"MAGIC MOON"

Born on December 12, 1943, in Buffalo, NY. Grover Washington, Jr., One of the finest musicians ever tagged with the charge of commercialism by purists, was commonly known as one of the founders of the smooth jazz-pop style that gained wide public favor from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the late 1990s he had produced albums in a range of styles and seen his music influence such commercial giants as Kenny G. Music lovers' appreciation for Washington's music was hardly diminished by his untimely death in 1999.

Washington came from a musical family. His mother sang in church choirs, and his father, who played the saxophone and maintained a large collection of jazz 78 RPM records, bought a sax for his son at the age of ten. "We came out of the ghetto," Washington said in the Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul, "but despite that fact, and despite Buffalo's cold winter climate, the city had a warm creative atmosphere, as far as I was concerned." His parents encouraged him to study classical music as well as jazz, and these studies proved beneficial later in Washington's career, honing his sight-reading skills and instilling in him a bent toward musical composition.

As a teenager Washington snuck out to jazz clubs and even performed with a blues band. "I'd play in a club until three o'clock in the morning, then be at school at quarter to eight," he recalled to the Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul. His brother Darryl became a jazz drummer who backed such stars as Angela Bofill and Gato Barbieri. Washington also hoped for a basketball career, but was frustrated by his small stature (he stood 5 feet, 8-1/2 inches tall). Graduating from high school at the age of 16, he immediately formed a rhythm-and-blues group called the Four Clefs, which toured with some success around the Midwest and the rest of the country.

This phase of Washington's career was cut short when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965, just as American troops were becoming enmeshed in the Vietnam conflict. Washington assumed he was headed for Southeast Asia, but his musical talents came to the rescue: he won a spot in the 19th Army Band. Stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, Washington found himself conveniently situated to continue building his musical career. He played with various ensembles in and around New York and Philadelphia, and performed and made friends with drummer Billy Cobham, another jazz-pop pioneer.

Discharged from the Army in 1967, the newly married musician worked for a record distributor while steadily gaining recognition as a jazz baritone-sax sideman. His breakthrough in the music profession came in 1971, when he was snared by Kudu record label producer Creed Taylor as a last-minute recording-session replacement for absent saxophonist Hank Crawford. Washington was to fill in on alto saxophone, an instrument he had not played since he had left the Army. Playing a rented instrument, Washington delivered a recording, released under his own name as Inner City Blues, that in the words of New York Times critic Robert Palmer, "sold hundreds of thousands of copies and did much to break down barriers between jazz and pop."

Washington's subsequent albums for Kudu continued his upward trajectory in the 1970s, with Mister Magic and Live at the Bijou meeting with special success. Washington energetically promoted his records on his own, and, in search of stronger label backing, moved first to Motown and then to Elektra at the end of the 1970s. The 1980 album Winelight, his second for Elektra, made him a superstar. It remained on Billboard magazine's pop chart for 102 weeks and was Number One on the jazz chart for 31 weeks. On the album Washington performed a duet with vocalist Bill Withers, "Just the Two of Us"; the two musicians, with their shared sophisticated-yet-earthy styling, complemented each other perfectly, and the recording remains one of Washington's best known.

Washington was not the first jazz musician to adopt pop and R&B influences, but his mixtures were new and convincing ones. Like other instrumentalists he performed jazz improvisations over a rock or urban contemporary beat; his improvisations were musically sophisticated but never lost the directness of the popular forms in which they were based. Washington, who was encouraged by his wife Christine to listen to more pop music, saw his music become a staple of various urban contemporary radio formats through the 1980s and beyond. And he was no temporary pop phenomenon. Most of his 1980s Elektra albums remained in print in the late 1990s.

Signing with the Columbia label in 1987, Washington kept up a steady schedule of releases. It was not until the 1990s that he relaxed somewhat in his pace of making new music. While continuing to make music that appealed to his large fan base, he took steps to address the concerns of critics who deplored the commercialism of his style. He made two albums, 1988's Then and Now and 1994's All My Tomorrows, that moved in the direction of straight-ahead acoustic jazz, toning down the popular rhythm tracks that had defined much of his music. "If you don't do things like this every now and then," Washington told Down Beat in 1994, "people think you don't know how. ... Most of us are multi-faceted, just like diamonds." Other albums, such as 1992's Next Exit, were more commercially oriented.

His success and celebrity assured--he performed at the inauguration ceremonies for President and fellow saxman Bill Clinton in 1993--Washington branched out into new areas in the 1990s. He collaborated with Boston Pops conductor John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra on a recording of music from the film A Place in the Sun for an album called The Hollywood Sound. And he remained alert to contemporary pop trends: the 1996 album Soulful Strut ventured into hip-hop, acid jazz, and African rhythm. A Christmas album, his first, appeared late in 1997. Many of his concerts, though, continued to feature the jazz-pop instrumentals that brought him his own place in the sun. As a Washington Post critic noted in 1997, "few people have played this music longer or more successfully than Washington."

Washington died on December 17, 1999, following the taping of an appearance on CBS-TV's Saturday Early Show. Jazzman Sonny Rollins told Downbeat: "He was one of the best people we had in this music, both on a human level and as a great player." In 2001 Jason Miles worked with a range of recording artists to put together a tribute album called To Grover, with Love.

To visit Grover Washington Jr's website CLICK HERE



Sonia Sanchez, Born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, AL; daughter of Wilson L. and Lena (Jones) Driver; married Albert Sanchez (divorced); married Etheridge Knight (divorced); children (second marriage): Anita, Morani, Mungu. Education: Attended public schools in New York City; Hunter College, BA, 1955; postgraduate work at New York University.

Career: Downtown School, New York, instructor, 1965-1967; San Francisco State College, instructor, 1966-68; University of Pittsburgh, assistant professor, 1969-70; Rutgers University, assistant professor, 1970-71; Manhattan Community College, assistant professor of black literature and creative writing teacher of writing, 1971-73; Amherst College, associate professor,1972-73; Muhammad Speaks, columnist, 1970s(?); Spelman College, poet-in-residence, 1988-89; Temple University, Laura H. Carnell Professor of English, 1977-99.

Memberships: Poetry Society of America, American Studies Association, Academy of American Poets, PEN, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Selected awards: PEN Writing Award and the American Academy of Art and Letters' $1,000 award to continue writing; honorary Ph.D. in fine arts, Wilberforce University, 1973; National Education Association Award, 1977-78; Honorary Citizen of Atlanta, 1982; Tribute to Black Womanhood Award by black students at Smith College; 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades; Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 1992-93.

Addresses: Home–Philadelphia, PA.

Sanchez also has contributed to journals and anthologies as a poet, essayist, and editor. She has edited anthologies, including Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comin at You, An Anthology of the Sonia Sanchez Writers Workshop at Countee Cullen Library in Harlem; and We Be Word Sorcerers: Twenty-five Stories by Black Americans. Also, she has written and edited stories for young readers, such as the compilation A Sound Investment, and the tale, The Adventures of Fathead, Smallhead, and Squarehead. In addition, Sanchez has contributed to a book on Egyptian Queens and written for the publications Black Scholar and Journal of African Studies. She also has recorded her poetry.

In her 1973 book of poems, A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, Sanchez explores being a woman in a society that "does not prepare young black women, or women period, to be women," as she told Claudia Tate in Black Women Writers at Work. She also writes about politics and ethnic pride and uses parts of her life to illustrate a general condition. Although she still advocates revolutionary change she also focuses on individuals battling to survive and find love and joy in their lives. Her work has been called both autobiographical and universal. Critics have observed that while her early books address social oppression, her 1970s plays are about her personal struggles. In Uh, Huh: But How Do it Free us? a black woman participating in the movement against white oppression refuses to be mistreated by her husband. As Sanchez said to Claudia Tate, "If you cannot remove yourself from the oppression of a man, how in the hell are you going to remove yourself from the oppression of a country?"

Sanchez's books of verse include Wounded in the House of a Friend and Does Your House Have Lions? The first book, published in 1995, is a blend of poetry and prose in which she pays tribute to Essence magazine and presents memorial pieces for Malcolm X and James Baldwin. According to Publishers Weekly, "Sanchez is at her best...when she places her speaker in the furious center of criminal action: a raped woman's detailed account of her attack, a woman trading her seven-year-old daughter for crack ('he held the stuff out/to me and I cdn't remember/her birthdate I cdn't remember/my daughter's face'). A brilliant narrative is offered in the voice of a Harlem woman struggling with (and eventually hammered to death by) her junkie granddaughter."

In Does Your House Have Lions? (1997) Sanchez concerns herself with AIDS and familial estrangements and reconciliations. In the book she writes of her brother who left the South angry at his absentee father. He hurls himself into the gay world in New York City, "and the days rummaging his eyes/and the nights flickering through a slit/of narrow bars. hips. thighs./and his thoughts labeling him misfit/as he prowled, pranced in the starlit/city," wrote Sanchez. But AIDS pursues him and the family is only brought together again because of his illness and hospitalization. As he dies, he hears the spiritual voices of his ancestors, who also are present. Kay Bourne stated in the Bay State Banner, "Stylistically, the 70-page heartfelt lyrical poem is a wonder. It is a triumph of skill with its consistent rhyming pattern (ababbcc) that propels the reader forward. It is brilliant in its choice of words, which, while never sending the reader scurrying to the dictionary, is touchingly apt in plumbing the depths of her brother's experience and that of her other family members."

The author has won numerous awards for her work and activities, including the PEN Writing Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' $1,000 award to continue writing. She was given an honorary Ph.D. in fine arts by Wilberforce University in 1973 and received a National Education Association Award in 1977-78. She was named Honorary Citizen of Atlanta in 1982, and received an NEA award in 1984. More recent awards include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1992-93, an honorary Ph.D. from Baruch College in 1993, a PEN fellowship in the arts in 1993-1994, and a Legacy Award from Jomandi Productions in 1995.

Throughout her distinguished teaching career, Sanchez taught and lectured at institutions across the country. As a teacher her legacy is as one of the pioneers of African-American Studies. She was the first professor to offer a course on the literature of African-American women (at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969). She began teaching in 1965 at New York's Downtown Community School. After teaching at several universities, including San Francisco State College (now University), the University of Pittsburgh, City College of the City of New York, Amherst, Spelman College, and the University of Pennsylvania, she became a professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University where she remained until her retirement in 1999.

Though retired from teaching, Sanchez did not quit writing. She kept to her discipline that she started as a youngster. She attributes her desire to keep writing to her "love of language," as she told African American Review. "It is that love of language that has propelled me, that love of language that came from listening to my grandmother speak black English. I would repeat what she said and fall out of the bed and fall down on the floor and laugh, and she knew that I was enjoying her language, because she knew that I didn't speak black English. But I did speak hers, you know. It is that love of language that, when you have written a poem that you know works, then you stand up and you dance around, or you open your door and go out on the porch and let out a loud laugh, you know."

With the 2004 publication of the spoken-word album, Full Moon of Sonia, Sanchez is continuing her legacy as the poet who brought black English to the world. As put by Black Issues Book Review: "It is refreshing to see a legend, a respected artist, come forward and show all of us how to do it right. Full Moon of Sonia does more than give us good poetry set to music; it galavants through an amazing formal and stylistic range that reminds us all how Sonia Sanchez finally got to this place."

Poetry
Homecoming Poems, Broadside Press, 1969.

We a BaddDDD People, Broadside Press, 1970.

Liberation Poems, Broadside Press, 1971.

It's a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs, (Juvenile) Broadside Press, 1971.

A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, Broadside Press, 1973.

Love Poems, Third Press, 1973.

I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, Black Scholar Press, 1981.

Homegirls and Handgrenades: Poems, Third World, 1985.

Under a Soprano Sky: Poems, Africa World Press, 1987.

Shake Down Memory and Continuous Fire, Africa World Press, 1991.

Wounded in the House of a Friend, Beacon Press, 1995.

Does Your House Have Lions?, Beacon Press, 1997.

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1999.

Plays
The Bronx is Next, Tulane Drama Review, 1968.

Sister Sonji, New Plays from Black Theatre, 1970.

Malcolm/Man Don't Live Here No Mo', Black Theatre, 1972.

Uh, Huh: But How Do it Free us? 1975.

I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't, OIC Theatre, 1982.

Black Cats Back and Uneasy Landings, 1995.

Recordings
Sonia Sanchez, Pacifica Tape Library, 1968.

Homecoming, Broadside, 1969.

We a BaddDDD People, Broadside, 1979.

A Sun Lady for All Seasons Reads Her Poetry, Folkways, 1971.

Sonia Sanchez and Robert Bly, Blackbox, 1971.

Sonia Sanchez: Selected Poems, Watershed Intermedia, 1975.

IDKT: Capturing Facts about the Heritage of Black Americans, Ujima, 1982.

Full Moon of Sonia, 2004.

Sources
Books
Black Women Writers at Work, ed. by Claudia Tate, Continuum, 1983, pp. 132-148.

Black Women Writers, 1950-1980: A Critical Evaluation, 1984.

Contemporary Authors, Gale, Vol. 49, New Revision Series, pp. 349-355; Vols. 33-36, First Revision, 1973, p. 691.

Contemporary Black American Poets and Dramatists, ed. by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1995, pp. 171-172.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Vol. 5, 1976, pp. 382-383.

Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African Poetic Tradition, Third World Press, 1996.

Notable Black American Women, Gale, 1992, pp. 976-977.

Sanchez, Sonia, Does Your House Have Lions? Beacon Press, 1997 p. 9.

Sanchez, Sonia, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Beacon Press, 1995.

Periodicals
African American Review, Winter 2000.

American Visions, August-September, 1996, p. 36.

Bay State Banner, October 23, 1997, pp. 22, 24.

Black Issues Book Review, March-April 2005.

Booklist, February 15, 1997.

Chicago Sun-Times, April 18, 1997.

Nation, April 17, 1972, p. 508.

New Yorker, April 8, 1972, pp. 97-99.

Poetry, 1973, pp. 45-46.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, 1974, p. 77; February 27, 1995, p. 97; February 24, 1997.

Time, May 1, 1972, p. 53.

Vibe, August 1997, p. 136.

World, May/June 1999.

—Alison Carb Sussman and Sara Pendergast

To visit Sonia Sanchez's website CLICK HERE

"Southern Poetology"

Marie Grady, affectionately known in the entertainment world as LyriQ, was born, September 7, 1971, in a small town called Heerlen in the southern region of the Netherlands, but now calls South Carolina home.

LyriQ is an author, songwriter/vocalist, and spoken word performer. With about nearly 10 years of performing experience under her belt, LyriQ is still a babe in the industry, yet she strives daily to reinvent herself and to take her craft to the next level.

To LyriQ’s acclaim are two self-published books of poetry entitled, “My Piece Be With You” and “Eye of Thee…Behold Her.” She also completed her first romance novel entitled “Tomorrow Promises…” A skilled vocalist and songwriter, LyriQ has fashioned a number musical/poetic favorites to include collaborations with such artists as the phenomenal Eryk Moore, Bro Poet of Da Wonda Twinz Dub TP Productions, B.L.I.S.S. of 1224 Entertainment, Nxt Lvl and the infamous Daryl Hayott of Konfuscious Klan. These and more heartfelt creations were compiled to create LyriQ’s soon to be released first album entitled “Sole to Soul”.

Currently, LyriQ travels with a group of poets called New Danger, whose primary purpose is to provide inspiration to our youth through spoken word performances at the Department of Juvenile Justice group homes, schools and colleges, as well as a number of community developed events. A member of the Black Poetry Café, the Black Author’s Network, and co-host of the Lyrical Disciples internet radio show, LyriQ is definitely out there doing her thing in the poetic realm.

A connoisseur of eclectic verbal stylings, LyriQ remains humbled by the concept of being a vessel through which vibes of existence flow. Her mission in life…to make a positive difference in the world we lovingly refer to as home.

To visit LyriQ's website CLICK HERE

To Listen to an interview I had with LyriQ CLICK HERE

Keith Pender better known as Quiet Storm of Spoken Word, was born in the city of Wilmington, NC on February 3, 1969. He grew up in a household with both parents and a sister named Keisha. He called her "Shortcake". She was his best friend, but, God saw fit to call her Home at the age of 9.

Keith's early years were a bit awkward, but, all of that changed one day as I listened to some Gospel Records that his mom owned. Gospel sparked his love for music as he listened to the words of the songs, really paying attention to them for the first time. It changed his life from that moment onward. He soon began taking piano lessons at the age of 10, and that lasted for 8 years. Quiet Storm sang in the Chorus during his Junior and Senior High School years. During those same years he began to write, but, that ended for a period when Shortcake died. Keith's desire to write was gone, but he kept on playing the piano and singing. Just like most in that day and age he'd been through many highs and lows. During one of his lowest points about nine years ago, he began to write again and has been doing so every since.

For Quiet Storm, spoken word came along within the last couple of years. He started doing what he does today as a form of expression and therapy. He continues spreading positive and heartfelt messages, because, he feels he's a Messenger. He feels that he speaks for those that may not be able to articulate certain feelings themselves, to the point of getting people to really understand or hear them completely.

Keith says; "I Am QuietStorm Of SpokenWord. I Have Much To Say To the World!"

To visit Quiet Storm's website CLICK HERE
To listen to the interview I had with Quiet Storm CLICK HERE

"Vibin' with a Lady"

Warren Robert Cheeseboro, better known as Khan Jamal, was born July 23, 1946 in Jacksonville, Florida. Born into a musical family, his mother played jazz piano, Jamal was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In his late teens, he took up the vibraphone, studying music both at college and privately.

Soon, he was playing professionally, and through the late 60s and into the 70s he worked mainly in the Philadelphia area. Among the musicians with whom he worked, sometimes under their leadership, were Frank Lowe, Grachan Moncur III, Archie Shepp, Byard Lancaster, Sam Rivers, Trudy Pitts, Sun Ra and Jerome Cooper.

With other Sun Ra alumni, he played in Cosmic Forces and, in collaboration with Lancaster he formed the group known as Sounds Of Liberation. The latter unit included at one time or another guitarist Monnette Sudler, drummers and percussionists Alvin Sharpless, Dwight James, Omar Hill and Rashied Salim, bass player Billy Mills.

Jamal continued with his studies, and one of his tutors was vibraphonist Bill Lewis, with whom he recorded an album of vibraphone-marimba duets. Also in the 70s, he was music director of the Philadelphia Jazz Foundation and played in Sunny Murray's band, Untouchable Factor.

During the following decade, Jamal, who plays both vibraphone and marimba, was with Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, Billy Bang, Joe Bonner and others, notably Johnny Mbizo Dyani, who appeared on three of Jamal's mid-80s albums for SteepleChase Records.

Absent from the recording scene for some time, especially as leader, at the end of the 90s and early in the 00s, he made a striking return with the well-received Balafon Dance. Illness dogged Jamal for a while and a 2002 medical support fundraiser saw the appearance of several colleagues and friends, including the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen.

A gifted, dynamic and restlessly inventive player, Jamal's chosen location, Philadelphia, has tended to keep him from the more widespread attention he deserves. When he does venture farther afield, and through his recordings, he ably demonstrates to the wider audience that his is an exceptional talent.



“Each and every poem I write, I consider a gift from God. A turn of a phrase. Emotions that surface. An experience distilled into verse. Each offering is a present from the Creator. All Praises. Thank you for choosing me as the vessel.” (Lady Dove’s Artist’s Statement)

"Lady Dove" aka Pheralyn Dove, is a poet, performer, wordsmith, infotainist and culturalist whose work has been showcased nationwide and internationally as a spoken-word artist, actor, author, essayist, playwright, creative writer and technical writer. She has appeared on stages in her native Philadelphia, New York City, Paris, France and Rome, Italy. Dove has been a press agent, an entertainment editor for the Philadelphia Tribune and feature writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

She portrays 17 characters in her poignant one-woman show, “Little Girl Blue,” which combines music, spoken word, monologues and video. Many of the poems in “Little Girl Blue” are excerpted from her book, Color in Motion (Axis Press), which has a foreword by drumming legend Max Roach. A graduate of Hampton University, Dove studied poetry and creative writing under Professor Sonia Sanchez at Temple University’s Pan African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP). Currently Dove teaches “Practical Writing” in the very same Temple University PASCEP program. Dove was named an Honored Author two consecutive years at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Annual Borrowers’ Ball, performed at the Jazz a la Villette Festival in Paris, France with the Sounds of Liberation and was a featured poet at New York City’s renowned “Vision Festival.”

Lady Dove lives in a perpetual state of gratitude. On a daily basis, she gives thanks to the Almighty for all the resplendent provisions. All praises, indeed.

To visit Lady Dove's website CLICK HERE

"A Tribute To Lena Horne"

Lena Horne, one of the greatest American artists of all time, endured more than her fair share of “Stormy Weather” as the title of her 1943 film and sultry signature song implied. Yet the chanteuse and actress – who possessed one of the most lush voices in the history of recorded music – broke down barriers, not only with performances of memorable songs like “Honeysuckle Rose" and "Black Coffee,” but also for speaking out about the prejudice she experienced during her early years as a contract player at MGM and the subsequent hardships she experienced throughout her time in the entertainment business. The recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor in 1984, the elegant actress was a legend with a cause. Horne sang her pain, acted through intolerance, and fought long and hard to erase color lines.

Lena Calhoun Horne was born in Brooklyn, NY on June 30, 1917 to Edwin “Teddy” Horne and Edna Scottron. After her parents separated, the young Horne moved in with her paternal grandparents and uncle. She was exposed as a child to the fight for civil and women’s rights as her grandmother, Cora Calhoun Horne, was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Urban League, and Suffragette organizations and it was she who often brought her granddaughter to meetings. Horne’s fair-skinned mother Edna was a singer and dancer in various drama troupes, and started bringing her daughter on tour when she was six. They moved around frequently due to Edna’s career, and Horne often stayed with relatives or family friends, such as two women from Macon, GA who taught her southern-style cooking as well as instructing her in the Bible. The youngster reunited with her father while she was living in Fort Valley with her uncle. After years of going from city to city, Horne and her mother settled back to New York when she was 12 years old.

Four years after moving back home, Horne began her career as a dancer at Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club, earning $25 a week. There, she was introduced to the growing community of jazz performers, including Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Harold Arlen, who would go on to write her biggest hit, “Stormy Weather.” She also discovered her vocal talent was on par with professional performers, so it was not long before the young girl made her recording debut with Noble Sissle’s band in 1936. Horne made history in 1940 when she toured with Charlie Barnet’s band – the first African-American to do so with an all-white band. While changing the face of the music industry, Horne also made waves as a theatrical performer. She made her first Broadway appearance in the 1939 musical “Blackbirds” and later received her best reviews for her performance in a 1957 production of “Jamaica.”

In 1942, two years after she toured with Barnet’s band, Horne rewrote history again when she became the first black performer to receive a contract from a major film studio. Discovered by a talent agent while performing at the Cotton Club, MGM gave the talented songstress various musical projects, including “Panama Hattie” (1942), where she had an uncredited role as a nightclub singer. Horne’s appearance in the film, however brief, was widely regarded as the best aspect of the entire film. Impressed with her onscreen appeal, MGM gave her a bigger role in their all-star revue, "Thousands Cheer” (1943), where Horne sang another one of her most famous numbers, “Honeysuckle Rose.” However, although she was signed to the most revered and powerful movie studio and lacked nothing in the way of beauty, style and talent, Horne’s skin color remained an issue for moviegoers throughout most of the country at that time. Because of this perspective, her film roles were often kept to minor characters or shot separately, so she was edited out for versions shown to Southern moviegoers who could not accept black performers playing anything other than servants or sidekicks. Getting edited out in certain versions of her films was the lesser of two evils for Horne, who stipulated in her MGM contract that she would not get such stereotypical roles.

The studio capitalized on Horne’s skin color much more than recognizing her true talent. Iconic makeup company Max Factor even invented the “Little Egyptian” makeup line for the star to highlight her dark features. MGM also loaned the actress to another studio – 20th Century Fox – for its all-star, all-black musical “Stormy Weather” in 1943. Singing the title song gave Horne her signature number that would remain the song most closely associated with the star. It was also her first real acting role. “In every other film I just sang a song or two,” Horne later remembered. “’Stormy Weather’ and ‘Cabin In the Sky’ were the only movies in which I played a character who was involved in the plot.” By the mid-1940s, Horne was the highest paid black performer in the country. Her renditions of “Deed I Do,” “As Long as I Live,” and Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things” became instant classics. Thousands of black soldiers abroad during World War II had Horne’s photos pinned up above their bunks. She had one last film appearance, singing “Baby Come Out of the Clouds” in “Duchess of Idaho” (1950), before Horne became an unfortunate target of that era’s biggest political and cultural dilemma.

Hollywood and politics clashed in the early 1950s when the Joseph McCarthy congressional hearings resulted in the blacklisting of several performers, including Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Gypsy Rose Lee. Horne, who had been politically active since she was a young girl, accompanying her grandmother to NAACP meetings, was now suddenly blacklisted as an adult for her participation in what was then considered “Communist actions." Not surprisingly, her film career was put on hold. Instead, the hardworking entertainer refocused and spent her time singing in nightclubs and cabarets. It would take six years for Horne to return to Hollywood, where she appeared as herself in the comedy musical, “Meet Me in Las Vegas” (1956).
After the decline of McCarthyism, her political involvement – particularly in regards to civil rights – intensified, with Horne continuing to be an active member of the NAACP. On Aug. 28, 1963, she joined 250,000 others in the march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the historic day when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Horne also spoke at a rally that same year with another civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, just days before his assassination. Tired of always being offered throwaway cameo roles rather than starring vehicles in films, Horne decided she was done with Hollywood moviemaking. She instead chose to focus on her music and television appearances, where she was a favorite guest star on the talk and variety show circuit, including “The Ed Sullivan Show” (CBS, 1948-1971) and “The Perry Como Show” (CBS, 1948-1963). Horne also appeared on TV specials hosted by her A-list friends Judy Garland, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, as well as the comedy hour “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” (NBC, 1968-1973).

Music was always synonymous with Horne, and it was where she left her greatest mark. Her 1957 recording Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria became the best-selling album by any female artist in RCA Victor’s history. The early 1970s proved challenging for Horne, who lost her father, son, and husband in the span of 12 months. She retreated from public life for a certain time, only to perform in CBS’ all-star entertainment revues “That’s Entertainment” (1974) and “That’s Entertainment II” (1976). Horne also appeared as Glinda the Good in the 1978 film “The Wiz,” an African-Americanized version of “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. It was her final feature film appearance.

One of Horne’s proudest achievements occurred outside the entertainment industry. After having turned down numerous offers, the artist received an honorary doctorate from Howard University in 1980. Horne also made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1984 with her comeback show “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.” The Brooklyn native saw her name in the bright lights on Broadway once again as the one-woman-star of the autobiographical production that included such signature songs as “Stormy Weather” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” The show won a Drama Desk Award, a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards (for its soundtrack), and a rave review from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle.

Fifty-two years after getting her MGM contract, Horne finally spoke out about the overt prejudice she had experienced with the studio when she was asked to co-host the 1994 special “That’s Entertainment III.” She accepted – but only if she could comment on her early years with MGM. That same year, she reunited with Sinatra in “Sinatra Duets” (CBS), and filmed her own special “An Evening with Lena Horne.” Working only sporadically at this point, in 2004, she appeared as herself in the celebration of MGM’s golden years, “The Masters Behind the Musicals.”

Lena Horne crossed over on May 9, 2010 at the age of 92

CANADIAN SUNSET

Jazz and Poetry are two truly international artforms. This program "Canadian Sunset," will certainly bring forth that fact. I sincerely hope that you enjoy this edition of Spotlight On Jazz And Poetry!

Yves Léveillé
Since moving to Montreal in 1984, pianist and composer Yves Léveillé has been increasingly called upon to perform his music at the national and international level. In the 90s, he decided to put together his own jazz ensemble dedicated to interpreting his compositions. This creative endeavour led to a collaboration with the jazz label Effendi, with whom he has made four albums: Signal Commun (FND001)1999, Zone Indigène (FND 023) 2001, Quantique (FND 038) 2003 and SOHO ( FND070 ) 2006.

Yves Léveillé has performed his music mainly in Quebec, but also in many other Canadians cities such as Halifax, Ottawa ,Vancouver, as well as in France, where the cities of Paris and Vienne have received him on several occasions. He also has several performances in New York city to his credit, most notably at Dizzy’s club in Lincoln Center in May 2007, his sextet sharing the stage with multi-instrumentalist Paul McCandless. In addition, his piano playing skills have led him to such far-flung locales as Singapore.

He has to his credit a large number of broadcasts/recordings for Radio-Canada and the CBC ( Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), as well as collaborations with established musicians such as Paul McCandless, Eri Yamamoto, Helmut Lipsky, Pierre Tanguay, Alain Bédard, and many others. Parallel to his career as a jazz musician, he regularly works as a musical director and arranger for singers and songwriters, most recently for the show « Marie-Thérèse Fortin chante Barbara ». He occasionally composes music for the theater as well. During the summer season he gives jazz workshops and lectures at Métabetchouan ( Lac St-Jean ) and Domaine Forget ( St-Irénée ) in Québec.

Yves Léveillé has been the recipient of several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des lettres du Québec.

Visit Yves website at http://www.yvesleveille.ca/



Mary Pinkoski


Mary Pinkoski is a spoken word poet from Edmonton and the winner of the 2008 National CBC Poetry Faceoff. Mary's additional performance credits include the 2008 South Country Fair, the 2008 Edmonton Nextfest and the 2006 and 2007 Roar Spoken Word Festival finales.

Sticking close to what resonates, Mary was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on May 27, 1977, and now currently resides in Edmonton, Alberta, her work constantly infuses the themes of religion and vast prairie landscapes that she grew up with.

Mary came to poetry in the way that moths come to flames, easily. She began writing at an early age, but came later to working with poetry as a performative outlet. As a Canadian, some of her strongest influences have been Canadian poets: Leonard Cohen and Gwendolyn MacEwan and Zoe Whittall.

Mary’s work vacillates between traditional poetry, spoken word and storytelling. Her performances attempt to meld these traditions into a cohesive whole. She has been heavily influenced by performance poets such as Sheri-D Wilson and Shane Koyczan, as well as storytellers Jack McCarthy and Utah Phillips.

Mary is a regular performer with the Edmonton Raving Poets. She has also performed with the Edmonton Stroll of Poets and at poetry slams in Calgary, Alberta. In addition to her live performances, Mary's work has been played on CBC Radio One's Key of A, as well as featured on the Daily Haiku and Eleventh Transmission websites. A chapbook of her work is forthcoming through red nettle press, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Watch a video of Mary Pinkoski at the Calgary Spoken Word Festival


Leif Baradoy
Leif Baradoy was born in Banff, Alberta, Canada--in the heart of the Rocky Mountains--in 1981. Raised by a pentacostal christian and an atheist, Leif grew up in the small village Seebe--population 100 people--and attended a one room school house. Living in the Rocky Mountains instilled in Leif a love for nature, silence, wandering, and solitude.

After moving to the city of Calgary, poetry revolutionized Leif's life in his early teens with the discovery of the Oxford Anthology of Twentieth Century Verse in his parents' book collection. Thumbing through the book , Leif discovered Ginsberg, Cohen, Eliot, Pound, and bp nichol. In particular, the potency of Ginsberg's Howl possessed Leif. In response, he began writing avant garde verse, based on word play and sound. This was his first drive to "Make it new."

As an emerging western-Canadian voice, Leif is been involved in multiple projects. Leif founded the awakendivine arts community in 2001, which produced a quarterly publication and a monthly open-mic poetry/art-show. He has been published in Synchronicity, The Pulchritudinous Review, eleventh transmission, and Geez Magazine--as well as a handful of chapbooks and zines.

He has read at: South Country Fair (2008 and 2006) in Fort Macleod Alberta, the Amnesty International Arts Jam (Calgary, 2006), the flywheel reading series (2006 and 2008), Calgary Multi-arts variety show (2006 and 2007), Soundlines (2007), Mayworks Festival (2001), and Single Onion (2007)--to name a few.
Leif is currently working on his first manuscript and experimenting with interrupting people's routines with poetry delivered by text messaging to mobile phones.

To receive a free copy of this chapbook "The Late Teacher and Other Poems" connect with Leif at www.leifbaradoy.com

"A Tribute to GURU"

Keith Edward Elam better known as GURU, was born on July 17, 1966 in Boston Massachusetts. He is the lyrical half of legendary hip-hop group Gang Starr together with DJ Premier. With his Jazzmatazz series, he is also considered to be one of the pioneers of hiphop/jazz crossover. The name Guru is an acronym for "Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal"

Founded in 1987, Gang Starr built a sizable following in the early 90's, releasing classic albums like, Step in the Arena (1991) and Daily Operation (1992). Guru's lyrical style is based on battle rhymes delivered smoothly, modestly, and with sly wit; he typically avoids using overwhelming charisma, focusing instead on his rhyming ability. His formidable skills on the mic, has earned him legions of admirers.

In 1993, he released his first solo album, Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 The album featured collaborations with Donald Byrd, N'Dea Davenport of the Brand New Heavies and Roy Ayers, while his second LP, Jazzmatazz, Vol. 2: The New Reality, featured Ramsey Lewis, Branford Marsalis and Jamiroquai. The Jazzmatazz albums are commonly considered some of the best rap of the early 90s, Guru's reputation was also bolstered through the continued success of Jazzmatazz, Vol. 3: Street soul (2000)
His "first proper solo album", in his own words, was Version 7.0: The Street Scriptures (2005), released with the help of super producer Solar. The album reached #1 on the college hip-hop charts. Guru's latest project is the fourth installment in the Jazzmatazz series, entirely produced by Solar. It was released in early June 2007

Guru crossed over on April 19, 2010

A Conversation with Victor Fields

In this era of disposable popular music and "flavor of the month" idols, there remain few artists who truly study their craft, sing songs with style and substance, and strive to create a significant body of work that will stand the test of time. Victor Fields is one such artist.

A critically-acclaimed singer and songwriter from Oakland, California, his ability to move seamlessly between R&B, Jazz and Pop prompted the legendary Lou Rawls to call him “the man with the golden voice” and the Los Angeles Times to describe him as “a stylistically accomplished singer who deserves much more attention.

Tune in to Spotlight On Jazz And Poetry to listen to a wonderful conversation between mysel (Bigtrigger), Celestial Dancer and Victor Fields. It was an enjoyable, candid and educational conversation.

To listen to the conversation CLICK HERE

To visit Victor Fields website CLICK HERE

Mingus In A Dream Deferred

One of the most important figures in twentieth century American music, Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church-- choir and group singing-- and from "hearing Duke Ellington over the radio when [he] was eight years old." He studied double bass and composition in a formal way (five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while absorbing vernacular music from the great jazz masters, first-hand. His early professional experience, in the 40's, found him touring with bands like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and Lionel Hampton.

Eventually he settled in New York where he played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950's-- Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington himself. One of the few bassists to do so, Mingus quickly developed as a leader of musicians. He was also an accomplished pianist who could have made a career playing that instrument. By the mid-50's he had formed his own publishing and recording companies to protect and document his growing repertoire of original music. He also founded the "Jazz Workshop," a group which enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings.

Mingus soon found himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. His recordings bear witness to the extraordinarily creative body of work that followed. They include: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, Let My Children Hear Music. He recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over three hundred scores.

Although he wrote his first concert piece, "Half-Mast Inhibition," when he was seventeen years old, it was not recorded until twenty years later by a 22-piece orchestra with Gunther Schuller conducting. It was the presentation of "Revelations" which combined jazz and classical idioms, at the 1955 Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts, that established him as one of the foremost jazz composers of his day.

In 1971 Mingus was awarded the Slee Chair of Music and spent a semester teaching composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the same year his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published by Knopf. In 1972 it appeared in a Bantam paperback and was reissued after his death, in 1980, by Viking/Penguin and again by Pantheon Books, in 1991. In 1972 he also re-signed with Columbia Records. His music was performed frequently by ballet companies, and Alvin Ailey choreographed an hour program called "The Mingus Dances" during a 1972 collaboration with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company.

He toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States until the end of 1977 when he was diagnosed as having a rare nerve disease, Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. He was confined to a wheelchair, and although he was no longer able to write music on paper or compose at the piano, his last works were sung into a tape recorder.

From the 1960's until his death in 1979 at age 56, Mingus remained in the forefront of American music. When asked to comment on his accomplishments, Mingus said that his abilities as a bassist were the result of hard work but that his talent for composition came from God.

Mingus received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation (two grants). He also received an honorary degree from Brandeis and an award from Yale University. At a memorial following Mingus' death, Steve Schlesinger of the Guggenheim Foundation commented that Mingus was one of the few artists who received two grants and added: "I look forward to the day when we can transcend labels like jazz and acknowledge Charles Mingus as the major American composer that he is." The New Yorker wrote: "For sheer melodic and rhythmic and structural originality, his compositions may equal anything written in western music in the twentieth century."

He died in Mexico on January 5, 1979, and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River in India. Both New York City and Washington, D.C. honored him posthumously with a "Charles Mingus Day."

After his death, the National Endowment for the Arts provided grants for a Mingus foundation called "Let My Children Hear Music" which catalogued all of Mingus' works. The microfilms of these works were then given to the Music Division of the New York Public Library where they are currently available for study and scholarship - a first for jazz. Repertory bands called the Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Orchestra and the Mingus Big Band continue to perform his music. Biographies of Charles Mingus include Mingus by Brian Priestley; Mingus/Mingus by Janet Coleman and Al Young and Myself When I Am Real, by Gene Santoro.

Mingus' masterwork, "Epitaph," a composition which is more than 4000 measures long and which requires two hours to perform, was discovered during the cataloguing process. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the piece itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller, in a concert produced by Sue Mingus at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after Mingus' death.

The New Yorker wrote that "Epitaph" represents the first advance in jazz composition since Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown, and Beige," which was written in 1943. The New York Times said it ranked with the "most memorable jazz events of the decade." Convinced that it would never be performed in his lifetime, Mingus called his work "Epitaph," declaring that he wrote it "for my tombstone."

The Library of Congress was presented with the Charles Mingus Collection in 1993, including autographed manuscripts, photographs, literary manuscripts, correspondence, and tape recordings of interviews, broadcasts, recording sessions, and Mingus composing at the piano.

To visit Charles Mingus` website CLICK HERE


Poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, autobiographer, and writer of children's books, James Mercer Langston Hughes, was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. Langston Hughes grew up mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, but also lived in Illinois, Ohio, and Mexico.

By the time Hughes enrolled at Columbia University in New York, he had already launched his literary career with his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in the Crisis, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. He had also committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans.

Hughes's sense of dedication was instilled in him most of all by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston, whose first husband had died at Harpers Ferry as a member of John Brown’s band, and whose second husband (Hughes's grandfather) had also been a militant abolitionist. Another important family figure was John Mercer Langston, a brother of Hughes's grandfather who was one of the best-known black Americans of the nineteenth century. At the same time, Hughes struggled with a sense of desolation fostered by parental neglect. He himself recalled being driven early by his loneliness “to books, and the wonderful world in books.”

Leaving Columbia in 1922, Hughes spent the next three years in a succession of menial jobs. But he also traveled abroad. He worked on a freighter down the west coast of Africa and lived for several months in Paris before returning to the United States late in 1924. By this time, he was well known in African American literary circles as a gifted young poet.

His major early influences were Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, as well as the black poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, a master of both dialect and standard verse, and Claude McKay, a radical socialist who also wrote accomplished lyric poetry. However, Sandburg, who Hughes later called “my guiding star,” was decisive in leading him toward free verse and a radically democratic modernist aesthetic.

His devotion to black music led him to novel fusions of jazz and blues with traditional verse in his first two books, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927). His emphasis on lower-class black life, especially in the latter, led to harsh attacks on him in the black press. With these books, however, he established himself as a major force of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926, in the Nation, he provided the movement with a manifesto when he skillfully argued the need for both race pride and artistic independence in his most memorable essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.”

By this time, Hughes had enrolled at the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, from which he would graduate in 1929. In 1927 he began one of the most important relationships of his life, with his patron Mrs. Charlotte Mason, or “Godmother,” who generously supported him for two years. She supervised the writing of his first novel, Not Without Laughter (1930), about a sensitive, black Midwestern boy and his struggling family. However, their relationship collapsed about the time the novel appeared, and Hughes sank into a period of intense personal unhappiness and disillusionment.

One result was his firm turns to the far left in politics. During a year (1932–1933) spent in the Soviet Union, he wrote his most radical verse. A year in Carmel, California, led to a collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks (1934). This volume is marked by pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism.

After his play Mulatto, on the twinned themes of miscegenation and parental rejection, opened on Broadway in 1935, Hughes wrote other plays, including comedies such as Little Ham (1936) and a historical drama, Emperor of Haiti (1936). Most of these plays were only moderate successes. In 1937 he spent several months in Europe, including a long stay in besieged Madrid. In 1938 he returned home to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which staged his agitprop drama “Don’t You Want to Be Free?” The play, employing several of his poems, vigorously blended Black Nationalist, the blues, and socialist exhortation. The same year, a socialist organization published a pamphlet of his radical verse, “A New Song.”

With World War II, Hughes moved more to the center politically. His first volume of autobiography, The Big Sea (1940), written in an episodic, lightly comic manner, made virtually no mention of his leftist sympathies. In his book of verse Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) he once again sang the blues. On the other hand, this collection, as well as another, his Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), strongly attacked racial segregation.

Perhaps his finest literary achievement during the war came in the course of writing a weekly column in the Chicago Defender that began in 1942 and lasted twenty years. The highlight of the column was an offbeat Harlem character called Jesse B. Semple, or Simple, and his exchanges with a staid narrator in a neighborhood bar, where Simple commented on a variety of matters but mainly about race and racism. Simple became Hughes's most celebrated and beloved fictional creation, and the subject of five collections edited by Hughes, starting in 1950 with Simple Speaks His Mind.

After the war, two books of verse, Fields of Wonder (1947) and One-Way Ticket (1949), added little to his fame. However, in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) he broke new ground with verse accented by the discordant nature of the new bebop jazz that reflected a growing desperation in the black urban communities of the North. At the same time, Hughes's career was vexed by constant harassment by right-wing forces about his ties to the Left. In vain he protested that he had never been a Communist and had severed all such links. In 1953 he suffered a public humiliation at the hands of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who forced him to appear in Washington, D.C., and testify officially about his politics. Hughes denied that he had ever been a party member but conceded that some of his radical verse had been ill-advised.

Hughes's career hardly suffered from this episode. Within a short time McCarthy himself was discredited and Hughes was free to write at length about his year in the Soviet Union in I Wonder as I Wander (1956), his much-admired second volume of autobiography. He became prosperous, although he always had to work hard for his measure of prosperity and sometimes called himself, with good cause, a “literary sharecropper.”

In the 1950s he constantly looked to the musical stage for success, as he sought to repeat his major coup of the 1940s, when Kurt Weill and Elmer Rice had chosen him as the lyricist for their Street Scene (1947). This production was hailed as a breakthrough in the development of American opera; for Hughes, the apparently endless cycle of poverty into which he had been locked came to an end. He bought a home in Harlem.

The Simple books inspired a musical show, Simply Heavenly (1957), that met with some success. However, Hughes's Tambourines to Glory (1963), a gospel musical play satirizing corruption in a black storefront church, failed badly, with some critics accusing him of creating caricatures of black life. Nevertheless, his love of gospel music led to other acclaimed stage efforts, usually mixing words, music, and dance in an atmosphere of improvisation. Notable here were the Christmas show Black Nativity (1961) and, inspired by the civil rights movement, Jericho–Jim Crow (1964).

For Hughes, writing for children was important. Starting with the successful Popo and Fifina (1932), a tale set in Haiti and written with Arna Bontemps, he eventually published a dozen children's books, on subjects such as jazz, Africa, and the West Indies. Proud of his versatility, he also wrote a commissioned history of the NAACP and the text of a much praised pictorial history of black America. His text in The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), where he explicated photographs of Harlem by Roy DeCarava, was judged masterful by reviewers, and confirmed Hughes's reputation for an unrivaled command of the nuances of black urban culture.

The 1960s saw Hughes as productive as ever. In 1962 his ambitious book length poem Ask Your Mama, dense with allusions to black culture and music, appeared. However, the reviews were dismissive. Hughes's work was not as universally acclaimed as before in the black community. Although he was hailed in 1966 as a historic artistic figure at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, he also found himself increasingly rejected by young black militants at home as the civil rights movement lurched toward Black Power. His last book was the volume of verse, posthumously published, The Panther and the Lash (1967), mainly about civil rights. He died in May that year in New York City.


In many ways Hughes always remained loyal to the principles he had laid down for the younger black writers in 1926. His art was firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling even as he cherished his freedom as an artist. He was both nationalist and cosmopolitan. As a radical democrat, he believed that art should be accessible to as many people as possible. He could sometimes be bitter, but his art is generally suffused by a keen sense of the ideal and by a profound love of humanity, especially black Americans. He was perhaps the most original of African American poets and, in the breadth and variety of his work, assuredly the most representative of African American writers.

MISTY MAGIC

Erroll Louis Garner was born June 15, 1921 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Erroll began playing piano at the age of 3. He attended George Westinghouse High School, as did fellow pianists Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal. Garner was self-taught and remained an "ear player" all his life - he never learned to read music. At the age of 7, Garner began appearing on radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids. By the age of 11, he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. At age 14 in 1937 he joined local saxophonist Leroy Brown. He played locally in the shadow of his older pianist brother Linton Garner and moved to New York in 1944. He briefly worked with the bassist Slam Stewart, and though not a bebop musician per se, in 1947 played with Charlie Parker on the famous "Cool Blues" session. Although his admission to the Pittsburgh music union was initially refused because of his inability to read music, they eventually relented in 1956 and made him an honorary member.

Garner is credited with having a superb memory of music. After attending a concert by the Russian pianist Emil Gilels, Garner returned to his apartment and was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall. Short in stature (5 foot 2 inches), Garner performed sitting on multiple telephone directories, except when playing in New York City, where a Manhattan phone book was sufficient.

He was also known for his occasional vocalizations while playing, which can be heard on many of his recordings. He helped to bridge the gap for jazz musicians between nightclubs and the concert hall. Until his death on January 2, 1977, he made many tours both at home and abroad, and produced a large volume of recorded work. Garner is buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery. He was, reportedly, "The Tonight Show" host Johnny Carson's favorite jazz musician; Garner appeared on Carson's show many times over the years. Called "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" by Allmusic.com, Garner showed that a "creative jazz musician can be very popular without watering down his music" or changing his personal style. He is referred to as a "brilliant virtuoso who sounded unlike anyone else" ,using an "orchestral approach straight from the swing era but ...open to the innovations of bop." Garner's ear and technique owed as much to practice as to a natural gift. His distinctive style could swing like no other, but some of his best recordings are ballads, such as his best-known composition, "Misty". "Misty" rapidly became a jazz standard - and was famously featured in Clint Eastwood's Play Misty for Me (1971).

Garner may have been inspired by the example of Earl Hines, a fellow Pittsburgh resident but 18 years his senior, and there were resemblances in their elastic approach to timing and the use of the right-hand octaves. As it is especially shown by Garner's early recordings, another clear influence on him was the stride piano style of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. Erroll's definitive style however, was unique and had neither obvious forerunners nor competent imitators although, at an amateur level, more players attempted to imitate him than any other pianist in jazz history. A key factor in his sound was the independence of his hands. Garner would often play behind or ahead of the beat with his right hand while his springy left had rocked steady, creating insouciance and tension in the music, which he would resolve by bringing the timing back into sync. The independence of his hands also was evidenced by his masterful use of three against four figures and more complicated cross rhythms between the hands. He also would play introductions to pieces that sometimes utilized cacophonous or just weird sounds unrelated to the number, but which produced a sense of excitement in the audience not knowing what he was up to.

Whether in ultra slow ballads or rollicking up-tempo improvisation, this never failed to convey a humorous and titillating attitude to both the material at hand and the audience. His recording career started out in the late 1940s when several 7" EP records were made with tracks such as "Fine and Dandy" and "Sweet 'n' lovely". However, his 1955 recording, Concert by the Sea, ranks among his most popular work and features Eddie Calhoun on bass and Denzil Best on drums. Ironically this recording of a performance at an army base in Carmel, California, was made using relatively primitive sound equipment, but Garner's inventiveness and swing made its point in each tune. Other notable works include 1951's Long Ago and Far Away and 1974's Magician, both of which see Garner perform a number of classic standards in his own style. Often the trio was expanded to add Latin percussion, usually a conga, with electric results.

What makes Garner's playing easy to recognize is his trademark introductions, which seem to make no sense until breaking dramatically into his exposition of the tune he will play, and the guitar strumming sound of his left hand, playing crotchet accompaniment to his rich sounding right hand. He places his chords and octaves on syncopated beats that swing very hard and can be used to build excellent tension, such as between phrases. The approach also suggests he was influenced by the iconic rhythm guitar work of Count Basie's long time guitarist, Freddie Green. But discerning listeners could find that while his even four left hand was a fixture, it was far from being the only rhythmic approach he took to playing.

Erroll Garner crossed over on January 2, 1977

To visit Erroll Garner's website CLICK HERE

SILK n SOUL

Lou’s voice is as distinctive and instantly recognizable as any in music. It all began on December 1, 1933, in Chicago with the birth of a boy, who would become the legendary Lou Rawls. From Lou’s early days in gospel, his collaborations with Sam Cooke, “The Dick Clark Show” at the Hollywood Bowl in 1959, the opening for The Beatles in 1966 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, his monologues in the 1970s that presaged rap music to becoming a “crossover” artist before the term was invented, there has been one constant in Lou Rawls’ career––a voice that one critic proclaimed was “sweet as sugar, soft as velvet, strong as steel, smooth as butter.”

Lou’s 52 years in entertainment as a recording artist, included an astonishing 60-plus albums, three Grammy wins, 13 Grammy nominations, one platinum album, five gold albums and a gold single and a Star on the Hollywood Hall of Fame. Lou has epitomized the ultimate song stylist. "I've gone the full spectrum--from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop--and the public has accepted what I've done through it all. I think it means I've been doing something right at the right time."

Not surprisingly, Lou began his career singing gospel. He was raised on the South Side of Chicago by his grandmother and became a member of his Baptist church choir when his was seven-years-old. As a teenager, Lou's horizons expanded with trips to The Regal Theatre to see Billy Eckstine, Arthur Prysock and Joe Williams. "I loved the way they could lift the spirit of the audience," Lou often stated. Influenced, as well, by doo-wop, Lou would harmonize with high school classmate Cooke and together they joined groups including The Teenage Kings Of Harmony.

In the Fifties Lou ventured to Los Angeles and was recruited for The Chosen Gospel Singers, with whom he was first heard on record. Lou later joined The Pilgrim Travelers before enlisting in 1955 as a paratrooper in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, The All Americans. Three years later, Sergeant Rawls left the service and rejoined The Travelers.
It was during a tour of the South with Cooke and The Travelers that a serious car accident nearly ended his career and his life. One passenger was killed, Cooke was slightly injured and Rawls was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital. Alhough he slipped into a coma for five-and-a-half days, suffered memory loss and didn't completely recovered for a year, Lou survived. "I really got a new life out of that," Lou said. "I saw a lot of reasons to live. I began to learn acceptance, direction, understanding and perception--all elements that had been sadly lacking in my life. I might have lived long enough to learn all this in the long haul, but I would have been just another soul taking up time and space for a long spell before I learned."

Playing small R&B, pop and soul clubs in Los Angeles, Rawls was performing at Pandora's Box Coffee Shop for $10 a night plus pizza in late 1959 when Nick Venet, a producer at Capitol, was so impressed with Lou's four-octave range that he invited Lou to make an audition tape. Lou did and was signed to Capitol. I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water, his 1962 solo debut album, became the first of more than 20 albums on that label in only a decade. It was Love Is A Hurtin' Thing in 1966 which shot Rawls to the top. The album was nominated for two Grammy awards: Best R&B Recording and Best R&B Solo Vocal Performance.
During this period, Lou began his hip monologues about life and love on "World of Trouble" and "Tobacco Road," each more than seven minutes long. Called "pre-rap" by some, for Rawls they grew out of necessity."I was working in little joints where the stage would be behind the bar. So you were standing right over the cash register and the crushed ice machine. You'd be swinging and the waitress would yell, 'I want 12 beers and four martinis!' And then the dude would put the ice in the crusher. There had to be a way to get the attention of the people. So instead of just starting in singing, I would just start in talking the song." His "raps" were so popular that 1967's "Dead End Street" won him his first Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance.

In 1971 Lou's popularity could be measured by the fact that he won the Downbeat magazine poll for favorite male vocalist, besting perennial champ Frank Sinatra, who has praised Rawls for having "the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game." The 1970s began with a second Grammy win for Natural Man. But, then came disco and Rawls, a symbol of quality and a relevance that transcended trendiness, balked. "A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me. I try to look for songs people can relate to because I know the man on the corner waiting for the bus has to hear it and say, 'Yeah that's right.'"

In 1975 while other artists succumbed to the beat, Lou moved to Philadelphia International, the Mecca of producers/songwriters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and their renowned Philly sound. His integrity was rewarded the next year when "You'll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine)" became Lou's biggest hit. The next year he took home his third Grammy, Best R&B Vocal Performance, for Unmistakably Lou.
In 1976 Lou became the corporate spokesman for Anheuser Busch, the world's largest brewery, which led in 1980 to that company's sponsorship of two events which have continued to this day. One was a series of concerts for American military personnel on bases around the world. The other was The Annual Lou Rawls Parade of Stars telethon to benefit the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). “An Evening of Stars” continues today as the longest running fundraising telethon. Although Lou did not attend college, he recognized the importance of higher education. Through Lou’s tireless efforts, the telethon has raised more than $200 million and has helped more than 65,000 students obtain higher education.

Epitomizing cool, class and soul, Lou's humanitarian efforts have won him more than honors, more even than a street named after him in Chicago, where South Wentworth Avenue is now Lou Rawls Drive. His work for the UNCF has been the joy of a man who never went to college but has since been awarded numerous honorary doctorates. "I remember a woman came up to me once and said, "Thank you. You made my grandson the first college grad in our family." "That makes it all worth it," Lou concluded.

In addition to singing, Rawls' talents extend to acting, a second love. Over the years he has appeared as a series regular, guest star and host in television series as well as television and theatrical movies. In the recent years Lou ventured in to the feature film arena, taking on lead roles in independent films as well as smaller parts in movies such as Oscar winning Leaving Las Vegas and Blues Brothers 2000. In 1999 Rawls appeared on Broadway for a stint in Smokey Joe's Cafe. Lou also brought his flair to children's programming, becoming the singing voice of the animated feline Garfield. In 1982, he was Grammy-nominated for Best Recording for Children for Here Comes Garfield and is the musical star of the "Garfield" TV specials. More recently, Lou sang the title song for "Jungle Cubs," an animated series. He is also the voice of the Harvey the Mailman on Nickelodeon's "Hey Arnold" series and the grandfather on Bill Cosby’s animated series, “Fatherhood.”

In 1998 Rawls released Seasons 4 U on his own newly created record label, Rawls & Brokaw Records. He also put together two CDs, The Best of Lou Rawls: Volume 1 and The Best of Lou Rawls: Volume 2 on the label. In 2001 Lou released a long awaited gospel CD entitled I'm Blessed on Malaco Records. In 2003 he release the critically accaimed Rawls Sings Sinatra CD on Savoy Records. As always, Lou’s fans motivated him to continue to travel extensively from clubs to jazz festivals, from America to Europe to Asia until one month prior to his death on January 6, 2006. Sinatra once said about the two of them that they were saloon singers--voices that's all, reaching into hearts and souls. Throughout the years, Rawls has stayed true to his voice. "People may not know what I'm doing," Lou said of his changing styles, "but they know it's me."

Notwithstanding all of Lou’s accomplishments, success and recognition, it was the love of Lou’s family which fulfilled him most. He leaves to cherish his memory his beloved wife Nina and his children: Aiden, Kendra, Lou Jr. and Louanna as well as his grandchildren: Louis, Chayiel, Jonathon and Katrina.

In the end as he was in life and always will be, Lou was Cool!

To Visit Lou Rawls website CLICK HERE

In this era of disposable popular music and “flavor of the month” idols, there remain few artists who truly study their craft, sing songs with style and substance, and strive to create a significant body
of work that stands the test of time. Victor is one such artist. With four CDs to his credit—Victor—called the man with the golden voice by the legendary Lou Rawls, has demonstrated his incredible gifts and range
as an artist.

Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, Victor Field’s love for music was cultivated and shaped by his mother, a singer and a Julliard- trained pianist. After attending Bowdoin College, Victor moved to the San Francisco/Bay Area where he built a successful business and began studying voice and songwriting to perfect his craft and to pursue his life-long love of singing and performing.

In 1997, a mutual friend introduced Victor to the Grammy- nominated producer/songwriter, Kashif (Kenny G, George Benson, Whitney Houston), which led to their collaboration on his debut album, Promise (1998). Released on Victor’s independent label, Regina Records, the CD gained impressive reviews and a strong cult following.

In 2002, Victor followed with the disc, 52nd Street, produced by famed guitarist, Chris Camozzi (Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton). The CD, with featured guests Chris Botti, Jeff Lorber, Nelson Braxton and Gerald Albright, received critical acclaim and landed at
#12 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart.

In 2005, Fields and Camozzi once again collaborated on the Victor CD. A collection of contemporary interpretations of jazz standards and compositions by celebrated
songwriters Diane Warren, Stevie Wonder, Vince Gill and Chuck Loeb, the disc also highlighted Victor’s mastery of a wide offering of musical styles ranging from contemporary jazz, R&B and adult pop to even theatrical Broadway-esque tunes. With his latest release, Thinking of You, Victor once again showcases his gifts as a song master in action featuring smooth jazz stars Richard Elliot, Jeff Lorber, and Rick Braun. The first two singles are receiving international radio airplay and placed in the top 10 on the
Indie Smooth Jazz and in the top 30 on the Urban AC Radio and Records Charts.

These achievements, along with his sold-out performance at Manhattan’s Sugar Bar and rave reviews after opening for soul legend Isaac Hayes at the Capital Jazz Festival, are recent examples of why Victor Fields won’t be considered one of the music industry’s best kept secrets much longer.

To Visit Victor Fields website CLICK HERE

Spoken Silhouettes In Silver

When Horace Silver once wrote out his rules for musical composition (in the liner notes to the 1968 record, Serenade to a Soul Sister), he expounded on the importance of "meaningful simplicity." The pianist could have just as easily been describing his own life. For more than fifty years, Silver has simply written some of the most enduring tunes in jazz while performing them in a distinctively personal style. It's all been straight forward enough, while decades of incredible experiences have provided the meaning.

Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on September 2, 1928. His father had immigrated to the United States from Cape Verde---and that island nation's Portuguese influences would play a big part in Silver's own music later on. When Silver was a teenager, he began playing both piano and saxophone while he listened to everything from boogie-woogie and blues to such modern musicians as Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. As Silver's piano trio was working in Hartford, Connecticut, the group received saxophonist Stan Getz's attention in 1950. The saxophonist brought the band on the road and recorded three of Silver's compositions.

In 1951, Silver moved to New York City where he accompanied saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and many other legends. In the following year, he met the executives at Blue Note while working as a sideman for saxophonist Lou Donaldson. This meeting led to Silver signing with the label where he would remain until 1980. He also collaborated with Art Blakey in forming the Jazz Messengers during the early 1950s (which Blakey would continue to lead after Silver formed his own quintet in 1956).

During these years, Silver helped create the rhythmically forceful branch of jazz known as "hard bop" (chronicled in David H. Rosenthal's 1992 book, Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965). He based much of his own writing on blues and gospel---the latter is particularly prominent on one of his biggest tunes, "The Preacher." While his compositions at this time featured surprising tempo shifts and a range of melodic ideas, they immediately caught the attention of a wide audience. Silver's own piano playing easily shifted from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic within just a few bars. At the same time, his sharp use of repetition was funky even before that word could be used in polite company. Along with Silver's own work, his bands often featured such rising jazz stars as saxophonists Junior Cook and Hank Mobley, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, and drummer Louis Hayes. Some of his key albums from this period included Horace Silver Trio (1953), Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1955), Six Pieces of Silver (1956) and Blowin' The Blues Away (1959), which includes his famous, "Sister Sadie." He also combined jazz with a sassy take on pop through the 1961 hit, "Filthy McNasty."

But it was a few years later when Silver would record one of his most famous songs, the title track to his 1964 album, "Song For My Father." That piece combined his dad's take on Cape Verdean folk music (with a hint of Brazilian Carnival rhythms) into an enduring F-minor jazz composition. Over the years, it has become an American popular music standard, covered not only by scores of instrumentalists, but also such singers as James Brown.

As social and cultural upheavals shook the nation during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Silver responded to these changes through music. He commented directly on the new scene through a trio of records called United States of Mind (1970-1972) that featured the spirited vocals of Andy Bey. The composer got deeper into cosmic philosophy as his group, Silver 'N Strings, recorded Silver 'N Strings Play The Music of the Spheres (1979).
After Silver's long tenure with Blue Note ended, he continued to create vital music. The 1985 album, Continuity of Spirit (Silveto), features his unique orchestral collaborations. In the 1990s, Silver directly answered the urban popular music that had been largely built from his influence on It's Got To Be Funky (Columbia, 1993). On Jazz Has A Sense of Humor (Verve, 1998), he shows his younger group of sidemen the true meaning of the music.

Now living surrounded by a devoted family in California, Silver has received much of the recognition due a venerable jazz icon. In 2005, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) gave him its President's Merit Award. Silver is also anxious to tell the world his life story in his own words as he just completed writing his autobiography, Let's Get To The Nitty Gritty (University of California Press, scheduled for fall 2006 release).

From the perspective of the early 2000's, it is clear that few jazz musicians have had a greater impact on the contemporary mainstream than Horace Silver. The hard bop style that Silver pioneered in the '50s is now dominant, played not only by holdovers from an earlier generation, but also by fuzzy-cheeked musicians who had yet to be born when the music fell out of critical favor in the '60s and '70s.

Silver's earliest musical influence was the Cape Verdean folk music he heard from his Portuguese-born father. Later, after he had begun playing piano and saxophone as a high schooler, Silver came under the spell of blues singers and boogie-woogie pianists, as well as boppers like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. In 1950, Stan Getz played a concert in Hartford, CT, with a pickup rhythm section that included Silver, drummer Walter Bolden, and bassist Joe Calloway. So impressed was Getz, he hired the whole trio. Silver had been saving his money to move to New York anyway; his hiring by Getz sealed the deal.

Silver worked with Getz for a year, then began to freelance around the city with such big-time players as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Oscar Pettiford. In 1952, he recorded with Lou Donaldson for the Blue Note label; this date led him to his first recordings as a leader. In 1953, he joined forces with Art Blakey to form a cooperative under their joint leadership. The band's first album, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, was a milestone in the development of the genre that came to be known as hard bop. Many of the tunes penned by Silver for that record — "The Preacher," "Doodlin'," "Room 608" — became jazz classics. By 1956, Silver had left the Messengers to record on his own. The series of Blue Note albums that followed established Silver for all time as one of jazz's major composer/pianists. LPs like Blowin' the Blues Away and Song for My Father (both recorded by an ensemble that included Silver's longtime sidemen Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook) featured Silver's harmonically sophisticated and formally distinctive compositions for small jazz ensemble.

Silver's piano style — terse, imaginative, and utterly funky — became a model for subsequent mainstream pianists to emulate. Some of the most influential horn players of the '50s, '60s, and '70s first attained a measure of prominence with Silver — musicians like Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Benny Golson, and the Brecker Brothers all played in Silver's band at a point early in their careers. Silver has even affected members of the avant-garde; Cecil Taylor confesses a Silver influence, and trumpeter Dave Douglas played briefly in a Silver combo.

Silver recorded exclusively for Blue Note until that label's eclipse in the late '70s, whereupon he started his own label, Silveto. Silver's '80s work was poorly distributed. During that time he began writing lyrics to his compositions; his work began to display a concern with music's metaphysical powers, as exemplified by album titles like Music to Ease Your Disease and Spiritualizing the Senses. In the '90s, Silver abandoned his label venture and began recording for Columbia. With his re-emergence on a major label, Silver is once again receiving a measure of the attention his contribution deserves. Certainly, no one has ever contributed a larger and more vital body of original compositions to the jazz canon.

To Visit Horace Silver's website CLICK HERE






Heidi Bacon, formerly known as Heidi Phillips-West, has been rightfully dubbed “Raw” by her fellow poets. Her highly illustrative words evoke strong emotions from her readers and listeners alike as she breathes life into words with each drop of magical ink which drips from her pen. The brilliance displayed between the lines of Raw’s poetic mastery thrusts her readers deep into the recesses of their very own minds and causes spiritual reflection as they read and reflect. Raw is a voice of inspiration seldom seen nor heard on the spoken word circuit these days. Her fresh style of mixing “pretty on paper poetry” with spoken word captures the attention of many. Raw speaks very vividly and detailed on the life she has led, gaining her the title “Raw”. She is known for spilling the grit of her life history, and this allows others to see themselves in and through her.

Heidi was born in Wurzburg, Germany to an alcoholic, Schizophrenic US Army soldier father who brutally abused her beautiful mother on March 13, 1971. They came to the states when Raw was an infant. Hers was a repugnant childhood, enduring endless exhibitions of her father’s reproachful and abusive behavior mentally, emotionally, and physically. From the age of 5 until she was 12, his hands of guardianship were used to defile her sexually…and this is where her nightmares began. It would take almost 30 years for them to end.

Growing up, Raw was always the ray of sunshine in the midst of the storm. She was the one always trying to make people smile. When there were arguments or conflicts in the home, she would try to fast talk or entertain to take the focus away from the controversy, and put the spotlight on herself. At age 14, Raw decided she couldn’t stay at home any longer, and she ventured out into the world as the “Master Mouthed Con Artist” (one of her spoken word pieces from her Bruised but never Broken CD). Raw used her ability to fast talk and “think on her toes” to talk her way into, or out of, whatever she needed. Life on the street took her through domestic abuse, rape, multiple miscarriages, and even the horrifying experience of being a witness to murder.

Estranged from her husband while single-handedly mothering their infant son, 22 year old Raw’s ability to slick talk any and everybody came to an end the day she met her match in a Michigan judge who sentenced her to 4 to 12 years in prison for crimes of a fraudulent nature. At age 25, she was released from prison, in a one week attempted reconciliation of her marriage her second child was conceived…a daughter. Raw decided she would not go back to a miserable marriage for the sake of “doing it for the children”. She had been raised in a home where her mother “did it for the children”…and it brought nothing but pain. She refused to do THAT to her children. She was determined to do it on her own; she already was anyhow with her son.

While pregnant with her daughter, Raw was befriended by a constant supporter and confidant…a man who swept her off her feet and ended up becoming her second husband and the father of her third child. Eight years later, her marriage ended while she was attending seminary at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan when she returned from being offered the job opportunity of a lifetime. Raw had been asked to pilot a program for women in transition at a church in Washington, D.C. Her husband refused to allow her to take the job. After she declined the position in writing… Raw found out the reason her husband did not want to leave Michigan was infidelity…he had a girlfriend.

This led Raw to a nervous breakdown; she left the state of Michigan and moved to Indiana with her three children. In Indiana, she looked to find clarity and a better life. Three months after she moved there, she found out her mother was dying of Cancer of an Unknown Primary. It took two months for the poison to ravage her entire body before she died. Raw was devastated. This is when she picked up a pen.

Raw began to spill the blood of her grief in beautifully passionate lines. She drew her readers so deep inside that they were there when her mother didn’t know her name three days before she died. They were there in bed with her Mama when the death rattle began rolling ‘round in her frail chest. They were there as the last breath exhaled from the lungs of the dying. Her readers saw the beauty of death through Raw’s eyes. When Raw sat back and reread the first two pieces of poetry she wrote, she realized she was able to purge the pain from within, and therein lay the therapy she had been seeking all her life.

And so it began, thousands of masterpieces of brilliant poetry were born. The poetic children born from generational curses placed upon her DNA, Raw fed the taste of her blood to her readers through the ink of her nouns and verbs at unbelievable rates, sometimes penning 15-20 pieces per day…leaving her readers astounded that she had just begun writing.

A year into her “therapy”, Tshombe Harris, taught Raw how to use her wings of Poetry to FLY, He introduced her to the world of Spoken Word. She started recording her work. Where her work was once known for being “pretty on paper”…it had transcended, and Raw began to be known for the intensive passion that dripped from her passionate voice as vocal chords vibrated poetic harmony.

Today Raw has self published her novel “Chronicles of my Ghetto Street” under her pen name, Marie Fontaine. She wrote this book only one year into her writing career. The book is a combination of poetry and prose, and she published it merely wanting to see her words in print. She has not released anything else since, for she has taken the last three years to grow as a person and a writer first. During this process, Raw went through one of the most difficult experiences of her life. After growing up and seeing her mother go through the abuse she suffered, Raw had been desensitized…unable to recognize the signs of her own abuse. On the brink of death, Raw realized she had become just like her mother. She fought for her life for the sake of her children. Using her ink to go back in time and purge the residual pain from over 30 years of trauma, Raw rose above her circumstances and stood victorious upon a mountain of broken chains of generational curses.

Raw currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with her fiancé’ and her children. She is seen frequently on the open mic circuit there, and most recently was featured at Clarence Motley’s “Poet’s Night Out”, and participated in “The Violet Project 3” to benefit the Julian Center domestic violence shelter. From now until March 4, 2010; Raw is also serving as the National Director of Events for the March Forth for Freedom Movement. On March 4, 2010; she will be coordinating, and performing, in a spoken word rally outside of the Marion County Jail in Indianapolis, Indiana. Raw will be the featured poet at the Midtown Lounge in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 18, 2010 at 9:00 p.m. Her tour is set to kick off tentatively in late April, beginning in Atlanta, Georgia; with stops in North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Colorado, Texas, and Florida.

The first of Raw’s two part memoir “Bruised But Never Broken” will be released on her 39th birthday: March 13th, 2010 along with her Spoken Word CD and poetry book of the same title. On January 20th, 2010 she will also be releasing “Whisper Me--Poems of Erotic Artistry” and “Inhalations of Eros”, in time for Valentine’s Day purchase. The tentative release date for part two of “Bruised But Never Broken” is June 2010.

Heidi Bacon is a resilient woman who has fought her way through every trial and tribulation imaginable… and when asked how she can pour so much of herself into her poetry… how she can be so open with her personal life the way she does and do it so passionately… her answer is simply: “Because I have to. Somebody out there is going to need it. Somebody is going to hear it, and be helped by it. I don’t have a choice anymore. Somebody told me I gave them hope one day. That’s when I realized I can’t ever stop doing this… and I can’t do it half-ass. This is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. This is my purpose. I was given these words as a gift and I’m supposed to share them with the world…and that’s what I’m doing. I’m sharing them. They’re not my words… they’re everybody else’s… and I’m just giving them away so that they can heal someone else too…the same way that they healed me.”

Heidi Bacon (formerly Phillips-West) can be found on Facebook under Heidi “Raw” Phillips-West. Her email address is sahabah2007@gmail.com. Her website; Ink Palpitations is currently under construction, but is due to be up and running by the beginning of February.