Black Music Sunday is a weekly collection highlighting all issues Black music, with over 260 tales overlaying performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.
That is the fifth yr I’ve celebrated Mom’s Day with music right here on Black Music Sunday, and over these years, readers have additionally contributed their favorites within the remark part beneath. A few of these tunes I used to be very conversant in, and others have been new to me. Now I’m posting a few of them from a number of genres.
In reviewing previous reader contributions and opinions, I discovered that probably the most talked about tune by readers wasn’t a couple of mother. It was Invoice Withers’ “Grandma’s Fingers.” Withers joined the ancestors on March thirtieth, 2020, and we paid tribute to him right here.
His music is normally positioned within the soul/R&B class, although his Songwriters Corridor of Fame bio belies that slim description, stating:
Artists which have recorded music written by Withers cowl genres comparable to pop, jazz, nation and western, classical, rhythm and blues, gospel and hip-hop.
Right here he’s performing “Grandma’s Fingers” stay in live performance for the BBC on Might 11, 1974:
The soul/R&B class is wealthy with mother tributes. The Spinners’ “Sadie” was a mainstay at each certainly one of their concert events.
The Spinners are among the many most iconic and enduring teams within the traditional soul pantheon. With a towering legacy spanning over six a long time, The Spinners get pleasure from common enchantment owing to a traditional catalog of songs which have earned their place within the Nice American Songbook.
The group’s traditional lineup —- Henry Fambrough, Billy Henderson, Pervis Jackson, Bobbie Smith, and Philippé Wynne — epitomized The Sound of Philadelphia. Thom Bell, the architect of the group’s sound, deployed their signature harmonic mix and compelling lead vocals, to channel the highs and lows of romance and heartbreak right into a catalog of traditional hits.
Right here they’re performing “Sadie” stay in live performance in 1974:
Once we take a hearken to extra modern soul/R&B vocal group concord, we head again to Philly with Boyz II Males:
The story of Boyz II Males begins in Philadelphia, the place Nathan Morris and Marc Nelson began singing collectively in highschool. They later fashioned a bunch with Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman, and collectively they started acting at native expertise reveals and occasions. After being found by New Version’s Michael Bivins, Boyz II Males signed their first file deal and launched their debut album “Cooleyhighharmony” in 1991.
“Cooleyhighharmony” was a vital and business success, that includes the chart-topping hit “Finish of the Highway.” The track stayed at primary on the Billboard Sizzling 100 chart for 13 weeks, breaking the file beforehand held by Elvis Presley. The album went on to promote over 10 million copies worldwide, incomes Boyz II Males three Grammy Awards and establishing them as one of the crucial promising teams in R&B.
Identified primarily as a rapper, Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III is best recognized by his stage identify, Aloe Blacc.
Raised by Panamanian immigrants in Southern California, Blacc grew up across the sounds of salsa, merengue, and cumbia. He initially developed his personal style by throwing himself into hip-hop earlier than making an attempt out his soulful voice to different ends. Throughout three albums, his sound advanced and grew, discovering a pocket that displays the lengthy and delightful historical past of American soul with timeless, descriptive songwriting that speaks to the broad vary of human expertise, from platonic love to like for humanity, from politics to aspiration. Versatile and compassionate, his songwriting is traditional in a manner that makes categorization irrelevant; certainly, Blacc’s lyrics have been paired with dance music and nation — at all times to stirring impact. Aloe Blacc isn’t outlined by style.
His lyrics are each highly effective and poignant.
[Verse 1]
Once I was just a bit boy
Once I would exit to play
And I’d marvel so removed from residence
That I’d lose my manner
Then I’d name on my mama to assist me
And she or he’d come straight away
To assist me get again residence the place I wanna be
And right here’s what I’d say[Chorus 1]
Momma maintain my hand
I don’t assume I can cross this highway on my own
Mama maintain my hand
I don’t assume I can cross this highway on my own[Verse 2]
And once I was a younger man
I’d go astray
Didn’t need no person to carry my hand
Needed to make my very own manner
And my mama would come out to assist me
However I’d push her away
Trigger I simply needed to be by myself
And right here’s what I’d say[Chorus 2]
Mama go away my hand
I’ve been ready to cross this highway on my own
Cross this highway on my own[Verse 3]
Properly now that I’m a grown man
I achieved moved away
I bought a home, a 9 to five and my spouse
Acquired a child on the way in which
Mama informed me that life’s gonna get tough
Take it daily
However each now and again I get scared
And I want I may say[Chorus 1]
Momma maintain my hand
I don’t assume I can cross this highway on my own
Mama maintain my hand
I don’t assume I can cross this highway on my own[Verse 4]
Now my mama is close to the tip of her years
And her hair is gray
Typically I name her to ask her
If she wish to spend the day
Mama was sturdy however she ain’t now
And she will be able to’t make her manner
That’s why I’m at all times round when she wants assist
And right here’s what I say[Chorus 3]
Mama maintain my hand
I don’t assume you possibly can cross this highway by your self
Mama maintain my hand
I don’t assume you possibly can cross this highway by your self
Canadian rapper and singer Aubrey Drake Graham, recognized merely as “Drake,” scored a significant hit with “Look What You’ve Achieved” in 2011, which was a track devoted to his mother, and to his different key nurturer—his uncle.
From Biography.com:
Born Aubrey Drake Graham on October 24, 1986, in Toronto, Drake grew up with music in his blood. His father, Dennis Graham, was a drummer for the legendary rock ‘n’ roll star Jerry Lee Lewis. An uncle, Larry Graham, performed bass for Sly and the Household Stone in addition to Prince . Drake says that his mom, Sandi Graham, additionally hails from a “very musical” household — his grandmother babysat Aretha Franklin.
Drake comes from an eclectic and distinctive ethnic and non secular background. His father is an African American Catholic and his mom is a white Canadian Jew. Talking about his private identification, Drake says: “On the finish of the day, I think about myself a Black man as a result of I am extra immersed in Black tradition than every other. Being Jewish is form of a cool twist. It makes me distinctive.”
His lyrics confront the complexity of his relationship along with his mother.
Shifting genres, New Orleans bluesman Earl King sings in regards to the significance of a mom’s love.
Music critic Geoffrey Himes dubbed King the “Poet Laureate of New Orleans” on this story for The Bitter Southerner:
Earl Silas Johnson IV was born on Feb. 7, 1934. He wouldn’t develop into Earl King till 1954. He grew up in New Orleans’ Irish Channel neighborhood, an unusually built-in space. His father died when he was 18 months outdated, and it was solely later that King discovered his dad had been a blues pianist earlier than turning into a preacher. King was raised by his mom, Ernestine Hampton Johnson, and his stepfather, Nathaniel Gaines, who made certain the teen first discovered to sing within the Antioch Baptist Church.
King first recorded “A Mom’s Love” in 1954:
Additionally from Louisiana was the good Clifton Chenier, often known as “The King of Zydeco Music.”
Clifton Chenier, accordionist and zydeco musician extensively thought of the “King of Zydeco,” was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, on June 25, 1925. His father, Joseph Chenier, was a black Creole sharecropper who was an novice accordion participant. Clifton’s uncle, Maurice “Huge” Chenier, was a guitarist, fiddler, and dance membership proprietor. It was from his father that Clifton Chenier first discovered the accordion, and although he grew up enjoying the single-row push-button diatonic accordion, it was the massive piano-key chromatic mannequin for which he would develop into well-known.
Chenier sang a tribute to his mom in “I’m Coming Residence (To See My Mom)”:
Going again in time, one of the crucial highly effective Negro spirituals speaks to being motherless.
“Typically I Really feel Like a Motherless Youngster,” first got here to vast public prominence when it was carried out by the Fisk Jubilee Singers within the 1870s. Audiences heard it and couldn’t neglect it. It has since been carried out and recorded by numerous singers and instrumentalists, from many various genres.
There are such a lot of highly effective variations of it that it’s exhausting to choose only one. My selection in the present day was sung by people singer Odetta Holmes.
Odetta was born within the ghetto of Birmingham, Alabama in 1930, at a time when it was oppressive and harmful for an African-American household residing in Jim Crow South. She skilled her first racial horrors in 1937, when after she boarded the Birmingham practice to maneuver to Los Angeles together with her household, the conductor angrily yelled at her and the household, known as them racial names, and forcibly pushed them to the again practice vehicles for “Coloreds Solely.”
In Los Angeles in 1944, whereas learning to be an opera singer, Odetta was requested to affix the famed Turnabout Theater firm, the place she carried out in lots of performs and musical revues for the following 5 years alongside Elsa Lancaster. By 1949, when opera firms in American would nonetheless not allow African American singers on their stage, Odetta joined the nationwide highway firm of the Broadway musical theater present Finian’s Rainbow. In the course of the present’s four-month run in San Francisco, Odetta discovered to play the guitar and commenced singing southern plantation work songs and chain gang songs on the metropolis’s coffeehouses. By 1953, she was a headliner at outstanding golf equipment on the West Coast, Chicago and New York and had recorded her first album Reside on the Tin Angel.
In closing in the present day, although we’ll have tons extra music within the feedback part, I hope you’ll discover a few of my earlier Mom’s Day tales:
2024: Black Music Sunday: Have a good time Mom’s Day with blues and jazz
Featured: Lead Stomach, Nat King Cole, B.B. King, Sonny Stitt, Etta Jones, George Cables, and Charles Mingus
2023: Black Music Sunday: A musical tribute to many various kinds of mothers
Featured: Dianne Reeves, Tupac, and Miriam Makeba
2022: Black Music Sunday: Celebrating our mamas, grandmas, and aunties with music
Featured: Invoice Withers, Gregory Porter, Dianne Reeves, and Ben Harper
2021: A Sunday soul serenade for Mama’s Day
Featured: Ray Charles, Kirk Franklin, The Spinners, The Intruders, and Earth, Wind & Hearth
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Completely happy Mom’s Day!
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