MM Musician Brings Joy To Earthquake Victims
By: Peter Kramer
Music Maker artist Harvey Arnold recently lifted the spirits of several Haitian burn victims who were airlifted to Chapel Hill after the devastating earthquake. MM musicians have always been generous in their support of deserving individuals, families, and other worthy causes, but this effort was especially poignant.
Eric Louis, who is pictured on page one of the 2/13/10 edition of the Durham Herald-Sun, is one of three Haitians who are being treated for burn injuries at UNC- Hospital in Chapel Hill. He was terribly burned when a taxi in which he was a passenger was parked at a gas station when the earthquake hit. The gasoline tanks exploded all around the vehicle.
As a volunteer for the hospital’s Door To Door program, Harvey Arnold sang and played several songs on the night of February 12 for Mr. Louis and the other patients. Harvey sang, “Every Morning”, a Keb Mo song, to Mr. Louis from the hallway, as Yvita Louis, the patient’s wife, listened. Yvita tended to Eric’s wounds for six days before they were flown to North Carolina. Then Arnold went into “There Goes Another Love Song,” a big hit by Harvey’s group, The Outlaws, from the late 70’s. Later Harvey realized that the first verse had special relevance:
Lonesome and lonely and far from my home
Trying to get back to where I know I belong
Wishing and hoping that I was already there…...
As Arnold sings everything with 110 % effort, the song got a big smile from Mr. Louis, who speaks French. After some time in the burn unit, Arnold visited a cancer floor. On previous visits, he has visited the children’s and adults’ psychiatric wards and the eating disorders clinic.
Joy Javits, the founding and present director of Door To Door, said, “Harvey has a deeply soulful voice that goes right to people’s hearts. He has an unusual skill for connecting with patients and I’m thrilled to have him as one of our artists.”
The World Cafe will be broadcasting a session with the Carolina Chocolate Drops on Monday, February 22nd.
National Public Radio’s World Cafe with host David Dye can be heard on over 200 stations nationwide.
Fans can find their local station by clicking here and selecting a state from the pull-down menu. Worldwide fans can also connect to the WXPN Philadelphia stream Monday through Friday, 2pm to 4pm EST, by clicking here.
On Feb.12 at noon, WUNC’s State of Things will air a program about Etta Baker’s music and life, specifically focusing on Music Maker’s latest Etta Baker release, Etta Baker: Banjo. Listen to MMRF Pres. Tim Duffy, Glenn Hinson of UNC-CH & Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, speak about Etta’s music and her rich history as one of the greatest female Piedmont Blues guitarist.
The State of Things is a live program hosted by Frank Stasio devoted to bringing the issues, personalities, and places of North Carolina to our listeners. We present the Tar Heel experience through sound, story, discussion, commentary and listener participation through calls.
Show your support for Music Maker and the musicians who keep us going. Click here to listen to the live stream.
Two Texas blues fans find new information on the life of Texas gospel and blues legend “Blind” Willie Johnson, while meanwhile working to raise funds for a memorial stone.
In 2007, Anna Obek and Shane Ford began a trip to find the graves of Texas blues musicians. They traveled around the state and the last site they visited was the grave of “Blind” Willie Johnson in Beaumont, Texas. As with the other graves, they had done some research as to where Mr. Johnson was buried. There was not much information to go on.
According to Mr. Johnson’s death certificate, he is buried in “Blanchette Cemetery” in Beaumont, Texas. There is a lot of confusion as to where “Blanchette Cemetery” is actually located. Finding “Blanchette Cemetery” seemed to be the main question. Anecdotal evidence suggested that “Blanchette Cemetery” was somewhere on Hegele Street in Beaumont. They did have some research experience so they got a map from the Jefferson County Clerk’s office detailing the “Blanchette Cemetery”. With map in hand, they set out to the edge of the railroad tracks on Hegele Street. They discovered an area in shambles. Instead of locating a grave, there was only a patch of land with broken, rotted headstones, caskets above ground and an unkempt lawn. None of the broken headstones yielded Mr. Johnson’s name.
After realizing that Mr. Johnson had no headstone, Ms. Obek and Mr. Ford began a campaign to preserve his legacy. They departed Beaumont very disappointed. If Johnson was indeed buried in “Blanchette Cemetery” there was no trace of him now. They decided then and there that it would only be proper for this man who affected them so much to have a memorial. They knew first that they had more research to conduct to make sure the memorial would be placed in an accurate location. They walked Commerce Street in Marlin where Mr. Johnson played and areas of downtown Beaumont in order to find out more about Mr. Johnson’s life.
For the next two years, they began collecting documents from the Jefferson County County Clerk, obtaining maps and deed documents, as to gather more information on “Blanchette Cemetery”. As is turned out, there were several “Blanchette Cemeteries.” Time continued on, with little to no results, as to his exact burial site. It seemed impossible due to the fact that the graves were shallow and with the storms that had come and gone, caskets were known to travel.
In 2009, their newly gathered evidence proved which one of the “Blanchette Cemeteries” Blind Willie was buried in. Several deed records were located that traced back to multiple owners and maps of the cemetery in question, some of which included the people who coordinated “Blind” Willie Johnson’s burial. Still, there was not an exact plot. At the time, the Jefferson County Historical Commission was working to submit an application for a Texas Historical Marker for Mr. Johnson. Ms. Obek and Mr. Ford contacted the JCHC and suggested, since there was no exact plot found, to have a marker where “Blind” Willie Johnson lived, the last location listed on his death certificate, the “House of Prayer” at 1440 Forrest in Beaumont, Texas. The Jefferson County Historical Commission reviewed their evidence and agreed and since have submitted this application to the main commission office in Austin.
Along the way, Ms. Obek and Mr. Ford also uncovered the mystery to who “Angeline Robinson Johnson” was, Mr. Johnson’s alleged wife. The information they found was discovered in old Beaumont City Directories and U.S. Census data. It is known that Angeline Robinson Johnson was the sister of blues guitarist, L.C. Robinson. The U.S. Census data lists an L.C. Robinson in 1920 as age five. L.C. Robinson was born in 1915, thus, making him five years old in 1920. One of the sister’s listed is Anna Bell Robinson, age twenty. According to Beaumont City Directories, in 1941, a W.M. Johnson and Anna Robinson resided at 555 Forsythe Street (St. Charles Hotel). After Willie’s death in 1945, the Beaumont City Directory of 1947 lists an Anna Johnson (wid of Willie) living at 1730 Cottonwood in Beaumont, Texas. Due to this evidence, they believe that Angeline was born Anna Bell.
Mr. Johnson’s final resting place may never be specifically located. Due to this, Ms. Obek and Mr. Ford have established a memorial fund to get a monument set up in the general premises of his grave, in what was once “Blanchette Cemetery”. They have obtained and secured written permission from D.H. Taft, President and Owner of Community Cemeteries (which owns the property in question). This location is situated between Hegele and Ollie Streets cornered by Inca Street and Southern Pacific Road in Beaumont, Texas. This was always an all black cemetery and is listed through county records as “Blanchette Cemetery.” Jefferson County deed records confirm that this area was still known as “Blanchette Cemetery” up to at least 1964.
“This has always been more than just a project for us. It is about a man’s life and legacy and his great contribution to the world. We hope that others will share our passion for this cause.”
If there is one thing that kills creativity, Rhiannon Giddens says, it is the habit of dividing music into genres: blues in one corner, folk, country and jazz in others. There was a time, she points out, when musicians knew that the best way to survive was by mixing things up. Keeping an audience of all ages entertained was the only thing that mattered; categories did not count.
This is by way of a preamble to explain why the members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops do not particularly care to be described as a “period band”. True, much of their music hails from the era of vaudeville and the once popular string and jug bands. But this is a group determined to prove that the past is not another country, that sets traditional banjo and fiddle tunes alongside Tom Waits’s Trampled Rose and a scorching makeover of Blu Cantrell’s 2001 R&B anthem Hit ’Em up Style, the story of a woman’s free-spending revenge on her faithless partner.
So, file under quality music, rather than nostalgia. Giddens and her colleagues, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson, have created a vivacious potpourri that has brought them a cult following in America. Having started out as part of a musicological crusade devoted to unearthing and celebrating the African-American dimension of traditional music, the group now plays not only to the cognoscenti, but to audiences who simply want a good time. “We perform for old-time fans who clap politely and college students who want to dance and just go nuts from the first song,” Giddens says. “There’s an underground thing going on. Every so often, there’s a clash when you get people who want to dance all the time and people who’ve paid for their seats. We’re probably going to start doing some all-dancing shows — the energy levels are amazing.”
Admittedly, the idea of three young African-Americans wielding vintage instruments may seem incongruous at first. Yet, as Giddens explains, their mission is to champion a tradition that has been overlooked, in part as a result of that quintessentially American pursuit of the new, in part because the music had become entangled with fraught issues of race and racism. Mention a banjo and most thoughts instinctively turn to country music or bluegrass — the white man’s property, in the eyes of many black Americans. The instrument also evokes the exceedingly dubious charms of the minstrel show. With their playfully archaic name, the Chocolate Drops are intent on challenging preconceptions.
It is easy to forget, amid all the negative connotations, that the banjo has African roots. It was developed by slaves transported to the new world who wanted to re-create the sonorities they remembered from their ancestral lands. Indeed, the rise of the Chocolate Drops coincides with a wave of interest in the origins of the humble instrument. The blues musician Otis Taylor, for instance, won acclaim with his 2008 album Recapturing the Banjo, as has the jazzman Bela Fleck, a virtuoso banjo player, for Throw Down Your Heart, a disc that finds him wandering the villages and plains of Africa in search of his long-lost musical cousins.
Nevertheless, the stereotypes are hard to shake off, which is why the trio have devoted a fair part of their energy to performing in schools, introducing youngsters to a side of American culture and history that has been all but erased from popular memory. It is tricky territory. Giddens’s voice takes on an almost evangelical tone as she discusses the challenge. “A lot of the music we play has been bowdlerised, ignored or demonised. As a people, we have taken that era and swept it under the rug. And there’s so much great music in it, and so many fantastic performance styles.
“I sometimes see The X Factor and American Idol. A lot of these people have no idea what entertainment is — they think it’s just singing into a stick. Then you look at some of these folks from vaudeville and they knew how to entertain. When we started out as a band, it was more about enthusiasm than anything else, but now I think we’ve got the skills. If people want to see virtuoso bluegrass, they go elsewhere. If they want to be entertained, they come to us. We always let audiences know where the songs come from, but we want to entertain, too.”
The three musicians came together in 2005 after attending an event in North Carolina called the Black Banjo Gathering. Soon, they were getting first-hand instruction and guidance from Joe Thompson — now in his nineties, and one of the last survivors of the prewar generation of African-American string band players. He had previously been sought out by white enthusiasts determined to keep the music alive, but the fact that young black performers wanted to learn from him was an extra boost to his morale. Soon, Giddens and her friends were making regular trips to Thompson’s home, absorbing new songs into their repertoire and listening to his anecdotes about the musicians of yesteryear. Although their touring schedule has grown increasingly hectic over the years, they still pay visits to the old man’s home. There are still lessons to be learnt.
Yet, if they are intent on unearthing the African-American contribution to the repertoire, it is also a way to emphasise the universality of music. Flemons, for instance, counts the Beatles and the Band among his prime influences, while Giddens, who studied opera at Oberlin Conservatory, is a devotee of Irish and Scottish music. A former member of a Celtic band, she is married to an Irish jazz musician. When I interviewed her at her mother-in-law’s home on the outskirts of Limerick, she was caring for their baby daughter. It is ironic, she laughs, that her husband knows more about jazz than she does, while she has the edge when it comes to traditional Irish music.
Aside from her newly acquired transatlantic relations, Giddens also has Native American ancestry, a legacy apparent in her cheekbones and long plaited hair. In short, much like Barack Obama, she represents a new, multiracial America. When the newly elected president described himself as a “mutt”, some strait-laced types were offended by what they took to be a derogatory term. Giddens, in contrast, could not have been happier. In his deceptively casual manner, Obama was opening a new chapter in America’s tortured history of racial taxonomy. In the wrong hands, “mutt” could be as much of an insult as, say, “octoroon”, but Obama drew the sting from the word. Giddens, Flemons and Robinson set out to do much the same with the term “chocolate drop”. -http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6995761.ece
On Saturday, January 23rd the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise will sail away to the beautiful Caribbean with more than 25 Blues musicians and their hundreds of fans for a week of soakin’ up the music.
This year, Music Maker is proud to be a part of the Cruise, especially the silent auction that will raise funds for various charities including MMRF. We would like to thank everyone at the Cruise for letting us on board and for supporting our mission. Click here for more info on the Cruise that occurs every January and October.
Long-time Music Maker friend and photographer Axel Küstner recently had a photo exhibit in one of Germany’s fine-art galleries. Küstner has photographed MMRF musicians for years and his worked can be found in MMRF newsletters, CD artwork, posters and all throughout the website. Click here for information about his exhibit.
Great photography makes you feel as well as see. Great music makes you feel as well as hear. When great music and photography merge, you have merged with the artists. You are standing in their shoes, sharing their lives, strumming their guitars, their face your face, their history your history.
For two years, Williams traveled the South, capturing the faces & souls of these men and women. Through the Music Maker Relief Foundation, he connected with these musicians, with their pasts and with their monumental talents. And thanks to the foundation, many have been given a new stage, a new spotlight that has made their lives and ours much better.
These are proud and soulful individuals blessed with notes and chords in their bloodstream, and blessed with the ability to endure and overcome.
This visual album can be viewed by clicking the link above
or by downloading the pdf.
Williams has created a series of limited-edition fine art prints for public/gallery purchase at www.Jimmywilliamsfineart.com. Locally, Williams’ work is exhibited at Somerhill Gallery, Durham, NC, and in the spring 2010, the collection kicks off a national tour at the Durham Arts Guild in Durham, NC. To support the continued growth of these artists, a portion of the print sales will be directed to the artists/Music Maker Relief Foundation.
