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      in Music

      How Jazz Musicians Like Louis Armstrong Paid Homage to Trains With Music

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      Jazz lovers worldwide know well the passion that Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong had for trains, especially for the elegant Pullman cars that toted them to gigs across the country. Within the velvet-appointed sleeping carriages, African American porters shined the musicians’ shoes, nursed their hangovers, clipped their hair and served them mint juleps and Welsh rarebit — the same service afforded wealthy white passengers.In return, the maestros composed their now famous songs of homage to trains. There’s Duke’s throbbing “Happy Go Lucky Local,” the Count’s bow to the “Super Chief” and Satchmo’s romantic rendering of “Mail Train Blues.” But few fans appreciated the real reason these jazz legends worshiped not just the railroad generally, but George Pullman’s sleeper car: It saved them from the threat of terrifying violence.In that Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Black people were relegated to separate and unequal accommodations in everything from schools and parks to water fountains and restrooms. Just getting out of an automobile or bus to look for a meal and a bed could prove perilous in unfamiliar cities below the Mason-Dixon line. Wrong choices sometimes led to berating, beating or worse, with racial violence reaching new peaks in the early 1900s. Even the music makers’ fame couldn’t fully protect them. Only on the Pullman cars, where they were served by fellow African Americans, could they truly relax while on the road.“To avoid problems, we used to charter two Pullman sleeping cars and a 70-foot baggage car,” Ellington wrote in his 1973 memoir, “Music Is My Mistress.” “Everywhere we went in the South, we lived in them.”Duke Ellington’s band members on a train in 1941. In the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Black people were relegated to separate and unequal accommodations in everything from schools and parks to water fountains and restrooms. Otto F. Hess Collection / New York Public LibraryThe Count Basie Orchestra did, too. Traveling in stylish Pullmans “was my piece of cake,” Basie recalled in his 1985 autobiography, “Good Morning Blues.” “Lots of times, instead of me getting into my bed, I used to sit and look out the window most of the night as we rambled from one place to another. That was music to me.” More

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      in Movies

      Toni Vaz, Stuntwoman and Founder of N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, Dies at 101

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      She created a program to honor Black artistic success in the 1960s. But she spent decades trying to get its organizers to recognize her role.Toni Vaz, who cut a path as one of the first Black stuntwomen in Hollywood, with appearances in more than 50 movies, and then created the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards to recognize the often unsung work of Black writers and performers, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 101.Cheryl Abbott, her great-niece, said her death, at a retirement home for actors in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, was caused by congestive heart failure.The notion of a Black stunt performer did not really exist when Ms. Vaz began her career in the 1950s — she and others were officially cast as extras, received no training, and often did not know what dangers they might face on a set until the cameras began to roll.During the filming of “Porgy and Bess” (1959), Ms. Vaz was instructed to lean out a window to catch a glimpse of two of the film’s stars, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier. Unbeknown to her, a carpenter had purposely weakened the railing; it broke as soon as she leaned on it, sending her falling several feet onto a mattress.Shaken, she was handed a shot of brandy to recover.Throughout her career, Ms. Vaz played a critical part in support of Black actresses like Eartha Kitt, Cicely Tyson and Juanita Moore as they began to break out of the racially stereotyped roles that had long been their only options in Hollywood.But she and other Black stunt performers were typically paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Standing in for Ms. Moore in a scene for “The Singing Nun” (1966), she and a white stuntwoman were directed to crash a jeep; Ms. Vaz got $40, she told the interviewer Amie Jo Greer in 2010, while the white performer got $350.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      When John Amos Had Enough of the ‘Good Times’

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      The actor, whose death was announced this week, made it known he didn’t like the direction the hit show was going. His character was then killed off.It was the role John Amos had worked toward his entire acting career. For three seasons, to many accolades and impressive ratings, Amos played the patriarch, James Evans Sr., on “Good Times.” The character was hardworking, earnest and serious-minded — traits largely unseen in Black television characters up to that point in the mid-1970s. And “Good Times” was a hit, part of a string of sitcom successes from the executive producer Norman Lear.But suddenly, Amos was no longer a part of the cast. The groundbreaking show explained the absence to viewers by having Evans die in an offscreen car accident while preparing the family for a move to Mississippi.“Damn! Damn! Damn!” the actress Esther Rolle, who played Evans’s wife, Florida, famously lamented while mourning his death.“Good Times” rumbled on for another three seasons without its fatherly anchor, and with diminishing viewership each season until it concluded in 1979.The actor’s actual death, at the age of 84, was made public on Tuesday although he died in August. The lag between his death and the announcement has widened a longstanding rift between his two children, Shannon Amos and K.C. Amos His daughter, Shannon, said that she had only learned of her father’s death through media reports.“This tragic news has left us in shock and heartache,” Shannon Amos said in a statement attributed to her, close friends and family members. “We are deeply concerned that our father may have been neglected and isolated during his final days.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Good Bones’ Review: A Gentrification Drama at Public Theater

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      A new play from James Ijames, who won a Pulitzer for his “Fat Ham,” has intriguing ideas about identity and community that never fully take shape.In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” In James Ijames’s “Good Bones,” which opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater in Manhattan, it’s not a parking lot that’s the issue but a sports complex. This project is being nudged along by Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson), a former local who is promoting the arena and building a luxe new home in her old hood as a way to revitalize it.Still, “Joni Mitchell never lies,” at least according to Earl (Khris Davis), the contractor working on Aisha’s house. Earl has fond memories of the housing project (in an unspecified city) known to its residents as the Heat. Aisha doesn’t; she sees the Heat as a place of fear, crime and lost prospects, and doesn’t mourn its potential replacement. Now, with her husband, Travis (Mamoudou Athie), she has returned to help transform the Heat into the up-and-coming neighborhood of Fennbrook. Oh, but their fabulous home may be haunted.“Good Bones” has great foundations: It’s a play about property and community exclusively featuring Black characters, and Black characters from different ends of the economic spectrum. How often do we see stories featuring the gentrified and the gentrifiers, all of whom are the same skin color? But “Good Bones” is meager with its plot and noncommittal in its intrigue, so even when the play offers its wry charms and astute reflections, it feels largely stuck in place.This production, directed by Saheem Ali, opens with a Brontë vibe; Aisha wanders in a shift dress through her in-progress modern mansion, with plastic sheets draping down from the high ceilings so the characters move through a haze of construction material. (Don’t worry, the sheets are gradually ripped down throughout the play to expose an Ikea showcase-worthy kitchen and dining room, beautifully designed by Maruti Evans.) The follow-through is a little less impressive.There’s an argument about kitchen knobs (Travis wants the handcrafted $40 ones; Aisha wants to stick to their budget) and whether they should have kids. Earl brings his sister Carmen (Téa Guarino) over for dinner. Occasionally Aisha hears a ghoulish giggle or watches her French doors spookily open on their own. But even our protagonist comically shrugs off these humble hauntings. (“I ain’t got time for this,” she snaps, turning on her heel.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Alicia Keys, LaChanze and Billy Porter Celebrate Black Theater

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      The stage stars were among more than 600 people who turned out for an evening of dinner and performances to benefit Black Theater United.LaChanze was in the mood to celebrate.“I am so ready to party,” the actress, wearing a sequined red gown with a bold red lip, said on the red carpet before the second annual Black Theater United gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Monday night.LaChanze is the president and a founding member of Black Theater United, a nonprofit that aims to combat racism in the theater community. She was one of more than 600 people — including the singer Alicia Keys, the actor Billy Porter, the actress Kristin Chenoweth and the pop-classical musician Josh Groban — who gathered at the grand event space for a live auction, dinner and performance on a night when most Broadway shows were dark.The gala raised money for the nonprofit founded by an all-star team of Black theater artists, including the Tony Award winners Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Phylicia Rashad and LaChanze in the summer of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Mr. Mitchell remembered a call at the time with Ms. McDonald, the director Schele Williams and LaChanze. “They just started saying, ‘We’ve got to do something,’” he said.The organization now offers programs for aspiring young Black theater artists including student internships, a panel and discussion series, a musical theater scholarship and a program that aims to educate artists of color about designing for the theater.From left: Nichelle Lewis, Stephanie Mills and Sydney Terry performing “Home” from “The Wiz.” Ms. Mills was the original Dorothy in the 1975 production of the musical, a retelling of the classic “Wizard of Oz” story.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      She Found a Home in Music. Now She’s the Composer for the King.

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      Errollyn Wallen, a Belize-born artist who has been named master of music by King Charles, discusses music as an escape, confronting racism and living by the sea.The call from Buckingham Palace came on a summer morning, when Errollyn Wallen, wearing a pink onesie with pom-pom trim, had just finished a breakfast of toast and marmalade at her seaside home in Scotland.A private secretary for the British royal family had phoned with momentous news: King Charles III wanted Wallen to serve as Master of the King’s Music, an honorary position roughly equivalent to that of poet laureate.Wallen, a composer and a pianist who was born in Belize, a former British colony, has spent her career challenging conventions in classical music.“I was astonished,” Wallen, 66, said in a recent Zoom interview. “I paused for a few moments, then cheerfully accepted.”Wallen, whose appointment was announced in August, is the first Black woman to serve in the role, which was created during the reign of King Charles I in the 17th century. While there are no fixed duties, Wallen is part of the royal household and will likely be called upon to compose pieces for special occasions, including weddings, jubilees and coronations. She is expected to hold the post for 10 years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Why You May Never See the Documentary on Prince by Ezra Edelman

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      Dig, if you will, a small slice of Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour documentary about Prince — a cursed masterpiece that the public may never be allowed to see.Listen to this article, read by Janina EdwardsIt’s 1984, and Prince is about to release “Purple Rain,” the album that will make him a superstar and push pop music into distant realms we had no idea we were ready for. The sound engineer Peggy McCreary, one of many female engineers he worked with, describes witnessing a flash of genius during the creation of his song “When Doves Cry.” Over a two-day marathon recording session, she and Prince filled the studio with sound — wailing guitars, thrumming keyboards, an overdubbed choir of harmonizing Princes. It was the sort of maximalist stew possible only when someone is (as Prince was) a master of just about every musical instrument ever invented. But something wasn’t right. So at 5 or 6 in the morning, Prince found the solution: He started subtracting. He took out the guitar solo; he took out the keyboard. And then his boldest, most heterodox move: He took out the bass. McCreary remembers him saying, with satisfaction, “Ain’t nobody gonna believe I did that.” He knew what he had. The song became an anthem, a platinum megahit.The next sequence starts to probe the origins of Prince’s genius, how it grew alongside a gnawing desire for recognition. His sister, Tyka Nelson, a woman with owlish eyes and pink and purple streaks in her hair, appears onscreen. She describes the violence in their household growing up. How their musician father’s face changed when he hit their mother. The ire he directed at his son, on whom he bestowed his former stage name, Prince — a gift, but also a burden, a reminder that the demands of supporting his children had caused him to abandon his own musical career. Prince would risk lashings by sneaking over to the piano and plinking away at it — the son already embarked on his life’s work of besting his father, the father giving and withdrawing love, the son doing the same.Cut to Jill Jones, one in a long line of girlfriend-muses whom Prince anointed, styled, encouraged and criticized. Hers is one of the most anguished testimonies in the film, revealing a side of Prince many of his fans would rather not see. Late one night in 1984, she and a friend visited Prince at a hotel. He started kissing the friend, and in a fit of jealousy, Jones slapped him. She says he then looked at her and said, “Bitch, this ain’t no [expletive] movie.” They tussled, and he began to punch her in the face over and over. She wanted to press charges, but his manager told her it would ruin his career. So she backed off. Yet for a time, she still loved him and wanted to be with him, and stayed in his orbit for many more years. Recounting the incident three decades later, she is still furious, still processing the stress of being involved with him.In the next sequence, it’s the evening of the premiere of “Purple Rain,” the movie, which will go on to win the Academy Award for best original song score in 1985. Prince’s tour manager, Alan Leeds, was with him in the back of a limo on the way to the ceremony. He remembers one of Prince’s bodyguards turning to Prince and saying: “This is going to be the biggest day of your life! They say every star in town is there!” And Prince clutched Leeds’s hand, trembling in fear. But then, as Leeds tells it, some switch flipped, and “he caught himself.” Prince’s eyes turned hard. He was back in control. “That was it,” Leeds says. “But for maybe 10 seconds, he completely lost it. And I loved it. Because it showed he was human!” In the next shot, we see Prince emerging from the limo and walking down the red carpet in an iridescent purple trench coat over a creamy ruffled collar, his black curls piled high. He swaggers, twirling a flower, unbothered: a creature of regal remove.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Isaiah Collier Funnels a ‘Very Radical Time’ Into a Vivid New Album

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      Before Isaiah Collier went into the studio to record his new album, the saxophonist and composer sent his fellow musicians a playlist of sorts. Instead of songs, it contained news clips chronicling racially motivated violence targeting Black men and women — including the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the 2023 shooting of the Kansas City, Mo., teenager Ralph Yarl — as well as the protests that followed. Collier wanted the LP to be an “observation log” of the past four years, and he was reminding the members of his band, the Chosen Few, exactly where the music had sprung from.“It’s one thing to hear people who write their inspirations,” Collier, 26, explained on a recent video call from his hometown, Chicago. “It’s another thing for you to be in real time, and knowing that this is really coming from an actual tangible and concrete place.”To make that context clear for listeners, Collier wove broadcast news excerpts into the finished album, “The World Is on Fire,” out Oct. 18. The aesthetic choice plays out powerfully on tracks like one named after Arbery, which opens with a CBS report blended with a somber chord progression from the pianist Julian Davis Reid. Later in the piece, police sirens wail in the background as Collier’s alto solo reaches a torrential climax, backed by the drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode’s seismic rolls and cymbal crashes.Along with his musical upbringing, Isaiah Collier learned about the perils of racism early on.Lyndon French for The New York Times“This is why this song carries this type of weight,” Collier said. “The air that you feel around it — it’s real.”Much of the record, which finds Collier most often playing tenor, surges ahead with an irrepressible momentum that harks back to John Coltrane’s classic 1960s quartet. Like another album Collier released this year with the Chosen Few, “The Almighty” — which juxtaposes turbulent workouts and meditative interludes in the mode of Pharoah Sanders’s late 1960s and early ’70s masterpieces — “The World Is on Fire” boasts the grit and conviction that have helped Collier stand out in an increasingly crowded field of younger artists engaging with the tradition of so-called spiritual jazz.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More