Category: General

Minnijean Brown Trickey leads off Black History Month at UMM

Last night the three of us went to hear Minnijean Brown Trickey speak as part of Black History Month at UMM. She was one of the Little Rock Nine, nine black teenagers who had the courage (and naivete) to actually believe the desegregation orders handed down by the courts. They had the temerity to show up for classes at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, despite Governor Orval Faubus’s decision to use the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering the building.

It was very cool hearing from someone who had been part of those amazing events. She wasn’t a super structured speaker, instead letting stories happen as the mood struck. She has had so much remarkable experience, though, that the stories were great and it wasn’t that hard to connect the threads.

Despite several audience questions that pointed in this direction, I left not really having a solid sense of why they actually did it. It was an enormous challenge, risk, and sacrifice, and I’m afraid I didn’t find the “Well, it had to be done” answers very compelling. Obviously it did need doing, but only nine of them actually did it (and only four returned after Faubus re-opened the high schools). Choices were clearly made, and I’d love to better understand what lay behind those. That, of course, assumes that they themselves understand their motivations, and she gave the impression that in many ways it was still a bit of a mystery to her.

White students confront members of the Little Rock Nine while the press looks on.

Some semi-random resources include the New York Times Learning Network site on the events in Little Rock and some recollections of Elizabeth Eckford (one of the nine).

Attendance at her talk was decent but not great (100-200?), which was a bit disappointing.

Currently listening to “Mean old world” by the Heavenly Gospel Singers from Anthology Of American Folk Music Volume 4 (Edited By Harry Smith). How appropriate.

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The complexity of Sam Cooke’s music

I was confused by some gaps in the iTunes music store (more on this in a later post), and ended up digging into the state of Sam Cooke re-issues, and found a pretty complex picture.

Cooke made some of the best and most influential gospel and early soul music in the late 50’s and early 60’s before his untimely (and somewhat bizarre) death in late 1964. We bought The man and his music back in the early 90’s, which is a tremendous overview is his career, starting with his gospel work with the Soul Stirrers, running through a bunch of his great soul hits, and ending with “A change is gonna come”, one of the best songs to come out of the Civil Rights Movement.

I discovered tonight, however, that the iTunes music store didn’t have “A change is gonna come”. Wow. They have five albums by Cooke, including a single disc Greatest hits and a box set entitled The man who invented soul music. Both of these are on RCA, which is the label of The man and his music, so it wasn’t clear why they didn’t include what is widely regarded as one of Cooke’s best and more important songs. WeatherGirl guessed that it was probably to do with permissions and licensing, and turned out (once again :-) ) to be right.

A very helpful review on Amazon of the box set by Paul Williams (who was in fact the producer on the project) explained that the rights to the recordings from Cooke’s last year (including “Change”) had all reverted to the Abkco records. This means that A man and his music is no longer available, and explains why RCA hadn’t included them in either of their collections.

Happily, in 2003 Abkco released Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 that has a very similar playlist to The man and his music (including “Change”), and apparently has much better audio quality. To be honest, I’ve never objected to the audio on A man and his music, but the reviews are all pretty adamant that both the box set and the Abkco collection sound much better. Unfortunately, I’ve not actually heard any of these more recent collections, so I can’t actually comment on their sound quality or contents.

I can say with complete confidence, though, that Cooke’s work remains some of the most wonderful music made in the 20th century. Songs recorded over 40 years ago, and which I’ve been listening to carefully for over 10, still sound fresh and captivating. The great shame, perhaps, is that for most people this brilliant music has been relegated to “Golden oldies” elevator music. This only serves to drain the life from songs that in their day must have both made parties happen and totally changed people’s sense of the possibilities of music, and perhaps life itself.

The Man and His MusicThe Man Who Invented Soul [Box Set]Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964

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