Topic: Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

[Nichi]

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(Wiki) Bessie Griffin (July 6, 1922 – April 10, 1989) was an African-American gospel singer. Born Arlette B. Broil in New Orleans, Louisiana, she was steeped in church music as a child. She sang for a while with the Southern Harps, had her own radio show in New Orleans, and later appeared in night clubs, on Broadway and in 1962 on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Griffin performed briefly with "Queen of Gospel" Albertina Walker and The Caravans in 1953-1954 but spent most of her career as a solo artist. While often compared to Mahalia Jackson, Griffin had a lighter contralto that allowed her to achieve more vocal pyrotechnics — holding a note for long periods of time, continuing a song for as long as twenty minutes and ranging through three octaves.

[Nichi]

Medley of Summertime and Motherless Child by Mahalia Jackson
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Amusing at the end, Bing Crosby and Dean Martin sitting there and saying they weren't going to follow her!

(Wiki) Mahalia Jackson (/məˈheɪljə/ mə-HAYL-yə; October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel". She became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer and civil rights activist. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as "the single most powerful black woman in the United States". She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen "golds"—million-sellers.

"I sing God's music because it makes me feel free", Jackson once said about her choice of gospel, adding, "It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues."

[Michael]

Bessie Griffin has an amazing voice.

[Nichi]

Bessie Griffin has an amazing voice.

Yes - I was pleasantly surprised. I had not heard of her before the search that night.

[Nichi]

Odetta
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(Wiki) Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. Time included her song "Take This Hammer" on its list of the All-Time 100 Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music."

[Nichi]

Lena Horne
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(Wiki) Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Because of the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.[1] Her career spanned over 70 years appearing in film, television and on broadway.

Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.

[Nichi]

Marian Anderson
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(Wiki) Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897 – April 8, 1993) was an American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century. Music critic Alan Blyth said: "Her voice was a rich, vibrant contralto of intrinsic beauty." Most of her singing career was spent performing in concert and recital in major music venues and with famous orchestras throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965. Although offered roles with many important European opera companies, Anderson declined, as she had no training in acting. She preferred to perform in concert and recital only. She did, however, perform opera arias within her concerts and recitals. She made many recordings that reflected her broad performance repertoire of everything from concert literature to lieder to opera to traditional American songs and spirituals.[2] Between 1940 and 1965 the German-American pianist Franz Rupp was her permanent accompanist.[3]

Anderson became an important figure in the struggle for black artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. The incident placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. She sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions. Anderson continued to break barriers for black artists in the United States, becoming the first black person, American or otherwise, to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 7, 1955. Her performance as Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Met was the only time she sang an opera role on stage.

Anderson worked for several years as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a "goodwill ambassadress" for the United States Department of State, giving concerts all over the world. She participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, singing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Anderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the National Medal of Arts in 1986, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.

[Nichi]

Louis Armstrong
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(Wiki) Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971),[1] nicknamed Satchmo[2] or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and an influential figure in jazz music.

Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).

Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over", whose skin color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. He rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation during the Little Rock Crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for men of color.

[Nichi]

Clara Ward
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(Wiki) Clara Ward (April 21, 1924 – January 16, 1973)[1][2] was an American gospel artist who achieved great artistic and commercial success in the 1940s and 1950s, as leader of The Famous Ward Singers.

An alto, a gifted singer and arranger, Ward adopted the lead-switching style, previously used primarily by male gospel quartets, creating opportunities for spontaneous improvisation and vamping by each member of the group, while giving virtuoso singers such as Marion Williams the opportunity to perform the lead vocal in songs such as "Surely, God Is Able" (among the first million-selling gospel hits), "How I Got Over" (composed by Williams, and one of the most famous songs in the Black gospel repertoire), and "Packin' Up".

[Nichi]

Jimmy Scott
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(Wiki) James Victor "Jimmy" Scott (July 17, 1925 – June 12, 2014), also known as "Little" Jimmy Scott, was an American jazz vocalist famous for his unusually high contralto voice and his sensitivity on ballads and love songs.

After a series of successes in the 1940s and '50s, Scott's career faltered by the early '60s. He slid into obscurity before launching a well-received comeback in the 1990s. His unusual singing voice was due to Kallmann's syndrome, a very rare genetic condition. The condition stunted his growth at four feet eleven inches until, at the age of 37, he grew another eight inches to the height of five feet seven inches. The condition prevented him from reaching puberty, leaving him with a high, undeveloped voice.

[Nichi]

O.V. Wright
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(Wiki) Overton Vertis "O. V." Wright (October 9, 1939 – November 16, 1980) was an American singer who is generally regarded as a blues artist by African American fans in the Deep South; he is also regarded as one of Southern soul's most authoritative and individual artists.

Wright was imprisoned for narcotics offenses during the mid-1970s, and, despite signing for Hi Records and releasing a series of recordings, his commercial success failed to recover after his release. A continuing drug problem weakened his health and he died from a heart attack, in Mobile, Alabama at age 41.
Legacy

Wright is among the most remembered voices of soul music, perhaps mostly for being sampled frequently in hip hop music. In 1996, his song, "Motherless Child" was sampled on the Ghostface Killah album Ironman on a song also called "Motherless Child."

[Nichi]

Richie Havens
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(Wiki) Richard Pierce Havens (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013), known as Richie Havens, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk, soul, and rhythm and blues. He is best known for his intense and rhythmic guitar style (often in open tunings), soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

Havens as a live performer earned widespread notice. His Woodstock appearance in 1969 catapulted him into stardom and was a major turning point in his career. As the festival's first performer, he held the crowd for nearly three hours. In part, Havens was told to continue playing, because many artists scheduled to perform after him were delayed in reaching the festival location with highways at a virtual standstill. If it was not for Billy Amato getting him to the venue from the West Village in Manhattan he would have not been on the show. He was called back for several encores. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual "Motherless Child" that became "Freedom". In an interview with Cliff Smith, for Music-Room, he explained:

"I'd already played every song I knew and I was stalling, asking for more guitar and mic, trying to think of something else to play - and then it just came to me...The establishment was foolish enough to give us all this freedom and we used it in every way we could."

In 2010, Havens had kidney surgery but did not recover fully enough to perform as he had before. On March 20, 2012, he announced on his Facebook page that he would stop touring after 45 years due to health concerns.

On April 22, 2013, Havens died of a heart attack at home in Jersey City, New Jersey at the age of 72. The BBC referred to him as a "Woodstock icon",[29] while Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young said Havens "could never be replicated."[29] The Daily Telegraph stated Havens "made an indelible mark on contemporary music," while Douglas Martin of The New York Times reported that Havens had "riveted Woodstock".

Pursuant to Havens's request, his ashes were scattered from a plane over the site of the Woodstock festival, in a ceremony held on August 18, 2013, the 44th anniversary of the last day of the festival.

[Nichi]

Van Morrison
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(Wiki) George Ivan "Van" Morrison, OBE (born 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. Some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are critically acclaimed. He has received six Grammy Awards, the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Known as "Van the Man" to his fans, Morrison started his professional career when, as a teenager in the late 1950s, he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands covering the popular hits of the day. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic "Gloria". His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns' death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks in 1968. Even though this album would gradually garner high praise, it was initially a poor seller; however, the next one, Moondance, established Morrison as a major artist, and throughout the 1970s he built on his reputation with a series of critically acclaimed albums and live performances. Morrison continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are generally warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains. In 2008 he performed Astral Weeks live for the first time since 1968.

Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and R&B, such as the popular singles "Brown Eyed Girl", "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", "Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz, and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as Astral Weeks and lesser-known works such as Veedon Fleece and Common One. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic Soul".

[Nichi]

Anthony Hamilton singing with Dr. John
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(Wiki) Anthony Cornelius Hamilton (born January 28, 1971, Charlotte, North Carolina.[1]) is an American R&B singer-songwriter, and record producer who rose to fame with his platinum-selling second studio album Comin' from Where I'm From (2003), which featured the title track single "Comin' from Where I'm From" and the follow-up "Charlene". He is also known for the song "Freedom" from the soundtrack album of Django Unchained cowritten and sung as a duo with indie soul singer Elayna Boynton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Hamilton_%28musician%29

[Nichi]

Sweet Honey in the Rock
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(Wiki) Sweet Honey in the Rock is an all-woman, African-American a cappella ensemble. They are an American Grammy Award–winning (and many times nominated) troupe who express their history as African-American women through song, dance, and sign language.[1] Originally a four-person ensemble, the group have expanded to five-part harmonies, with a sixth member acting as a sign-language interpreter. Although the members have changed over three decades, the group continues to sing and perform worldwide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Honey_in_the_Rock