“Those who possess wisdom cannot just ladle it out to every wantwit and jackanapes who comes along and asks for it. A person must be prepared to receive wisdom, or else it will do him more harm than good. Moreover, a lout thrashing about in the clear waters of wisdom will dirty those waters for everyone else.” -Tom Robbins
Have a fly day!
Lots of Love,
Starface
“In 1971, a Harlem lawyer and politician named Percy Sutton led a group of Black investors, including David Dinkins, to buy two New York stations, WLIB-AM and FM. Sutton Changed the FM station’s call letters to WBLS, and hired Frankie Crocker as his star air personality and first program director.
The call letters ‘BLS’ were said to stand for ‘Black Liberation Station.’ Indeed, WBLS gave Frankie Crocker freedom during a time of corporate captivity for Black music and Black artists. In turn, Crocker’s WBLS freed the minds of a generation of New Yorkers. Under Crocker, WBLS redefined and expanded the concept of the ‘Black’ radio station. To the traditional soul and R & B fare of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder, Crocker added an eclectic mix of rock, jazz, and pop standards- everything from Rolling Stones to Frank Sinatra. Crocker’s tastes were broad and cosmopolitan, and he expected no less from his listeners. He gave New Yorkers their first taste of a Jamaican rock-and-roller named Bob Marley. Crocker was among the first on the radio to play the beat-heavy, dance-oriented, soul that was becoming so popular in the new DJ-driven nightclubs called ‘discotheques,’ records like Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’ and MFSB’s ‘Love Is The Message.’ Crocker presented a show that was sophisticated and grown-up. If WWRL was Harlem, WBLS was Sugar Hill- a cut above, a station that gave its listeners a taste of upward mobility…
In a time when Black music was being pushed from the airwaves across the country, and record and radio executives subscribed increasingly to the notion that there were records that were simply ‘too Black’ for White listeners, Frankie Crocker turned WBLS into the number one-rated music station among all listeners in the largest city in the country.
More profoundly, Crocker created a generation of young music aficionados in New York, kids from the inner city and from the suburbs, to whom he gave the gift of an open mind and the notion that a DJ could change the world.” -From, “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop” By: Dan Charnas
“In the early 1900s, the African American business district in Tulsa, Oklahoma was deemed the most prosperous in all America and was commonly referred to as ‘Black Wall Street.’ The many banks, theaters, doctor’s offices, and other African American owned business were a source of pride for African Americans in the community and throughout the nation.
The economic stability of ‘Black Wall Street’ was shattered in May 1921 during one of the worst pogroms in American history when Tulsa became the first city ever to be bombed from the air. Irving Wallace described the wreckage of the black community in an article on March 13, 1993:
‘Whites invaded the black district, burning, looting and killing. To break up the riot, the police commandeered private planes and dropped dynamite. The police arrested more than 4,000 blacks and interned them in three camps. All blacks were forced to carry green ID cards. And when Tulsa was zoned for a new railroad station, the tracks were routed through the black business district, thus destroying it.’
There are numerous articles and publications that discuss this sad chapter of American history and they are well worth reading. The GAP Band, a R&B musical group that hails from Tulsa, has kept the memory of this tragic event live. The letters G, A, and P are the initials of the streets of Greenwood, Archer, and Pine that were in the heart of the black business district destroyed during the ‘Tulsa Race Riot.’” -From, “Survival Strategies For Africans In America” By: Anthony Browder
Here’s some interesting observations and recollections that Quincy Jones made about the music industry in his autobiography:
“But by and large beboppers were artists, proud, sensitive, intelligent people who practiced for hours and didn’t want to shuffle and entertain white folks anymore. They said, ‘We’re artists and want to be treated that way.’ You can imagine how that kind of attitude came off in the 40s & 50s- Black men and women talking that way. Forget it. That’s why so many turned to drugs.
These were the days when managers would sign an artist, record him, take a million dollar life insurance policy, record him, let the artist tour Vegas, record him again, then smoke him and collect the insurance.
At the first sign of Charlie Parker’s jones coming down at a recording session, they’d have him sign away all his composing, publishing, and artist’s royalties before they’d let in the dealer so that Bird could shoot up. Monk, Bird, Miles, Basie, nobody knew the business. Most of us sold our songs and publishing rights for peanuts to people who didn’t give a s*** about anything but money.”
Originally Posted: 7/17/09
