"I
got started singing when I was five years old," Marie Knight said
in a recent phone interview. "My mother used to stand me up on the
table in the church. That's been my life, the church."
Unlike those black sanctified singers who crossed over from gospel to pop (like Sister Rosetta Tharpe) or who started in blues but ended up preaching (like the Reverend Gary Davis), Knight's story has generally stayed within the bounds the church. And this year she's being inducted into the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame in Detroit.
When
Tinsley Ellis first came to the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival in
1989, he was just beginning his solo career. "I just remember we
were a new band out of Georgia, got the deal with Alligator
[Records], and the blues society booked a concert there," he said.
"We started off that concert by being like, I think, one of the
first bands to play of the day, and now, here I am being the closing
act of the main stage."
Any
description of Recapturing the
Banjo feels inaccurate.
The
Great Black Music Ensemble, with almost 40 members, has long been an
avant-garde force in jazz. CDBaby.com asserted that the ensemble
brings "the excitement of new sounds and rhythms, while
incorporating the traditions of black music including funk, reggae,
bebop, swing, and more" to its music. The group is one of two bands
connected to the Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM), a group that has made "unparalleled contributions
to modern music," according to JazzPolice.com. Before 2005, the
ensemble was known as the AACM Big Band.
As
a young woman, Denise LaSalle began writing songs. "I thought that
I could do that. I started writing songs and writing songs," she
said in a recent phone interview. "They used to laugh at me on my
job. 'Is she crazy? What's wrong
with her? What is she doing?'
... They wanted to know, 'Writing songs for who?' I would write a
song as I think that someone would sing it. I would say, 'I'm
writing this for Jerry Butler; this is for so-and-so. This one's
for Aretha.' In my mind this is who I thought could sing those
songs."
When
Bo Diddley died on June 2, you might have heard a story about how
that name came to be.
