GM – FBF – “What most of us can only strive for—a rich musical heritage and the ability to express that heritage beautifully through my playing.” – Elizabeth Cotten

Remember – “I was just glad to get the Grammy. I didn’t know what the thing was. It’s the honor what I loved.” – Elizabeth Cotten

Today in our History – April 11, 1972 – Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten wins the National Folk 1972 Burl Ives Award for her contribution to American folk music.

Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (1895-1987), best known for her timeless song “Freight Train,” built her musical legacy on a firm foundation of late 19th- and early 20th-century African-American instrumental traditions. Through her songwriting, her quietly commanding personality, and her unique left-handed guitar and banjo styles, she inspired and influenced generations of younger artists. In 1984 Cotten was declared a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts and was later recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as a “living treasure.” She received a Grammy Award in 1985 when she was ninety, almost eighty years after she first began composing her own works.

Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Libba Cotten taught herself how to play the banjo and guitar at an early age. Although forbidden to do so, she often borrowed her brother’s instruments when he was away, reversing the banjo and guitar to make them easier to play left-handed. Eventually she saved up the $3.75 required to purchase a Stella guitar from a local dry-goods store. Cotten immediately began to develop a unique guitar style characterized by simple figures played on the bass strings in counterpoint to a melody played on the treble strings, a method that later became widely known as “Cotten style.” She fretted the strings with her right hand and picked with her left, the reverse of the usual method. Moreover, she picked the bass strings with her fingers and the treble (melody strings) with her thumb, creating an almost inimitable sound.

Libba married Frank Cotten when she was 15 (not a particularly early age in that era) and had one child, Lily. As Libba became immersed in family life, she spent more time at church, where she was counseled to give up her “worldly” guitar music. It wasn’t until many years later that Cotten, due largely to a fortunate chance encounter, was able to build her immense talent into a professional music career. While working at a department store in Washington, D.C., Libba found and returned a very young and lost Peggy Seeger to her mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger. A month later, Cotten began work in the household of the famous folk-singing Seeger family.

The Seeger home was an amazing place for Libba to have landed entirely by accident. Ruth Crawford Seeger was a noted composer and music teacher while her husband, Charles, pioneered the field of ethnomusicology. A few years passed before Peggy discovered Cotten playing the family’s gut-stringed guitar. Libba apologized for playing the instrument without asking, but Peggy was astonished by what she heard. Eventually the Seegers came to know Libba’s instrumental virtuosity and the wealth of her repertoire.

Thanks largely to Mike Seeger’s early recordings of her work, Elizabeth Cotten soon found herself giving small concerts in the homes of congressmen and senators, including that of John F. Kennedy. By 1958, at the age of sixty-two, Libba had recorded her first album, Elizabeth Cotten: Negro Folk Songs and Tunes (Folkways 1957, now reissued as Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs, Smithsonian Folkways 1989). Meticulously recorded by Mike Seeger, this was one of the few authentic folk-music albums available by the early 1960s, and certainly one of the most influential. In addition to the now well-recorded tune “Freight Train,” penned by Cotten when she was only eleven or twelve, the album provided accessible examples of some of the “open” tunings used in American folk guitar. She played two distinct styles on the banjo and four on the guitar, including her single-string melody picking “Freight Train” style, an adaptation of Southeastern country ragtime picking.

As her music became a staple of the folk revival of the 1960s, Elizabeth Cotten began to tour throughout North America. Among her performances were the Newport Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the University of Chicago Folk Festival, and the Smithsonian Festival. Her career generated much media attention and many awards, including the National Folk 1972 Burl Ives Award for her contribution to American folk music. The city of Syracuse, New York, where she spent the last years of her life, honored her in 1983 by naming a small park in her honor: the Elizabeth Cotten Grove. An equally important honor was her inclusion in the book I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America, by Brian Lanker, which put her in the company of Rosa Parks, Marian Anderson, and Oprah Winfrey.

Cotten’s later CDs, Shake Sugaree (Folkways, 1967), When I’m Gone (Folkways, 1979), and Elizabeth Cotten Live (Arhoolie 1089), continued to win critical acclaim. Elizabeth Cotten Live was awarded a Grammy for the Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in 1985.

Elizabeth Cotten continued to tour and perform right up to the end of her life. Her last concert was one that folk legend Odetta put together for her in New York City in the spring of 1987, shortly before her death. Cotten’s legacy lives on not only in her own recordings but also in the many artists who continue to play her work. The Grateful Dead produced several renditions of “Oh, Babe, It Ain’t No Lie,” Bob Dylan covered the ever-popular “Shake Sugaree,” and “Freight Train” continues as a well-loved and recorded tune played by Mike Seeger, Taj Mahal, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, to name a few. Libba’s recordings, concert tours, media acclaim, and major awards are a testament to her genius, but the true measure of her legacy lies with the tens of thousands of guitarists who cherish her songs as a favorite part of their repertoires, preserving and keeping alive her unique musical style. Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – I love it when I come across a New Jersey talent. Keyport, NJ is where Juanita Hall grew up and Matawan, NJ was laid to rest.

Remember – ” South Pacific was the musical that made me a household name and I enjoyed winning the award. – Juanita Hall

Today in our History – April 9, 1950 – Wins Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress ( South Pacific).

Juanita Hall (née Long, November 6, 1901 – February 28, 1968) was an American musical theatre and film actress. She is remembered for her roles in the original stage and screen versions of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals South Pacific as Bloody Mary – a role that garnered her the Tony Award – and Flower Drum Song as Madame Liang.

Born in Keyport, New Jersey, Hall received classical training at the Juilliard School. In the early 1930s, she was a special soloist and assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir. A leading black Broadway performer in her day, she was personally chosen by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to perform the roles she played in the musicals South Pacific and Flower Drum Song, as a Tonkinese woman and a Chinese-American, respectively.

In 1950, she became the first African American to win a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Bloody Mary in South Pacific. She also starred in the 1954 Broadway musical House of Flowers in which she sang and danced Harold Arlen’s Slide Boy Slide. She played the role of Bloody Mary for 1,925 performances on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre beginning on April 7, 1949. Her co-stars were Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. In addition to her role in South Pacific, she was a regular performer in clubs in Greenwich Village, where she captivated audiences with her renditions of “Am I Blue?”, “Lament Over Love”, and Langston Hughes’ “Cool Saturday Night”.

Prior to her acting roles, she assembled her own chorus group (The Juanita Hall Choir) and kept busy with performances in concert, on records, in films, and on the air. She auditioned for “Talent 48”, a private review created by the Stage Manager’s Club. Later, she performed on radio in the soap opera The Story Of Ruby Valentine on the National Negro Network. The serial was broadcast on 35 stations, and sponsors of the broadcast included Philip Morris and Pet Milk.

In 1958, she recorded Juanita Hall Sings the Blues (at Beltone Studios in New York City), backed by an astonishing group of jazz musicians including Claude Hopkins, Coleman Hawkins, Buster Bailey, Doc Cheatham, and George Duvivier. In 1958 she reprised Bloody Mary in the film version of South Pacific, for which her singing part was dubbed, at Richard Rodgers’s request, by Muriel Smith, who had played the role in the London production. The same year, Hall starred in another Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway show, Flower Drum Song.

Hall married actor Clement Hall while in her teens. He died in the 1920s; they had no children. Hall, a diabetic, died from complications of her illness. She had been living at the Percy William Actors home in East Islip, New York. Leonard Feather gave a particularly moving tribute to Hall at the time of her death when he proclaimed her “an expert student and practitioner in the art of singing the blues”. Research more about this American Shero and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – “When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.” – Sarah Vaughan

Remember – “When I sing a tune, the lyrics are important to me. Most of the standard lyrics I know well. And as soon as I hear an arrangement, I get ideas, kind of like blowing a horn. I guess I never sing a tune the same way twice.” – Sarah Vaughan

Today in our History – March 27, 1924 –

Sarah Vaughan was a popular twentieth century African-American Jazz singer. She was recognized for her beautiful voice and often nicknamed ‘Sassy’, ‘Sailor’ and ‘The Divine One’ for her salty speech. Moreover, she won a Grammy Award and was awarded the “highest honor in jazz” by The National Endowment for the Arts.

Sarah Lois Vaughan was born on March 27, 1924 in Newark, New Jersey to carpenter and guitarist father, Asbury Vaughan. Her mother also had a singing background as she used to sing in choir. During the First World War her family moved from Virginia to Newark. Sarah began to take piano lessons at the young age of seven. She would sing in the church choir and play piano at different services. The popular records and radio music were her favorite. Newark in those days had an active live music scene at night clubs. Seeing various bands on tour performing at those clubs inspired Sarah and she ventured into Newark’s night clubs and performed as pianist and sang occasionally.

At first Sarah went to Newark’s East Side High School and later transferred to Newark Arts High School. However, the academic pressure began to affect her love of music and late night performances, thus she dropped out of the high school. This time around Sarah and her friends began to wander across New York City to catch popular bands playing music. Inspired by their performances, Sarah tried her luck at Harlem’s Zeus Theater. It is recorded by some biographers that she immediately became popular after that amateur night performance. Soon after, she was introduced to bandleader and pianist Earl Hines. He took her under his wings and replaced the current male singer in his band with her. During 1943 to 1944, Sarah Vaughan toured with Hines’ band which she joined as a pianist. But when Hines brought another pianist to the band, her duties became limited exclusively to singing. The major band member Billy Eckstine, left the band in late 1943. He gathered various talented jazz artists to perform in his band. Upon invitation from him in 1944, Sarah accepted the offer to join his new band. It was an opportunity for her to develop and polish her skills as a musician under the supervision of such great talented music artists. She was given the opportunity to record her first song, “I’ll Wait and Pray”. Eventually, she left Eckstine’s band in order to pursue a solo music career. Although, they continued to work together on several music projects and remained close friends.

In 1945, Sarah launched her solo career as she did freelance performances at night clubs, such as the Onyx Club, the Famous Door and the Three Deuces. She recorded “Lover Man” for the Guild label, the same year on May 11. Henceforth, she recorded music for several record labels including the Musicraft label and the Crown and Gotham labels. During this time she was also performing at Café Society Downtown in New York, where she met trumpeter George Treadwell and they became friends. He later was appointed as her manager and handled the musical director responsibilities for her, which allowed Sarah to solely focus on singing.

Some of her well-known music that she recorded for Musicraft include “I’ve Got a Crush on You”, “If You Could See Me Now” and “Don’t Blame Me”. Her “Tenderly”, became a smashing hit in 1947. One after another hit led to Sarah Vaughan’s ultimate stardom.

In 1989, Vaughan’s health began to decline, although she rarely revealed any hints in her performances. She canceled a series of engagements in Europe in 1989 citing the need to seek treatment for arthritis in the hand, although she was able to complete a later series of performances in Japan. During a run at New York’s Blue Note Jazz Club in 1989, Vaughan received a diagnosis of lung cancer and was too ill to finish the final day of what would turn out to be her final series of public performances.

Vaughan returned to her home in California to begin chemotherapy and spent her final months alternating stays in the hospital and at home. Vaughan grew weary of the struggle and demanded to be taken home, where she died on the evening of April 3, 1990, while watching a television movie featuring her daughter, a week after her 66th birthday.

Vaughan’s funeral was held at the new location of Mount Zion Baptist Church, 208 Broadway in Newark, New Jersey, with the same congregation she grew up in. Following the ceremony, a horse-drawn carriage transported her body to its final resting place in Glendale Cemetery, Bloomfield in New Jersey. Please, please research more about this great American because I could not put her whole life in and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – “You’re always going to have people that are naysayers, that don’t believe in your talent, that don’t believe that you have any kind of longevity.” – Vanessa Williams

Remember – ” I am lucky to have three daughters who are completely different. I look at my daughters and I have different relationships with all three and there are parts of each personality that are very special.” – Vanessa Williams

Today in our History – March 18, 1963 –

Vanessa Lynn Williams is a Grammy nominated singer, former beauty queen and television and film actress. She was born on March 18, 1963 in Bronx, New York but soon moved to a more fashionable neighborhood. Her parents, Milton and Helen Williams, both worked as music teachers and so Williams and her brother Chris were exposed to and surrounded by music from their childhood. She was a talented musician and learnt to play the piano, violin and French horn by the age of 10. Other than playing, singing and songwriting, she also trained as a dancer and planned to become the first African American “Rockettes” dancer. She was a conscientious student and graduated from high school in 1981. She won the “Presidential Scholarship for Drama” and was one of only 12 students to gain admittance at the Carnegie Mellon University theater arts program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, she refused their offer and chose to attend Syracuse University in New York.

As a freshman at Syracuse, she took a job as a receptionist and makeup artist for local photographer Tom Chiapel for whom she later posed as a nude model. However, she was not happy with the results of the shoot and did not give permission for publication. While she was studying theater and music at Syracuse, she was offered a candidacy in the “Miss Greater Syracuse pageant” which she initially hesitated to accept, but later did and won with ease. In 1983, she was crowned Miss New York and just 6 months later, she made history by being crowned the first African American “Miss America”. She shot to fame overnight, receiving offers for dozens of product endorsements, $25,000 scholarship prize money and lines of interviews and magazine spreads.

Vanessa is the first African American recipient of the Miss America title when she was crowned Miss America 1984 in September 1983. Several weeks before the end of her reign, however, a scandal arose when Penthouse magazine bought and published unauthorized nude photographs of Vanessa. Vanessa was pressured to relinquish her title, and was succeeded by the first runner-up, Miss New Jersey 1983, Suzette Charles. Thirty-two years later, in September 2015, when Vanessa served as head judge for the Miss America 2016 pageant, former Miss America CEO Sam Haskell made a public apology to her for the events of 1984

Unfortunately however, her fame was rocked by an equally dreadful scandal. The nude photos of her which Chiapel had earlier taken were published in “Penthouse” magazine. This was a huge setback for her career, as the Miss America pageant board asked her to resign her post, and most, if not all of her product endorsements were withdrawn. She was officially allowed to keep her title, but requested not to attend next year’s coronation ceremony. She filed a $500 million lawsuit against Penthouse but later dropped it after several months of futile litigation. She also dropped out of university and chose to try to set her career back on track. Initially, it seemed too daunting a task as she only received minor roles because of her tarnished reputation. However, her public relations expert Ramon Hervey II, who was later to become her husband, managed to find her a worthy role in the 1987 movie “The Pick Up Artist” also starring Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey, Jr.

Williams then signed a record contract with PolyGram and released her first album titled “The Right Stuff” in 1988. The album was certified Gold, and won her the “Best New Female Artist” award from the NAACP. Her second album, “The Comfort Zone,” was released in 1991 and was a phenomenal success. It went triple platinum and received 5 Grammy nominations. The song “Save the Best for Last” from this album is her most popular song to date. Her third album “The Sweetest Days” was released in 1994. It went platinum and received 2 Grammy nominations. All in all, she has 11 Grammy nominations but no wins.

Williams has also appeared in a wide range of television shows and films. Her TV roles include the role of Wilhelmina Slater in “Ugly Betty” and Renee Filmore-Jones in “Desperate Housewives”. Her popular film roles include “Eraser”, “Soul Food”, “Hannah Montana: The Movie” and “Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor”. She has also worked in theatre, and some of her shows include the musicals “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Into the Woods” as well as Tony Award nominated play “The Trip to Bountiful”.

Vanessa Williams has been married twice, first to her agent Ramon Hervey II, with whom she had three children, from 1987 to 1997. Next she married an NBA basketball player named Rick Fox. The marriage lasted from 1999 to 2004 and produced one child. The 51 year old actress has recently announced her third engagement to an accountant named Jim Skip. Reserach more about this American Shero T.V. Star, Movie Star, Theather Star, Model and Songbird. Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Eight GOLD Albums. Share with your babies and make it a champion day!

GM – FBF -“God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands”. Mahalia Jackson

Remember – “Time is important to me because I want to sing long enough to leave a message. I’m used to singing in churches where nobody would dare stop me until the Lord arrives!” Mahalia Jackson

Today in our History – In 1956, Mahalia Jackson made her debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

20th century recording artist Mahalia Jackson, known as the Queen of Gospel, is revered as one of the greatest musical figures in U.S. history.
Synopsis
Born on October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Mahalia Jackson started singing as a child at Mount Moriah Baptist Church and went on to become one of the most revered gospel figures in the U.S. Her recording of “Move On Up a Little Higher” was a major hit and she subsequently became an international figure for music lovers from a variety of backgrounds. She worked with artists like Duke Ellington and Thomas A. Dorsey and also sang at the 1963 March on Washington at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She died on January 27, 1972.

Early Life
Born Mahala Jackson on October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Charity Clark and Johnny Jackson, she became one of gospel music’s all-time greats, known for her rich, powerful voice that cultivated a global following. The young Mahala grew up in a Pitt Street shack and started singing at 4 years old in the Mount Moriah Baptist Church. When she started to sing professionally, she added an “i” to her first name.

Brought up in a devout Christian family, Jackson still found herself influenced by the secular sounds of blues artists like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Jackson’s sanctified style of performance would also rely upon freer movement and rhythm when contrasted to the styles seen in more conservative congregations.

Major Gospel Hit
After moving to Chicago as a teen with the aim of studying nursing, Mahalia Jackson joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church and soon became a member of the Johnson Gospel Singers. She performed with the group for a number of years. Jackson then started working with Thomas A. Dorsey, a gospel composer; the two performed around the U.S., further cultivating an audience for Jackson. She also took on a number of jobs — working as a laundress, beautician and flower shop owner for example — before her musical career went into the stratosphere. She wed Isaac Hockenhull in 1936, with the two later divorcing.

While she made some recordings in the 1930s, Mahalia Jackson tasted major success with “Move On Up a Little Higher” in 1947, which sold millions of copies and became the highest selling gospel single in history. She became more in demand, making radio and television appearances and going on tour, eventually performing in Carnegie Hall on October 4, 1950 to a racially integrated audience. Jackson also had a successful 1952 tour abroad in Europe, and she was especially popular in France and Norway. She had her own gospel program on the CBS television network in 1954 and scored a pop hit with “Rusty Old Halo.”

An International Star
In 1956, Jackson made her debut on The Ed Sullivan Show and in 1958 appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, performing with Duke Ellington and his band. Ellington and Jackson worked together on an album released the same year under Columbia Records titled Black, Brown and Beige. Future Columbia recordings from Jackson included The Power and the Glory (1960), Silent Night: Songs for Christmas (1962) and Mahalia (1965).

In 1959, Jackson appeared in the film Imitation of Life. By the end of the decade, much of Jackson’s work featured crossover production styles; she was an international figure, with a performance itinerary that included singing at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.

Civil Rights Work
Jackson was also an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. She sang at the March on Washington at the request of her friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963, performing “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned.” In 1966, she published her autobiography Movin’ On Up.After King’s death in 1968, Jackson sang at his funeral and then largely withdrew from public political activities.

In her later years, Mahalia Jackson had several hospitalizations for severe health problems, giving her final concert in 1971 in Munich, Germany. She died of a heart attack on January 27, 1972. Jackson is remembered and loved for her impassioned delivery, her deep commitment to spirituality and her lasting inspiration to listeners of all faiths. Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!