Emmy, Tony and Oscar winning production, set and costume designer Tony Walton (All That Jazz, Mary Poppins and Broadway’s Pippin just to name a few) shared his Oscar nominated set and costume work for the 1978 film The Wiz. The film was the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical of the seventies and the Black version of the L. Frank Baum classic The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Sidney Lumet, it featured Diana Ross as Dorothy, Nipsey Russell as the Tinman, Richard Pryor as The Wiz and a young Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow. Lena Horne played Glinda the Good Witch.
Universal spent a record $24 million on the production, making the movie the must expensive musical made up until that time. Studio execs were worried Ross was too old to effectively play Dorothy and rumor had it she won the coveted role by promising to deliver the pop sensation as The Scarecrow. Sadly Jackson’s dance skills were never fully utilized in the film. And even sadder for his fans, he had only one solo number, “You Can’t Win” which was at the film’s end.
The multi-talented Walton designed the sets along with Philip Rosenberg, creating a yellow brick road out of Congoleum at the Astoria studios in Queens. Apparently the flooring company came out with a style called Yellow Brick Road in their collection shortly after the film premiered. Many of the film’s special effects were created with matte paintings, as evidenced by the Manhattan skyline scenes below, by the Hollywood master Albert Whitlock.
Leontyne Price, a lyric soprano, is one of the world´s leading lyric sopranos. Her career in concerts and opera has brought her the praise of public and critics alike. Miss Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi on February 10, 1927, and received her B.A. in 1948 from the College of Educational and Industrial Arts (now Central State College) in Wilberforce, Ohio. She later accepted a scholarship to Juilliard where she studied with Florence Page Kimball. After seeing her in the student production of Verdi’s Falstaff, Virgil Thompson, the noted critic selected her to sing in the revival of his Four Saints in Three Acts which was performed on Broadway for two weeks in 1952.
She then played the role of Bess in the 1952 revival of Porgy and Bess, and continued in the part on a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. During the run of Porgy and Bess, she introduced works by Stravinsky, Henri Saguet, John La Montaine and others at such places as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.. In 1954, she gave a successful Town Hall recital and, the following year, sang Tosca for the NBC-TV Opera Company. She later appeared on this network in The Magic Flute (1956); Dialogue of the Carmelites (1957), and Don Giovanni (1960).
Miss Price made her Metropolitan debut in Il Trovatore on January 27, 1961. Since then, she has made numerous recordings of operas and operatic arias. She is married to the noted black bass baritone, William Warfield. Just one season after she had made her Met debut as Leonora in Verdi´s Il Trovatore, Miss Price had her first Met opening in 1961 in the title role of Puccini´s The Girl of the Golden West. Since then, she has made numerous recordings of operas and operatic arias. In September of 1966. Miss Price opened the Metropolitan Opera season in the role of Cleopatra. The opera (Anthony and Cleopatra) was said to have been written by composer Samuel Barber with her in mind. In the world of opera, Miss Price ranks alongside Birgit Nilsson, Joan Sutherland and Renata Tebaldi as one of the most esteemed and celebrated sopranos of the contemporary era. Her voice is said to be the perfect Verdi voice; her Aida is often regarded as the paragon against which all others should be measured.
Source: Classic Black
The Museum of UnCut Funk is all about celebrating the power of THE FUNK and of 1970′s Black Culture. As we continue to provide information on one of the most powerful and productive decades in Black history, we also want to pay homage those those who passed this year who were major players during this period and beyond.
As the year 2010 closes and southern states in the U.S, continue to rewrite our history, The Museum of UnCut Funk proudly acknowledges the civil and human rights, public service, music and art achievements that these great Black Americans gave to the world.
All of your hard work and service was not done in vain…Rest in Peace.
The Museum Of UnCut Funk honors:
Percy Sutton – Politician
Juanita Goggins – Legislator
Manute Bol – Athlete and Humanitarian
Paul R. Jones – Major Collector of African American Art
Teena Maria – Funk, R & B Singer
Lena Horne – Singer and Actress
Janet MacLachian - Actress
Gary Coleman – Actor
Jefferson Thomas – Little Rock Nine
Teddy Pendergrass – R&B Singer
Vonetta McGee – Actress
Benjamin Hooks – Civil Right Activist
Abbey Lincoln – Jazz Singer
Albertina Walker – Opera Singer
Soloman Burke – Soul Singer
Dorothy Height – Civil Rights Activist
RIGHT ON!!!
Dobbs as the Queen of Shemakha in Le Coq d’Or at Covent Garden, 1954
An internationally acclaimed opera and concert singer, Mattiwilda Dobbs has a voice often compared to the clear and resonant sound of a bell and she is known for warm, intimate performances. Only two Blacks sang at the Metropolitan Opera before her, and, appearing in Rigoletto in 1956, she was the first Black to perform a romantic lead on that stage.
An Atlanta, Georgia, native, Dobbs was born and raised in the Jim Crow south. Her father, John Dobbs, a railroad postal clerk, was determined that his children should receive a well-rounded education; because the Atlanta public library did not lend books to Blacks, he borrowed books from other libraries on his postal route for his six daughters to read. He also insisted that each of his children study music. Because of his commitment to her early musical training, Dobbs has credited her father with her success as a singer. John Dobbs played a significant role in shaping the future of his community when, in 1935, he founded the Georgia Voters League and began the fight to register southern Black voters. He helped to lay the groundwork for future civil rights activists.
While training with some of the opera world’s most prominent and rigorous voice instructors, Dobbs earned a number of important scholarships, allowing her to travel to Europe to continue her studies. Among these was the Marian Anderson Scholarship, named in honor of the groundbreaking Black singer. Dobbs was one of the first people to receive this prestigious award. Years later, when President Jimmy Carter awarded Anderson the Congressional Gold Medal, Dobbs, by then a world-class opera star, performed at the ceremony in Anderson’s honor.
During the course of her career, Dobbs has received decorations and awards from the international opera community. She won acclaim all over the world—from Israel to Ireland, Scandinavia to New Zealand—in part because of her personal connection to her audiences. For a performance in the Soviet Union, Dobbs learned a song in Russian; when she performed in the United States, she often included adaptations of old Negro spirituals, Creole slave songs, and works of contemporary American composers. When she sang at the Municipal Auditorium in her hometown of Atlanta in 1963, she performed for one of the city’s first un-segregated audiences. And when her nephew, Maynard Jackson, became that city’s first Black mayor, she sang at his inauguration.
Dobbs was one of Carl Van Vechten’s favorite opera performers. “Mattiwilda was glorious,” he wrote of her debut opera at the Met, “a warm and brilliant coloratura and the best Gilda in my experience and I have heard Nellie Melba, Emma Eames, and Bessie Abott, to say nothing of the current Hilde Gueden who always leaves me cold as a sardine in the icebox.”
Portrait by Carl Van Vechten
If Dobbs has not received the popular attention her voice and accomplishments deserve, it is likely that she has been overlooked only because of the abundance of fine singers who were her contemporaries. “Sandwiched between the debuts of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, momentous and sensational respectively, Dobbs’s bow at the house in 1956 was greeted warmly but inevitably overshadowed,” Opera News critic Ira Siff has said. “The impact was perhaps reduced even more by the advent of the big-voiced coloratura, personified by Maria Callas (who arrived at the Met a few weeks before Dobbs) and later by Joan Sutherland.” Still, Dobbs is often celebrated for what Paul Hume has called the “singular purity and radiant texture” of her voice.
In 1974, after retiring from the stage, Dobbs began a teaching career at the University of Texas, where she was the first Black artist on the faculty. She spent the 1974-75 school year as artist-in-residence at Spelman College, giving recitals and teaching master classes. In 1979 Spelman awarded honorary doctorates to both Dobbs and Marian Anderson.
Dobbs continued her teaching career as professor of voice at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. She served on the board of the Metropolitan Opera and on the National Endowment of the Arts Solo Recital Panel. Dobbs continued to give recitals until as late as 1990 before retiring to Arlington, Virginia, where she currently resides.
Sources: Wikipedia and Opera News
Sissieretta Jones aka Black Patti (1869 – 1933) was a pioneer of Black operatic singing, and she paved the way for a long list of black opera singers to follow, including Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Leontyne Price, and Grace Bumbry, among others.
From 1890 to 1916, Sissieretta Jones was one of the best-known and highest-paid Black singers in America. She sang for U.S. presidents and for royalty in Europe, and drew sellout crowds with her own minstrel show, Black Patti’s Troubadors. But she died nearly penniless in Providence. Born in Virginia in 1869, Matilda Sissieretta Joyner was the daughter of a minister of the African Methodist Church. The family moved to Providence in 1876, and Sissieretta attended Meeting Street and Thayer Schools in Providence.
From an early age, she sang for the public – at school functions and festivals at Pond Street Church. She married in 1883 when she was only 14, and had one child, Mabel, who died before the age of 2. Her husband, David Richmond Jones, was her manager for several years but apparently squandered and mismanaged her money. They divorced in 1899.
When she was 18, she attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, one of the best music schools in America.By 1887, Sissieretta had begun to draw public acclaim, appearing in front of 5,000 people at Boston’s Music Hall in a benefit for the Parnell Defence Fund. In 1888, she made her successful New York debut and was engaged to tour the West Indies with a Black troupe. During that tour, she was presented with the first of many medals she was often photographed wearing.
As Sissieretta’s fame grew, she began to be known as “The Black Patti,” a phrase coined by a New York City newspaper, comparing her to the great Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Although Sissieretta reportedly disliked the name, it remained with her throughout her career. In 1892, she sang for President Banjamin Harrison in the White House and starred in the Grand African Jubilee, a three-day event at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
After she signed a three-year contract with Maj. J.B. Pond, a manager of other well-known singers and lecturers such as Mark Twain and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Jones’s fees began to rise. She was paid $2,000 for a week’s appearance at the Pittsburgh Exposition, the highest fee ever paid to a Black artist. (By comparison, Adelina Patti was paid $4,000 a night.) After legal troubles involving her husband’s attempt to book appearances for her independent of Pond, Jones went to Europe for an extended tour.
She sang for the Prince of Wales and the Kaiser, and in a letter home said that she encountered much less racial prejudice in Europe. ”It matters not to them what is the color of an artist’s skin,” she wrote. “If a man or a woman is a great actor, or a great musician, or a great singer, they will extend a warm welcome. . . . It is the soul they see, not the color of the skin.”
In 1896, Jones formed her own touring company, Black Patti’s Troubadors, which toured for the next 20 years, playing Black and white audiences alike. The show included Jones’s singing as well as vaudeville and minstrel acts. Around 1916, she retired to her home in Providence. By the time she died in 1933, her savings were nearly gone and she had sold three of her four houses and most of her jewels and medals. In her final years, William Freeman, a real estate agent and president of the local chapter of the NAACP, paid her taxes, water bill and provided coal and wood.
Contributor: Jane Lancaster
Sista ToFunky met Alex Hafner in January of this year and to my delight Alex is one of the Koolest Cats I ever met. We spent some time getting to know each other and we shared our love for FUNK and all things FUNKY. Alex, who is from Germany, is a DJ and has a wealth of knowledge of R&B, Funk, Soul, Techno and more.
Alex Hafner grew up in Neu Ulm, in southern Germany, where he began working as a DJ at the tender age of 15. At that time he mostly played punk and EBM (Electronic Body Music), until he was exposed to hip hop, at 17. Knowing that most hip hop samples come from funk, soul, and jazz, Alex began listening to the original works—and a love affair began. While he continued to spin electronic music, especially trip hop, Alex always came back to his old favorites for, as he is quick to remind everyone: “Jazz is the teacher, and Funk is the preacher.”
Although he currently has a day job as a pharmaceutical representative, Alex continues to spin music and plan events for groups and individuals—such as his ongoing “Funk My Soul” event series— through his company: www.ah-eventmanagement.de.
The Museum of UnCut Funk is delighted to have Alex Hafner as a friend and a true fan of Blaxploitation film, music and all things FUNKY. To all members and fans of The Museum of UnCut Funk, when in Germany please check out Alex as he spins his tracks.
Michael Jackson left this earth too soon and so unexpectedly and tragically.
The Museum of UnCut Funk is working through profound sadness over his passing by honoring him in this blog with a quick look at his career as a comic book character.
Considering how fast nowadays comic books – perhaps fueled by a need-for-sales-and-publicity desperation – have embraced Barack Obama and thrown him into the Marvel Universe, the Image Universe and even stuck him back in the barbarian age, you might have thought they would have equally embraced someone who was as globally popular as Michael Jackson. Particularly given the fact that as Michael Dean wrote in The Comics Journal #270, Michael Jackson almost bought Marvel Comics.
You’d be wrong. Michael Jackson’s comic book appearances were few and far between. While he appeared many times in MAD and CRACKED Magazines, they really do not count, as they are “magazines” and not comic books.
He made a pre-plastic surgery appearance in Marvel Comics’ Spoof #3 (1973), as part of The Jackson 5. The story was co-written by Steve Gerber and Bruce Carlin and illustrated by Henry Scarpelli. This was similar to MAD and CRACKED and even Marvel’s Crazy, but Spoof was in comic book not magazine format.
Michael Jackson and his brothers were also drawn as part of the audience shown attending the Superman vs. Muhammad Ali fight in this 1978 DC comic.
A few years later the self-proclaimed King of Pop appeared in Longshot #2 (October, 1985) by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams.
In July,1987 Eclipse Comics published Captain EO (actually known as Eclipse 3-D Special #18), a 3-D comic book, based on the Michael Jackson Disneyland ride.
And then in 1991, Revolutionary Comics released Rock And Roll Comics #36, a bio-comic of Michael Jackson.
The Museum of UnCut Funk salutes Michael Jackson and all the contributions he’s made to music and the world.
On April 4, 2009, Run-DMC became only the second hip-hop act to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Run-D.M.C. was an influential hip hop group from Hollis, in the Queens borough of New York City.
Founded by Joseph “DJ Run” Simmons, Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam-Master Jay” Mizell, the group is arguably the most important and influential act in the history of hip hop. They were the biggest act in hip-hop throughout the 1980s and are credited with breaking hip hop into mainstream music. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked them number 48 in their list of the greatest musical artists of all time. In 2007, the trio was named Greatest Hip Hop Group of All Time by MTV.com. They were also named Greatest Hip Hop Artist of All Time by VH1. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 4, 2009, the second hip-hop group to be inducted.
The three members of Run-D.M.C. grew up in the neighborhood of Hollis in the Queens borough of New York City, USA. As a teen, Joseph Simmons was recruited by his older brother, an up and coming hip-hop promoter named Russell Simmons, to be the onstage DJ for rapper Kurtis Blow-who was managed by Russell. Performing as “DJ Run, Son of Kurtis Blow,” the younger Simmons soon began trading rhymes with Kurtis Blow and beat-boxing for the audience. He would often come back to Hollis and play his taped performances for his friend Darryl McDaniels. Previously, McDaniels had been more focused on athletics than music, but soon began to DJ after purchasing a set of turntables.
Simmons convinced McDaniels to start rapping, and though McDaniels wouldn’t perform in public, he soon began writing rhymes and calling himself “Easy D.” Simmons and McDaniels (who, over time, had overcome his early stage fright) started hanging around Two-Fifths Park in Hollis in late 1980, hoping to rap for the local DJs that performed and competed there. The most popular local DJ at the park was a youngster named Jason “Jazzy Jase” Mizell. Mizell was known for his flashy wardrobe and b-boy attitude; but had had troubles with the law as a teen. He’d decided to pursue music full-time and began entertaining in the park soon after. Eventually, Simmons and McDaniels rapped in front of Mizell at the park and the three were immediate friends.
Following Russell’s success managing Kurtis Blow, he helped Run record his first single, a song called “Street Kid.” The song went unnoticed, but despite the single’s failure, Run’s enthusiasm for music was growing. He wanted to record again-this time with his co-hort Easy D; but Russell refused, citing a dislike for D’s rhyming style. After they completed high school and started college in 1982, Simmons and McDaniels finally convinced Russell to let them record as a duo, and they recruited Mizell (who now called himself ‘Jam-Master Jay’) to be their official DJ. A year later, in 1983, Russell agreed to help them record a new single and land a record deal; but only after he changed D’s name to ‘DMC’ and christened the group ‘Run-D.M.C.’-a name, incidentally, that the group hated. DMC said later, “We wanted to be the Dynamic Two, the Treacherous Two — when we heard that [crap], we was like, ‘We’re gonna be ruined!’”
Inducted By Eminem
It was fitting that the group that blazed the trail between rock and rap in the 1980s was invited into the rarified club by a hip-hop icon of the modern era whose career is built on their bedrock: Eminem.
His sartorial style inspired by his heroes, from the black leather jacket, shirt and pants, to the black fedora tilted on his head, Eminem bounded onto the stage with a pimping swagger and crossed his arms in a Run-DMC style as he leaned into the microphone. Eminem said “Two turntables and a microphone, that’s all it took to change the world,” the reclusive Detroit MC began. “Three kings from Queens made rap music in the b-boy stance a global phenomenon,” he said of the group’s members, rappers Joseph “Reverend Run” Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and late DJ Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell. They were the first rock stars of rap. They were the first movie stars of rap. They were the first rap group played on MTV. … They were the baddest of the bad, the coolest of the cool. Two turntables and a microphone.”
