Unforgivable Blackness

I've settled on a few more artists for my play list. Nothing is etched in stone of course, and I'm still doing my research and editing and loosening the rocks in my head. I've found a few surprises and material I hadn't heard until I started this project. With so much music out there it's small wonder. What a great reward! Nuggets, I call them, obscura and such (to me).

Here are a few more hints--selections from Unforgivable Blackness, the soundtrack of Ken Burns's film by that title, which is also the title of Geoffrey C. Ward's biography of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Ward in fact co-wrote the film with Burns.

Jack Johnson beat former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries in the championship fight held in Reno, 4 July, 1910. Jeffries, retired for six years, had responded to Jack London's call for a "Great White Hope" to emerge to "knock the smile off Johnson's face." Jeffries said, "I should step into the ring again and demonstrate that a white man is king of them all."

Riots followed the fight in which Jeffries was knocked down twice. His handlers threw in the towel after 15 rounds. Until the fight, Johnson's critics had dubbed him a phony champion because he'd taken the championship title from Tommy Burns, who became champion upon the undefeated Jeffries's retirement.

Wynton Marsalis wrote the music and rearranged other tunes for the soundtrack of Unforgivable Blackness. It's an amazing score. I'm trying to determine how much of it I want to play.

What does the world want? Buddy Dooley always asks, and unfortunately I don't have the answer for him. This show might careen a bit, but so what?

Contrast Marsalis with Junior Brown's Grow Up America, and you'll have some idea of the show's range.

Here is some of Junior Brown's pure hokum, which I love. He invented that guitar thingy he's playing.

TS