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So, I assume the neighborhoods we should be focused on pre 1930 are in Brooklyn since Harlem isn't one of them. Do you know which ones? I know Brooklyn had some prominent African American neighborhoods from 1880-1930. I don't know which ones though.
I think Harlem should still be in the mix, given the history and the thing with history is that we find more of it as time goes on.
Back when Boston still had WILD I used to listen to Skippy White Time Tunnel which as all balck music from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. WILD was an urban/soul AM owned by the Nash family and then Radio One that ran in Boston as a daytimer station from ~1968-2011.
Skippy is a Jewish man who was a holdover form before Roxbury became fully black. he owned two record stores (the las tof which closed during the pandemic in Egleston Square). Skippy had a record label, DJ'd and had his store.
For nearly 40 years, the Rev. Huston Crayton Jr. has been leading Sunday services at the Lincoln Congregational Church in Brockton. His sister Joyce directs the choir. “I make sure all my songs have a little intricacy,” says Crayton, who plays keyboards. “I make sure our songs have a hook.”
A few years ago he and Joyce led a reunion of the Crayton Singers, their teenage gospel group, which recorded two singles for Skippy White’s Silver Cross label in the mid-1960s. Reverend Crayton’s wife, son, and daughter took part.
...
The reunion was joyful, but Crayton never expected to see a day when someone would reissue the Crayton Singers’ obscure 1966 single “Master on High.” It’s part of a 15-track compilation, out Friday, called “The Skippy White Story: Boston Soul 1961-1967” (Yep Roc Records), curated by Eli “Paperboy” Reed, with liner notes from Peter Wolf and music historian Peter Guralnick. Reed hosts a record-release party at the Sinclair on Saturday.
Reed has been thinking for years about compiling some of the gospel, soul, and blues songs that Skippy White released on various record labels in the ‘60s, when his self-named record stores were a hub of Black music and camaraderie in the Hub.
“The two places to hang out in those days were the barber shop and the record shop,” says White, who closed the final location of his record store, in Egleston Square, in 2020. “It was a lot of fun.”
As a young man, Reed dove into the underappreciated history of Boston’s Black music heritage. He learned to sing old-time gospel alongside the Silver Leaf Gospel Singers, the vocal group that started back in the 1940s.
“That stuff does stand out,” says Reed, who now lives in Brooklyn. “Not a lot of people were taking a chance on down-home blues records, especially in the Boston area, in the early ‘60s.”
Crayton, who played bass in those years, performed with plenty of notable musicians on the local scene. His band Huey and the Bossmen backed the Turnpikes, the family band that would go on to become Tavares. Saxophonist Bobby Eldridge and trumpeter Milt Ward, both Berklee students who were in the Bossmen, also played in the house band at the Sugar Shack, the Boylston Street nightclub, where they met Stevie Wonder, who took them on tour.
Not saying Harlem shouldn't be in the mix, I'm just saying Harlem is more recent history compared to other neighborhoods right after the civil war and early 20th century. There is an entire 60-years prior to Harlem of Black excellence that existed prior to Harlem becoming a thing. That includes neighborhoods in Brooklyn during the 1880s that were thriving. Obviously, that includes DC which has the earliest Black history of any of these cities. And Baltimore and Philadelphia which also have Black history that predates Harlem.
Not saying Harlem shouldn't be in the mix, I'm just saying Harlem is more recent history compared to other neighborhoods right after the civil war and early 20th century. There is an entire 60-years prior to Harlem of Black excellence that existed prior to Harlem becoming a thing. That includes neighborhoods in Brooklyn during the 1880s that were thriving. Obviously, that includes DC which has the earliest Black history of any of these cities. And Baltimore and Philadelphia which also have Black history that predates Harlem.
Sure, but the Harlem Renaissance became arguably one of the best examples of Black Excellence in American history, because it was a cultural movement that involved a more diasporic input with black people from various regions of the country, but also from the Caribbean as well. So, it a bit unique in that regard.
Sure, but the Harlem Renaissance became arguably one of the best examples of Black Excellence in American history, because it was a cultural movement that involved a more diasporic input with black people from various regions of the country, but also from the Caribbean as well. So, it a bit unique in that regard.
I question the timing of when Black people were at the clubs. Are we saying the greatest time and movement in African American history (Harlem Renaissance) was during a time when we could perform for White people, but Black people could not sit and enjoy the shows themselves? When did these spaces integrate? Which spaces were for Black people alone?
For example, the Apollo didn't even allow Black people to sit in the audience until 1934. Am I the only one who has a problem with the fact that Black performers weren't performing for their own people during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s?
"The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds and brightest talents of the day, an astonishing array of African American artists and scholars. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation’s history—the Harlem Renaissance.
The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves,” as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.
Among the Renaissance’s most significant contributors were intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, and Walter Francis White; electrifying performers Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora Neale Hurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee Cullen; visual artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; and an extraordinary list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and countless others.
As the 1920s came to a close, so did the Harlem Renaissance. Its heyday was cut short largely due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression, which hurt African American-owned businesses and publications and made less financial support for the arts available from patrons, foundations, and theatrical organizations."
Last edited by MDAllstar; 11-02-2022 at 01:58 PM..
Not saying Harlem shouldn't be in the mix, I'm just saying Harlem is more recent history compared to other neighborhoods right after the civil war and early 20th century. There is an entire 60-years prior to Harlem of Black excellence that existed prior to Harlem becoming a thing. That includes neighborhoods in Brooklyn during the 1880s that were thriving. Obviously, that includes DC which has the earliest Black history of any of these cities. And Baltimore and Philadelphia which also have Black history that predates Harlem.
Right. It's easily the most iconic Black neighborhood in America with instant name recognition.
That’s true, however, that’s also because Harlem was commercialized. I mean, until recently, most people didn’t know about Black Wall Street.
If we’re being honest, and I’m including in this, we have been bamboozled with regard to Harlem’s history because the height of Harlem was during a time when Black performers were playing for White only audiences. That’s enough grounds for disqualification from this discussion.
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