February is Black History Month:

[Good Doctor HST]

Just a reminder that the month of February is devoted to the prominent African-Americans who have shaped our lives, by both artistic achievements and creating social change for all races.

Today let's take a look at Ralph Ellison (courtesy of Biography.com):

"Teacher, editor, and writer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied at Harvard (1907 BA) and was the first African-American to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar (1910 B Litt). He studied philosophy at the University of Berlin (1910-11) and attended lectures by Henri Bergson in Paris. Returning to the USA, he taught philosophy at Howard University (1912-17), gained his Ph D at Harvard (1918), and resumed his teaching career at Howard as professor of philosophy (1918-53). He first became known as the editor of The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), an anthology of African-American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He published other anthologies featuring the literary work of African-Americans, as well as books, essays, and reviews that were influential in defining African-Americans' distinctive traditions and culture and the role they might play in bringing blacks into mainstream American society. In The Negro and His Music (1936) he placed African-Americans' music into the spectrum of African and world folk music, while his Negro in Art (1941) was one of the first works to stress the influence of African art on modern Western painting and sculpture."

If you get a chance everyone, read (or reread) the novel "Invisible Man", another notable work from Mr. Ellison. A great story of a young black man's struggles against society and his corresponding self-discovery.

[princesskittypoo]

february is also the month of LOVE :-)

[Gold9472]

John Lee Hooker - Musician

The Best of Friends celebrates the collaborations and friendships between John Lee Hooker and the musicians he has worked with over the past decade. Together they created the landmark and award-winning albums The Healer (1989), Mr. Lucky (1991), Boom Boom (1993), Chill Out (1995) and Don't Look Back (1997). In addition to highlighted tracks from these five albums, The Best Of Friends features three new tracks recorded especially for this release with Ry Cooder, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite and some other very special friends. Not only is every collaboration the result of friendship and mutual admiration, but every song has a story, as does the album itself and the period it celebrates.

Fifteen years ago, Van Morrison, already a long-time friend, suggested producing a record for Hooker. Several years later, George Thorogood and Carlos Santana asked to be part of whatever project John Lee might next embark upon. The fruits of these seeds of inspiration resulted in 1989's The Healer. John Lee was captured performing duets with his friends and performing in solo and small ensemble formats. The concept, and the great response it received, appealed to even more friends and in the ensuing years a variety of artists who shared a deep mutual admiration for John Lee lined up to join the fun.

Carlos Santana is featured on two songs co-written with Hooker, "The Healer" and "Chill Out (Things Gonna Change)," each title tracks of Grammy winning albums. Carlos' association started with his showing up at Hooker's Bay Area shows, first as a fan and then regularly as an onstage guest. Carlos was eager to bring Hooker's music to a wider audience and he saw that dream realized in songs that surprised many with the combination of the two artists' dissimilar styles. Hooker sees nothing unusual about the pairing, though, as he loves Carlos' playing, loves the passion he brings to the music and is always proud to call Carlos one of his best friends.

"I'm In The Mood," Hooker's duet with long-time friend Bonnie Raitt, earned first-time Grammy Awards for both friends in 1989 in the Best Traditional Blues Recording category. Hooker's only other vocal duet partner in his past decade of hits was Van Morrison. Their duet on the title track to Don't Look Back, most of which was produced by Morrison, brought them a shared Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. That track also features the legendary Charles Brown on keyboards. The album itself won Hooker his fourth Grammy, for Best Traditional Blues Recording. Morrison is also captured here on Hooker's classic "I Cover The Waterfront," backed on Hammond B3 by the master of the instrument, Booker T. Jones.

In the early 1980's Hooker fell in love with a tape of Robert Cray's Bad Influence while touring Europe. Months later, Cray was added as the unknown opening act on a US tour headlined by Hooker. They have since become warm friends and Bay Area neighbors and Cray and/or members of his band appear on four of the five albums released since The Healer. Their first recorded collaboration, "Baby Lee," is an upbeat, almost calypso style number that led to one of Hooker's most entertaining videos ever.

Jimmie Vaughan joins Hooker on "Boom Boom," one of Hooker's biggest hits when it was first released on Vee Jay in 1961, and subsequently covered by The Yardbirds and The Animals. Hooker loved jamming onstage in Austin or anywhere else on the road with Jimmie or little brother Stevie Ray. Jimmie and John Lee nailed this track, which became the theme for a major ad campaign across Europe and helped the album of the same name to debut at #16 on the UK pop charts.

Los Lobos were well versed in Hooker's style and, in fact, backed him on "The Boogie" when he joined them for their Greek Theatre 20th anniversary celebration in 1993. They showed that drive again with "Dimples," one of Hooker's all time biggest hits when it was originally released in 1956. Hooker re-recorded the song in 1996 with Los Lobos producing and playing, and the result was the driving lead track on Don't Look Back.

Ry Cooder, who had performed a number of live duets with Hooker earlier this decade, as well as excelling as producer/guitarist on "This Is Hip" from Mr. Lucky, reprises those roles on a new version of the Hooker gem, "Big Legs, Tight Skirt," a track that also features keyboard work from the legendary Ike Turner.

A relatively recent friendship with rising star Ben Harper began with a shared show at Marin County's legendary Sweetwater, just around the release of Ben's Virgin debut, Welcome To The Cruel World. Now friends, Ben brings an element to "Burnin' Hell" reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix, who credited Hooker as an influence, in turn had a significant influence on Harper. Also featured on the session is legendary harp player Charlie Musselwhite, one of Hooker's oldest and dearest friends (in fact, John Lee was best man at Charlie's wedding), matching Harper's licks as all three make the track truly burn.

Capping the new tracks in grand style is a driving version of Hooker's first hit, "Boogie Chillen," featuring an all star lineup of players. "Boogie Chillen" was Hooker's first recording and it took off like a rocket exactly 50 years ago. This golden anniversary version features stellar sidepersons Jim Keltner on drums, Reggie McBride on bass, Little Feat's Bill Payne on keyboards and Johnny Lee Schell and John Lee's long-time sideman and best friend, Rich Kirch, on guitars. This great new version of "Boogie Chillen" caps a decade of collaborations and marks a half-century since Hooker's first big break.

The one exception to the "Best Friends" theme is a solo track too good to leave behind. "Tupelo" captures Hooker at his finest, telling the story of a disastrous flood in Tupelo, Mississippi in the haunting, stark way that is Hooker's trademark and also showcases his delta roots. The actual recording of this track was captured for the prestigious South Bank Show's documentary on Hooker's life, just one of the many tributes paid to Hooker in the past decade.

John Lee Hooker was 72 years old when The Healer was released in 1989. At an age when most artists are well past their retirement, Hooker's accomplishments in the past decade have numbered more on an annual basis than many achieve in a lifetime.

[Good Doctor HST]

Today, let's examine the life of Sojourner Truth, the brave suffragist/abolitionist (courtesy of Galegroup):

"Born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York, around 1797, she was freed by the New York State Emancipation Act of 1827 and lived in New York City for a time. After taking the name Sojourner Truth, which she felt God had given her, she assumed the "mission" of spreading "the Truth" across the country. She became famous as an itinerant preacher, drawing huge crowds with her oratory (and some said "mystical gifts") wherever she appeared. She became one of an active group of black women abolitionists, lectured before numerous abolitionist audiences, and was friends with such leading white abolitionists as James and Lucretia Mott and Harriet Beecher Stowe. With the outbreak of the Civil War she raised money to purchase gifts for the soldiers, distributing them herself in the camps. She also helped African Americans who had escaped to the North to find habitation and shelter. Age and ill health caused her to retire from the lecture circuit, and she spent her last days in a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan."

Her most famous words were uttered at a suffrage convention, directed at a male heckler....

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! Ain't I a woman?.... I have borne 13 children, and seen almost all of them sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, no one but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?”

[Good Doctor HST]

Today, let's look at Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam leader during the 1960's:

(1897-1975)
Black Nationalist, Nation of Islam Spiritual Leader



Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, on October 10, 1897. His father, a Baptist preacher, had been a slave.

As a boy, Elijah worked at various jobs involving manual labor. At the age of 26, he moved with his wife and two children (he was to have eight children in all) to Detroit. There in 1930, Poole met Fard Muhammad, also known as W.D. Fard, who had founded the Lost-Found Nation of Islam. Poole soon became Fard's chief assistant and in 1932 went to Chicago where he established the Nation of Islam's Temple, Number Two, which soon became the largest. In 1934, he returned to Detroit. When Fard disappeared that year, political and theological rivals accused Poole of foul play. He returned to Chicago where he organized his own movement, in which Fard was deified as Allah and Elijah (Poole) Muhammad became known as Allah's Messenger. This movement soon became known as the Black Muslims.

During World War II, Elijah Muhammad expressed support for Japan, on the basis of its being a nonwhite country, and was jailed for sedition. The time Muhammad served in prison was probably significant in his later, successful attempts to convert large numbers of black prison inmates, including Malcolm X, to the Nation of Islam. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Nation grew under Muhammad's leadership. Internal differences between Muhammad and Malcolm X, followed by the break between the two men and Malcolm's assassination, for which three Black Muslim gunmen were convicted, provided a great deal of unfavorable media coverage, but this did not slow the growth of the movement. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Elijah Muhammad moderated the Nation's criticism of whites without compromising its message of black integrity. When Muhammad died on February 25, 1975, the Nation was an important religious, political, and economic force among America's blacks, especially in this country's major cities. Elijah Muhammad was not original in his rejection of Christianity as the religion of the oppressor. Noble Drew Ali and the Black Jews had arrived at this conclusion well before him. But Muhammad was the most successful salesman for this brand of African American religion. Thus he was able to build the first strong, black religious group in the United States that appealed primarily to the unemployed and underemployed city dweller, and ultimately to some in the black middle class. In addition, his message on the virtues of being black was explicit and uncompromising, and he sought with at least a little success to bolster the economic independence of African Americans by establishing schools and businesses under the auspices of the Nation of Islam.

[Good Doctor HST]

Today, let's look at a man who was born only about 20-25 miles from my hometown:



Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, a pioneer in open heart surgery was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Attended formal schooling in Hare's Classical Academy in 1877 and received his M.D. from Chicago Medical College, Northwestern Medical School, in 1883. He helped to found the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses.

In 1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first open heart surgery by removing a knife from the heart of a stabbing victim. He sutured a wound to the pericardium (the fluid sac surrounding the myocardium), from which the patient recovered and lived for several years afterward. He established a training school for nurses. He was the first Surgeon in Chief to divide the Freemen's Hospital in Washington, D.C. into separate departments to treat specific conditions: Medical, Surgical, Gynecological , Obstetrical, Dermatological, Genito-Urinary, and Throat and Chest. In 1891 he founded the Provident Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago, the oldest free-standing black owned hospital in the United States. Dr. Williams was the only African-American in a group of 100 charter members of the American College of Surgeons in 1913. He founded and became the first vice-president of the national Medical Association. Dr. Williams was awarded by a bill in the United States Congress in 1970 that issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.