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Burn, Baby! BURN!
The Autobiography of Magnificent
Montague
By Magnificent Montague with Bob Baker
With his dynamic on-air personality and his
trademark cry of
Burn, Baby! BURN! when spinning the
hottest new records, Magnificent Montague was the charismatic
voice of soul music in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles from
the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. In this memoir Montague recounts
the events of his momentous radio career, which ran from the era
of segregation tot hat of the civil rights movement; as he does
so, he also tells the broader story of a life spent in the
passionate pursuit of knowledge, historical, and musical.
Like many black disc jockeys of his day,
Montague played a community role beyond simply spreading the
music of James Brown, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and other
prominent artists. Montague served as an unofficial spokesman
for his black listeners, reflecting their beliefs and acting as
a sounding board for their concerns.
Montague was based in Los Angeles in 1965
when the Watts rioters seized on his incendiary slogan, turning
the shout of musical appreciation into a rallying cry for racial
violence. In
Burn, Baby! BURN! Montague recalls
these tumultuous times and his own difficult choice: whether to
remain true to his listeners or bend to political pressure and
stop shouting his suddenly controversial slogan.
What his listeners never knew was that since
the 1950s Montague, who would later become the first African
American to build his own radio station, had been amassing one
of the country's largest private collections of books,
paintings, and other artifacts by or about African-Americans--a
veritable one-man museum dedicated to documenting black
achievement.
A compelling account of a rich and varied
life,
Burn, Baby! BURN! gives an insider's view of
half a century of the black experience, told with on-the-air
zest by the deejay/historian who was chasing history as history
chased him.
Check Prologue:
http://magnificentmontague.com/pro.pdf
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About Magnificent Montague
Born in New Jersey in 1928, Magnificent Montague built a
reputation for a fierce, unpredictable style of broadcasting
that was enthralling and perfectly in synch with the soul music
of his day. Moving from Houston to Chicago to San Francisco to
New York (to Chicago again) to Los Angeles, he personified
independent radio of the '50s and '60s.
Leaving day-to-day
broadcasting in the early 1970s, he became a successful radio
consultant and built his own station in Palm Springs in the
'80s. He has spent the past decade cataloging his massive,
6,000-piece collection of African American memorabilia.
Montague and his wife of 49 years, Rose, are the parents of a
son, Martin. They live in Las Vegas.
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Co-Author Bob Baker
Born in Los Angeles in 1947, Bob Baker grew up loving music
and first tuned his radio to Montague's KGFJ show in late 1965.
Twenty years later he tracked down the DJ for a Los Angeles
Times article, and they eventually became writing partners.
Bob attended Cal State Northridge, spent seven years as a
reporter and editor on a small newspaper and then joined the
L.A. Times.
He's been at the Times for the past 25 years as a
reporter, editor and writing coach, and these days is an
entertainment/popular-culture reporter. He's also the author of a book on mental organization for
journalists, Newsthinking (Allyn & Bacon, 2002) and the
creator of www.newsthinking.com.
Bob has been married for 33 years to his wife, Marjorie.
They're the parents of a daughter, Amanda. They live in Los
Angeles.
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Mockingbirds at Jerusalem
(poetry manuscript)
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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Debt: The First 5,000 Years
By David Graeber
Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy. Economist Glenn Loury /Criminalizing a Race
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
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1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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updated
4 November 2007
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