Long Live the Kings of Black Entertainment

CDs by Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Blacknuss / Volunteered Slavery / Bright Moments / Brotherman in the Fatherland / The Inflated Tear

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Sun Ra Music CDs

Space Is the Place (1972) / Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy/Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow (1992)

Lanquidity (2000) / Angels & Demons at Play/The Nubians of Plutonia (1956, 1993) / The Magic City (1965; 1993)

Super Sonic Jazz (1956; 1992) / Jazz in Silhouette: Music (1958, 1992) / The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 (1965, 1999)

/ When Angels Speak of Love (2000) / Nuclear War (1982, 2001) / Visits Planet Earth/Interstellar Low Ways (1956, 1992)

Sunrise in Different Dimensions (1980, 2007) / Atlantis (1967, 1993)

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CDs by James Brown

Live at the Apollo / Messing with the Blues / 20 All-time Greatest Hits / Star Time / 50th Anniversary Collection / Foundations of Funk

The PayBack / Say It Live and Loud

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Long Live the Kings of Black Entertainment

James Brown -- Rashaan Roland Kirk -- Sun Ra

By Rudolph Lewis

James Brown's dramatic death Xmas morning caused me to reconsider his impact on my life. He was a childhood icon that later became a bit tarnished. One might say that outside of my family church his was the first dramatic performance I experienced. That was at the Royal Theatre in Baltimore on Pennsylvania Avenue, then the Negro entertainment district, before the 1968 post- MLK assassination riots.

I was twelve, maybe fourteen years old up from the countryside visiting my mother for the summer when she lived in Cherry Hill. The exact time is a bit vague, though I suspect that it was before I graduated from high school in 1965. But by that time, I think I had listened to jukebox 45s of “Try Me” (1959), “Think” (1960), “Bewildered” (1961), maybe even “Lost Someone” and “Night Train” (both issued in 1962). But it was a great troupe of stars that came on before. JB closed the program with his first hit. But it was the way he performed rather than sang “Please, Please” (1956) that ever stands out in memory and of course his dancing—his quick feet and the splits and his seemingly tireless energy, as in his performance of "Night Train."

In those days on the chitlin circuit, stage shows would begin on maybe Wednesdays and extend until Friday night. There would be two performances a day—a matinee in the afternoon and then an 8 o'clock show. On Fridays, there would be three performances, ending with a midnight show. I saw James Brown for the matinee and the 8 o'clock show.

Back in those days, one could go into a theater for a movie or a live performance and stay all day, as long as one remained in the building. I was too young for the midnight show.

As I said, the only theatre I had seen to that point occurred in a black Baptist church, in my early days under the pastorate of Reverend General Ruffin, a very dark, short stout man, very handsome and very demanding morally. I was a childish believer, then. With Ruffin, unlike the preacher who replaced him, there was no silliness in the pulpit. He was thoroughly convincing in bringing God into our presence.

James Brown did not necessarily bring God into our presence at the Royal, but he certainly brought a wholly convincing improvisational spirit into our presence. As thrilling as any classic Negro sermon. I was thoroughly convinced by his “Please, Please” performance and when I saw it a second time I was surprised that it was such a precise copy of the performance that had been given hours ago, with the same energy and with the same passion. Still it was more than just an act, though it caused me to reflect on Reverend Ruffin's performance in the pulpit. In both cases it was more than just spirit possession but consummate skill and planning and stunning execution.

It was years later as an adult that I saw a performance that rivaled JB's onstage presence. Before I go on I must say, Brown's late sixties performances and onward from "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (1965) to "Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968) to "Sex Machine" (1970 disco) did little for me. They were memorable indeed. But I had become politically aware then and though James' funk was the in thing, he had gotten a little "Stoned To The Bone" (1974) for my taste. Of course, he always remained Mr. Dynamite, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business and however difficult I found him, I couldn't help from loving and admiring him because he was always running to stay ahead of what everybody else was doing or trying to do and he was successful in doing so.

That other performance occurred on Charles Street near North Avenue at a program of the Left Bank Jazz Society, which presented its programs cabaret style, BYOB. It was Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the blind jazzman who played multiple instruments all at once. Like Brown he came off as a supernatural force. His circular breathing (ballooning jaws), which he claims to have learned from the Australian aborigines, is a wonder that gives the impression of continuous dynamic energy, much like Brown’s dancing and footwork And his costumes behind huge black sun glasses with bags of instruments, two/three horns in his mouth at once and he's blowing and fingering. And you spacing and dancing and the whole world is filled with beautiful sounds inspired by Rashann.

At the Left Bank program, Rashann's band came back from a break and Ra announced that he was told that his group had to quit the stage for a rock n roll band. So Rashaan and his band broke out into "Volunteer Slavery." They rocked it and rolled it and brought the house down. Rahsaan had folks dancing on the tables, lined up before the stage snorting coke, and the show ended with him breaking up chairs on stage. . . . He was never invited back to Baltimore. His stage presence was too dynamic, too unpredictable.

The other greatest performer was Sun Ra, again, presented by the Left Bank Jazz Society. But this time at Coppin State College Auditorium. I had listened to Sun Ra's records before I saw the performance, his heliocentric worlds. I think he did Baraka’s Black Mass. Ra’s was the strangest performance I had ever seen, sort of neo-African, cosmic mystery, much stranger and definitely more intriguing than George Clinton's Parliament. But Ra's performance at Coppin did not possess the magic as I had imagined it. The problem I think was the setting—the college auditorium. It was too huge and too much light and space. The same problem with stage shows at the Civic Center. There was a problem with intimacy.

There are film clips however that are much more successful in capturing Sun Ra as performer. In these he is thoroughly convincing. It comes off as more than Act. The man plays such wild music but he floats around quiet and self-possessed—"destination unknown." Sun Ra was on a different plane than anyone on Planet Earth. In capes and Egyptian headdress I wouldn't be surprised if he visited us sometime soon.

I suspect that the best ancient dramatic performances occurred after dark or in the twilight with artificial light (all kinds), instrumental music, human voices, movement (to and fro), and costumes (all colors). All of these performances were on the borderline of the secular and the sacred, of reality and myth, the ordinary and the extraordinary.

Strangely the first drama as drama I actually saw was a play by Baraka (LeRoi Jones), not in a theatre but in a church just off Fremont Avenue and Edmondson Avenue in Baltimore. That was probably in early 1968. Stokely Carmichael, as well as LeRoi and his group, was there. All of these were in what Baraka calls the tradition of African American entertainment. Words cannot fully capture what it is that these performers and performances achieved and the impact that they had/have on consciousness.

One must experience JB, Rashann, and Sun Ra directly to appreciate truly the uniqueness and the wonder of their performances. There are not words sufficient to describe the impact they had/have. They each had their own unique way of transporting us from the doldrums of our workaday worlds, from soulful depression, from fragmentation and alienation to thrilling heights of elation, fulfillment, and wholeness. In seeing them at work, one cannot help but smile in somewhat unbelief at what is being observed. . . . Long live the messengers of the gods!

Read also Jamie Walker's Tribute -- http://www.pageturner.net/gbc/ (The Royal Theatre image above is from a painting by Kaki)

posted 27 December 2006