Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Funky "Soul!" opening with audio layover of King Curtis & Kingpins playing "Soul!" theme. Ellis Haizlip introduces program: "Tonight we are featuring a work that was shaped by one of the giants of our black musical history, Max Roach. Max, together with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White, has drawn on the sound of contemporary black music & the spiritual as materials for this work. Protest comes in var forms. Marching, sitting-in, fasting, fighting-- I mean, getting down with it. Protest can be a brick hurled through some dumb window & it can be the simple refusal to participate in some inhuman but popular act." "Taken in historical context, the spirituals were songs of protest & inspiration which sometimes even chronicled our history in America. Gospel music, however, has mainly dealt w/ songs of devotion to Christianity as defined by the King James Bible. Frederick Douglass was the very embodiment of protest & resistance. He protested his own enslavement by escaping. He protested the enslavement of our people w/ his writings & his oratory & his tireless activity in the abolitionist movement."
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt portrays elderly Frederick Douglass recounting his life story, interspersed w/ stories of slavery. "I have never met a slave who could ever tell of his birthday." "The white children could tell of their ages. I wondered why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege." "The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father but the correctness of this opinion I know not. The means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant, too young to know her as my mother."
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Cover of Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers "Lift Every Voice and Sing" LP. Brief keyed effect bubble over album cover of solo vocalist singing. Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White perform "Motherless Child." Deep spiritual over baleful, mid-60s period Trane-like jazz. Interesting musical experiment. Max Roach ensemble features: Joe Bonner, piano; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Omar Clay, drums; Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Max Roach, drums.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White continue to perform "Motherless Child." Deep spiritual over baleful, mid-60s period Trane-like jazz. Interesting musical experiment. Max Roach ensemble features: Joe Bonner, piano; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Omar Clay, drums; Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Max Roach, drums. At outset, TLS seated audience applauding.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White perform "Garden of Prayer." Gospel spiritual with lead vocal by J.C. White. Max Roach ensemble features: Joe Bonner, piano & organ; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Omar Clay, drums; Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Max Roach, drums.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt portrays Frederick Douglass delivering oratory: "In whatever else the Negro may have been a failure, he has in one respect been a marked & brilliant success. He has managed by one means or another to make himself one of the most prominent & intersting figures that track & hold the attention of the world. Go where you will, you will meet w/ him." "Despite it all, the Negro remains like iron or granite. Cool, strong, imperturbable, and cheerful. It is his sad lot to live in a land where all presumptions are arraigned against him unless we accept the presumption of inferiority. If his course is downward he meets very little resistance. But if upward, his way is disputed at every turn of the road." "No matter what may be his attainments or his abilities, there is always presumption based upon his color or his previous condition. It is a real calamity in this country for any man to be accused of a crime. But it is an incomparable calamity for any black man to be so accused." The racism of the courts. "For as in the eyes of most white people, all negroes look alike, and as the man arrested is black he is undoubtedly the criminal. A still greater misfortunte to the Negro is the press." Racism in the media.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt continues to portray Frederick Douglass delivering oratory: "What Abraham Lincoln said of the United States is as true of the colored people as of the relation of those states. They cannot remain half slave and half free. You must give them all or take from them all. Until this half & half condition is ended, you will have an aggrieved class & this discussion will go on." "Until color shall cease to be a bar to equal participation, this discussion will go on." "Until the American people shall make character & not color the criterion of respectability, this discussion will go on." "When will he cease to be a bone of contention between the two great political parties. Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that I wish it to cease." "I want the whole American people to unite in sentiment w/ their greatest captain, Ulysses S. Grant, and say w/ him on this subject, Let us have peace. But it is utterly idle to dream of peace anywhere in this world while any part of the human family are victims of marked injustice & oppression."
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt continues to portray Frederick Douglass delivering oratory: "Now that slavery is abolished, the newly emancipated black man has none of the conditions of self-protection. He is free of the individual slave-master, but the slave of society. He has neither money nor property nor friends." "The old master class hates the slave b/c he has been freed as a punishment onto them, or so they think, b/c they feel that they have been robbed of his labor." "The liberties of the whole American people are dependent upon the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box, and without these no class of people can live & flourish in this country."
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White perform "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord." Gospel spiritual with lead vocal by J.C. White. Max Roach ensemble features: Joe Bonner, piano & organ; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Omar Clay, drums; Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Max Roach, drums.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt portrays Frederick Douglass delivering 4th of July oratory: "The papers & the placards say I am to deliver a 4th of July oration. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men. And if they did not go mad they became restive under this treatment." "With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression." "My business is w/ the present. The accepted time w/ God & his cause is the ever-loving now. Washington could not die until he had broken the chains of his slaves, yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood." "The evil that men do lives after them and the good is often interred w/ their bones. Fellow citizen, allow me to ask why I am called upon to speak here today. What have I or those I represent have to do w/ your national independence? I am not included w/in the pale of this glorious anniversary. The blessings which you rejoice-- liberty, prosperity, independence-- bequethed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. You may rejoice; I must mourn." "Must I argue that a system thus marked w;/ blood is wrong?"
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt continues to portray Frederick Douglass delivery 4th of July oratory: "What then to the American black slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him the gross injustices to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham." "A thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a national of savages. There is not a nation guilty of practices more shocking & bloody than the people of the United States at this very hour. Americans, your republican politics, not less than your republican religion are flagrantly inconsistant." "You profess to believe that of one blood God hath made all nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth, and yet you hate all men whose skin are not colored like your own." "Fellow citizens, the existence of slavery in your land brands your republicanism a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad & corrupts your politicians at home."
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White perform "Let Thy People Go." Gospel spiritual mixed with jazz. Max Roach ensemble features: Joe Bonner, piano & organ; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Omar Clay, drums; Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Max Roach, drums. Cecil Bridgewater solos on trumpet. Nice shots of Max Roach on drums.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
FOR FULL PERFORMANCE WITH AUDIO, PLEASE CONTACT WPA. Studio audience applauding. Max Roach with the J.C. White Singers conducted by J.C. White perform "Joshua." Gospel spiritual mixed with jazz. Max Roach ensemble features: Joe Bonner, piano & organ; Cecil Bridgewater, trumpet; Omar Clay, drums; Billy Harper, tenor saxophone; Reggie Workman, bass; Max Roach, drums. Billy Harper solos on tenor saxophone.
Soul! EP # 47 (405)
Actor Arthur Burghardt portrays Frederick Douglass delivering oratory: "Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress." Credits eventualy roll along right side of screen.