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The Columbus Black History Blog by
Arnett Howard
A blog is a web log; one of the new age
methods of publishing and distributing without incurring the huge expenses
of ink, paper, shipping and promoting. We cut out the costs of visiting
books stores, consigning our products, waiting on payments and servicing a
local, regional and national markets for our intellectual properties.
Podcasting is the audio version of
blogging; creating an audio broadcast without driving to a radio station,
begging for a gig and getting paid five dollars per hour. The trick is
have a great computer, good software and the curiosity to keep learning
each day about your subject matter and the technologies to apply it to the
new age of the worldwide web.
I began writing and collecting audio on
subjects of Black music in the mid-1970s, focusing on Columbus history in
1980 and I was part of a team that produced a book called
Listen For the Jazz:
Keynotes in Columbus History in 1990. Many of the subjects in my
Black History Blog were people that I first met in 1980 and I am forcing
myself to keep their valuable legacies fresh, as well as adding to the
lore of musicians or Columbus personalities who have been on the rise in
the past twenty-five years.
Black history is American history; it
belongs to all of us and should be celebrated by everyone. Enjoy the
triumphs of your people!
Share your thoughts with me at
mayorarnett@gmail.com
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February 28, 2006
I
met Eddie J. Colston, Jr. in 1980
as I began my quest to discover the roots of Black entertainers in Central
Ohio. His family lived on Eastwood Avenue, down the street from my jazz
mom, Emily Sawyer.
I was drawn to the Colstons because of the legacy that was established by
Eddie J.Colston, Sr., a tap dancer, journalist, entertainment
manager and promoter. Legend has it that his dancing days, he became the
road manager for Lionel Hampton's Band,
thus becoming the first Black to manage a popular orchestra during the
swing era.
Perhaps the need to raise his family took him of the road, but Eddie J.
Senior put his energies into promoting all things musical in Columbus. He
became the amusements editor for the Ohio Sentinel during the 1940s,
soliciting advertising and promoting many of the popular entertainers that
came to Columbus. He and pioneer radioman
Eddie Saunders were two persons that met and promoted the
entertainers of all persuasions that brought their acts to the Central
Ohio area during the heydays of supper clubs, concerts and nightclubs
during the forties and fifties.
It is said that Eddie J. Senior and photographer
Roosevelt Carter worked together
and when I met Eddie Jr. and his mother,
Dorothy, the collection of items in the family photo box was a
who's who of entertainment. There were enough pictures to produce a book,
unfortunate I never returned to duplicate the photos and book was never
done. Eddie said that after his mother's death, the photos became his
sister's
property and he said they were now in Georgia.
Eddie Colston, Sr. died suddenly in 1960 at aged forty.
Eddie Junior was sixty-seven when he passed away last week, but he packed
a heap into his life also. He was a graduate of St. Mary's High School in
German Village and Cols. College of Art and Design, where he later
instructed. He spent the bulk of his working years in the Cols. Recreation
an Parks Department as a recreation leader and instructor to art students
of all ages. Those students will be his legacy.
Jim Loeffler remembered the late
1950s when he and Colston were among the hungry visual artists who decided
that they would drag their paintings out to the open space between the
State of Ohio building
on Front
Street for an impromptu exhibition, like those in Jackson Square, New
Orleans. Within a few years, the Greater Columbus Arts Festival was born.
Candy Watkins remembers Eddie as
being the only color-blind painter that she ever knew. I remember the
subtle dark shades and textures that he composed his canvases with.
But mainly, he and I both regreted that we were never able to collaborate
on the book that should have emerged from the collection of family
photographs that told the story of his father's life making the
entertainment rounds in Columbus. One of those bright moments was putting
Black performers, like Madam Rose Brown,
Nancy Wilson and the Harmonaires on television in the pioneering
days of television.

Love live the memory of the Colston Family. A picture is worth a thousand
words.
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February 26, 2006
Sunset Negril was taken of me by my former
saxophonist Keith Kimble in 1998. Nice 'eh?
Greetings on this
Saturday Night/Sunday morning. Pat and I just went to the new Sunset
Negril in the Continent. I can't remember when the last time I drove up
Busch Blvd. and turned right into the parking lot, but when I walked past
the fountains, I remembered back in 1986-92 when the Gatherings on the
Continent attracted thousands to our performances in the summers and we
made so many friends.
We found Sunset Negril in the location of the former Funny Bone Comedy
Club at 6312 Busch Blvd., opposite the movie theater. We saw our old
friends Gabbo, who played keyboard with the reggae band Identity and
Deighton Charlemeign, the steel drum wizard from St. Lucia, as soon as we
walked in the place.
The dark, but colorful room has a nice sized stage, a tile floor and you
can dance on a stone map of Jamaica that highlights the major cities.
Gabbo and Deighton might be jamming each week from Wednesday through
Saturday with any number of musicians in the band.
To eat and drink was our primary mission; after Red Stripe and Corona
beers came the coconut shrimp, along with two kinds of dipping sauces,
Mango Chutney and Reggae Twenty-nine (hot). Afterwards, and quickly mind
you, came our entrees of curried chicken and the sliced, grilled fish
called tilapia. I told Pat the story about waiting for meals
extraordinarily long times in Negril restaurants and getting the answer,
"Soon come," from our waitresses. Our food "come" surprisingly soon at
Sunset Negril, thanks to three Jamaican cooks in the kitchen.
Pat joined the clean plate club and Arnett took a box with a "soon come"
Monday meal. On the way out, we walked over the stone map, I gave her a
geography lesson and the very personable restaurant proprietor and
founder, Garrett Greenlee, met us in the middle of the empty dance floor.
After I introduced my legendary self (LOL), Garrett said that he had
cultivated his Sunset Negril dream from an experience with me. He said
that a friend and he had signed on for our Return to Negril tour in 1992
(and a great trip it was), but had to change plans and ended up going
later in the season.
He has had a five year dream of opening a Negril theme restaurant and
after an aborted effort in the Arena District, he and his team of cooks,
bartenders, musicians and staff have landed on their feet in the
Continent. I read a food review in my Clintonville This Week paper and
made it my main stop this Saturday night.
When Garrett saw our mardi gras beads and I told him that I had no gig on
Fat Tuesday, he suggested that we put together a quick party for Fat
Tuesday so I accepted his challenge.
Fat Tuesday, February 28, Sunset Negril
with Arnett Howard and Friends. 8 pm. the music starts, come an
hour early for dinner. You will like the room and food, I guarantee.
6312 Busch Blvd., opposite the
movie theater. Plenty of parking, but you have a good walk from the
parking lot; there is no valet service. Bring some beads, a mask and some
color.
Soon come!
Download this MP3 to get into
the Mardi Gras spirit
Return to Negril, Jamaica, June 22-29, 2006
Willa Owen, Uniglobe Trave Unlimited, 614/764-9914 |
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February 24, 2006
Edith
Clark was a pianist and singer who I met once in the 1980s, doing a
stint at the legendary piano bar called the Dell, on Parsons Avenue. I
found her photo in the archives of the Columbus Call-Post, a Cleveland
based Black newspaper chain that continues to serve Ohioans.
I interned at the Call-Post in the early eighties and a book that Edith
had written came into my possession, through my friend and fellow
journalist Charles Briggs. In
The Way, The Gifts and
The Power, published in 1971 by New York's Vantage Press, Inc.,
Edith created an autobiographical character named Isobel Grant, who grew
up in a community in Columbus called Flytown. Now known as the Arena
District, the area was also the community where musicians
Hank Marr and
Ronnie Kirk, as well as Edith, grew
up in the twenties and thirties.
Here is the narrative that begins on page thirty-six of
The Way, The Gifts and The Power,
describing the community in the 1920s;
"Flytown was a community singular unto itself. It nestled around the Ohio
State Penitentiary, a stones through from where the Olentangy and Scioto
Rivers merge, a hop, skip and jump from the geographical center of
Columbus. Bordering Long Street on the south, Flytown meandered along the
edge of Front Street past Naughten, Maple and Vine, crossed the
Pennsylvania Railroad tracks at Spruce, skirted down Goodale Street past
the park, followed the street car line past Neil Avenue, cut through Henry
Street to Buttles, then up to an undefined line which eventually ended at
the Olentangy River to the West.
A railroad spur track ran behind Michigan Avenue to serve the many
factories which lined the river; the Indianapolis Paper Stock Company, the
Pipe factory, the Wire Works. The factory that made molds edged a big
vacant lot where my father, Carl, and his cronies played baseball for
barrels of beer.
Past the mold company there was a small open field where the kids played
and men kept their dump wagons. There was the Paste factory, the Piano
company, the Vault company, the derrick makers, the stove factory, and on
up towards First Avenue, the Oleo makers and the beer company. On Michigan
Avenue proper there stretched the lumber company.
Carl was working for the Power and Light Company downtown when he mashed
his thumb on the job and, taking pride in his male invincibility, ignored
the soreness until it festered into gangrene and he lost part of his left
arm, almost up to the elbow, in order to save himself from dying due to
blood poisoning.
With the money that he received as compensation for the lost of a limb,
Carl and Reba, my mother, paid cash for a house further down Michigan
Avenue. By this time the bootlegging and highjacking Italians were
becoming affluent enough to leave Flytown and move across the river into a
newly developed suburb which began at Goodale Street. Our family was the
first Colored family on that block. Reba took great pride in jerking the
"For Sale" sign as a symbol of an answer to some White neighbor who called
to inform them that the house was not for rent; it was for sale.
Carnivals and medicine shows often set up on the baseball field on the
corner of Poplar and Michigan in the summer time and the neighborhood
reveled in the novelty of the show put on by the medicine man. The Godman
Guild was the heart, the hub, the center around which revolved the
community of Flytown. It taught the residents laws and ordinances, showed
them the way wherein they must walk and brought their causes to the rulers
of the city.
Long before the nation would be confronted with the same problem, the
Godman Guild met and found solutions, faced squarely and honestly the
needs of the neighborhood and welded the transplanted souls into a solid
acknowledgment of pride in themselves and their community. The pillars of
society of Flytown were as high-minded and respectable, virtuous and
God-fearing as any people in any neighborhood; for their children they had
the same goals as any human being in the nation."
Thanks to Edith Clark, we have a glimpse of Flytown, a community that
ceased to exist in the 1960s when urban renewal and highway construction
brought progress to the near Northside of Columbus. |
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February 22, 2006 I give my
greetings with a heavy heart this day; my friend Eddie Colston, Jr. died
yesterday morning. Eddie was a noted painter and educator, teaching
at the Martin Janis Center, part of the Columbus recreation and Parks
Department. His father, Eddie Colston, Sr., was an entertainer and
journalist and much of his writing and photography has helped me uncover
the legacy of Columbus' Black entertainers. Eddie Jr. is to be honored
with a funeral mass on Saturday at St. Dominic Parish on North Twenty-five
Street.
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The
Mother of Black History in Columbus is
Anna Bishop. In addition to being an educator in
Columbus schools, a singer, poet, composer, actress and tireless community
activist, she was the author of Beyond Poindexter Village: The Blackberry
Patch.
In 1982, the first of four parts of her writings were published by the
Columbus Metropolitan Library. Beyond Poindexter Village chronicled the
community that began after W.W.I when Black southerners moved north to
take advantage of the industrial boom that was occurring in many
Midwestern cities. The Blackberry Patch was settled in East Columbus
bordering Long Street, Mount Vernon Avenue, Ohio Avenue and Mink Alley.

According to the book, southerners brought strange customs and cultural
patterns to Columbus. "On warm days different people came through the
streets selling different things. The watermelon man drove a flat bed
truck with a hand made sign that said 'Georgia.' You could hear him
coming, singing, 'Watermelon, watermelons! Georgia watermelons, red, ripe,
red watermelons!"
Jake and Lena, Italian immigrants, had a horse drawn wagon and they sold
vegetables. The people on Champion Avenue knew what Jake meant when he
called out, "Epple! Epple! Good, juicy red Epple!" All of the people in
the neighborhood would run out to get fresh apples, green beans, corn and
potatoes.
One man rang a bright metal hand bell as he walked along the streets and
all of the children ran out to the musical sound. The scissors grinder
carried a contraption on his back that was machinery for sharpening knives
and scissors, screwdrivers for umbrella repairing and for fixing things.
He was their science and mechanics teacher.
When the rag man called out, "Iron, rags, glass," the people in the
Blackberry Patch knew they could exchange the things that they had been
collecting in buckets around the neighborhood for cash. The rag man was
the original recycling business.
In her four volumes Anna Bishop interviewed the golden agers, born in the
south at the beginning of the century, who had the recipes that helped
families survive the terrible times of the depression years of poverty.
She documented the details of neighborhood business, theaters, nightclubs,
transportation and personalities.
One
fascinating businessman was James Albert Jackson, a successful feed
merchant in the day when Columbus citizens kept small flocks of chickens
in their backyards. He and his business partner, James Williams, opened
the Empress Theater at 768 East Long Street in the 1920s. When a theater
owner on Mount Vernon insisted on keeping Black customers out, Mr. Jackson
said that he'd fix them, "I'll build a theater better than any one in the
United States."
When the Ogden (Lincoln) Theater opened in 1928, the whole interior took
you back to Egypt with marble pillars carved and painted to look like
Egyptian antiques. The carpeting was plush and the Club Lincoln was where
Sammy Stewart's Orchestra performed and little Sammy Davis, Jr. was four
years old when he made his first impromptu appearance onstage.
Anna Bishop passed in 2004, but the legacy that she not only left with her
active life but documented in Beyond Poindexter Village, continues to
inspire me.
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February 20, 2006
What a blazing weekend; Cols. was on fire.
Friday,
Tim Commisky Trio
at Worthington Inn, Saturday,
the Cols.
Children's Choir World Music Festival, Arti Gras at First Community
Church in Marblecliff with real New Orleans Cuisine, The Cols. Jazz
Orchestra saluting Diz and Bird with Jeff
Clayton, Claudio Roditi and Deena DeRose, a jam session with
Bryan Olsheski
at the Cols. Music Hall, Sunday
at Shiloh Baptist Church and a sellout at Cols. Music Hall that featured
piano phenom Aaron Diehl. I'm
overdosed!
For
thirty years my artistic mother has been
Barbara Chavous, painter and sculptor. I met Barbara in 1975 when I
was living in East Columbus and she was looking for a space to work. She
and her former husband, painter and engineer
Stanley Sourelis, moved two doors
away, above the then Pace Gallery at Taylor and East Broad Street.
Barbara was raised in Columbus, graduated from East High, Central State
University and was married to movie photographer
Adger Cowens in New York. She met
Sourelis in New York and they resettled in Columbus. She says that he
taught her the sense of color that now characterizes her work.
During those exciting days, Stanley and Barbara were the artistic mentors
to many of us; Queen Brooks, Terry Logan,
Pheoris West, Candy Watkins, Stephen Canneto, Walt Neal, Sandy Aska
and countless others. They moved to 776 East Franklin Avenue, the former
Henry Hallwood Mansion, and were one of the pioneering household in a
diverse community now know as Olde Towne East.
One day in 1979, I was wrestling with the choice of accumulating thirty
years and a pension in a lawn fertilizer factory or walking off into
unknown to be a musician entrepreneur, I went to her for advise (or more
like a shove off the gangplank). Her words I will carry with me forever,
"If a bird stays too long in the nest they get too fat to fly." I jumped
into history.
She can't remember those words of advise to me. If fact, my artistic mom
can't remember very much because she has dementia; that loss of
intellectual capacity has become so severe that it interferes with her
social functioning. She has been patient for over ten years, but
fortunately, she has been able to continue to create her amazing art
pieces.
In
2003, I was honored to be nominated for the Arts Freedom Award, presented
by Southside Settlement House and the Columbus Museum. The two other
honorees that year were Steven Anderson,
director of Phoenix Theater for Children and
Barbara Chavous, my mom.
What a joyful evening; like the proverbial "Old Home Night." All of the
Columbus arts family that we partied, exhibited and loved with during
those frenzied days of the seventies and eighties came together to
celebrate the recognition of our life's work.
To paraphrase a composition from my pastor
Mary Kay Beale Carter, "With grateful heart I thank you, Lord, "
for bringing Barbara Chavous into my life.
Enjoy. Feedback feels good.
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February 16, 2006
| Wendell at Club Regal on Long Street at Garfield
Ave. Dig those curtains. Early 1950s. |
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These days there are reports of British music fans who are
writing my jazz research friends, actively interested in Wendell Hawkins,
a Columbus pianist who was nearing the end of his long career when I saw
him in the early 1980s. He was playing at Engine House Number Five, a very
popular steak and seafood house on Columbus' Southside, at Thurman and
Fourth Street in trendy German Village.
I regret that I never interviewed him because he lived not too long
afterwards. I did spend an evening and had a chat with his brother, Wyman,
a drummer with The Chuck Henderson Trio at the Gloria Restaurant. And,
somewhere, I picked up a record album on the King Label called Mr. Hawkins
at the piano: The Wendell Hawkins Trio. So, to fill whatever thirst that
our British friends have, here are the notes from the ten song album
written by Bill Brabson in 1960.
"Unfortunately, scattered throughout the length and breadth of America are
a handful of musicians who, for one reason or another, be it the case of
not being in the right place at the right time or merely the workings of
an unpredictable fate, sometimes spend their entire professional lives
unknown and unrecognized by anyone save their fellow musicians and a
relatively small following of discriminating fans in what area they happen
to be working.
Wendell Hawkins has been, up until now, one of those
hiding-their-light-under-a-bushel musicians.
Jazz fans around Ohio have been digging Wendell, and his equally talented
brother Wyman, for more years than either of them care to remember. But
the music business being what it is today, Gabriel himself couldn't get
the type of exposure that was almost commonplace in the hey day of bug
bands, radio remotes and supper clubs in the 1930s and '40s.
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| The Sammy Hopkins Trio, Bill Ray, drums, Sammy,
alto sax, Wendell, piano. Late 1940s. |
Twenty-five
years ago... Wendell Hawkins would have been known coast-to-coast. (He)
has as little background worth touting as anyone we've ever run across. He
has had no command performances before Queen Elizabeth, he's never played
the Newport Jazz festival and he isn't a regular on Jack Parr's nightly
(show).
All he does is play good, listenable, clean-cut, imaginative, jazz piano.
There's a little Art Tatum here, a smattering of Erroll Garner there, a
hunk of Oscar Peterson in spots, but the overall product is pure Wendell
Hawkins. A thirty-two year old pianist from Columbus, Ohio who we firmly
expect to be one of the blazing new stars on the jazz horizon. He is
backed up by his brother Wyman on drums and the capable bass work of
William Bell.
We hope you like Wendell. We think he plays good. He's a nice guy too."
Wendell was born in 1927 or 28 and died in
the mid-1980s.
Lover Short MP3 (2MB)
The sound file is three minutes. Sorry if it clogs your
browser:
Feedback is good.
Charlie Einhorn is featuring my blogs on
Innerart.
http://innerartblog0.blogspot.com/2006/02/this-is-real-jazz-lovers-gem-bright.html
Mardi Gras season starts Friday. My first party is at First Community
Church, First Ave. and Cambridge Blvd., Saturday, Feb. 18th, 3 pm.,
featuring a second line for displaced New Orleans families.
Let the good times roll.
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February
14, 2006 (b) Thanks to Doug Tracy the mystery
woman has been uncovered. He found this column in the pages of the Ohio
Sentinel, a Black newspaper that I used to deliver as a child on the
Westside. Doug, you are da' man!
The Bright Rose of Bronzeville
By Eddie J. Colston, The Ohio Sentinel, March 29, 1958 edition
Name any
great Columbus entertainer in the past decade and the name
Madam Rose Brown will ring a bell.
Years ago, Madam was the town's top performer. Today she still has firm
hold on her star studded crown by singing and swinging in the area's night
clubs and plush cocktail lounges.
The young clique will remember Madam more vividly from her weekly TV show
a few years ago, over WTVN-TV, for a segment of "The Rose Brown Show" was
devoted to introducing fresh talent.
Born in Savanah, Georgia, Rose Brown came to Columbus to visit relatives.
Out on the town one night she did several guest numbers at a couple of
popular night haunts. With soulful blues, sexy torch songs and energetic
swing style, she had the town's nightlifers in the palm of her hand. Since
then, this has been Rose Brown's town.
Wasn't so long ago that Rose rose (and I'm not tongue tied) to the
pinnacle of Broadway success, when she costarred with the late Bill
Robinson as Katisha in Mike Todd's "The Hot Mikado."
Her Broadway appearance was in a featured role in "My Dear Public,"
starring Willie Howard and a long list of today's top stars.
Rose has
added other musical triumphs and flattering press notices to her scrapbook
with top billings with The Page Cavanaugh Trio. Louis Jordan's Band, the
Page One Ball, sponsored annually by the Columbus Chapter of the American
Newspaper Guild and many others.
Norman Nadel, Columbus Citizen's celebrated theatrical editor and big
voice in show business recently penned a lengthy feature on Rose Brown.
Nadel said, "I thought of shows I'd seen, singers I heard in Manhattan
nightspots where the cover charge would buy food for a family of six. Once
in a blue moon you might hear a singer like Rose. People from Columbus go
to those New York clubs when they travel east. They could do as well or
better, listening to this handsome dark-skinned woman singing in a little
club on High Street."
Another thrill for Rose was her invitation to audition for the role of
Bloody Mary in the original "South Pacific" cast. "Rogers and Hammerstein
brought me to New York," he recalled happily, "and I sang the part for
them. But when I saw Juanita Hall do it, I told them to go ahead and pick
her, because she was perfect for the part. But I would have loved it."
Currently, Rose is slated to make a series of films or live appearances on
WTVN-TV doing Negro spirituals.
Note: Rose Brown passed in 1960.
Download the MP3 of I Cried
for You
PS: The music files are from Jim Loeffler,
whose father, Bill, recorded them on a homemade disc cutting maching in
the 1930s. The photos are from the Cols. Call-Post newspaper. |
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February
14, 2006 In honor of Claudio Roditi and this
week with the Cols. Jazz Orchestra, here is a treasure. I just wish I
could upload the other twelve minutes of this fiery song from 1980 when he
jammed at Oldfield's Bar with Sanctuary (featuring the beautiful Debra
Rothrock) after his set at the Ohio Theater with Herbie Mann and his
Brazilian Band. Enjoy
Listen to
Claudio Roditi MP3
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February
13, 2006Among my first memories as a child
growing up in West Columbus in the mid-1950s, was listening to WCOL-AM
1230 late at night on our family's Westinghouse transistor radio. From
nine at night until the wee hours, WCOL-AM featured
Doctor Bop and his introductory
patter went, "This is Doctor Bop on the scene with a stack of shellac and
my record machine. A little country boy from across the track, so down
with it, baby, that I'll never go back."
Doctor Bop's real name was
Hoyt Locke
and his family ran Bop Record Shop in 1956. When hot new rhythm and blues
records came out, he would call the radio station and bug the disc jockeys
to get with the musical program. In time, he talked his way onto the air
and stayed on WCOL-AM for several years.
Doctor Bop was the person who introduced the high energy music of
Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry
to Columbus teenagers. The accompanying photo, taken by
Kojo Kamau, shows the good doctor
at a local dance. The band in the background is led by legendary jazz
saxophonist Ronnie Kirk, also known
as Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Bop eventually migrated to a Milwaukee radio station and he died there in
1984. But he was the announcer who brought rock and roll to Columbus
audiences in the 1950s.
The sound file is about five minutes. Those who have dialup service have
been left off this mailing; the file is too big. If I've mistakenly
included you, sorry. Feedback is good.
Dr. Bop MP3 |
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February 10, 2006
Greetings. Black History Month, Day Ten.
I'm getting feedback from some of my friends, but wondering why I'm not
from many of my loved ones. Oh well, outta sight, outtta' mind.
Thanks to my partner in history, B-ruce
Warner, for this contribution to celebrating people of color. The young
drummer featured at the end of this link is Tony Royster, Jr., from
Hinesville, Georgia. He has been playing since aged three and is mentored
by drummer Dennis Chambers.
Bruce Warner wrote, "make sure you have the sound on when
you watch this video .... and I fail to see how this kid can get much
better!"
Enjoy. It'd sure be nice to hear that some
of you are still alive in this millennium of instant communication. What
are you doing to get through the winter?
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February 9, 2006
Today, Thursday, I am principal for a day at one of my favorite schools,
Robert Frost Elementary in Westerville. Lucky me.
The Black History profile is of one of my musical fathers, Archie "Stomp"
Gordon. I guess he is who I get my crazy energy from.

Download an MP3 of Stomp performing Fat
Woman Blues here
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February 8, 2006
Happy Birthday to Ethyl Tanner from New Orleans, who hit the Big
Seven-Five yesterday and we did a second line in her honor at Lutheran
Village late evening. I ate crawfish 'til my belly 'bout busted.
Here is a profile on two men who have blessed me with their friendship and
linked me with the music of one hundred years.

Enjoy and let the good times roll
(Mardi Gras, February 28th). Click
here to hear Jeepers Creepers MP3
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February 7, 2006
Here is a profile on one of my dads, Cliff Tyree. He is a king!

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February 3, 2006
It's Super Sunday,soon come. Go Steelers. Go Seahawks. I'm off to Chicago
to visit Aunt Becca Robbins and Bill Dancey has pulled my coat about a new
club, Hot House.
http://www.hothouse.net/
Perhaps someone can solve a twenty-five year puzzle for me. Who is
Madame Rose Brown? I have plenty of pictures, two recordings, but no
biography.
Perhaps by the end of History Month...
Enjoy this dynamic woman and the sound file
attached. Click here
for MP3.
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February 2, 2006
Due to an overwhelming response from my people, February Black History
Month is being combined with Filipino History Month and Westside Columbus
Month. Now to find the first Black Filipino from the Hilltop...
Enjoy this profile on Nancy Wilson, while I work on the Phillipines
connection.

Click
here for a MP3 sound file of Nancy Wilson
Here is a great picture of Nancy Wilson with Hank Marr
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February 1, 2006
Greetings. It's history month and I'm making myself learn new things about
the people in my beloved community of Columbus, Ohio. Attached is a
profile on Reverend James P. Poindexter, a giant in the foundation of
community relations, religious life and education.
Also, I am making a concert appearance at Wexner Heritage House,
Wednesday, February 1, 2006, at 2 pm. It will be a treat for senior
audiences, especially my friends Elizabeth Laney and Rose Ross who live
there.
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