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For Immediate Release: 2/27/06 | Click
here for PDF version
Jazz Museum in Harlem Celebrates Women’s History
Month (Twice!)
Flautist Bobbi Humphrey at Harlem Speaks!
· Bobbi Humphrey, Flautist, March
16, 2006
· Sarah
McLawler, Organist/Vocalist, March 30, 2006
· Cobi
Narita, Producer, April 13, 2006
· Delilah
Jackson, Historian, April 27, 2006
New York, NY — Dubbed “First Lady of the Flute,” Bobbi Humphrey is the special guest of the Jazz Museum
in Harlem’s Harlem Speaks series on March 16,
2006.
Since the start of her professional career began in 1971,
when she was the first female signed to Blue Note Records,
Harlem resident Bobbi Humphrey has been playing her special
brand of music to audiences around the world.
In 1973, her LP Blues and Blues was not only a huge
commercial success, but established her as a strong crossover
artist. That year she was invited to the prestigious Montreux
International Music Festival in Switzerland, where noted jazz
critic Leonard Feather acclaimed her “the surprise hit
of the festival.” She currently remains the only successful
female urban-pop flutist on the scene.
Born in Marlin, Texas and raised in Dallas, Humphrey’s
training on flute began in high school and continued at Texas
Southern University and Southern Methodist University, where
Dizzy Gillespie spotted her when he served as a judge in a
school-wide competition. With Gillespie’s encouragement
she pursued a career in New York City, where on her third
day she performed with Duke Ellington!
The title of one of her Epic LPs, The Good Life, best
describes her career. Humphrey has played with notables such
as Lee Morgan, Ralph McDonald, and her close friend Stevie
Wonder, who featured her on the classic Songs In The Key
of Life LP in 1977. Between 1971 and 1976, Humphrey recorded
six albums for Blue Note, including the successful Satin
Doll LP.
Humphrey has also composed and produced musical jingles for
several major corporations, such as Halston and Anheuser Busch,
and did solo work for The Cosby Show. In 1989, she produced
one of her most exciting and personal LPs entitled City
Beat, which remained on the Billboard Magazine Black Charts
for sixteen weeks.
In 1990 her company, Bobbi Humphrey Music, Inc., signed a
production agreement with Warner Bros. Records, in which she
brought new artists to the label and produced new material.
Her agreement with Warner Bros. followed her discovery of
R & B vocalist Tevin Campbell, resulting in sales in excess
of five million units. In 1994 Humphrey launched her label,
Paradise Sounds Records, releasing Passion Flute, which
continues to be one of her fans’ all-time favorite recordings.
The album showcases Bobbi Humphrey in a cool jazz setting;
mostly at mid-tempo, with a surprising uptempo version of
the huge hit, “Harlem River Drive.”
http://www.bobbihumphrey.net/home.html
Hammond B-3 organist Sarah McLawler is the Jazz Museum’s Harlem Speaks guest on March 30, 2006.
She was raised in the church with gospel music, and studied
organ at an Indiana Conservatory. Influenced heavily by the
music of the big bands, McLawler used to sneak into clubs
in Indianapolis to hear Lucky Millinder's big band, with whom
she ended up going on the road. She later formed an all-woman
band, the Syn-Co-Ettes. They spent some time as a house band
at Chicago's Savoy Club.
During the 1950s, McLawler' recorded singles for the King
and Brunswick labels that are now collectors' items: "I
Can't Stop Loving You" "Love, Sweet Love,"
as well as "Red Light" "Tipping In" "Let's
Get the Party Rocking" and "Blue Room." Her
recordings with her husband, violinist Richard Otto, include "Somehow," "Yesterday"
"Body & Soul" for Brunswick, and "Babe
in the Woods" "Relax, Miss Frisky" "Flamingo"
"Canadian Sunset" and "At the Break of Day"
for Vee-Jay.
McLawler continues to breathe life into jazz standards, performing
major shows at the Newport Jazz Festivals and the Newark Jazz
Festival. She's lived in Harlem for many years, and regularly
performs at Chez Josephine restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
A beacon of jazz for over 40 years in New York City, Cobi
Narita joins the Harlem Speaks roster on April
13, 2006. She carved a unique position for herself in the
jazz world by founding a nonprofit educational group, the
Universal Jazz Coalition, in the late 1970s. The group’s
purpose was to help musicians manage their own business affairs
when they lacked managers and bookers. This led to her becoming
a concert promoter and producer. Narita even hired well-known
musicians to teach workshops for newcomers. Soon she noticed
that women were having even more difficulty than young, struggling
men in jazz, so she founded a women's jazz festival in New
York to give women a chance to play in public. The festival
is housed at Cobi's Place in Manhattan at 158 West 48th Street,
fourth floor, between Sam Ash and Manny’s.
The April 27, 2006 guest, cultural historian Delilah Jackson,
has worked with Cobi Norita to co-produce numerous tap concerts
and film showings at Cobi's Place. She is founder and artistic
director of the Black Patti Research Foundation (named after
Sisseretta Jones who organized the most prestigious group
of touring black troubadours at the turn of the century),
and has amassed one of the most extensive collections of African
American expressive culture anywhere—more than 1000 rare
slides, photos, and vintage films documenting the performances
of musicians, singers, actors and dancers of Harlem during
he 1920s and 1930s.
______________________________________________________________________
On the evening of February 23, 2006 Paul Robeson Jr. informed
the attendees of the packed office of the Jazz Museum in Harlem
about his early years growing up in England, Austria and Russia,
learning Russian and German in addition to the native English
of his parents, Eslanda (“Essie”) and Paul Robeson,
Sr., the legendary performer and human rights activist.
He recounted the earliest memories of his father holding
him high with a huge smile, being on a movie set with his
dad at the age of seven, witnessing a deep discussion in 1938
between his father and Nehru (in which Nehru posed a hypothetical:
“What would I do if I were the leader of India?"),
as well as the heroic status of Robeson Sr. among miner’s
in Wales, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, black folks,
and lovers of
freedom the world over.
Robeson Jr. also revealed that his mother was extraordinarily
talented (chemist, cultural anthropologist) from a prominent
family line who devoted herself to her larger-than-life husband.
They were friends with many artists, especially jazz greats
such as Thelonious Monk, with whom his father discussed music
theory.
He also explained the physical and emotional basis for his
father’s powerful vocal gifts, which gave Sr. the sound,
control and resonance that will be remembered for centuries
to come as well as the study and effort he exerted to bring
authenticity to his renderings of the spirituals and folk
music of a variety of cultures.
His own musical training on piano (before turning to sports
as a young man), his culture shock of coming to Harlem with
a British accent and knickers (“It only took two days
for me to get acculturated!”), his travels to South Africa
with his mother in the mid-‘30s, his memories of his
dad’s special appreciation for Duke Ellington, his father
taking him to jazz clubs during the bebop era, and using his
booming bass voice to quiet a crowd at Café Society
when Sarah Vaughn rose up from the audience to sing, were
all recounted as if they had happened yesterday.
The Harlem Speaks series is produced by the Jazz Museum
in Harlem's Executive Director, Loren Schoenberg, Co-Director
Christian McBride, and Greg Thomas Associates. The series
occurs at the offices of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, located
at 104 East 126th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues,
from 6:30pm-8:00pm.
This discussion series is free to the public. To view the
photo archives of Harlem Speaks go to: http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/gallery.php |
