Posts

Hollywood Shuffle: Exploring the Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs of Louis Gossett, Jr by Sheldon Taylor

Image
"We know this is a struggle. Take the low pay now. Next time we’ll get them. Next time never came. Finally, there did come a time when I took a stand saying no to a part unless the studio paid me properly. It took the studio all of five minutes to say “Next” and hand the part to someone else. That scene broke it for me sending me headlong into self-loathing…" These aren't words from Taraji P. Henson’s tearful testimony of Hollywood career struggles.  These are reflections  torn from the pages of the late Louis Gossett Jr’s 2010 memoir  An Actor and A Gentleman.  The book's title  is a  nod to 1982 film  An Officer and A Gentleman featuring Gossett's  riveting performance as  swaggering Marine drill instructor  Emil Foley earning t he Brooklyn-born actor an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  Gossett was the first Black actor to win in the category and the  American-born Black actor to ever win an Academy Award (Sidney Poitier was born in the Bahamas). His  Oscar win
1 comment
Read more

Beyonce: A League of Her Own by Sheldon Taylor

Image
In an August 2022 npr.org article Revolutionary Fun: Why we can't stop talking about Beyoncé's 'Renaissance' music critic/musicologist Jason King shared fellow culture/music critic Greg Tate's summary of Beyonce Knowles' enduring appeal:  “She's a curatorial genius whose magic is to bring together collaborators and other people's intellectual property into a unique artistic vision that is a sum often greater than its parts.”   Critics frame the singer as a country music interloper even as Country Music Television (CMT) features acts who cribbed her machine-gun vocal as well as unique elements associated with urban music.  A 2004 video from contemporary country singer Gretchen ("Redneck Woman") back then reeked of early 2000s106 and Park. Knowles' biggest critic is John Schneider, the New York-born/Atlanta raised actor whose claim to fame was his portrayal  of southern good ol' boy Bo Duke on the hit TV series the Dukes of Hazzard.
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghostface Killah: Pain Is Love

Image
                                                                                                            "We eat fish, tossed salad/and make rap ballads"                                                                       --- Fish (1996)  Every time I hear a Ghostface Killah song I long for the days of sample-based hip hop.  Nearly 30 years ago, Bad Boy Records took hits from the eighties and made them sound crazy. On the flipside of the label's celebratory champagne-soaked anthems was Wu-Tang Clan's epic street sagas set to vintage Sixties and Seventies soul samples.  Below the surface of the Wu's catalog, you'll find more than songs in the key of trife. Beneath the grit and grime of their rhymes you'll 360 degrees of the human condition. While each Clan member displayed moments of wearing their heart on their Avirex sleeves, it's Dennis Coles aka Ghostface Killah who's most masterful and prolific.  Known for delivering storytell
Post a Comment
Read more

BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT: EXPLORING THE LYRICAL GENIUS OF JALIL HUTCHINS: BROOKLYN'S ORIGINAL RAP KING BY SHELDON TAYLOR

Image
  Am I eternal or eternalist? Rakim's rhetorical reflection from 1988's Follow The Leader finds the God MC pondering his place in hip-hop history. While Ra's legacy is solidified, rap's historical highlight reel moves at the speed of light, omitting major players of the game. Jalil Hutchins is one of those major players. Many don't know the name but they know at least one of the classics that sprang from  his mighty pen and fertile mind that are part of the Great American Rap and Black Music Songbook.  To put things in perspective; to all the outsiders reading this essay---think Gershwin and Berlin. For those in the know--- think Sly Stone. Smokey Robinson. Gamble and Huff.  Many emcees had hot lines. Jalil had hot songs: " Friends". "One Love". "Freaks Come Out At Night". "Five Minutes of Funk". These songs inspired two decades of R&B and hip-hop samples,  remakes, and interpolations.  Go to whosampled.com  and sip from J
Post a Comment
Read more

THOM BELL: I HEAR A SYMPHONY

Image
  With Thom Bell's passing, another major player of the Philadelphia Soul family is gone. Having left an earthly footprint for eternity---I envision Bell ascending to an ancestral plane, reuniting with his departed comrades. His signature strings, French horns, sitars, and oboes trumpet his arrival.    My early memories of the legendary producer/arranger/singer/songwriter were ignited by his peculiar-looking first name--- Thom:  a cross between a West Indian spelling and an antiquated abbreviation of his birth name. (For years I called him  Th- om as in the word “thumb”).  I remember my mother's recollection of my little sister’s infatuation with "Rock and Roll Baby"----a Bell-produced joyful romp about a precocious child prodigy from “Bluefield, West Virginia” in "doodle-white shoes" who "never sang out of tune."   Even as a seven-year-old in 1976, I was keenly aware of Bell's music. As a second grader, I proudly recited (to say I sang it woul
Post a Comment
Read more