Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

                                 "Earth rotates/time won't stop/lyrics on vicious beats/ I drop"  ---Ecstasy "Day to Day" (1991) As 2020 fades into the abyss, it refuses to go peacefully. Intent on snatching as many souls as possible, this year's treacherous reach has no limitations. Hemingway's somber ode to fatality comes to mind: "any mans death diminishes me , because I am involved in Mankinde ; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee ." Paired with ominous keys (replayed on Whodini's 1986 How Dare You) from Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor (skip to 16:42 ), Hemingway and Chopin's unlikely union make for a chilling soundtrack. This time the bell tolls for John "Ecstacy" Fletcher, one third of hip hop supergroup Whodini.  Before Jay-Z, Kane, and Biggie, it was Whodini were Brooklyn's original Kings of New York. Thriving in the mid-80s before hip hop became the global phenomenon it

                                                                                                     As I reflect on Gerald Levert's career, two words come to mind: legacy unfulfilled. His untimely death evokes the tragic passing of Otis Redding and Michael Jackson. Redding was the King of Soul hovering at the cusp of superstardom having conquered the international market and the hippie love crowd. Jackson was the King of Pop mapping out 50 concerts to restore his liquidity, erase debt and then walk off into the sunset with his publishing intact.  Levert also had a vision. Rescue traditional R&B from the clutches of peripheral obscurity that snatched the souls of Black performers turned ice-cold like cadavers laid out on a slab of indifference, a bitter memory of what could have been. Wielding his talents like John Henry's hammer, Levert toiled heavily to chip away the granite of indifference one piece at a time.     Redding's fatal plane crash extinguished his l