Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

Forty-five years ago, Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall" was released to critical and commercial acclaim. Jackson's breakthrough album solidified the singer's transition from child star to adult entertainer.  Let the madness in the music get to you..... I remember the time so very well because it was when I emerged from off the wall: a ten-year-old moving from music spectator to consumer. Since there were  no younger acts back then, every kid my age was drawn to music made by adults ten, twenty, and nearly thirty years older.  It was heady time.  From around '74 to '79, my life played out to a soundtrack that was one long musical highlight reel.  I wasn't buying music yet but it didn't stop me from reading about it or watching documentaries or television shows devoted to musical subjects.  As a toddler I was transfixed by Jackson Five album covers laying around the house. I can't remember when I first learned they were from my hometown of Gary, I...

"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...

In his autobiography Hit Man: Forty Years Making Hits , Topping Charts and Winning Grammys , songwriter David Foster reflects on his encounter with friend and teacher Maurice White in the early Eighties. Foster was flying high, having made the jump from journeyman session man (he co-wrote Cheryl Lynn’s 1978 smash Got To Be Real ) to an in-demand super producer. Rejuvenating Chicago’s career, Foster turned the band with the wicked horn section into platinum power ballad kings.  Next up was a project with a certain country/pop superstar. Foster recalls sharing his success with White:   "I remember running into Maurice a few years later. I was producing something for Kenny Rogers at the time and I told Maurice about it, and he turned to me and said, “You know, I never get called for any of those jobs.” Are you kidding ? I said, with your track record! “No he said, I don’t get called for that kind of stuff.” And when I thought about it later, I understood what he ...