Corey @ I'll Keep You Posted

R.I.P. CHRIS HENRY: A Redemption Song!

Late last night, someone sent me an email asking did I hear about "Chris Henry's accident?".  That person made a statement that reminded me how often the bells seems to toll around this time of year for those who will not make it into the new year.  There seems to be an interesting, morbid, almost fascinating countdown as the morning news announces the passing of well-known individuals in entertainment or we receive emails and phone calls announcing bad news!  I didn't know Chris Henry personally, but being here in the Greater Cincinnati area, I sure felt like I did.  It's right here that all the drama from the What-Did-Chris Henry-Do-Now Show seemed to play right on out!  It's here that I watched local sports fans and media build him up just to tear him down!  Granted, for awhile, Chris Henry seemed intent on making a disaster out of his life.  He attracted all manner of low-lifes and hangers-on from trashy females to wimpy pimple-faced college kids looking to make a quick buck off of his name.  And the public loved to hate him!  Oh, how well I remember how so many of us equated him with the scum of the earth and enjoyed damning him to Hell while he was caught up in the throes of his personal problems. 

But God gave him a second chance to get it right! 

He was suspended from the Bengals, but Marvin Lewis hired him back!  Chris Henry seemed to turn over a new leaf!  He kept a low profile instead of hanging out with low-lifes!  He gained the respect of his teammates as he rededicated himself to his sport!  Everytime I saw him I'd smile a little bit and say to myself  "Well.....Chris Henry is keeping out of trouble.  God bless him."  Look what work, personal desire and a little love can do!  And then...the shocking news of his tragic death!  Some say it's untimely end!  I'm not getting into whether it is or isn't, but I do believe he accomplished what he was supposed to while he was here!  I think Henry decided it was all about his own personal integrity and not about immaturity, nor the flash, flair & fame that comes with being a football star!  I think he made well of that second chance while he had the chance and that will forever be exemplary!

Thank God most of us love a redemption song!

I am not a sports-writer, so I'd like to share with you a wonderful piece written by one MJD over at the Yahoo sports blog, Shutdown Corner!  It's one of the most heartfelt I've read yet.........

Chris Henry Dead at 26! Could have been a role model! 

Redemption stories are the best kinds of stories. If someone's failed, lost their way or made more mistakes than we deem acceptable, I always find myself on that guy's side.

I'm not there supporting what they've done or making excuses for them, but hoping that they'll find a way to be better. Hoping that they'll learn from their mistakes, grow and become the person they can be. In one way or another, I think we're all striving for that.

That's what Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry was doing when he lost his life this morning after falling out of a truck reportedly driven by his fiancee.

We know the guy had made mistakes, getting arrested multiple times and being suspended for half of the 2007 season, but those aren't important today. That was Henry's past. By all accounts, his future was better and brighter, because he had worked his tail off to make it that way. Changing your life is not easy.

Henry was doing it, though. In the preseason, his quarterback, Carson Palmer(notes), had raved about Henry's work ethic and his ability. According to Palmer, Henry had a great offseason and had "really turned his life around." Unfortunately, his season was cut short by injury when he broke his forearm against the Ravens on November 8.

He was 26 when he lost his life this morning. Just 26 years old. For as many headlines as he had made, it seemed like he should be older. The fact was, though, that he was still a very young man. He was just entering his football prime, and considering his natural gifts and the signs he had been showing before being put on injured reserve this year, he could have gone on to have a great, great career.

That's the tragedy here. It's not that we'll miss out on seeing a man who could have been a brilliant player, it's that someone who had once been so far down the wrong path could have come back. He was on his way. If things had continued to go the way they were headed, Chris Henry could have one day stood in front of the world as an example that no matter what you've done in the past, that your future can be better. He could have told the at-risk youth of the world, "Yes, it can be difficult to change the direction of your life, but it can be done, and you have the power to do it. I did it, and you can do it."

What a great thing that could've been for the world to have. Too many times, a gifted person comes along, and we automatically make them a role model. Inevitably, they end up doing something to let us down. The truth is, though, that those were never the role models we needed. The role models we need are the people who let us down first, and then show the strength and character to fight back from that.

Sooner or later, we're all going to let somebody down. We're all going to screw up. But life is about how you come back from it, how you learn from it and how you use it to make yourself a better, stronger person.

Chris Henry was becoming that guy. And we could have used that.

And from a story written by Associated Press writer Mike Cranston (with contributions from Mitch Weiss & AP Sports writer Joe Kay in Cincinnati) comes this more detailed report....

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)—Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry died Thursday, a day after falling out of the back of a pickup truck during what police said was a domestic dispute with his fiancee.  Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said Henry died at 6:36 a.m. Henry was 26.

“We knew him in a different way than his public persona,” Bengals owner Mike Brown(notes) said of the player who was suspended five times during his career. “He had worked through the troubles in his life and had finally seemingly reached the point where everything was going to blossom. And he was going to have the future we all wanted for him. It’s painful to us. We feel it in our hearts, and we will miss him.”

Police spokeswoman Rosalyn Harrington said homicide detectives have been assigned to the case but had no further information.  Later Thursday, police released two 911 tapes. The first was from an unidentified woman who said she was following a yellow pickup truck.

“It’s got a black man on it with no shirt on, and he’s got his arm in a cast and black pants on,” she told a dispatcher. “He’s beating on the back of this truck window. … I don’t know if he’s trying to break in or something. It just looks crazy. It’s a girl driving it.”  Just over a minute later, an unidentified man called 911 and said he saw a man “laying in the road” and “definitely unconscious.”

Henry was rushed to the hospital Wednesday after being found on a curvy section of a residential road. Police said the dispute began at a home about a half-mile away, and Henry jumped into the bed of the pickup truck as his fiancee was driving away from the residence.  Police said at some point when she was driving, Henry “came out of the back of the vehicle.” Harrington wouldn’t say if the woman, whom police would not identify, was present at the scene when police arrived.

Henry is engaged to Loleini Tonga, and the couple has been raising three children. Tonga’s MySpace page identifies herself as “Mrs. C. Henry” and has a picture of her next to a person who appears to be Henry. She also has a post from Tuesday talking about buying wedding rings. A neighbor said Wednesday that the Tonga family owns the home where police say the incident began. Charlotte is home to his fiancee’s parents.

“We ask that you keep Chris’ family—especially the young children he leaves behind—in your prayers,” Henry’s agent, Andy Simms of PlayersRep Sports said in a statement. “It is tragic when a life is taken so young. He was a man just realizing his potential, not just in football, but in life.”

Authorities have not announced the cause of death. Mecklenburg County medical examiner investigator Carol Cormier said they were expecting to receive the body later Thursday.

The Bengals will wear a helmet sticker Sunday against San Diego to remember Henry.

When the players received word Henry had died, quarterback Carson Palmer(notes) called them together in the locker room and said they should dedicate the game and rest of the season to Henry and the wife of defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, who died unexpectedly during the season.  Henry was away from the Bengals after breaking his left forearm during a win over Baltimore on Nov. 8. He had surgery and was placed on season-ending injured reserve following the game.

“We are greatly saddened by today’s tragic news about the loss of Chris Henry,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to Chris’ family, including his Bengals family. We have been in contact with the Bengals to offer our support through this difficult time.  “I ask you to keep Chris Henry and his family in your thoughts today.”

Throughout his career, his temper and poor decisions got him in trouble.

He was ejected from a game and suspended for another while at West Virginia, where former coach Rich Rodriguez told Henry that he was an embarrassment to himself and the program. His reputation was already costing him—the Bengals were the only NFL team to bring him in for a pre-draft visit in 2005.  They found that his demeanor didn’t match his reputation. Henry was shy and spoke in a quiet voice. They warned him that he had to stay in control if he was going to stay in the NFL. Then, they picked him in the third round.

In a sense, it was already a second chance.

“I’m worth the chance,” Henry said, when he showed up the following weekend for a rookie minicamp. “I’m just happy they took me.”

Henry become a vital part of the offense as a rookie, helping the Bengals reach the playoffs in 2005 with his ability to run past defenders to grab long passes. In the final month of the season, he also showed his other side, getting arrested for marijuana possession. After a playoff loss to Pittsburgh, he was arrested on a gun charge in Florida.  Henry and former Tennessee cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones became the league’s two most trouble-bound players. Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended both in 2007—Jones for a full season, Henry for half of it—as part of a toughening of the league’s conduct policy.

When Henry was arrested for a fifth time following that season on an assault charge, the Bengals decided they’d had enough. At his arraignment on April 3, 2008, Municipal Court Judge Bernie Bouchard called Henry “a one-man crime wave.” He was released by the Bengals the same day.  It was a jolt to Henry, who had dreamed of an NFL career since high school, when he got the NFL logo tattooed on the back of his right hand. No team showed an interest in bringing him back. His career seemed finished.

Then, Brown—who refers to himself as “a redeemer”—changed his mind and gave him another chance.

“If you only knew him by hearsay, you’d think he’s some kind of ogre,” Brown said, during the Bengals’ appearance on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series this summer. “It’s not true. He’s a good person. When you see him up close, you’ll find that you’ll like him. He’ll be a soft-spoken, pleasant person.”

This time, Henry seemed determined to stay out of trouble. After only 19 catches and two touchdowns in 12 games in the 2008 season, he set about making himself a topflight receiver again. He got into top shape and worked out with teammates in the offseason, showing more resolve than at any point in his career.  Henry also changed his personal life, spending more time with his fiancee and the three children they are raising. Teammates noticed a pronounced change in his demeanor.

“He’s a great kid with a great heart,” quarterback Carson Palmer said as training camp started. “He’s changed his life around. He ran into some trouble, made some bad decisions, and realized that. He’s sorry for them, apologized for them, and has done everything he can to make himself a better person. I’m just proud of him.”

Before the 2009 season, Henry got a new tattoo that matched his new outlook. Below his left ear, in flowing one-inch script, was the world “Blessed.”

“I kind of felt like I dug myself out of the hole and started doing the right things,” Henry said in an interview with The Associated Press as training camp opened. “People say, ‘How you feeling now Chris? You doing all right?’ I just tell them I’m blessed. That’s why I got it.”

He caught a touchdown pass in each of Cincinnati’s four preseason games. A thigh injury slowed him early in the season, and he had 12 catches for 236 yards — his 19.7-yard average per catch leads the team—when he broke his left arm during a win over Baltimore on Nov. 22, ending his season.

“He was doing everything right,” receiver Chad Ochocinco(notes) said. “My grandma always says you never question the man upstairs on decisions he makes. Everyone makes mistakes, but I don’t see how Chris was supposed to go already, especially when he was on the right path. Other than that, he’s going to be missed.”

Rest In Peace!

Disney's First Black Princesses: DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES SING DISNEY CLASSICS!

I'm so there! I can't wait! In just a few days, Disney will present The Princess & The Frog, the first hand-drawn illustrated film in the company's history to showcase an African American princess! Most movie-goers won't know that way back in 1967, Disney almost had three black American princesses named Diana, Mary and Flo!  Okay, Disney would've had little to do with it. It was Motown who had plans to present Diana Ross And The Supremes Sing Disney Classics, a collection of classic songs from the Disney catalogue that reached back to their earliest films to the most recent films of the that day. And why not?  The Supremes sang everything else! They sang Rodgers & Hart, Country Western & Pop, A Bit of Liverpool, and Sam Cooke too!

From 1961 to 1969, Diana Ross and The Supremes recorded scores of songs in almost every style of music imaginable! It is said that half of their recorded output remains unreleased ~ locked in the Motown vaults! Entire concept albums were recorded! The covers were shot and designed! They were ready to roll and then......the finished products were shelved! So it was with Sings Disney Classics! Berry Gordy calculated and controlled every professional step they made, every record release was carefully considered! The right decisions weren't always made!  And some projects were totally aborted; Around The World With The Supremes intended to showcase familiar international tunes, but the girls never laid down the tracks! A Tribute To The Girls was intended as a nod to the other girl-groups who came before them, but only a few songs were recorded. Back in 1965, “the girls” switched from regular Motown fare to recording an album of adult standards for a project to be called There's A Place For Us. It took over 35 years for this project to be released by Hip-O Select in 2004. However, much of the gold from the Motown vaults has been mined in recent years in one way or another in various box sets, compilations, and special “from the vaults” releases. In fact, all the known recorded songs for Sings Disney Classics (minus three) have already been released in those formats, but the diehard fans haven't given up hope for one full and complete CD release. There's always been talk! And with the release of The Princess & The Frog, the rumors are starting up again!  So, there's hope! 

Legend has it that Diana Ross And The Supremes Sing Disney Classics was not one of Gordy's brainstorm crossover ideas. It's said that Miss Ross wanted to do an album for children so recording began in January of 1967 while Florence Ballard was still a member of the group. In one of the best (and most fun) recordings from the project, Ross offers a delicious rendition of Whistle While You Work (from Snow White) as she references Mary and Flo in much the same way she did on Back In My Arms Again, except this time Flo injects some wicked humor of her own. By 1967, there was nothing fanciful or fairytale-like about The Supremes real lives with each other, and by July of the that year, Florence was dismissed from the group. Recording for this particular project was temporarily halted but resumed by September with Ross now calling out to Ballard's replacement, Cindy Birdsong on Heigh Ho (also from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). It didn't matter that Ballard had sung on half of the album while Birdsong (supposedly) sang on the rest of it (at least that's what the public was supposed to think) with Ballard's departure, the group name officially became DIANA ROSS and The Supremes! The project was eventually finished with 15 songs total but like so much of The Supremes's (and other Motown artists) material in, it headed straight to a vault shelf! It wasn't because the material didn't measure up to standard – many a Motown classic lay at waste in the vaults!

The songs are:  "Heigh-Ho" (from Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs), "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" (from CInderella), "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" (from Song Of The South), "When You Wish Upon A Star" (from Pinocchio), "It Won't Be Long Till Christman" (from The Happiest Millionaire), "Toyland" (from Babes In Toyland), "Chim-Chim Cher-ee" (from Mary Poppins), "Whistle While You Work" (from Snow White), "The Land Of Make Believe" (from Peter Pan), "Some Day My Prince Will Come" (from Snow White), "A Spoonful Of Sugar" (from Mary Poppins), "I've Got No Strings" (from Pinocchio), "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (from Mary Poppins) "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett" (from Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier).

It's been said that “Bippity Bobbity Boo” (from Cinderella) was recorded for inclusion on the album and maybe there's an instrumental track, but no vocals have been discovered for it yet! The Disney flick, The Happiest Millionaire had not yet been released when recording wrapped for this album, so it's thought that the song, “It Won't Be Long Till Christmas” was recorded a to cash in on any hopes that it might be a Christmas hit!  Eventually, three songs from Sings Disney Classics was released on the Motown lp, Diana Ross & The Supremes 25^th Anniversay (1986), a collection of hits, rarities and never before released songs from the group. Eight more songs were released the next year on Diana Ross & The Supremes: The Never Before Released Masters (1987) a hidden treasure trove of 27 unreleased Supremes gems from the vaults. “Chim-Chim Cheree, A Spoon Full Of Sugar (both Mary Poppins) and “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” (from Song of the South) are the remaining three that have not seen the light of day! Yet!

If you listen closely, you'll hear the beat of You Can't Hurry Love, snatches of riffs from You Keep Me Hanging On, even Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart! The songs are fantastic! Mary's does a solo! Ballard's having fun! Cindy's just there! And Ross is giving it her most dreamy best! With the exception of the remaining three vocals listed above, the wait has basically been over for awhile, but the time is right now for the release of the whole total project on one remastered CD! As a child, I had all the Disney soundtracks (whether I played them or not!). The Jungle Book! Mary Poppins! Imagine The Supremes in the mix! I would have lived for this as a kid! For some of us, what would our childhoods have been like without Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck memories? As a grown man, I'm waiting with baited breath for The Princess & The Frog! Some things never change! I hope Hip-O Select/Motown is waiting, looking and listening, too! Keep those rumors flowing! Maybe they'll hear them in through the grapevine!

Kurtis, a devotee of the Disney musical catalogue posted a few of the Supremes songs over on the blog, Covering The Mouse! Here's the link: covering the mouse

Enjoy!

CESAR ROMERO: Tall Dark Handsome...and Gay!

In 1968, well into middle age, he was called one of the most beautiful men in the world! It wasn't lip service! Cesar Romero was a good-looking man until the day he died in 1994, at the age of 86. Think Cesar Romero and images of a wild hyena-like character with green hair, a pasty white face and flaming red lipstick immediately come to mind. Indeed! The Joker was a perennial thorn in Batman's side during the run of the 1960's television series starring Adam West. The Joker was Romero's star turn and it would make him a household name despite a career that spanned six decades in the movies and television. “Now that was a handsome man in his day” my mother once exclaimed as I watched Batman. I could have cared less back then, but recently I had the opportunity to see for myself.  Mama didn't lie! The man was smoldering! When Romero appeared on screen in the 1930's and 40's, he was no joker! His sex appeal was serious as a heart attack!  He was tall, dark, handsome and oh so sexy! And in real life he was oh so gay!

In Tall Dark & Handsome (1941), Romero plays a womanizin' gangsta with a secret! His character is suave, debonaire and nattily dressed to the nines in almost every scene! He's rough around the edges and is known for bumping off anyone who gets in his way! But the real truth is that he's not as tough as his street credentials suggest! Tall Dark & Handsome was one of Romero's few starring roles and I recently had the opportunity to see it on TCM. Turner Classic Movies is my favorite cable station! I've been turned on so many times now seeing so many of the vintage movies that I once thought I'd never see, and I've been turned out a few times by movies that I never knew existed!  So, it can safely be said that my belated hot-in-the-butt-reaction is to the actor's bad-boy image in that movie!  Romero's early career was built around the whole Latin Lover Gigilo persona created by the Hollywood studios in the wake of Rudolph Valentino's death in 1929. I think Romero added a new depth to that type of character but my opinion doesn't matter. Many of the so-called critics thought he was too much of a dandy and that his portrayals were often too foppish – never hard and true enough!

Born into a prosperous New York family in 1907, Romero's Italian father was an importer-exporter of sugar refining machinery, his mother a concert singer and her father, the famed Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti. Cesar began his career as a ballroom dancer before moving on to the Broadway stage where he was first recognized by the Hollywood star makers. In Hollywood, he starred with the likes of Marlene Dietrich but there was something about the man that just never propelled him into leading man status. It wasn't his looks! He was gorgeous! He was talented! He could act! And he could dance! A self-proclaimed “dancing fool” Cesar became a permanent fixture in the Hollywood nightlife for decades as the dancing partner of good friend Joan Crawford, Carmen Miranda and later Ginger Rogers. Art exhibits! Fashion shows! Movie premiers! It was joked that Romero would attend the opening of a napkin! Romero was the most exquisitely dressed man of his set, at one time boasting more than 30 tuxedos, 200 sport coats and 500 suits! Later on in life, Mr. Romero eventually opened his own chain of clothing stores! He was the quintessential “confirmed bachelor” charming and discreet!

Unlike SO MANY of his peers, he never actively tried to deny or hide the truth of his sexual orientation. He was protective of his image but he was also respected!  Yet, his sexuality was an open secret! And he was quite comfortable with it – not like his rumored lover, the popular actor Tyrone Power!  Romero never publically admitted that he and Power were an item. He didn't have to! It seems all of gay Hollywood, their friends and acquaintances readily admitted it for him! Throughout his life, Romero was extremely dedicated to Power (who died at age 44). Tyrone Power played the games of “arranged” Hollywood marriages or marrying for conventiality, but not Cesar Romero! Power remained tormented and terrified of being found out! But not Cesar!  In the book Hollywood Gays (1996), written by Boze Hadleigh, the author compiled a series of interviews with aging graying Hollywood players who either were or were rumored to be gay or bisexual. Cesar Romero was interviewed several times and dished quite freely about Tyrone Power (but never their life together). With class and in gentlemanly fashion, he spoke candidly about the joys of masturbation, glory holes and oral sex! He also spilled the beans about his one-time hook-up with his friend & fellow latin lover, Desi Arnaz, Jr.  Recognizing that it takes two people to perform one homosexual act the actor says "In the old days.....fellatio was a big status symbol. If someone was willing to do that for you, you felt like a king. Few would have said no.”  Use your imagination! Poor Lucille Ball never knew! But she may not have been too surprised because …......she knew Cesar!

Romero went on to give insightful information about maneuvering the issues of sexual identity around early Hollywood politics in the 40's and 50's, being homosexual in Hispanic culture, and why he never felt the the need to hide behind a wife. However, the fact that there were serious veracity issues surrounding the author's interviews cannot be ignored! For instance, there were many critics, reviewers and insiders who refused to believe that Cary Grant could never ever under any circumstances be so loose and free with himself (or anyone else at any time!) to do and say the things attributed to him by Hadleigh. Regardless, it is noteworthy that most hold Romero's interview as gospel – which is a testimony to the man himself!

Still handsome, Cesar Romero remained active in the movies and television practically up to the time of his death. He remained an engaging and youthful personality to the end! I no longer think of him as a Joker! I will always think of him as the dashing Cisco Kid in such campy 40's westerns as The Gay Cabellero, the dancing romancer in Springtime in the Rockies, and in the persona of all the super-sharp, devastatingly handsome gangstas I see on TCM. It is there where he will always remain eternally charming, tall, dark, handsome and .......gay!  Hail, Cesar!

TRANSGENDERED, TRANSITIONED AND TRANSFIXED!

 

Light another candle! Or two!

Have another vigil! Keep sayin' your prayers!

But when will we move into ACTION!

When will we LOVE, VALUE & PROTECT OUR OWN?

Maybe that's it! We don't!

This is my second post in honor of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009!

Another post done in my own way void of a litany list of tragedy!

Yes! We should be SCREAMING at the top of our lungs over the hatred and violence against all members of the LGBT community. But in addition to remembering (or wondering whatever happened to someone), I wanted to celebrate! Celebrate with photos! Vintage photos....of course!

The photographs are from Jet (October 1952 – 1958) and Hue Magazine (1954). They document a somewhat integrated transgender community in an era of segregation! The smiling faces are of old-school dolls named after popular actresses & singers of the day like Mitzi Gaynor, Kim Novak and Josephine Baker. They are the countless, the nameless and the forgotten!  Now they are the celebrated!

Transgender? What does it really mean?  It's an “umbrella” term that has continually evolved before, during and especially after the time these photos were taken. It includes people who are otherwise gender non-conforming who identify as male or female or have an identity fluid between the two. Many people identify as transgender, but they do not all have the same experience or same set of circumstances! Those who truly identify as transsexual have had full (or some degree of) sexual reassignment surgery! In a lot of cases, those who have cross-dressed or became “drag queens” or “transvestites” have at some point realized they are really transsexual. And then there are those who have realized the opposite! In my previous post, Miss Brown To You! Whatever Happened To Carlett Brown?, I indicated Miss Brown might be intersexed – meaning there was some ambiguous sexual genitalia or other physical characteristics. But I don't know that Brown would have referred to herself as such!  Currently, all the identities and definitions are in flux as to who actually falls under the umbrella! And some don't want to be so clinically identified!

Here's the deal! Whatever they tell you – respect it! Can we think of them as the gender they refer to themselves as or refer to them with their chosen names? Many transgenders feel they have always been the gender they now self-identify as, and if you're not sure – ASK! Some transgender people do not wish to be identified with the “gay community” at large meaning that their gender identity and SEXUALITY are two different things entirely! Don't be confused! Don't be offended! Recognize!

I have no clue how the party revelers and pageant competitors in the accompanying photos identified! Much of the terminology used now was not even in use during the 1950's. Most were considered as “those crazy homosexuals” - and that's wrong too! There's a lot of wrong period! There's too much misunderstanding and not enough, at least, trying to understand! I am attempting to do that here! What really unnerves me is the hatred among us in the gay community at large! I get really unsettled when I hear something like “I hate them because if it weren't for them he-she's people wouldn't hate US so much” or something like “it's because of THEM that we're being HELD BACK”. Huh? Who? What people? Just know that if someone hates us on sexual orientation or identity alone they aren't taking the time to differentiate! When they come for us they're coming for ALL of us! But that's the thing! We want to get to the day when they aren't coming for us.....any of us......like that!

Hope is on the horizon!  

Look back! Say a prayer! Remember! Celebrate! Enjoy the pictures!

 

MISS BROWN TO YOU!: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CARLETT BROWN (aka Charles Brown)?

Say A Prayer!

Light A Candle!

I'd like to honor the 2009 Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (Nov. 21) a little differently this year!

 

 

 

 

 

In remembering those who've experienced a violent and untimely end to their lives this year due to the hatred and hysteria against those members of the LGBT community, I'd like to remember Carlett Brown. (Charles Brown if we're to be a little more precise!). With no disrespect to this day, and the attention that's focused on the maniacal savagery perpetrated against the trans-community (and gender-variant people in general) I'd like to look a little bit farther back into the past!

During 1953, the pocket-sized Jet Magazine, a staple in African American homes across the nation, ran a series of mini-stories on one Charles Brown! In just a few months, Brown would become known as Carlett Angianlee Brown, but it seems that after this rash of stories first appeared, initial interest in Brown was lost! Historians in the transgender community are trying to find out, but whatever happened to Carlett has yet to be discovered! In the article below (June 18, 1953), we see that 26 year-old Charles Brown is described as a “shake dancer” as in booty-shake, grind & in most cases, striptease! Most importantly, she has high hopes for a sex-change operation to be performed in Europe! According to the article, there is serious suggestion that, perhaps, Brown is intersexed, that she is hoping to "marry" a man she's known since childhood, and is considering giving up her American citizenship!  Around this same time, Christine Jorgensen is making history as she becomes, not the first, but the most famous trans-woman in history up to that time! Jorgensen is a media sensation all over the world! Brown is poor, black and her story is only featured for five minutes in a tiny magazine! So far, these are the only articles that have come to light, and while the terminology used in the articles will be addressed, right now let's go back 56 years and see what they tell us!

(July 9, 1953) 

 
 
(June 25, 1953!  Becomes Carlett Angianlee!)

(Below, August 6, 1953) 
   

(The last available article on Brown appears October 15, 1953.  See below!)

For a magazine that often thrived on sensationalism in the black community, I'm struck by Jet's straight-forward, non-judgemental, almost symphathetic portrayal of Brown's ambitions, trials and tribulations!  The "condition", as they called it, was that of being a transvestite.  But I don't think that was their fault!  Not this time!  The term transsexual wasn't quite known or in use despite Christine Jorgensen's groundbreaking sex-change operation right around this same time period.  Moreover, a careful reading of the first article clearly states that Brown was intersexed (and just maybe they didn't know what to call that either!).  Perhaps they wouldn't have even cared about being correct but looking back in retrospect, it cannot be ignored; Carlett seemed to have a pretty good grasp of where she stood!  The slant here is that she desperately wanted that operation to marry her soldier boyfriend, but she knew that marriage between two men wasn't an option in (or out) of the United States!  The serious dialogue with the doctors in the first article in Jet told the whole story about what she needed (and wanted) to do next under the circumstances!  Corrective surgery would complete her dream for a full life!  I'm also so impressed by Carlett's early political awareness and speaking out on the full rights to equality for transgender people!  The forwardness on her part is way before  (now-legendary) Isis competed on America's Next Top Model and has Tyra Banks offer to pay for her trans-surgery on national television.  It's so before Ongina won our hearts but not the prize on Rupaul's Drag Races - and yes, technically, some  "drag queens" often fall under the "umbrella" term of transgender, too!  During a time when any non-gender-conforming "man" was considered just another homosexual, Carlett seemed to have a good grasp on her own truth. 

But what happened?  We've seen where she had to sell blood (and God knows what else) to save money!  I'm not really trying to project anything, but the possiblity of tragedy looms large!  Even now, over half of transgender murder victims & victims of other types of violence are people of color!  Did Brown ever make it to Germany or Denmark?  Did she ever make to post-op status?  Did she get married?  Did she live to a ripe old age or die young and beautiful?  IS SHE STILL LIVING?  Did she ever shave those legs in the picture above...........come on  now, Carlett!?!  LOL!

I'd love to hear about the possibility of her triumph!

  

 

 

DANTE'S INFERNO: Dancing With The Devil & Taylor Siluwe!

Have you ever danced with the devil? If there's any doubt about it, you'll certainly know after you've read Taylor Siluwe's Dancing With The Devil! I'm not necessarily saying that you'll read your own life, but you'll recognize yourself in the pages! This book is about what happens when the song has ended but the melody lingers on ~ especially when it's a dirge. There's always a price to pay for bumpin' & grindin' with Satan and sometimes the payback starts well before we even realize it! That's if you believe in such things!

I knew when I read the introduction that I was in for a treat, that I was going to get into and like this book! And after a few paragraphs of the first story, I immediately knew that the author was a talent to be reckoned with. Taylor Siluwe is an erotic storyteller! Dancing With The Devil is a delicious, delirious collection of five short stories. It's different! Real different! And different is good! It's a book full of forbidden funk and fire. There are plenty of trials and tribulations, but they aren't about cute young yippie-yuppie black gay puppies and their tales of woe living and loving in a big city. The brothas here live on the edge of the city, on their knees in dark ghetto stairwells. Beneath Paradise! This is real writing! Real reading, too! It helps if you're in tune with your inner freak (and perhaps even a little demented to begin with).

It caused me to wonder just how freaky and demented Taylor Siluwe is! So I asked! “Yes! I can be extremely freaky or even demented (in its most comical sense, of course). But I think that comes with being human. Most people don't, or just won't 'fess up to the presence of the inner freak. Those are usually the same self-righteous people later caught in embarrassing sex scandals. Like repressed “anythings” those repressed inner-freaks will assert themselves and more power to them” he told me. Repression is something our protagonist here knows all too well about! Dante spent a good part of his youth oppressed by a fanatically religious mother (and trying to adhere to the impossibly high religious code of his strict Jehovah's Witness upbringing). Now over 40, but with a vestige of youth, enough to still pull the pretty young gangstas in the neighborhood, Dante's inner freak has long been asserted, and these are the types that he's eroticized. Dangerous types! That's  what sometimes happens when one's sexual thoughts, feelings, & desires are left to develop in secret … and repression! A sort of compulsion or sexual schizophrenia develops, splinters and often morphs into something sinister like a monster that gets bigger and uglier and ends up overpowering. Almost like an addiction! Dante practically says as much …. “Standing just feet from the bed, my nostrils full of youthful summer funk, I felt a trickle and wondered why I always fell for the same types – the same pretty young gangster types – knowing that grief always followed the pleasure.” Taylor says it's an addiction to danger maybe! “Pretty young gangsters, sexy drug addicts and thugs, all have an element which titillates our dark side, our danger junkie, and sometimes our inner freak. It's the bad boy syndrome! The reason predictable, ordinary nice guys rarely get laid because everyone secretly, or not so secretly wants that bad boy. It's why people love roller-coasters too; why if they invented one that traveled 500 mph with a mile high drop, people would come in droves to ride it. We're never as alive as when we're whizzing toward possible death at 500 mph” Siluwe offered.

When I asked how much Dante is based on his own life, Taylor jokingly described himself as a boring couch potato who watches too many crime dramas. He went on to quote Alfred Hitchcock with “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out” and added “throughout Dancing, the reader knows Dante likes sex and drugs, but never what Dante does for a living. Dante is my drama. He's my broken, drama-filled doppelganger who doesn't walk or even exist on the dull side of the street. Dante is all the horrible things I've ever dreamed, done or desperately wanted to do.” On the other hand “the book takes Dante from high-school to middle-age, and his experiences overlap my experiences – as a religiously abused child, as a black gay boy, as a self-described 'perv from my earliest memory; a destructive soul who couldn't fuck enough or get high enough. So, yes it's inspired by my life – though it's hardly autobiographical.

Hell! It seems like every character in this book is dancing with some demon or other in some kind of living hell! Lessons aren't always learned and the solutions aren't always easy! “Sounds like life to me” says Siluwe. “How many times do we make mistakes, learn from them, only to repeat the same damn mistake down the road? In the opening story, When Romeo Wakes, Dante asserts he's going to hell for what he's doing, then decides “but then again, this IS Hell.” So I would have to say Hell is all around us. We have to somehow navigate our lives through it without getting burned too much in the process. Religion was certainly a key point in his decline into self destructive behavior....'cause when you damn a boy to Hell for being himself, can you blame him for ultimately wanting to die high and on the verge of a nut?”. Well said, Mr. Siluwe! Alas, the system of Dante's Hell!

I think Dancing With The Devil is so far beyond the current collection of available black gay literature, yet Taylor (not surprisingly) cites E. Lynn Harris and James Earl Hardy, two pioneering black gay authors, as his most pointed influences. “Seeing those openly gay black men successfully publishing black gay stories inspired me to the core. Inspired me to write what I know, the dark shit I've seen people do to each other. To this day, I write about what I find endlessly fascinating as seen through my black gay eyes, which among other things – would be the dark human tendency toward total self destruction” Siluwe offered. He told me that writing is both sanctuary and therapy by adding “writing is a way to focus and turn inward, I guess, to solve our nagging little problems. I sometimes can work out an issue by giving it to a character and helping him work his way through it. And the benefits, I believe, are not unlike those experienced from prayer. Some believe there's an old man in the sky who grants wishes arbitrarily. I believe all we need is our brain. We just have to learn to focus its awesome power.”

Whatever you believe about an old man in the sky, or a red man with horns who lives in the bowels of the earth, please believe that Taylor Siluwe presents something mighty special with his collection of stories. My only complaint is that the collection is too compact but this only leaves you wanting more. No problem! Siluwe is working overtime adapting his stories, and doing all the things that require getting them on the screen! Until then, you can buy the book! Dancing With The Devil (published by the Atlanta based Chuma Spirit Books) is available on Amazon.com. Taylor Siluwe resides in New Jersey & is an amateur photographer for the most widely distributed regional magazine in the LGBT community, Out IN Jersey. He can always be found at his popular website http://taylorsiluwe.typepad.com/taylor_siluwe/

 

DOROTHY DANDRIDGE REMAINS TO BE SEEN!

I remember so clearly the first time I saw Dorothy Dandridge!  It wasn't in Carmen Jones, Island In The Sun, or any of her various other films occasionally seen on the late show.  It wasn't in Ebony, Jet or Essence!  I first saw her image on a little wallet sized photo that my father kept in what he called his "bill-a-fold".  He'd had it ever since he was a teenager in the 1940's, and while I was no more than ten or eleven years old, I was immediately captivated by this woman as he had been so many years ago.  I was disappointed to learn that the stunning woman in the photo was not a relative, but that didn't stop me from "stealing" the photo for awhile, taking it to school, and telling everyone that she was my aunt.  After I became an adult, my father still refused to give me the photograph, and in his quest to "protect" it from me, he ended up forever "hiding" it from the both of us.  Today, I can collect all the images of Dandridge that I want, but I have yet to see that particular glamour shot anywhere online, on Ebay, or reprinted in a book or magazine.  Indeed!  It remains to be seen!

Remains To Be Seen is a movie that isn't often seen on stations like Turner Classic Movies.  In fact, I've only known it to air on that station no more than two times.  That's too bad because it's the only place you're likely to see it considering the fact that it's never been released on VHS or DVD.  The film is a not-so-great romantic comedy starring June Allyson and Van Johnson from 1953.  It would be otherwise unremarkable if it wasn't for a red-hot musical number that showcased a seriously sexy Dandridge singing "Taking A Chance On Love".  Since Halle Berry's star turn in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, there's been a number of DVD documentaries  chock-full of rare clips of Dorothy from 50's television shows, and rare musical "shorts" from the 1940's.  None of them include the segment from Remains To Be Seen.  And it's a shame!  Dandridge sizzles and sings with a full vocal confidence not always evident in her television performances, and it's clear that she considers this a defining moment in her burgeoning career.  She shakes her her shoulder-length hair and it falls right back into place!  She shakes her hips (and what part of that low-cut dress that isn't plastered to her sensuous curves).  She simmers, boils and then BURNS, baby!  She's not to be played with!

November 9, 2009 marks Dorothy's 88th birthday.  What do you add, say or do differently to pay tribute to an icon like Miss Dandridge when it's all been said and done before?  And one can't really tell the story without rehashing the tragedy, so I decide to spotlight this one brilliant, shining moment from 1953.  It's not like it hasn't been captured for posterity....forget the movie....I'm just waiting to see the performance in its entirety again.  Now, around this same time, Dandridge co-starred with the equally as gorgeous Harry Belafonte in what would be the first of their three movies together, Bright Road.  The good news is that a bit of the sequence from Remains To Be Seen was used right at the beginning of the original trailer for Bright Road.  It was used to introduce another side of her talent, something other than Dandridge the nightclub queen. 

In Bright Road, Dorothy plays a sedate rural schooteacher, but here she is certainly no less arresting!  Yes, arresting is the perfect word!  I would never reduce Miss Dandridge (or her legacy) down to something just to be "gawked" at, but let's face it, a great deal of her appeal was physical.  She's held me captive and in custody by the authority of her beauty ever since I was a kid!  It remains to be seen if I'll ever see that "lost" photo again or find it in my the remains of my late father's belongings, if Ted Turner will ever release that movie or allow the sequence of "Taking A Chance On Love" to be included on any future DVD's. 

What's for sure is that there are other Dandridge films that are either lost, forgotten or "unseen".  Consider her 1941 debut in "race" movies in Four Shall Die.  This film starred an eighteen year old Dorothy Dandridge in "a horror thriller of the Boris Karloff order with a Haitian background" complete with zombies, mysticism and supernatural manifestations.  Race films were mostly crude, cheaply and quickly made films shown to black audiences in segregated theaters, and by 1940, there were at least 900 such theaters across the country.  Four Shall Die, however, was just a little bit more ambitious.  The budget was higher, at least twelve sets were constructed for the film and there were four full camera crews as opposed to the usual one.  There were large scale action sequences, and it was hoped that this film, above all the others at the time, was going to be "the one" that broadened the appeal of race movies thus attracting a larger audience.  The movie was released, reviewed in the "white" press and Dorothy was singled out.  Hopes were riding high, but it wasn't meant to be.  The production company, Million Dollar Pictures, suffered major distribution problems and the film was pulled.  Two years after its initial release, prints for Four Shall Die virtually disappeared!  And they have yet to resurface!

In 1962, Blues For A Junkman starred Dorothy Dandridge and Ivan Dixon (the black guy from Hogan's Heroes) with Ed Asner and James Coburn.  It was originally filmed as a one hour episode for the television drama, Cain's Hundred, with additional scenes (some nude) shot for a full-length feature film called The Murder Men, to be released in Europe only.  Junkman presented Dorothy as Norma Jenkins, a doomed jazz singing Billie Holiday-like character just released from prison on dope charges who strives to make a comeback while resisting the lure of drugs.  From a personal stance, Dorothy was fighting for her life; she was struggling to keep her sinking career afloat, keep the IRS at bay, and survive in a new marriage with an emotionally and physically abusive man.  She invested all she had into the role and turned in a critically acclaimed performance that was highly unusual for television at that time.

Junkman appeared on the rare bootleg video but now even that bootleg is no longer available, and the European movie version, although real, seems to be the stuff of myth.  Come on now, imagine Dandridge nude in the movies!   Marco Polo immediately followed.  In it, Dorothy co-starred with Anthony Quinn (with an international roster of stars) in the role of an East Indian princess, and her scenes were shot in India, Nepal and Lebanon.   The producer, Raoul Levy, experienced financial setbacks from the beginning and they only got worse.  Time magazine reported that the film was finally completed but the finished product was uneditable.  A few years after that, Levy committed suicide and who knows where the print ended up?  The idea of sumptuous filmed-on-location footage of a glamourous Dorothy Dandrige as an Indian princess rotting in somebody's vault is a sickening thought, indeed!  (See magazine cover photo below with French co-star Alain Delon).

You're right if you're thinking that it remains to be seen if we ever get to see them!

Dorothy Dandridge left us to soon at the age of 42 in 1965.

DEATH BECOMES US: The Past Post-Mortem Photography of James VanDerZee

"One time I dreamed I went to make a picture of a dead woman who reached in her chest and took out her heart and threw it over here, then she reached in there and took out something else and threw it over there.  I just waited to see if she was going to take something else...but I wasn't scared or nothing like that in the dream."   James VanDerZee, from the book The Harlem Book Of The Dead.

James VanDerZee, legendary African American photographer, is primarily remembered for his striking Harlem Renaissance-era portraits of the 1920's and 30's.  In his hey-day, VanDerZee captured the images of some of the most beautiful, beloved and now iconic personalities of the day.  But his career as a photographer lasted over six decades as he documented the lives of the common, everyday working class denizens of Harlem U.S.A.  He was also favored for his photography skills among the newly dead!  After many years of quiet and repose, James VanDerZee finally experienced his own personal renaissance that actually began in 1969 when he became the largest single contributor to the Metropolitian Museum of Art exhibition "Harlem On My Mind."  With renewed interest in his career, more than a few books were published as retrospectives of his work.  Among them, The Harlem Book Of The Dead, a strange, now out-of-print,  85-page collection of vintage past-post mortem photographs boasted "a very long"  very stiff interview with the photographer by artist Camille Billops, and the inclusion of the very lifeless poetry of Owen Dodson. 

The top photo is one that VanDerZee took at the funeral of his own 16 year old daughter, Rachel VanDerZee.  Note the super-imposed images in the top right & left hand corners; a VanDerZee trademark.  On the left, you'll see a smaller photograph of the deceased in her lively youth.  Young Miss VanDerZee passed away in 1927. 

If The Harlem Book Of The Dead doesn't seem quite complete as a collection, the book remains a classic!  And it's always the photographs that matter!  I should know!  We'd all die to get my hands on a now lost family photograph of one of my grandfather's wives, Charlotte.  She died in childbirth and the baby died a day later!  There was a double funeral and someone photographed both of them laying in the casket.  I am hoping that one day it will turn up as later generations of family members have always heard about but never seen this photo.  Among VanDerZee's funereal photos, there were many taken of babies!  It was very common to have a portrait done of a deceased baby or child to forever commemorate and pay tribute to their memory for years to come.  VanDerZee explained "Most of these babies, they all died of pneumonia; chest gets filled up with colds because they were living in cold (water) flats.  It was a very common thing in those days for people to be without heat".  He went on to describe the second 1930's photo here with "the reason for having the father hold the child was that the mother was sick in the hospital and couldn't get out.  The child died in the meantime.  If it wasn't for the picture, the mother wouldn't have seen the child for the last time".

Things would get even more personal when my father passed away!  When my brother came back, he brought his family, and a lot of grief with him.  He also brought a lot of ostentatious camera equipment that nobody knew about until the wake.  Brotha starts settin' up, and I'm like "OH! NO, HE'S NOT!"  I wasn't the only one who was appalled, but I was the one who went ballistic.  My mother, now a widow after 52 years of marriage, was the only one who could settle the dispute.  "Let him do it, but we better not ever see them"  she whispered.  To keep the peace, my mother allowed her oldest son to photograph her dead husband in his casket.  While I thought it quite bizarre at the time, my brother may have unwittingly created another family photograph that will become even more legendary as the years and generations pass. 

 A caption from the book describes this 1926 photo with "She was the one I think was shot by her sweetheart at a party with a noiseless gun.  She complained of being sick at the party.....and they taken her in the room and laid her down.  After they undressed her and loosened her clothes, they saw the blood on her dress.  They asked her about it and she said "I'll tell you tomorrow, yes, I'll tell you tomorrow.  She was just trying to give him a chance to get away."

James VanDerZee told Camille Billops that his grandfather was a gravedigger in Lenox, Massachusettes, and how as a child he used to hear stories of how, oftentimes, the coffins would have to be moved from one place to another.  When they were opened, his grandfather would be astonished to find that sometimes the bodies would be in different positions or even turned over completely in their caskets.  He suggested that during that time, some of the "deceased" weren't altogether dead when they were buried.  Not too many people were being embalmed then, and some of them were only just sick and in comas, but buried as dead anyway.  He remembered the "dead" sitting up in caskets and the undertakers being so frightened, they'd jump out the windows.  VanDerZee explained that the old saying "You'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes" was coined when the undertakers would use pennies on the eyelids of the deceased to keep their eyes closed.  I don't even want to think about where the term "She'd turn over in her own grave" came from!

She was never captured on film!  Her voice was never recorded!  Just two of the factors why, with each successive generation, Florence Mills always remains on the verge of being forgotten.  Yet, there's something in the collective consciousness of black America that refuses to totally forget her.  In the Twenties, she was the biggest star!  Period!  She conquered home and all of Europe, too!  Famous authors like Evelyn Waugh included her as characters in some of their most well-known books!  She was the first Negro woman to appear in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair!  Her voice was high and birdlike.  She was a small, petite woman with a winsome, wide-eyed beauty.  Known as The Little Blackbird, she was most effervescent on stage with her high-kickin', tireless and high octane performances.  Harlem was home to Mills, and there she reigned as The Queen.  Imagine the horror, when after a grueling, whirlwind tour of England, Mills returned home gravely ill with appendicitis.  Her death, a month later, set off an outpouring of love and grief, memory and flowers, affection and music that Harlem had ever seen.  Her body lay in state for a week in the chapel of the Howell Undertaking Parlors at 137th & Seventh Ave., and her funeral at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted an estimated 5000 mourners.  Numerous accounts suggest that at least 150,000 people lined the streets outside while hundreds of blackbirds were released by helicopter above.  Mills was photographed by some of the most famous photographers in the world, but her VanDerZee portraits are the ones that remain the most well-known.  As in life, he also captured her in death, too!  Oddly enough, none of the Mills photographs appear in The Harlem Book Of The Dead, but in the plate above we see a super-imposed image of Miss Mills looking through the window at her own corpse "in a way that suggests both the liberation of the soul and the contemplation of mortality". 

Please consider the additonal photo included here of the man laying on his bed.  "To make this dead gentleman look more natural, his family wanted the paper put in his hand, to make it appear he had been reading and had just dozed off" says VanDerZee.  If you look very closely, you'll see he would have been reading the headline news on the death of Florence Mills!  Perhaps he died of grief!

Photographing a deceased person was a common practice in the 19th & early 20th century, and James VanDerZee put as much pride and artistry in his photographs of the dead as he did in those of his living subjects.  Early photographers from the late Victorian and Edwardian era often posed their mortuary subjects with cemetary artifacts or surrounded by boquets of flowers.  VanDerZee was influenced by this tradition, but most definitely put a art deco, avant-garde spin of his own in many of his images of the dead.  Looking back, we find that past post-mortem photographs make up the largest collective group of 19th-century American photographs, but this particular form of photography is no longer popular, and is now even frowned upon. Much of that attitude may have to do with how we now struggle to avoid the topic of death and loss.  Such power many of these photos hold!  The dead are shown posed alonside the living "as though life and death were inseperable siblings" while small children and babies are elaborately dressed and shown laying in cribs and in the arms of their parents.  In viewing these types of portraits, we are compelled to confront our own mortality issues and aversions.  When I first got the idea for this post, I was like "eww" and I approached the photos with a mixture of fascination and no small degree of queasiness.  But now, I'm able to look at them and see the beauty in them as I would any other photo!  My father's death was 12 years ago, and in preparing this blogpost, I'm thinking I'm not all that opposed to seeing (maybe even owning) a copy of that photograph my brother took.

James VanDerZee died in 1983 at the age of ninety-six.  Before his death, he created another photographic collection of famous African Americans including the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat.  But his reputation and memory rests during that wonderful period when Harlem was in vogue!  Indeed!  One can almost imagine stepping out of a brownstone on 125th & St. Nicholas on a cold, dreary depressing morning, reluctantly looking up at a gray sky, and right as the first bolt of lightening strikes, one is struck by the thought "What a lovely day for a funeral!  I think I'll call Mr. VanDerZee".

A Review of Dale Guy Madison's Dreamboy: My Life As A QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits!

 

 

I'm excited!  So delighted!  To finally see the light shine through.  I can see a million dreams come true.  So hold on!  Here we go!  I got a feelin' that it's gonna grow up to the top of the world.  Here I am!  There you are!  I got a feelin' that we're going far up to the top of the world!  (From the song "Top Of The World" from Diana Ross's album Baby It's Me, 1977, composed by Gene Page)

MOTOWN DREAMBOY TELLS ALL!  Chances are that you've never heard of dreamboy Dale Guy Madison's greatest hits, right?  Well, this is still Motown's 50th Anniversary, we're still celebrating and whether you've heard of him or not, Dale Guy Madison is a star, baby!  A Motown Star!  A would-be Supreme diva who just released his tell-all memoirs, titled Dreamboy: My Life As A QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits.  Yes!  You know Dale Guy Madison!  You've seen him in countless television sitcoms and dramatic series, and he has appeared as an extra in as many movies!  You may or may not recognize him from his one-man/one-woman stage play, FREEda Slave, or John Water's Hairspray, or as a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar and Stonewall!  He's been an actor, a model, a fashion designer, film producer, and now a writer.  However, it is after gaining nationwide fame as a television host on the QVC shopping network that Dale had his "biggest hit" to date.  Trust me, I saw enough of him during this time as my mother watched the station relentlessly.  Even then, you knew there was something "different" about this animated and sho' nuff personable guy in the multi-colored vests and eye-catching (sometimes green-eyed envious) clothing ensembles.......

Add the classic recordings of Diana Ross, both solo (and with The Supremes) plus songs from the broadway musical Dreamgirls and you have the soundtrack, backdrop and the perfect comparative metaphor for Madison's tale of self-discovery, struggle and success.  This book is dedicated, in part, to "every little boy who dreamed of sparkle, glitter, and glamour while singing Supremes songs in the mirror, but was ashamed to let anyone know it".  Lord knows I can relate to that!  Much like little gay boys today make Youtube videos dancing and lip-synching to Beyonce, oh how well I remember sneaking back into the school building during recess with my childhood friends Jerome and Wynton.  We'd steal into the boys restroom, tie our sweaters on our heads as "wigs" and sing the whole Supremes catalogue.  We had no clue that so many other boys like ourselves were doing the same thing in the mirror, jostling for that middle spot, fighting to be Diana!  We also didn't know that sometimes, you have to pay the cost to be The Boss.......

On the road of life, building a reputation to become a star can often be a bittersweet experience!  Sometimes among the hangers-on are abusive men who who feel the need in a creative, but often lonely soul.  Like magnets, they seemed to be attracted to the broken flow of energy created by the author's experience with a cold and emotionally abusive father.  Many love affairs are detailed here, love affairs that ache of father love and longing, that finally cause Madison to conclude "People say that daughters always look for their father in the man that they marry. I realized that gay guys look for the love they never received from their fathers in the men that they love. I know I did".  Dale Guy Madison IS Neely O'Hara should have been the caption on the movie poster from the author's full-year stint in the "loony bin" after a PCP drug trip gone terribly wrong.  O'Hara, the Patty Duke character from the gay cult-classic, Valley Of The Dolls (one of the author's favorite movies) has nothing on Madison's personal experience (from having a live breakdown while working as a telephone operator to the successful comeback to his own real life.)  There are many disappointments, but they'll all be met with the sort of balance one finds with a God-grant-me-the serenity-to-accept-the-things-I-cannot-change-but-help-me-to-change-the-things-I-can type of attitude!  And it's all told ever so matter of factly, almost so one on one without the least hint of sermonizing.  Yes, Madison has a thing or two to teach about "comebacks", redemption and RE-INVENTION thus proving that while true divas may indeed get down, they're never truly out!  

Much like the crossover success of the original Supremes, the A-side of this book presents the universal themes of growth, hope and self-confidence that transcend age, race and sexual orientations (the message is here if you're open to it!).  Dreamboy: My Life As A QVC Host & Other Greatest Hits really has all the BIG hits of a life come full-circle here in this collection!  STILL!  There is much here for that core audience of gay men of color, especially those who after a certain age, think it's too late to dream!  And not only dream, but to bring those dreams to fruition!  The author challenges us! Dares us!  With anecdotes from a common era, there is so much for me to personally relate to.  As an aspiring writer, sometimes when I read black gay authors, I often wonder what's left to write about.  But nobody can tell our own truth like we can in our own way.  That's part of the dare!  I read this book with a perpetual smile and with a few gasps, too!  Dale Guy Madison's story is an inspiring one & that inspiration goes as deep as any classic Supremes song.  He's a soul survivor!  And this book is those of us who are still here, still surviving & still dreaming, too!  The B-side hasn't been played yet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SMOOTH OPERATORS: JET MAGAZINE'S DIVA YESTERDAYS!

THIS WEEK'S BEST PHOTO: (From Jet Magazine, April 16, 1953) Glamorous singer Dorothy Dandridge was among the scores of well-wishers who welcomed home star songstress Sarah Vaughn, just back from Paris, in her opening at New York's Birdland Cafe.  Sarah Vaughn was one of Dorothy Dandridge's two favorite singers (it's said that Dinah Washington was the other!).  Good taste!  ALL of them are among my favorites.  PERIOD!  They were all absolutely distinct, completely individual and of a time when it just wasn't cool to look like, sound like, be like everyone else!  They were not trying to be each other and because of that their gifts made room for them.  During her early career, Miss Dandridge was relentlessly compared to Lena Horne, and Dinah Washington cited Billie Holiday as her most direct influence, but they were all undeniably individual and they all emerged as legends and icons in their OWN RIGHT! 

I noted the photo caption described Dorothy as a singer and not an actress, nor even singer slash actress.  Since about 1950, while Dandridge had appeared on screen in such diverse B-movie "dramatic" roles as an African queen & a reserved schoolteacher, she was still known primarily as a singer in upscale supper clubs during this time.  Her sizzling, red-hot Oscar nominated lead in the film Carmen Jones was about a year or so away.  Miss Vaughn had been around since the early 40's, and was recognized as one of the few women in be-bop.  By 1953, she had already become the smooth singing jazz innovator and consummate performer known as Sassy or Sarah ~ the Divine One, and was just making her foray into pop music!  I'm not going to front!  With her soaring highs, and swooping lows, and a career that lasted five decades, I can listen to Sarah for days on end.  She often puts me in a sublime mood!  As a singer, she's unmatched!  But it's not for singing and soothing that I turn to Dandridge.  Watching her does it for me!  Her beauty is mesmerizing!  Her movements are captivating!  She excites my senses!  She practically steals every scene of everything she was ever in because when she's on screen, your eyes are only on HER!  She was about more than just beauty!  She was about talent!  Not quite as lucky as Lena, Dorothy just never got the chance to fully prove it!

But who would have guessed that in just a few short years, Vaughn and Dandridge would run neck and neck for a hit record?  The same record!  I don't know who recorded the song, Smooth Operator first!  No!  This is not the same song Sade made popular!  This one has such cheesy lyrics like "when you kiss me, baby, my toenails curl and I'm so happy just to be your gurl".  By 1960, Vaughn had already eased into making pop records while still simultaneously singing jazz.  She had hits with such uncharacteristic Top 40 songs as Broken Hearted Melody, but I think Smooth Operator is as close to straight Rhythm & Blues as Vaughn ever got.  Like everything, she handled it with aplomb; it's danceable, fingersnapping and used to be included on a lot of R&B compilations.  But Dandridge also released a more sexy version in 1961 on the Verve jazz label - a little more fast-paced, a little more twistin'.  Can you believe it?  Dorothy Dandridge singing rock and roll?  I'm not making this up.  BOTH versions are campy FUN!  But neither was a hit!  Around this time, Vaughn's singing career was soaring but Dandridge's acting career had just about fizzled out!  She was struggling!  Odd thing, back in 1958, Dandridge had first ventured over into Vaughn territory by recording a straight jazz album on the Verve label with the Oscar Peterson Trio.  Dandridge is not singing like Dandridge, here!  She's going for Billie Holiday!  In July 1956, a few years before this recording session, Jet magazine announced that Dandridge would star in a film version of Lady Sings The Blues, the just released autobiography of Billie Holiday!  You didn't dare cross Billie Holiday or rub her the wrong way, but if she liked you - she liked you!  She had a cross section of friends and Dandridge and Holiday were reportedly amiable.  There was a meeting and Holiday approved Dandridge to play her, but we know this project never moved because it wasn't until a decade later that singer Diana Ross stepped into the title role as an actress for her own Oscar turn in 1972.  Dandridge's '58 jazz recordings were shelved, and in the same year that she passed away (1965) Ross, daughter of all these women in one way or another, was just starting to add a whole new dimension to the word diva. 

Dorothy had piggybacked on what Lena Horne started and made it her own!  She also did what Lena wanted to do but never could do by becoming the first black singer/actress to ever be nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category for her role as Carmen.  And it was a miraculous fete that she was so recognized.  She was up against singer/actress Judy Garland in A Star is Born, but even Judy didn't win.  Like many other potential movies, the Holiday role just didn't work out! The Best Actress Oscar win didn't work out for Ross either!  Many said she could have won but she didn't.  She was up against Judy Garland's daughter, Liza Minnelli for Cabaret!  It wouldn't be until FOUR decades later that non-singer Halle Berry (Best Actress Emmy winner for her SPOT-ON portrayal of Dorothy in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) would take home the statuette for Monster's Ball.  Halle had already done for Dorothy what Diana did for Billie by introducing them to a whole new generation, elevating their accomplishments & worth to a whole new and much deserved status! 

The 1955 Jet cover with Eartha Kitt asks "What (Negro) Women Singers Think Of Each Other?". 

Eartha Kitt and Dottie Dandridge were contemporaries, and while both owed tremendously to Horne, Kitt was in a class alone.  Lena Horne has said that she and Dinah Washington were friendly, and obviously Lena & Sarah thought enough of each other to come together for a charity drive in 1955 (above) while Sarah and Dinah (right, 1952 Jet) certainly had a friendly rivalry!  They were ALL consummate professionals, always brought their A-game, and were known to be brutal on a half-steppin' musician if he messed up!  Suffice it to say, that I love all the women that I've talked about here and I could go on and on about the six degrees of divadom that certainly started well before Sarah & Dorothy or Lena & Dorothy or Dorothy, Diana and Halle.  Whereas, the talent factor may not be as pronounced and unique as in days gone by, it's a connection that lasts well to the present day.  While there are valid comparisions between a few of them, they were all smooth operators who strove to bring their unique gifts & talents to the world.  And they succeeded magnificently!

Dorothy's jazz recordings were eventually released on CD in 1999 as Dorothy Dandridge: Smooth Operator!  Check out both Sarah and Dorothy's 45 versions of Smooth Operator here!  Dorothy Dandridge Smooth Operator   And here! Cool BLACK LADIES of pop-rock (Dinah Washington +2)  If these links don't work, go straight to Youtube and use the same keywords highlighted here!

PS:  Regarding BIllie's cross section of friends that I mentioned earlier - consider actress and volatile personality Tallulah Bankhead!  They look kinda cozy here in this 1951 photo from Jet! 

I did a post on their friendship earlier this year! 

See it here! GETTIN' FUNKY WITH BILLIE HOLIDAY AND TALLULAH BANKHEAD! 

Hmm!  Now, what's this SENSATIONAL trial all about?

MICHAEL & JAMIL'S BIG FAT BLACK GAY WEDDING!

There's an old saying that pictures are worth a thousand words!  And it seems everyone had an opinion about the very recent wedding of hairstylist Michael Cole Smith & his husband Jamil Smith Cole, a black Minneapolis gay couple whose wedding photographs were displayed on gossip sites, and through the private emails of all the black ho's of cyberspace.  It all started when a (now fired) secretary working in the office of the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, used company resources (and company time) to send out a much too opinionated rant against the couple.  Almost immediately, the black gossip sites lifted the wedding photos, picked up the story and launched one of the most vile homophobic tirades in recent memory.  Oh!  How they carried on something awful as only they can do!  But they weren't the only ones!  Some black gays also joined in the fracas, and some of our comments were just as mean-spirited!  While the sistahs blasted the wedding details (and wished they could rip out Michael's flowing tresses) they also ripped black gay men blaming us for the fact that they can't find what they call an "eligible" man. But the gay brothas seemed to be making a quick judgement call by attacking the newlyweds for not totally representing "us" as "we'd" like to be seen!  Huh?!  The two opposing factions seem to be in agreement that Michael Cole Smith's ceremonial outfit was just plain "wrong!".  Wrong for WHOM? 

I must admit, his fashion choices initially gave me pause, but the more I thought about it (coupled with the revelation from an on-going personal experience) I realized everything was completely RIGHT about the Smith/Cole marriage!  They had the wedding THEY wanted!  Wore they clothes (and hairstyles) THEY wanted to wear!  It didn't matter whether I really liked his Superfly-inspired tuxedo train or not.  Their choices were good choices because they represented THEM!  They did not have to consult me!  As for their getting married or having a wedding, well, they had my support 99% from jump!  So let me explain about that one percent..........

My partner and I have been together for 17 years!  We live in Ohio, and if we never get the opportunity to marry legally, I at least, want the experience of a ceremony!  A wedding!  We live on a quiet street full of well-kept post-Victorian houses in a diverse neighborhood and we're literally making our house a home with committment and .....renovation!  We argue, kiss, make-up & plan for our future; we have a real life!  We also have a late model luxury car in the driveway that we cannot drive because we don't have the finances right now to pay for the repairs.  In the meantime, we're riding in a 20-year-old tore up, broke down, rusty ass, ugly ass white van with a hole in the manifold which means that it's NOISY NOISY NOISY!  You can hear us before you see us!  But it gets us where we need to go!  Because Marv is Marv it doesn't bother him much, but the situation is quite challenging for me.  He doesn't see the sneers, jeers, the frowns, laughs and finger pointing!  And then there are those in certain more upscale areas of town who look at us like "Umph!  THEM!  I thought so!".  For awhile now, I've felt like they're looking at A PICTURE OF US IN THE VAN and making assumptions about who we are and  judgement calls without even knowing us.  Just this morning, some sistah with her hair all over her head came out of White Castle's, threw her trash on the ground, looked over at us, frowned and rolled her eyes as if to say "WHAT A PUBLIC NUISANCE!".  She was on her way to the bus stop!  We were driving!  This was a particularly funny incident but the root of my feelings are anything but!  Sometimes, I want to shout "STOP STARING AT US LIKE THAT" but what I really mean by that is "STOP JUDGING ME!"

These experiences, this apparent "judgement" goes right to the heart of that kid, young man and grown man constantly judged for being himself and not being or doing what others thought he should!  It reminds me of the constant sting of criticism and the defense mechanism of appearing perfect in public just for the sake of appearing perfect in public! It exposes the hidden insecurities of being the only African Americans on our street who aren't able to "represent" just now how we want to or how our parents taught us to!  Intrinsically, I've always known that the van does not represent our real life, who we really are!  Well, maybe it does for a minute, but it does not DEFINE us!  We often have to go to those "upscale" areas I mentioned to shop, eat and play and when we're in the van, there's a sense of "go back to where you belong".  When we're among our own, there's a sense of "you can do better than that/get it together".  Insecurites?  Indeed!  I have them!  I'm human!  But when you know better...what?...you do better! 

That's why I retract any previous statements I made about this couple!  Statements like "they just had to have known they'd attract at least some degree of negativity by being sligthtly over the top with this wedding".  The truth is that they would have gotten it anyway from some quarters!  When a friend sent me the photos, some of the text of a previous email loop was included, and I read the following statement from someone who said "the minute I saw the pictures I can easily determine what kind of neighborhoods they came from and the level of education they have, even what kind of professions they most likely have.  Then again, I am not a HATER!".  Oh Really!  This comment came from a black gay brotha, and it wasn't slanted in the postive!  I knew I had to speak up and out and divest myself of any mess that I was holding!  I couldn't be or allow anyone else to think I could be THAT rigid, and while I was trying to be aghast at someone else's choice of clothing on his very special day, I realized that man is living the life I'm trying to achieve!  He actually GOT MARRIED while I'm just CALLING MYSELF MARRIED!  I'm told both men are popular, successful business owners, and I'm sure THEY can afford to do the minor repairs on their luxury car without having to wait!  They stepped out boldly and made a real declaration about their love, who they were and what they had and said APPEARANCES BE DAMNED!  I'm not speaking for anyone but myself, but I do think a lot of us reacted to some of the photos without thinking first!  We looked at it from the perspective of how we would do it.  Or if we'd ever get the CHANCE to do it!  But some of us reacted out of hatred!  And judgement!  And there's my one percent!  Today, I renouce my own and give it up to the Smith-Cole's a total 100 percent!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A LOVER'S QUESTION? I'D LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT CLYDE McPHATTER!

"When we got ready for bed that first night I watched as he took off his battle dress, slipped off his tie and began to unbutton his shirt.  As I caught sight of his chocolate chest under the khaki, he looked up and smiled his dazzling smile.  "Ever unwrap a soldier boy before?" he asked, beckoning me over... (Ruth Brown from Miss Rhythm: The Autobiography of Ruth Brown, Rhythm and Blues Legend!)

Ruth Brown was the Queen of Atlantic Records!  During the 1950's, Atlantic was the major label producing R&B music, and the roster included Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker and Ray Charles. But the company was known as "the house Ruth built".  Ruth Brown was one of the most popular Rhythm & Blues recording artists in the industry with hits that included "5-10-15 Hours", "Wild Wild Young Men" and her signature recording "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean".  One of her popular label mates, perhaps her male counterpart at that time, was the influential and wildly popular Mr. Clyde McPhatter.  They both started out around the same time in the late 40's, and by the early 50's, they both were enjoying hits on the record charts making "race" music, laying the groundwork for what would soon become known as Rock and Roll!  McPhatter started out as the lead singer for Billy Ward and The Dominoes (for Cincinnati's King Records) with such phenomenal hits as "Have Mercy Baby".  Ward's name was out front but the group was enjoying their success at McPhatter's expense.  He left the group and moved to Atlantic Records and formed a history-making group called Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters!  Together, they had a successive run of very influential R&B hits that included the sexy "Money Honey" and the lilting "Such A Night".  Perhaps their most enduring classic is the doo-wop version of "White Christmas" which is still played in heavy rotation every Christmas season.  They were two very attractive individuals working at the same recording company!  They were two very successful young people with hits on the record charts, and in the small world of the "chitlin circuit" they worked the same venues often on the same bill!  It's natural that they'd become friends, enemies, or even lovers! 

Ruth Brown told the story in her 1996 autobiography!  She admitted that their attraction was based on mutual respect and affection!  And she admitted that it was purely sexual!  Ruth Brown also admitted that the boy wonder with the high-tenor voice was deeply troubled about his bisexuality! 

I've searched the web!  I've searched the library, the CD liner notes, and I've contacted the writer of an unauthorized, unacknowledged, and out-of-print biography (who never answered) and I still cannot find the proof!  Ruth Brown apparently knew what she was talking about!  For now, let's assume Ruth Brown is proof enough!  So what's this about?  Pure gossip!  Indulge me!

I grew up between the houses of my grandparents and other relatives.  I could go from one to the other to have my ever-growing fascination with black music idioms satisfied.  It was from my aunt's collection of old, sratchy 78rpm records that I was first enthralled with the voices of Big Maybelle and Dinah Washington.  Ruth was there, too!  But there was no Clyde McPhatter!  At least not under his own name!  I thought this was odd, especially after my aunt told me that McPhatter was one her favorite male singers.  So, of course, my next plan of action was to hear Clyde McPhatter, not realizing it was him singing lead on the Billy Ward jam "Have Mercy Baby" that I begged my aunt for.  Eventually, I heard his stuff with the Drifters and "Money Honey" was mighty sexy!  I heard the songs that he recorded (more famously) as a solo artist!  Songs like "Ta Ta" and "Without Love" but the one that I liked the most was "A Lover's Question" ~ the one he is most associated with.  To be honest, I wasn't necessarily impressed with McPhatter's vocal stylings!  No matter that he directly influenced Elvis Presley's singing style!  Indeed, McPhatter may have sung about being without love but WITHOUT McPHATTER there would be no Presley!  Okay!  Without the Rhythm and Blues stars of the 50's there would be no Elvis PERIOD!  But that's another story!  Even today, Clyde McPhatter doesn't do it for me, but let me go on record (pun entended) as saying that I highly respect his talent, influence, contribution to (and struggle in) the music industry.  His discography has rightly earned his place in history as one of the architects of rock! 

Ruth Brown describes their short-lived affair in detail in her book.  She said that despite his "girlish" mannerisms there was an "innate manliness" about Clyde McPhatter that she was immediatley attracted to.  It was something in the way they looked at each other in the Atlantic hallways.  A tease (or promise of something more whenever they said goodbye).  The chemistry got to be too much for them and they arranged to spend the weekend together.  It only happened once (according to her) while McPhatter was halfway through a quick 1954 stint in the army, hence her remark about his "battle dress".  But an initial weekend booty-call proved so good that it was extended for a few more weeks because the "consummation proved even sweeter" than the anticipation Brown shared with Pfc. Clyde L. McPatter.  See Brown (L), McPhatter (M), and label mate LaVerne Baker ("Jim Dandy" "Soul on Fire") here just around that time. 

"Like everyone else I had heard rumors of his bisexuality, and I believe towards the end he was ashamed and terrified of the outside world having his gay tendencies confirmed.  He began drinking to drown the guilt and shame he felt, sinking his career into the doldrums" says Brown.  Sooo...how exactly were those rumors confirmed?  McPhatter was a married man.  I believe he was married several times!  His alcoholism is indeed well-known, and most on-line biographers and writers of CD reissue liner notes don't shy away from that!  They ascribe his drinking to "life's problems" and "his personal demons and struggles".  Almost all of them overlook an arrest for "loitering with intent" during a failed British tour in the 60's.  When it is mentioned, details are never given.   Back around 1955, Clyde McPhatter left The Drifters for a huge solo career on the same label.  He soon left the company for Mercury where he made records that sounded like Brook Benton recordings as he used Benton's arrangers and songwriters.  The hits were sporadic, but when he hit, he hit big!  More problems with record labels followed, and by the middle 60's, while still popular with audiences, the hits had basically dried up as his style failed to adapt to the ever changing musical trends of the 60's.  Miss Brown suggested McPhatter's arrest added to his angst about his flailing career and reputation, which was that of a smooth crooning debonair ladies man.  In 1968, Brown, McPhatter and Frankie Lymon were scheduled to open at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.  Lymon didn't show up!  He'd overdosed earlier that night in his grandmother's coldwater flat.  McPhatter showed up wasted and Brown had to coax him off the stage.  It was the last time the two friends would see each other!

"Loitering with intent" usually meant lingering or hanging around in a public place where one has no particular purpose.  There has always been the question as to whether such laws are constitutional, but Ruth Brown said she spoke with McPhatter's pianist during that time and insinuated she was "in" on the situation.  She also said the charge was dropped!  Apparently there's another criminal ordinance that's under the umbrella of "loitering with intent" that regulates public drunkenness, soliciting prostitution and "lewd behavior".  Let's not forget this was the 60's and crackdowns on certain activities in public places like parks and restrooms happened on the regular.  Okay!  So now I'm moving into speculation because I don't know the details!  You may ask why would McPhatter risk his reputation in such a manner?  I say why would someone like George Michael do the same?  Why would Tevin Campbell and so many others?  We have and continue to do so!  But during this time, everything was hush-hush!  It was even more down-low than it is today!  If this happened today, McPhatter's career might survive, but back then his star was already about to flicker out!  He wasn't flamboyant like Little Richard or a brazen heterosexual in public like Sam Cooke.  Back then, being publically gay or bisexual was tantamount to having a mental illness in some circles (like the black community).  You were a social "deviant" often suspected of pedophilia.  Clyde Mcphatter was never able to bask in the glory of his early career again!  Not that he didn't make an occasionally great recording - they were just overlooked!  After his return from Britan, McPhatter descended into a maddening alcoholism that culminated in his death in 1972.  He died in his sleep of a heart attack.  He was 39 years old. 

Ruth Brown struggling in the mid-60's too!  She had mega problems with record labels, most notably Atlantic in a well publicized legal dispute over back royalties.  She couldn't pay anyone to hire her for a gig.  Things got so bad that the former Miss Rhythm, the woman who made so many millions for so many others, had to take work as a bus driver & a day maid scrubbing floors.  A brief bout with substance abuse followed.  Just when it looked like she was going down for the count, a phone call from Redd Foxx brought her back to the public eye.  Bonnie Rait, a longtime fan, chipped in with professional help and financial assistance!  Brown reinvented herself as an actress on Broadway, on TV, and in the movies.  By the 1980's, she'd resumed her recording career with a vengeance, won out over a decades long dispute with Atlantic Records, won a Tony and a Grammy too.  A bonafide survivor, she passed away at the age of 78 in 2006 after a stroke and a heart attack.  Hey!  Remember the legendary hip-hop duo Eric B. (and Rakim)?  Rakim is her nephew!

Clyde's 1958 landmark recording A Lover's Question is a 1958 pop ditty that questions a girlfriend's fidelity and has a line that asks "I'd like to know where the answer lies, is it in her kiss or is it in her eyes. I'd like to know owowow".  I'd also like to know if Clyde ever considered that he could find the answer in HIS eyes as well!  Or would it be just a sex thang like it was with Ruth?   Until the right writer or biographer comes along to tell the truth of the matter, bloggers like me can only go on speculation!

 

 

 

 

THE ORIGINAL HOUSE OF DUMAS! The Father, the Son and the Architect!

"My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where your's ends."  French writer Alexandre Dumas pere, in response to a racial insult.

Certainly, there were no monkeys in the recent family line, and that quip was less about self-denigration as it was self-affirming.  It also served as a flippant SO WHAT!  We all know a bit of something about Alexandre Dumas pere (the father), who along with Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, ranks as one of the most famous, prolific and well-respected male writers of the 19th century.  Dumas' never denied his African heritage during his lifetime, thus it was never ignored by any of his biographers.  Much has been written about that aspect of his background.  In fact, the keen examination of his paternal line are the basis for who he was in his place and time. 

I have yet to read where anyone has ever proclaimed Alexander Dumas pere to be the first man of color anywhere to ever step into the arena of literary fiction and make his mark on the world.  But I'm almost sure he was!

Among his most famous works are the novels, The Three Muskateers, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask, books that have endured the test of time well into the 21st century.  These three works are but a fraction of his fictional output ( Dumas' revision of T. A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker is THE ONE that inspired Peter Tchaikovsky to adapt it into a ballet) but these three are still required reading in schools the world over.  They are still popular with audiences having repeatedly been made into movies and television series.  It is said that one of the reasons Dumas' work has endured is because they were written with such intensity of truth and meaning.  Dumas was an intensive and an extensive researcher.  Today, many serious writers regularly travel and visit the scenes of their novels, but back then it was not very common.  Dumas routinely did so, and in turn his descriptions of landscape and geography were particularly precise and vivid; his dedication to his craft still resonates with the public five generations later.  Dumas was tall, kinky-haired and broad shouldered.  His unconventional looks in Europe, coupled with his fame, made him extremely popular with the ladies, thus he was father to many children.  He became rich and famous and truly became one of the first writers of any race to live that lifestyle!

Like father, like son!  Alexandre Dumas fils (the son) was also an author and dramatist whose fame eclipsed that of his father in many ways.   Dumas the younger, bore few (but just enough) of the physical traits that marked his father as "mulatto" or at least "other".  His biographers cite those facts as "profoundly influencing his thoughts, behaviours and writing".  However, it was more his "illegitimacy" that seemed to haunt this Dumas more than anything else.  He was almost 10 years old before his father recognized him, but when that happened Dumas pere stepped in with a vengenace and sent his son to the best boarding schools of the day to receive the best education possible.  French law allowed Dumas the elder to remove the child from his mother and in turn, her agony inspired Dumas fils to write prolifically about tragic female characters.  One of his most popular plays was The Illegitimate Son, in which he espoused the belief that if a man fathers an illegitimate child, he has an obligation to legitimize the child in any way possible, either by marriage or by law.  During the 1840's, Dumas fils wrote the romantic novel The Lady of the Camellias, which in English would be translated as Camille.  Like some of his father's works, Camille is considered a classic in literature, and serves as the basis for the Verdi opera, La Traviata.  Camille has also been dramatized in many television dramas and Hollywood movies, the most famous of which is Greta Garbo's 1935 film version.

Wait!  Let's back up!  The father and the son were but chips off the block of the architect!  Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was the real father of the house!  Born in Haiti (or Saint-Domingo as it was then know) in 1762 to a marquis of French nobility & a black slave girl named Marie-Cessette Dumas, his real name was Dumas de la Pailleterie, but he was called Thomas-Alexander.  Alexander pere insisted that when his father was born, his grandmother was promoted to the rank of wife, but there are no surviving documents to verify that assertion.  What is known is that when she died in 1772, the marquis de la Pailleterie (who recognized his son from birth) whisked him off to France where sons of noblemen, such sons of mixed-race, went to receive a more formal education and where they were numerous in number.  In France, while still no more than a teenager, Thomas-Alexander quickly made a reputation for himself as a fearlessness and expert swordsman.  His physical strength & attractiveness, and skill as a lover were becoming as equally well-known.  Supposedly, out of boredom (and against his father's wishes) he adopted his mother's name and enlisted in the army where such miraculous physical achievements as grabbing hold of the stable roof beam and lifting himself (and his horse) helped provided the groundwork for his legend.  He wanted to prove himself to himself, his father and the world, and he was in the right place at the right time.  Enter the French Revolution!  And Dumas' ascension from the bottom ranks to the top was nothing less than meteoric!  Despite his advantages, he was still a man of color, and like many other men of color after him, he viewed the bigger picture of gaining equality for the full of his community through military effort.  In February 1792 brigadier Dumas joined the all-black regiment led by the already famous Chevalier de Saint-Georges (below).  A muskateer, a composer who

directly influenced Mozart, and according to the Prince of Wales "the most attractive gentlemen of color now living", Saint-Georges would become equally as celebrated and legendary in French history. 

It was a time of natural ability, quality service and quick promotions.  By September of that same year, brigadier Dumas became a second lieutenant, the next day a first lieutenant, and three months later a lieutenant-colonel.  By July 1793, at 31 years old, he was brigadier-general of the Army of the North.  By September he was a general of division of the same army, and five days later, he was General Commander-In-Chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees.  He was known for his humanity but at the same time for his herculean efforts that caused him to be nicknamed The Black Devil!  But he was soon to meet his foe!

1796. The Emperor/General Napoleon Bonaparte (right) needed the military might and talent of General Dumas in Italy.  And Dumas' contribution did not disappoint!  They moved on to Egypt and Dumas carried his bravery with him!  But Napoleon viewed him side-eyed with discomfort, then more fully from the perspective of a green-eyed monster.  They clashed!  Dumas' insisted on going back home to France, and refusing to let him leave, and after making his life and career in Egypt miserable, Bonaparte relented and said "let him go!".  And he'd never have another command in the French army again!  But on the way home, his life would take an unexpected turn.  His life, up to this point was equal to any of the dramatic escapades of the characters created by his future offspring, and before leaving, General Dumas purchased four thousand pounds of Mocha coffee, eleven Arabian horses, and chartered a small-scale vessel to travel home.  A fierce storm arose. The vessel sprang a leak.  Ten pieces of cannon, the only defense went overboard followed by all the Arabian horses, followed by all the coffee, followed by all the personal effects of the crew.  Off the coast of Naples, they made it to dry land where Dumas thought they were in friendly territory.  He was in for a rude awakening when he was imprisoned by the Neapoitan authorities for almost three years before being released.  During that time, his health deteriorated and his spirit almost broken.  Finally released in 1802, he spent his remaining five years at home writing letter after letter to Napoleon, pleading for his portion of the Neapolitan indemmity that was his due, in addition to the arrears of his salary that belonged to him.  He'd made an enemy of Napoleon, and the emperor never relented even after death when General Dumas' wife ( Marie-Louise Labouret) took up the plea.  

However, that same year (1802) a son was born that bore his father's physical characteristics!  Father and son adored each other and were very close in their short time together.  They were inseperable and Alexandre Dumas pere would remain loyal to the memory of his father for the rest of his life.  He'd grow up and (for awhile) lift the family out of poverty to great riches and redeem their social standing.  He'd sire his own son, Dumas fils, who would lift them once again.  Thomas Alexander-Dumas died in 1806 at the age of 44.  Alexander Dumas pere died in 1870 of natural causes.  Dumas fils was born in 1824 and passed in 1895.   

Since that time, there have been many members of the house of Dumas, the literary house created by the father and the son.  Consider Charles Chestnutt and James Weldon Johnson!  Consider Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman and Rudolph Fisher!  Think about Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin all the way up to Amiri Baraka, John Edgar Wideman and Walter Mosley!  They inherited the legacy, the membership by simply by birth!  And as things change, the more they stay the same!  So it is with the new Same-Gender-Loving inhabitants of the house! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE EX-COLOURED MEN! PASSING FANCIES, FANCY PASSES AND PASSING STRANGE PART 2

Is President Barack Obama (the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother) really our first "black" president?  According to some historians, both black and white, there have been at least six previous United States presidents who've had known black ancestry! 

While the more "mainstream" historians remain skeptical, these type of allegations garner the most interest among African Americans primarily because they recognize all the possibilities of truth in the assertions.  It is also recognized that in American politics race has always been used by unscrupulous political opponents to incite, excite or otherwise smear whoever and whatever they wished.  Regardless, most all seem to agree that our nation's 34th president Dwight Eisenhower and Warren G. Harding, our 29th U.S. president, are the most likely candidates.  It is said that Eisenhower's mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower was a woman of color.  Something about a mysterious maternal grandfather who carried the surname of Link, and there being only two Links families in the Virginia town they originated in ~ a black one and a white one.  And something about interviews conducted with elderly area blacks during the 1950's who long remembered the references to Eisenhower's mother as "that black Links gal".  But perhaps the evidence that raised the proverbial eyebrow was the 1885 wedding day photograph of the president's parents which many say is all the evidence they need!  (Wow! I just had a flashback of being a little boy and my grandfather, a fair-skinned man with straight hair teaching me how to examine features to determine if someone was passing or not).  Okay Corey, back to center....speculation, all of it!  But look at Mrs. Eisenhower for yourself!  What do you see?  I've known many women who looked just like her, and men who looked like her son the president ~ people who called themselves black because it was their choice to do so!  Or perhaps because they didn't have a choice not to do so! 

Warren G. Harding never flat out denied the accusations, and when pressed for a response, he referenced the old "nigger in a woodpile" comment with "how would I know who my grandparents jumped the fence with?"  Interesting comment considering how much trouble his white biographers have gone through to provide him with an English and Dutch ancestry!  More interesting still is that Harding attended college at Iberia College (renamed Ohio Central College), a school in Iberia OH founded to educate fugitive slaves.  This makes perfect sense to Marsha Stewart, the black author of Warren G. Harding, U.S. President 29: Death By Blackness (2005).  She states that Harding's black ancestors escaped slavery in the south to the north by way of the Underground Railroad, and that she ought to know because she's Harding's fifth cousin.  She traces their common ancestors (right) back to the black settlers of Isabella, Montcalm and Mecosta counties in central Michigan. Warren Harding's immediate family remained in Ohio, but other branches moved to Michigan, according to Mrs. Stewart, who said those are the Hardings from whom she is descended. While his presidency is dismissed as ineffectual, whispers of black ancestry weren't the only rumors that swirled around Harding; he was most certainly one of our nation's most scandalous, which some have tried to blame on that very colorful strain of ancestry.  For a complete (and very convincing) breakdown on Harding's heritage, presidency and personal life, visit the link here: www.stewartsynopsis.com/warren_gamaliel_harding.htm

"I am a Negro!  My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blonde.  The triaits of my race are nowhere visible upon me."  So says Walter F. White, whose seminal work against public segregation & disfranchisement with the NAACP during the early twentieth century achieved a success unparalleled in the history of civil rights, in his 1948 autobiography A Man Called White.  Ironically named, White, whose five black great-great-great-grandparents (the other 27 were all white) aggresively and purposely chose to align himself with the black community.  Wait!  He did pass now that I think of it!  As part of his "field work", Walter F. White used his appearance to advantage by traveling south to investigate as many as 41 lynchings and at least eight race riots.  He could "pass" and infiltrate the white community while also being able to identify himself in the black community.  In 1919, he narrowly escaped his own death by lynching in Phillips County, Arkansas while there investigating the deaths of 250 blacks killed in an effort to discourage the collective organization by African American cotton farmers.  White's strong racial ties to the black community had root in another act of violence that took place in his Atlanta, GA childhood. Inflamed by false stories of black men raping white women (that lie goes back A LONG TIME!) maurauding whites terrorized blacks in the Atlanta area with White and his father barely escaping injury with their saving grace were their ivory complexions.  But when they got back to the black community the danger became more of a reality.  White's family was easily recognizable in the community and they were immediately targeted.  Young Walter's father positioned him in the window with a rifle and told him not to miss.  "In that instant, there opened up within me a great awareness; I knew who I was.  I was a Negro, a human being with an invisible pigmentation that marked me as a person to be hunted, hanged, abused, discriminated against, kept in poverty, and ignorance, in order that those whose skin was white would have readily at hand proof of their superiority so that no matter how low a white man fell, he could always hold fast to the smug conviction that he was superior to two-thirds of the world's population."  Traditionally, for many reasons, and not only among blacks, those who passed have garnered a wide range of negative reactions, but do we love Walter White for passing or what?

It seems to defy logic why Charles King, a successful geologist and author of one of the most well-known books of the late nineteenth century would suddenly (and secretly) change his identity to become James Todd, a light-skinned black man supposedly working as a railroad Pullman-porter.  Was it a type of social or scientific study?  Better opportunities often influenced black-to-white passing during the post-Reconstruction era and in early twentieth century America, but Clarence King (a white man) already had everything men of color who were fair-skinned enough to pass desired - comfort, respect, prestige and position.  What would make a man like Charles King flip the script and introduce a whole new aspect to the experience of passing? For thirteen years (and five children later) Charles King represented himself as James Todd, a light, bright and damned near white man for the love of a woman ~ an ex-slave woman named Ada Copeland.  And in the days in which one drop of black blood would distinguish a black man from a white one, his story was totally plausible.  In fact, he supposedly never even told his wife.  She supposedly didn't find out until she received a deathbed letter from Charles King (his fabricated job  kept him "traveling and away from home" much of the time) dying in another part of the country.  King, while known for being highly intelligent, and well-respected among his friends, never seemed to find his own niche in the world.  He moved easily among the rich and famous, and counted several American millionaires as his closest friends.  In fact, it was they whom he lived off, receiving countless "loans" and "donations" over many years to help sustain his own existence, that of an ailing mother, a few siblings, in addition to his black wife and growing family of color.  He consistently moved them up higher into "society" but when his poor health eventually deteriorated to a deathbed confinement, he had to tell the truth!  But other than to Ada, who did he tell it to?  Charles King was twenty years Ada Copeland's senior, and she outlived him some 60 years, dying at the age of 103 in 1964.  So what happened after King passed away way back in 1903 and wasn't around to keep his family in luxury anymore?  How did Ada Copeland cope?  Martha Sandweiss tells it all in the critically acclaimed new book, Passing Strange.

There was none craftier than Ellen Smith!  The daughter of a Clinton GA slave owner and his mixed-raced slave quarter mistress, young Ellen often ran afoul of her father's white wife until she was given away at the age of eleven as a wedding present to another family member.  In 1846, she met and fell in love with William Craft, a dark-skinned slave on a neighboring plantation in Macon, Georgia where they devised a deliciously dangerous scheme to escape the peculiar institution of slavery which held them in bondage.  Often mistaken for being one of the "legitimate" family members, Ellen cut her long hair short, adopted a swagger, swaddled her jaw in bandages (to mask a lack of facial hair) and passed herself off as a man!  A white man!  And William?  He played the role as the dutiful and attentive slave!  Craft's face poultice  served to discourage conversation with strangers, and to mask her illiteracy, she kept her right arm in a sling as an excuse for not being able to sign any papers.

Traveling to Philadelphia for "medical treatment" it took them only four days to reach a Quaker farm where they stayed a few weeks before moving on to Boston.  In Boston, they quickly became the darlings of the abolitionist set that included William Lloyd Garrison and William Wells Brown.  Brown, also an escaped slave arranged for the Crafts to make appearances at abolitionist meetings where a fee was charged for admission.  The money was given to the Crafts to help them settle in a local free-black community where William used his skill as a furniture maker to earn a living.  But due to the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, they were soon on the run again!  They made it to England where they had five children and met with even greater success in life, but after the Civil War, they were back home again in the states where they endured one hardship after another in the quest to make better their own lives (and the lives of the former slaves of the American South).  While not a transgendered man, by Ellen Craft's triple-play, we've seen that one could (and often did) pass along lines of gender as well. 

In Part One of this two-part post, we examined the "one drop rule" introduced into late nineteenth century U.S. legislation, that designated any individuals with any known black ancestry as African Americans no matter what they looked like or how far back that "black blood" went.  Although the phenomenon known as passing was practiced well back during slavery, black-to-white passing reached a fever pitch as those who were light-skinned enough chose to represent themselves as something other as to circumvent the repressive and discriminatory laws that were commonplace in our country.  By the 1950's, racial passing was quickly becoming a passing fancy of the past.  Consider the text from a vintage page out of Jet magazine, whose chronicle of racial passing often bordered on obsession... "with new and greater opportunities, the Negro is competing more and more on even terms with other men in a competitive society.  The faster he becomes equally integrated into the American economy, the slower he will be to resort to the peculiar American sociological phenomenon of passing".  I guess for the most part this assessment was a true one, but the story can't fully be tidied up in a happy ending.  There are still the vestiges of passing that we have to deal with.  Some children, and grandchildren who had no idea their forebearers passed often have to grapple with a new identity in addition to the one they've always known.  Mixed-race individuals have more freedom of choice, and often choose to embrace all the branches of their family tree.  Still, others deal with a racial self-hatred that has its root in the politics of complexion.  Some who passed for years, like the family of Dr. Albert Johnstons (pictured in the articles) sought to come "back home" and were often met with the rude awakening that they could never come home again!  At least not without a price to pay.  There always seemed to be a price!  And even the most successful ended up never really able to fully pay the cost to be the boss!  Indeed, there were a few fancy passes, but there were far too many more passing fancies who just ended up passing strange!

 

 

 

LADIES FIRST! PASSING FANCIES, FANCY PASSES AND PASSING STRANGE!

The one-drop rule!  Meaning anyone with any known black ancestry, no matter how far back it was acquired, classified you as a black person.  No amount of white ancestry counted!  Ninety-nine and a half just wouldn't do!  It had to be no less than one hundred percent!  That "one drop" (or traceable amount) automatically assigned racially mixed individuals in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth century an Afro-American race card.  The one-drop rule was a concept created in the U.S. South to codify and strengthen segregation and disfranchisement most notably among those of black African descent.  Post-Reconstruction white legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws of segregation and restriction in myriad areas from accomodation & employment to interracial relationships.  No doubt, some of these same Supreme Court decisions were passed by former slave-owners and overseers  who helped create the many mixed and multi-racial people that they now sought to further subjugate. 

Consider the case of Anita Hemmings.  I have not found any evidence that Miss Hemmings was descended from the families produced from the infamous union of Thomas Jefferson and his "near white" slave girl, Sally Hemmings, but it would not be a surprise if she was.  Many of them were light-skinned enough to blend into white society without notice and many of them did.  On the other hand, many of them proudly professed that they were people of color.  Race couldn't be denied for Anita Hemmings's Boston parents who were both bi-racial and identified as "black" but sent their daughter off to Vassar College as a white girl in 1897.  She quickly established herself as an exceptional student, mastering Latin, ancient Greek and French.  But her roommate wasn't buying the charade!  She voiced her suspicions to her prominent father who immediately hired a private investigation into the background of Miss Hemmings's Boston upbringing.  It was only a few weeks before graduation, but she was not destroyed!  She was allowed to graduate!  After graduation Hemmings married one Dr. Andrew Love, who eventually built a prosperous Madison Avenue medical practice.  Dr. Love was also "passing" for white, and together they raised three very successful children and raised them into white adulthood.  The point?  The phenomenon of passing was a direct result of the so-called "one drop rule".  For large numbers of fair-skinned African Americans at the turn of the century, passing was a means of gaining opportunities that never would have otherwise been optional to them as blacks.  Even for families of color who had risen to a level of educational, economic, and professional aspiration, they were still excluded from most of the elite institutions.  Their dreams of a better life were most often deferred.  Those who chose to cross the "color line" paid a heavy price!  In order to fully gain the opportunities they sought, they had to give up all familial and social ties to their community of origin.  They denied parents, siblings and forgot themselves as they moved forward often never looking backward. 

Writer James Baldwin once called her a "dog-assed" actress!  And if her acting abilities were questionable to some, it could never be denied that Merle Oberon was one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood during the 1930's and 40's!  Few knew that the British actress now appearing in American films was born in Bombay, India to a woman of color named Charlotte Selby (below right) and a British engineer working on the Indian Railways.  Or maybe that woman of color was actually her grandmother and not her mother after all!  Perhaps that woman of color passed as Merle's mother to raise her for her own daughter Constance!  Merle's actual parentage has remained deliberately cloudy, and during her reign as one of Hollywood's true beauty queens, she worked hard at obscuring it.  Throughout her professional career, she maintained that she had been born and raised in St. Helens, a beachside resort on the east coast of Australia.  And since there was no proof,  she declared all pertinent records had been burned in a fire!  Oberon would also work hard at her craft, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in The Dark Angel (1937), and one of her most famous film roles is Cathy in 1939's Wuthering Heights.  As she climbed the ladder of success, her mother (above left) caught up with her in Hollywood, moved in and joined the masquerade by passing herself off as her daughter's live-in maid.  By 1950, Oberon's career was all but over, but she remained a well-respected personality in her community.  Since her death in 1979, there have been a number of books, a documentary and a television mini-series, all of which have examined her convoluted background.  Although black-to-white passing is considered the most classic type of racial passing, Merle Oberon's case proves it was certainly not the only form.

Fredi Washington could have passed as white if she wanted to, and in 1930's Hollywood, she was often urged to do just that!  In her private life, she was a fierce "race" woman, but on-screen she was the ultimate "tragic mulatto" ~ usually a female of mixed-race, torn between two worlds and never able to be comfortable in either.  She was miserable and in turn, made everyone else's life miserable too!  She was often portrayed as despising her heritage, especially that aspect of it that made her "black" and in her decision to pass, tragedy was her destiny and death was often her reward for turning her back on "her people".  Miss Washington was born in Georgia into a multi-racial family in 1903, traveled to New York City as a young woman and quickly established herself as a beauty with a personality to be reckoned with.  She started her career as a dancer in some of the most well-known Harlem chorus-lines of the early 1920's, including the legendary Shuffle Along!  She was wooed by some of the most wealthy white "stage door johnnies" of the time, but preferred to have affairs with the likes of Paul Robeson, and other dark-skinned men in her profession and in her own community.  White-hot and soulful, it was inevitable that Fredi Washington would appear before the film camera.  She starred in a number of film shorts made for black audiences, and actually co-starred with Robeson in The Emperor Jones (1933) where she had to darken her ivory skin with a gross makeup so it wouldn't appear Robeson was being lovey-dovey with a white woman.   Fredi is most well-known for her groundbreaking performance as Peola, the black girl who passes as white, in the original 1934 movie, Imitation Of Life (not to be confused with the more famous 1959 remake with Lana Turner).  Peola is sullen, disrespectful and hates her mother and herself, and Washington played her to absolute perfection.  She should have been nominated for an Oscar, but it was Hollywood, circa 1934.  She would have a few more Hollywood film roles but by 1940 it was all over!  What do you do with a black actress in the 1930's who looked like she did?  Maybe disappointed, but certainly not deterred, Fredi Washington went on to make a name for herself on the stage, work as a theater writer, and otherwise live a life that Peola could never imagine for herself as a black woman.  She was a founding member of the Negro Actors Guild of America which worked for better opportunities and roles for black actors.  Washington was an early mentor to Lena Horne as she began her Hollywood career in the 1940's, and in the 50's, she was influential in helping to cast Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones.  Throughout her life, she worked tirelessly with the NAACP and other civil-rights organizations, but despite her efforts in the community, the spectre of Peola always unfairly haunted Washington!  She died in 1994 at the age of 92.

I guess it could be said that Elsie Roxborough chose to be tragic!  She seemingly had everything going for her!  It looked as though she was quite comfortable playing the role of a Black American Princess born into a prominent African American Detroit family.  She was the daughter of Charles A. Roxborough, Michigan's first black state senator, and the niece of John Roxborough (who made a fortune as Detroit's no. 1 numbers king).  During the depression of the 1930's, the Roxborough's lived in a large house with live-in maids, and summered at black resort communities like Idlewild in northern Michigan.  Tall, slightly tanned, and talented, the beautiful, young Elsie was regularly mentioned in the society pages of African American newspapers that monitored her love life and followed her every move.  She imagined for herself a career as a writer and playwrite that by all indications got off to a promising start.  She founded her own black theater company and struck up a close friendship with writer/poet Langston Hughes.  Perhaps she wrote too much about what she knew - the black uppercrust, which caused her work to be routinely panned by African American critics as "unrealistic".  Roxborough desired legitimate work in the theatre that just wasn't forthcoming, and in 1937, she dyed her hair a shade of auburn and passed into the larger society.  By Christmas of that same year, the Baltimore Afro-American reported that Elsie had been living as "Nordic" much to her family's "undisguised disgust".  She had traveled to South America, brushed up on her Spanish and became Pat Rico, a white Greenwich Village model.  Perhaps a little too dark for certain tastes, she changed her name again and became Mona Manet while operating a modeling studio in Manhattan. Those who remember Elsie Roxborough remember a self-confident, ambitious and happy young woman firmly entrenched in her community and family of origin!  Those who remember Mona Manet remember a beautiful but sad social butterfly on the verge of living a lush life in some small dive.  There is stong evidence that Elsie Roxborough never completely cut off ties with her family, as some of them were also light enough to pass as well.  It was those fair-skinned family members who were called when Mona's roommate found her dead in the apartment they shared in 1949.  People like to say that Elsie/Mona committed suicide at the age of 35. Her death certificate states she died of "congestion of the viscera". There were no obits in the New York papers under any of her aliases, but when the African-American papers got wind of her passing, it was banner headlines; they said she died of "nerves".  The passing of Elsie Roxborough, both literally and figuratively, elicits many different responses in African Americans.  Some offer compassion and try to understand that black America expected much of her, that she may have expected more of herself, and as Elsie she couldn't deliver (or didn't try) but as Mona she still failed!  And some others say..well, she had it coming!

Belle da Costa Greene was born Belle Marian Greener in Washington D.C., in 1879 into another elite family of color.  Her mother's family had been free, prosperous and light-skinned for decades during slavery. Her father, Richard T. Greener (below) was born bi-racial and a slave, but pulled himself up so high as to become the first black graduate of Havard (class of 1870).  He worked tirelessly and diligently toward the "uplift" of the race, and went on to become an attorney, a U.S. Diplomat, and  served as the dean of the Howard Law School.  Maybe his wife wasn't quite so proud or quite so connected.  Maybe Greener was a bit too unattentive to his wife and family (that his marriage eventually resulted in divorce).  And while it can't be denied that he passed to them ambition, he failed miserably in instilling any race pride in his children, for after the divorce, they all changed their names (including his ex-wife) and passed for white and never looked back!   But Belle was exceptional!  At Princeton University, she began her undergrad studies in rare books and manuscripts.  There, she would meet the nephew of the multi-millionare J.P. Morgan, and he would arrange an interview with his uncle that would literally change the lives of both individuals.  Now known as Miss Greene, and claiming a more acceptable Portugese ancestry to explain her darker coloring, Belle "da Costa" Greene stepped into a world unimaginable had Morgan known of her ancestry.  Race aside, Greene's ascension to the heights in her field was exceptional for a woman of any race in the early twentieth century.  She became Morgan's very close confidant who helped to shape his world-renowned collection of rare books and art at the Pierpont Morgan Library in Manhattan, eventually becoming the director there for twenty-five years.  By association, she entered a whirlwind world of fine dining at some of the most prestigious tables in America, trips abroad for both work and pleasure, and scores of romances with rich and powerful men.  Greene was known as something of a firecracker with an acerbic wit. She was at home in bohemian Greenwich Village as well as among the upper crust.  There was always talk about her coloring and whispers about her background but apparently nobody took it seriously, least of all J.P. Morgan.  Belle da Costa Greene was unapologetically unconventional, free-spirited and sassy.  She didn't care who said what about her coloring...or maybe she did since she often joked about it in very unflattering and hateful racial terms.  She too, fought to keep her background hidden but she also fought for and won respect as an individual and as a woman.  A white woman!  She died in New York in 1950.

I'd like to say this post is not about re-claiming people who didn't want to be claimed!  What would be the point?  They were the ones who passed and wanted to be something and someone else! I will admit to being fascinated with the whole idea of living double, or presenting ourselves as something or someone we're really not.  But if it weren't about re-claiming, I wouldn't have the fascination!  I'm not necessarily mad at them for their decisions and I tried to present them without judgement.  I personally don't see this whole early phenomenon of racial "passing" as some kind of imbred racial hatred on the part of the person who passed.  Not totally!  I don't particularly feel betrayed, but maybe that's a feeling in retrospect as compared to being a contemporary of the person with the fancy for passing.  Still, I think it was a very sad predicament to fine oneself in. The threat of being found out, of possibly being ruined both socially, professionally and financially, and of having to give up everything remains intriguing for me.  Perhaps, my attraction is really a mediation on what could have been if I had been born in a different generation as a gay man.  With talk a'plenty about men who are basically homosexual at heart, but who live on the "down-low" as heterosexuals is proof that there are still a few vestiges of passing prevalent in our culture today, but that is really not a new thing.  As those who formerly passed the color line stepped in line with their oppressors & became loud and fervent bigots so as not to draw any suspicion and blow their cover, so it is today!  It's now just talked about like racial passing used to be.  Today, while some people of mixed-race certainly still have identity issues, they are more prone to embrace all of who they are without the exclusion of one element over another.  And so they should!  While this continues to make many among us angry, with racial passing no longer relevant or certainly not as prevalent, they now have the choice (like all of us) with not having to settle with making fancy passes, being a passing fancy or just having to pass strange! 

White women passing as white men, black women passing as white men, black men passing as white men and white men passing as black men!  It remains utterly fascinating!  Look for And Now The Men! Part two of Passing Fancies, Fancy Passes and Passing Strange!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANAL RETENTIVE KNOWLEDGE!

I'm so anal! And so are you if you participate in any kind of man-to-man sex on a regular basis!  A few years ago, certified Sexologist and Community Health Activist/Advocate Jai Evans, wrote an excellent essay on anal health, with an emphasis on douching for gay men that's getting a lot of attention all over again, and deservedly so!  There are so many levels of approach to such an important topic for same-gendered identified men that such talk should not be considered taboo.  But for some reason, for some of us, it remains so!  And it may not be surprising that those men among us are the ones who probably need the information the most!  The young ones want to know, need to know it, but the old ones can't tell it because some of them don't know it either! 

Evans, who used the moniker Intelekt, originally intended for his essay, which he called Anal Douching: Part 1 to be part of a series on anal health issues.  He introduced the initial essay this way:  This series is something that men that identify as bottom or versatile need to pay close attention to. It is also a subject that top men need to be very aware of. The proper awareness and healthy anal decision making in our community is something that touches off more discussions than just physical health or cleanliness. It also touches on a deep discussion of internalized sexual phobia, and internalized homophobia that we rarely talk about. It plays into fantasy and the body as a model for that fantasy, and the reality of what we are doing physically in our bedrooms. This topic brings up more issues than just wanting to keep the "stick" clean; it is about myths and facts that in many cases are worlds apart. In this series I hope to address the digestive system, myths, taboos, and other important social issues around anal heath. 

And then he got down to the brass tactics...

The notion of cleanliness is not often associated with our "gluteus maximus", "ass", or "kudunkadunk" ; whichever you prefer to describe the place of hollowness that is both admired and detested by people in our society. However, within the SGL/Gay/ Bisexual/ SSD Communities there is a major amount of pressure put on "receptive players" to be immaculate. This is a pressure that has caused health problems for men later in their lives, and it also has created a sentiment of hostility within the community, which is filled with people with little to no biological understanding of the digestive system. It is imperative that people understand how their bodies work so that they may make better choices and decisions for live healthier lives.

It is amazing to me when I hear stories from friends and clients about their sexual exploits, how naive we all are about the proper usage of enemas. Many men are using feminine hygienic products thinking that if it's good enough to clean a woman's vagina it is good enough to clean a man's rectum. This could not be further from the truth. Summer's Eve and the like products are not created to clean the rectum and thus are filled with ingredients that leave the rectum in a very unhealthy state. The insert caps can also tear the mucous membranes, leaving you more susceptible to being infected for a number STD's and HIV. It is my recommendation that you use safe products like Fleet enema, also read the ingredients, and stay away from vinegars. If you are planning on giving your man a treat, make sure that he uses a condom as the entry tip may leave abrasions and small cuts leaving you more open to infection of HIV and other STD's.

I understand very clearly the want and desire to be clean when having sex (for some people), but we must put aside some of the myths that we hold on to and believe. Many people who may think they may be physical after a date or when in cruise mode will not eat certain foods. We have to understand that the enema that you are taking only cleans out the foods from 48 hours prior to your cleaning. You see the body takes 48 hours to digest food. So that steak you ate two days ago is the product that you are actually cleaning. When taking an enema please allow at least 2 hours before any sexual activities take place. This allows any fluid that you did not excrete to make its way down to leave the body. This will allow your body to relax and for you to have a peace of mind that you wont give your partner or yourself a very unwelcome surprise.

The use of enemas can cause complications if used to often. I had a client who claimed to use enemas every 3 days. I was shocked and perplexed to hear his story, as he had no idea the possible damage he could be doing to himself. I explain thoroughly why it is important to tone down enema usage. Many men do not know that with your rectum are bacteria and oils that help facilitate bowel movement. When you use an enema not only do you clean out the feces, but you also clean out necessary bacteria and oils that are created by your anal glands. This causes the body to have to grow the bacteria again. After, you use the enema at such an unhealthy rate it becomes harder for the bacteria to grow back and for the oils to be produced. This means that your body canpossibly move to depending on your enema use to facilitate the essential body cleaning process. This can both be a problem and a financial and embarrassing dilemma. To replace the needed oils and bacteria necessary for a healthy digestive system recommend eating yogurt will be your best friend.

Do not get me wrong their can be major problems when dealing with other peoples fecal matter, including Hepatitis B and parasites, so cleaning up is a very healthy and necessary part of anal intercourse or anal play. This also means using protection and cleaning all toys and dildos thoroughly each and every single time you play, making sure you do not share toys, and covering dildos with condoms.

Pretty poignant stuff, huh?  Mr. Evans abruptly ended his essay on the note of dealing with sex toys, but there are so many other related topics like oral-anal contact, the digestive system, and psychological issues surrounding anal sex and health.  Questions are posed such as how to correctly use a douching apparatus, even down to making hard decisions on whether bottoming is best for some of us or not!  To my knowledge, Jai Evans never produced part two of his intended series.  Wherever he is, I'm seriously hoping that he gets wind that a lot of people are reading again and talking again, and perhaps he will be inspired to enlighten us again!

Jai Evans has been seen on BET's "Meet The Faith" "Black Men: The Truth" and CNN's "On Record with Paula Zahn", and BET's "Meet the Faith".  He has written several curriculums around diversity, sexuality, and HIV Prevention. He was awarded a Black Man of Integrity Award from the Black Business Alliance of New York City in 2005.  His volunteer work includes working with New Jersey States Day Reporting Centers with formerly incarcerated individuals and with the Community Advisory Board of Project WOW in Newark, NJ, which focuses on adolescent gay men and their health.  As of 2007 Jai Evans had dual residency in New York City and Jersey City, NJ.  The essay Anal Douching: Part 1 originally appeared on the website, GBMNews.

 

 

FOR A BEAUTIFUL BLACK BOY....

The model is Keyontyli Goffney!  And he is a professional model!  As well as having appeared in television commercials, television shows and on billboards, he's been showcased on websites and in fashion spreads for magazines, and it's been said that he recently held a backstage position on The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency.   The road hasn't been easy!  There have been mistakes!  One of Keyontyli's favorite quotations is "the people with the greatest capacity for good are the one's with the greatest capacity for evil".  His is the type of appeal that crosses genders & makes you route for him to rise and succeed, and there are many who are doing just that!  Someone said "he is not famous for his face".  We beg to differ!  His face is legendary and his physical beauty is for the ages!

Muhammad al-Nawaji bin Hasan bin Ali bin Othman, alternately known as Muhammad al-Nawaji, also known as Shams al-Din, as well as by Hafiz, was by some accounts, a native resident of Cairo, Egypt or a Persian poet born in Shiraz, an ancient city in the south of what is now Iran.  What most definitely is known about him is that he was more than just the greatest lyrical poet of the fourteenth century (1383-1485), he was a well-respected lawyer, mystic and teacher in the high courts of the Islamic colleges where he led the mystical prayer services, which has lead some historians to highly suspect that he was also a Sufi.  Thus, in accordance with the practices of the times, he was also a lover of young men.  In fact, his famous ghazal, or The Meadows Of The Gazelles, is a collection of short poems couched in stunning imagery that pay tribute to the many beautiful young men that Hafiz must have seen and met on his travels (which included two pilgrimages to Mecca).  In presenting a few of the mystic's ancient poems here, I wanted to juxtapose them against the handsomeness and allure of a young man who is by all accounts desperately trying to prove to the world that, he is as intelligent, contrite and triumphant as he is physically beautiful.  I am hard pressed to imagine that Hafiz ever met any young men as beguiling as Keyontyli Goffney!  But then again, he was a mystic.  Perhaps he could see into the future!

For a beautiful black boy

Aroused, he exhales
The intense perfume of his musk.
The sight of his face, lit by a ray of light
Imprints itself.

So arresting is his beauty,
So limitless its power,
That the gaze of those parched for love
Envelops him in tenderness,

And the caress of all those black eyes
Has daubed his body
With their magic color.

To a handsome boy with ink-stained lips

Before this mouth smeared with ink,
A precious box filled
With adorable pearls, I cry out,

"What is this strange sign?
A talisman to avert the evil eye
From him we cherish . . .
Or a seal for the mouth of the jar
Enclosing the wine of pleasure?"

 

The Woman I Love

(adressed to a boy)

Because the Woman I Love
Lives inside of you,

I lean as close to your body with my words As I can -

And I think of you all the time, dear pilgrim.

Because the One I love goes with you
Wherever you go,
Hafiz will always be near.

If you sat near me, wayfarer,
With your aura bright from your many
Charms,

My lips could resist rushing to you and needing
To befriend your blushed cheek,

But my eyes can no longer hide
The wondrous fact of who
You Really are.

The Beautiful One whom I adore
Has pitched His royal tent inside of you,

So I will always lean my heart
As close to your soul
As I can.

For a Turk boy

I have chosen from among the sons of the Turks
A young male gazelle.
In my burning desire to possess him
I have consumed my life to no purpose.

I asked him one day
"What will put out the fire
That you have lit in me,
O, most fearsome of men?"
He answered, "My lips."

For a pretty seller of cucumbers

God! How beautiful, this young
Cucumber seller, and a face to make
The sun itself blush at noontime.

The day he agreed to a tender meeting
I was overwhelmed.
Ah, how I savored
That mouthful of cucumber.

From: Muhammad al-Nawaji - The Meadow of the Gazelles

 

 

 

 

 

 

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT HARRY! BELAFONTE, that is!

Before Boris Kudjo!  Before Henry Simmons!  Before Shemar Moore, Rockmond Dunbar, Jensen Atwood or Marcus Patrick, there was Harry Belafonte!  This really isn't about comparision because those younger brothers have a long way to go before they can ever touch the hem of Harry's garment but when it comes to handsome men, those pretty black men we call heartthrobs, Harry Belafonte is the Mackdaddy!  And yet, it was a label he rejected early because he was about so much more than capitalizing and cashing in on his extraordinary good looks, and he was determined that one day we'd all know it.  That day has come and gone, we know it and now we can look back past the grand design of his illustrious career, break it down and say without hesitation "Damn! That man was phione!".  Not long ago, I found the stunning photographs used here and I knew that I had to post them on this blog.  I had to find a reason without exactly doing a full-scale biography. There are so many prolific things I could say about Harry Belafonte ~ his legendary and groundbreaking work in film and television, the folk songs and calypso albums that have made recording history, and his continuing work as a civil rights activist & humanitarian.  Harry Belafonte is one of my heros, and this is not to disrespect him in any way, but I think these photos are so fabulous that they speak for themselves, and wanting to share these photos is ENOUGH reason to share these photos!  Feel me?

Harry Belafonte was born on March 1, 1927 in New York City, the son of Jamaican immigrants.  From 1935 to 1940, he lived with his grandmother in her native country of Jamica and developed a love of his West Indian heritage that would be a part of the fabric for almost everything he'd do commercially.  His career jumpstarted with the RCA album Calypso (1956) when it became the first LP to sell over 1 million copies, spend 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. music charts.  Earlier, during WWII, Belafonte served in the Navy, where he told his superiors that he was Lena Horne's cousin so he wouldn't have to work so hard, and even promised that she come sing for them "if his commander, who was a bit gay, didn't bother him too much".  During the latter 1940's, he took acting classes at the famed Dramatic Workshop of The New School alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, and it was here that he'd meet his lifelong friend & brother Sidney Poitier. 

In addition to Belafonte in his tight pants and open shirts, the 1950's would usher in an influx of black talent like Eartha Kitt, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier and especially Miss Dorothy Dandridge; they didn't come from out of nowhere but it was in the 50's when they'd hit their apex. By 1954, Harry Belafonte was thrilling movie audiences (especially black Americans and white women) in his co-starring roles on the big screen with the sizzling hot Dorothy Dandridge.  They starred in three movies together, but their blazing performances in 1954's Carmen Jones is the stuff of legend.  Who could forget Harry, as the whipped army private, blowing on Miss Dandridge's freshly painted toenails?  Much like Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams in the 70's, they were the perfect Hollywood "dream" couple of the 1950's ~ in the movies as well as on again/off again in real life.

Dissatisfied with the dearth and the types of movie roles available to a black actor in the 50's, Belafonte gave up his acting career in 1959 to concentrate more on his music career.  His recordings like 1959's Belafonte: At Carnegie Hall -The Complete Concert & Jump Up Calypso (1961) are considered classics, while other of his recordings enjoyed great commercial success as well.  In the 1960's, he introduced the talented South African artist Miriam Makeba to American audiences, and went on to win a number of deserved Grammy Awards.  During the so-called Blaxploitation movie era of the early 1970's, Harry Belafonte resurfaced in the movies with memorable performances in Buck and The Preacher & Uptown Saturday Night with his friend Sidney Poitier.  In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors, and in 1994 he was presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  In 2007, after five decades of world-wide performances, Belafonte officially announced his retirement.

Inspired by his mentor (and another of my heros), the brilliant Paul Robeson, Belafonte stepped into the political arena very early.  He was a strong opponent of Western colonialism in Africa as well as American apartied at home, refusing to perform in the American south for many years.  He worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., in the Civil Rights Movement often raising thousands of dollars, and personally bankrolling many efforts that King was involved in.  He financed the Freedom Riders, supported voter registration drives and helped to organize the March on Washington.  His work with World Hunger is exemplary.  He received an appointment to UNICEF as a goodwill ambassador in the 1980's, and has worked to raise awarness to the needs of African children throughout the Diaspora, especially in Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya.  Harry Belafonte remained as politically outspoken as he was always politically involved being an especially sharp-tongued critic of the Bush Adminstration, those comments embroiling him..perhaps boiling him in much controversy.

While preparing for an up-coming post on an African king, these photos came to mind and I thought such royalty is Mr. Harry Belafonte!  How much of a brilliant & beautiful African prince is he!  Okay, so perhaps I did something of a full-scale bio of Belafonte after all.  It was worth it!  I feel it's high time that I give up the respect and props to the many brothas I admire and this is just the beginning.  The photos that accompany this post were taken at the height of his fame in 1954 by photographer Dorothy Wilding.  Harry Belafonte is now 82 years old and reportedly lives on West End Avenue in New York City. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOOD TIMES! NOW IT'S THE MACY'S MUSIC FESTIVAL!

For two nights, this weekend, Cincinnati will play host to the Macy's Music Festival.  Thousands will converge on the city to enjoy the talents of perfomers from John Legend and Fantasia to veteran performers like The Whispers and The O'Jays.  The Ohio Kool Fest is just one of many incarnations this event has been known as, but it has always been more popularly known as the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival because at one time, they actually did book jazz acts.   But, the word "jazz" should have disappeared from the working title of the festival as far back as the 70's when groups like Roy Ayers & Ubiquity and Norman Conners (two acts with a very strong R&B following) were opening and quickly making way for all the most popular soul groups of the day that dominated the lineup.  Groups like Maze, The Staple Singers and Chic.  Singers like Marvin Gaye, Peabo Bryson, Roberta Flack, and Natalie Cole.  Lawd, Natalie Cole!  I'll deal with her in just a minute!

The first year I went to this festival, my parents had to take me because I was way too young, something like eleven or twelve years old.  Roberta Flack really caught my attention with "Reverend Lee".  I have faint memories of being impressed with Les McCan and Eddie Harris doing "Compared To What" even at that age.  But my recall is sharp as I sat spellbound as Mavis Staples sent chills through my young body singing "You're Gonna Make Me Cry".  My parents tried not to acknowledge the fact that the air was thick with reefer smoke and that their son may have had a contact high by the time the Staples did "Respect Yourself".  Back then, it wasn't too cool for (some) kids to dance in front of their parents, but the funk was too much for me.  By the time they finished "I'll Take You There" they had took me THERE and a few other places I'd never been before.  If you've ever seen the movie, Wattstax, that should give you an idea of what it was like.  I'm almost sure Rufus Thomas was there that night, but he didn't turn it out like he did in the movie.  Maybe, I'm having memories of a past life, but I'm ready to swear that I was doing The Breakdown out in the ailse! 

The next time I went to the festival, I was about fifteen going on twenty-five.  I do not remember who was there, but I wore an outfit very much like the one in this photo.  I tried hard to look like the guys in these pictures, but my little fifteen year old, underdeveloped body just couldn't pull it off.  When I recall these days, I often say I was playing dress-up!  The cuffs on my elephant leg slacks were about three inches thick, and the shoes I wore were EXACTLY like those shown here.  I found a big ostrich feather in a second hand shop, sprayed it with glitter, and stuck it in the brim of my hat.  Wherever Beverly Evans is these days, she has photos of this fashion shipwreck, but you could not have told me I didn't look fly.  I was trying hard to be Superfly, but as some of my more cruel peers reminded me once, I was nothing more than Superfag. 

Those were some good times in more ways than one.  I literally remember the summer of Good Times!  Chic ripped shit up and totally slayed us in the spirit of the boogie.  They worked us into a frenzy with everything they ever recorded!  Every slow jam sounded nothing less than sublime!  We watched in awe as Diva Gray and Luci Martin wore us out on At Last I Am Free.  But they knew we were waiting on THE JAM!  And when we heard that guitar riff intro, baaaby it was all ovah!  The place erupted in PANDEMONIUM!  Niggas...YES, I SAID NIGGAS...was screamin', drinks were flyin', folks just stopped wherever they were and just started dancing with ANYBODY! Chic was RELENTLESS!  NOBODY WAS STILL!  I'm telling you folk that were working the concession stands just closed up shop and started bootyshakin'.  They had to have been the closing act that year because nobody COULD or WOULD have followed that, and when it was over, Riverfront Stadium was totally DEMOLISHED!

But wait!  I wanted to talk about Natalie Cole circa 1976.  I was there for the set, but time has stolen much of the actual memory.  Let me say this ~ Miss Natalie, as we used to call her, was a force to be reckoned with in the 70s.  You DID NOT play with her!  Contemporary audiences primarily know her as the Grammy Award winning remaker of her father's old songs, or the sedate singer with the golden-honeyed voice swinging the jazz standards.  But back then, she could belt with the best of them.  Yes, she could ASTOUND you by refashioning unlikely songs such as The Beatles "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" and completely WEAR YOU OUT with it.  She borrowed "Que Sera Sera" using Sly Stone's arrangement until HE never touched it again.  Although they tried to do it, she was never a singer that was so totally and easily categorized but for all intents and purposes, she was a soul singer that could twist and bend a note until she had you silly. She made you  scream and want to throw your shoe at her! Whenever Cole came to town, we went to see her!  These were the days when you could pick up a hotel house phone and say "Please connect me to Natalie Cole's room" and they WOULD, and you'd say "Miss Cole, I'd love to meet you and have you sign my albums" and SHE'D say "Sure, sweetheart, come right on up".

The Saturday night of this particular festival, again...the marijuana smoke!  It just hovered and never went anywhere.  Cole had taken us to church and we'd shouted with her, but there was something we were waiting for from her.  We wouldn't let her go and she came back for several encores, and finally she let us have it and we went into conniptions.  It was either "I Can't Say No" or "Touch Me".  That following Monday, The Cincinnati Post (July 26) put it like this....."This Festival, which attracted 60,000 people ...was heavy on male singing groups, but...Natalie Cole was the hit of this 15th annual festival, a clear winner over Nancy Wilson, Marvin Gaye, The Spinners and the Temptations.  The young singer takes command with remarkable poise and a strong, penetrating voice with great range.  She worked the huge Saturday night audience (about 40,000, double that of Friday) into a frenzy with her expert manipulation of their emotions, using the suspense or repetition on "I Can't Say No" to build to remarkable heights.  The writer, Dale Stevens, went on "In a sense, the highlight of the festival was being able to see both Nancy Wilson and Natalie Cole - a study how two singers with different approaches can have similar effects upon a crowd".

Yes, Nancy was there too!  I attended both nights and I vaugely remember being awed by Nancy's performance.  I don't think she had any hit records at the time, but she didn't need any.  She was NANCY WILSON!  Need I say more?  But there were two different styles going on, indeed.  Wilson elicited a lot of amens, screams and shouts, and I'll admit, at fifteen I really didn't want to give it up for her, especially when they tried to make a contest out of who would be the queen of the Festival.  You know where my loyalty was!  And also now that I'm remembering so much,  maybe Cole nor Wilson was the true queen of the festival, considering one of the outfits I wore that year. 

Regardless, I haven't attended this celebration in years.  I'd love to see John Legend, whom I adore, but you just couldn't pay me enough to go.  Once upon a time, I thrived on being in this kind of atmosphere.  Today, it's totally passe for me.  But as so many others come from near and far to be entertained by all the wonderful singers this year, I wish them all the enjoyment and fun that I used to have.  Note:  I'm almost certain the 2-lp set Natalie Cole LIVE (1978) has been released on CD.  If you don't believe anything I've said, go find this because it's the TRUTH!  This set is considered to be one of the best live albums that's ever been recorded!

AND THIS TOO SHALL PASS: E. LYNN HARRIS DIES!

Some have called him The Father of Urban Black Gay Literature, and rightly so!  And as any good father would, he inspired dreams, opened the doors, and directed the path for those who would follow in his footsteps.  Today, author E. Lynn Harris passed the torch forever to those many, many brothers, sons (and daughters) who yet marveled that God would make a poet, a writer, or scribe black, gay and bid him sing.  At the age of 54, Everette Lynn Harris passed away on the West Coast, while on the road promoting his latest novel, Basketball Jones.  According to some reports, Mr. Harris suffered a "serious health setback" while on a West Coast book tour.  Some say he'd recently complained about the stress of being on the road once again.  He reportedly went into cardiac arrest at a restaurant in Beverly Hills thursday night.  He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Hospital.

One source has posthumously stated that he was not a household name, but I beg to differ and the question then begs to be asked "whose house?."  Mr. Harris was one trailblazin' brotha in the literary world.  Ever since he was forced to sell his now classic break-out novel, Invisible Life, from the trunk of his car, and from beautyshop to beautyshop, the mold was set for independent black writers to come out, speak out, tell and sell their stories even when the major publishing houses wouldn't touch them.  Some were later picked up as Harris had been (Doubleday) and some were even inspired to start their own publishing companies.  (Along with the B-Boy Blues of James Earl Hardy) E. Lynn Harris's early novels (Invisible Life, Just As I Am, and And This Too Shall Pass) lit a fire in the soul of legions of black gay men burning to write, film, and even blog their stories.  He was brother, friend and mentor to many.  He opened the door for fellow brothas writing like Eric Jerome Dickey, Omar Tyree and Carl Weber.  He personally helped or mentored blood-brothas like Maurice Jamal, Keith Boykin and Patrick Ian Polk.  For the early support they showed him in the beauty shops, Harris spoke frequently of the debt that he owed black women, and freely expressed his affection in his eleven novels, which were successively tailored for them.  

Harris's novels increasingly concerned themselves with "down-low" male entertainers and athletes like the legendary character, the "low-down" Basil Henderson, or the melodramatic, daytime soap-opera antics of diva Yancy Harrington.  They were the bold and beautiful African American professionals from Atlanta to Hollywood to Broadway who propelled almost all of his novels onto the New York Times Best-Seller's List, making E. Lynn Harris one of the most popular, successful and wealthy African American novelists of all time.  However, Mr. Harris wasn't without his detractors and critics.  Some grew increasingly tired of what was described as the tawdry lives of the black A-listers, wishing he'd write more about the tawdry lives of more relatable "everyday folk".  And some wished he'd fashion his stories to celebrate the lives of the black, more out-and-proud cross-section of his audience as opposed to the more devious and confused.  Yet, E. Lynn Harris was a gifted storyteller from day one, and he grew to master that gift almost without equal.

His book signings inspired such a cross-section of fans from here to dare who said "I think I want to do this" to "I have the talent to do this and I'm going to" and they were standing-room-only events.  I met Harris numerous times at these signings, and I have more of those snapshot kind of photos taken with him in bookstores (that so many others have) than I realized.  But I did not know him.  I did not communicate with him like a few other bloggers or writers that I've come to know.  He did ask me to, but I did not.  I do know he was generous to his fans, and very supportive of burgeoning writers.  When I first heard the news of his passing, my mouth fell open in shock.  Momentarily.  Within the last weeks, I've dealt so much with the subject of death in one way or another that I was quickly reminded that dying is a part of living.  We live and we die, but Harris's death for me is more sobering than shocking.  "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"  he asked in his autobiography named after the very sad and poignant Motown classic by Jimmy Ruffin.  I personally think they either sink lower into despair, or they rise up and out of their muck and mire, and sometimes they're just able arrive at a place where it's not great but it's okay.  Bearable!  Harris told Essence magazine "I've overcome depression.  I was physically abused by my stepfather, I was raised by a single mother.  And I'm a member of a race that considers my sexuality inappropriate.  But there's a message in my memoir for anyone who has suffered from lack of self-esteem or sought love in all the wrong places....for much of my adult life, I was not true to myself.  I was pretending not to be gay.  In the 1980's when I was a sales executive at IBM, I traveled a lot and made good money, but I wasn't happy.  A few years later I felt so empty and confused that I finally reached out for professional help.  Seeing a therapist gave me the strength to deal honestly with my sexuality.  It also renewed my interst in writing.  Now I'm truly happy.  My life is filled with family, friends and work that I love". 

He always struck me as a man on a mission, trying to get "it" done as quick as possible.  E. Lynn Harris life stands as a testimony to always be true to self, and in addition to "doing you" it is also imperative that we "get it done" because tomorrow is not promised.  For all of his many fans, followers, and friends, this is a very sad occassion.  But I think the message is to live as if this world were ours, and not any way the wind blows.  Think about it!