Corey @ I'll Keep You Posted

DWTS: Doug Crutchfield, Cincinnati FABULOUS!

Other than what I'm working with right now, I know next to nothing about Doug Crutchfield.  Until last year, I'd never even heard of him.  But it's not like I didn't put forth at least a cursory effort to find out more.  It all happened when I was paging through a vintage copy of Ebony magazine (April, 1970) when I was surprised to read about a Cincinnati native who defied custom (and his father) to find fame in Europe as a dancer.  The article, with the exhaustive title, Thanks to Doug Crutchfield: Fru Nilson Can Dance (Cincinnati jazz dancer helps Denmark's aged and infirm find new joy in living) is an inspirational profile of a modern day expartriate following his dreams and living his truth.  While I don't know much about Crutchfield, I think it can easily be surmised that the man must have been quite fabulous.  I mean, doesn't this photo (left) say all that needs to be said on that?  Then too, anyone would have to leave Cincinnati in order to find fame and fabulosity.  Consider Randy Crawford, The Isley Brothers and Bootsy Collins, or even Penny Ford & Alton Fitzgerald White.  But what ever became of Doug Crutchfield?

I asked around and nobody seemed to know.   And those who insinuated otherwise refused to talk to me.  But the indicators suggest that Crutchfield left Cincinnati sometime in the early 1960's as a teenager or young adult after a dispute with his father, a local minister.  It seems he arrived in Copenhagen via New York City, at the age of 22 in 1963.  One man that I asked told me that he knew Crutchfield and that he died about 15 years ago.   He ignored my requests for the details of his death but said that he was still in communication with surviving family members.  All attempts to contact them yielded not one reply.  Another man went so far as to suggest that I was just trying to "exploit" Mr. Crutchfield on my "gossipy blog."  I've known both of these much older men since I was a teenager and now they want to act brand new about exploitation and gossip?  This blog is not about that but I wish I could say the same for them!  What I do understand is that Doug Crutchfield was of a generation that didn't always speak openly of certain proclivities - especially as the son of a prominent minister.

According to Ebony, young Crutchfield was expected to follow in his father's footsteps as a Baptist preacher.  It wasn't his calling!  He refused to conform and his resistance didn't go over well with the elder Crutchfield.  Doug left for New York and eventually made his way to Denmark where he kept a small apartment but lived very big and brilliant in spirit and in his truth.  He was known locally as a very distinct dresser who designed and made a lot of his own clothes.  In the town of De Galmes, Crutchfield opened a dance school that by 1970, had almost 500 students.  All the while, his career was still in full swing as he commuted from Denmark to Sweden where he performed onstage and in a local ballet company.  He also taught jazz dance and ballet at the Ballet Academy at Lund University.

Fabulosity is not an affectation.  It is a sense of being and Crutchfield may have found his true center when he took on the additional task of teaching Modern Dance to senior citizens at a local center called the Old People's Town.  Through the expression of movement, Crutchfield helped elderly members find rejuvenation, and new strength of character and attitude through dance.  They "used to cower in corners waiting for death" but now they had their groove back.  There, Crutchfield also found time to devote to the local handicapped youth.  Noting how many of the children found healing and freedom through dance, Crutchfield quipped "once you get the children away from the parents, who are often the cause of their shyness, you find the child is hungry for new contacts.  Their shyness disappears and they are willing to work hard to diminish their handicaps."

 

 

Did he know of which he spoke? Certainly!  Was he a saviour?  The local townspeople seemed to think so.  "When I stubbornly refused to go into the ministry I thought I had left religion.  But in a way I guess you can say I am a priest" Crutchfield observed.

 

 

 

 

From the little that I've been told, he was certainly looked up to not only abroad but here locally as an elder statesman in the community.  So what's the big hush?  I only wanted to give credit where credit is due.  And in this blog post, I think I've done just that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy Baldwin & The Booty Green

Novelist. Essayist. Social Critic. Civil Rights Activist. Dancer?  Why not!  Literary icon and SGL hero, James Baldwin is caught letting his backbone slip with an unidentified CORE worker during a lecture tour for the group in 1963.  Taken in New Orleans, it looks as if photographer Steve Schapiro, already out on a mission to chronicle the "icons of American Life" captured the image at just the right time. 

 

Who knows?  Down in New Orleans they might've been listening to Bobby Marchan and dancing the Booty Green.  Especially with the way that sistah looks like she's gettin' ready to back it up.  Regardless, Jimmy looks like he's enjoying it and well he should.  After The Fire Next Time and them white folks 'down south he probably needed it.

 

DANCING WITH THE STARS: Diane Ross & Pops Gordy

(Diane Ross and "Pops" Gordy, Christmas 1963)

It may take more commitment than I'm up for but within the upcoming week, I hope to present my own version of Dancing With The Stars.  Not because I'm a fan of the television reality show but because it's way past time for the photo repository to be emptied. 

You should expect to see Katherine Dunham dancers and the usual suspects like Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell and Geoffrey Holder.  You'll also see the obscure and long forgotten dancers like Cincinnati's own Doug Crutchfield, Van Vechten model Allen Meadows, and by way of Senegal - Feral Benga, the "toast" of Paris in the 20's.  Most of the readers here know that Miss Fredi Washington was a dancer well before she stormed Hollywood, but are you familiar with her partner Al Moore? 

I hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew by promising that they'll all be here next week but I plan to work diligently in making sure that happens.  You know how divas are!  They'll show up when they feel like it!

To kick off the season, we have a young Diana Ross (then still known as Diane) and Berry "Pops" Gordy, Sr (father of the Motown president).  Taken during the Christmas season of 1963 at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom, Ross was all about ingratiating herself with the family. In the upcoming year, the twenty year-old songstress would soon experience the payoff she'd been striving toward. 

But everyone needs a break!  Perhaps she took time out to Shing-a-ling or Boog-a-loo?  She might be teaching Pops to Hully Gully?  Or maybe she's just doing a premature Victory Dance!

THE DELANY SISTERS visit Elizabeth Gooch in Covington, KY

When Sadie and Bessie Delany visited their friend Elizabeth Gooch in my hometown of Covington, Ky in the late 1950's, nobody outside of the so-called black elite really knew who they were.  As members of one of the most distinguished black families in America, nobody had thought to write a book, a play nor a movie based on their extraordinary lives just yet.  Though well into their senior years, the Delany Sisters were still in dress rehearsal for the day (four decades later) when they'd capture our hearts and have their say in the process.  Timing was everything and waiting until they were fiesty Centenarians just seemed like the right time, indeed!

Chile, did you see those old ladies on 60 Minutes last night?  Baby, wasn't that one named Bessie quite a mess!  We adored them as they schooled us on 100 years of wit, wisdom and remarkable lives through race, struggle and success from the 1890's to the 1990's.  Their joint autobiography, Having Our Say (with Amy Hill Hearth) stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 105 weeks and inspired a play and a television movie - neither of which did them any justice!

Black Covington was amazed when the book came out because there was "our" Miss Gooch right up there with the Delany's in pictures and in text.  As friend, mentor and one of the most beloved teachers at Covington's segregated Lincoln-Grant School, Elizabeth Wotten Gooch is a legend in our local community.  She was born in Covington on September 16, 1883.  She attended the Lincoln-Grant School from the age of six until her graduation in 1902.  She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, a private liberal arts college noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and African American students.  It was during a stint as a teacher at St. Athanasius School in Brunswick, GA, that she met and roomed with the slightly younger Bessie Delany.

The two didn't quite hit it off right away but eventually became life-long friends.  Bessie (right) retained and wrote about enduring memories how as young women, they'd go to the beach together and lovingly watch the turtles come in from the sea to nest.  Like her two more famous friends, Elizabeth Gooch never married.

Gooch ulimately earned a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Cincinnati, and taught at Lincoln-Grant from 1915 until her retirement in 1954.  She was also an organist at Ninth St. United Methodist Church for 64 years.  She passed away on August 16, 1983, a full decade before the Delany's found world-wide fame as early female pioneers.

Bessie Delany eventually became the second woman to practice dentistry in New York State.  She and Sadie enjoyed another best-seller together with the Book of Everyday Wisdom (1994).  She passed at the age of 104 in 1995.  Sadie Delany was the first African American to teach domestic science at the high school level in the New York public schools.  She released On My Own at 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessie (again with Hearth) in 1997, and passed at the age of 109 in 1999.

It is with good reason that some black Covingtonians seem to think The Delany Sisters were also related to "our" Delaney's in Covington.  They all "looked the part" well enough and had the right attitudes and aspirations, but John W. Delaney (and his wife Elizabeth) had SOLID Kentucky roots.  The famous Delany's are solidly North Carolinian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE GLORY OF KEN NORTON

In a black gay men's group, somebody recently asked the meaty question "Ken Norton or Carl Weathers?"  I didn't say much in response but I know I had the answer.  There ain't even ... yes, ain't even ... no contest!  There's no need to objectify the man down to his abs, thighs and boxing trunks 'cuz this brotha was the total package.  I've known that since I was 12 years old!

And if you didn't believe me the first time ... check THIS out!

Mine eyes hath seen THE GLORY!

Of course, Ken Norton's true glory is his stellar career as a heavyweight boxer.  Some of us only know (or care) about his turn as a butt-naked plantation stud in movies like Mandingo and Drum.  However, Norton is best known for his trilogy of boxing matches with Muhammad Ali. On March 31, 1973, Ken "the Jawbreaker" Norton became only the second professional boxer to ever take Ali down in his prime.  (Ali had previously lost the heavyweight title to Joe Frazier who lost it to George Foreman who lost it back to Ali in 1974.) 

In the meantime, Ali avenged the Norton loss six months later on September 10, 1973, but only by a split decision after a hard exchange with Norton. When they met again in 1976, Ali had regained the title but Norton put Ali through the ringer once more in one of the most contested bouts in boxing history.  Only by a narrow margin (many felt Norton won the fight) did Ali retained the title.  Muhammad Ali proved he was "the Greatest" but Ken Norton was in his prime and also proved he was quite ...... glorious, indeed.

Carl Weathers might have been phyne, but he wasn't even a contender!

Addendum:  If you look below in the comments section, Derrick says "Ken Norton had the most beautiful booty in the whole wide world."  I'm inclined to agree!  Perhaps, we must examine that Mandingo turn as Mede, the African slave, after all.  I originally didn't want to do it but now I think I must ..................

 

 

 

SAMUEL R. DELANY: It Ain't His Meat - It's His Motion!

The motion of light in or on water is often serene and quite beautiful. It's such a simple pleasure that the beauty of it is often taken for granted. Even when the waters are murky it can still be rather illuminating if we care to see at all. When I finished reading Sameul R. Delany's 500-page plus tome of autobiographical memory reconstruction, The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, I wasn't so much amazed by everything I read as I was by how it was written. 

Exploring the vulnerability of memory as much as it does art, music and the coming of age experiences of a young man at the intersection of race & sexual identity in early 60's New York, it's a masterwork in the art of minimalist writing.  And the brotha is writing about HIMSELF!

Despite the pressure of growing up as a member of one of America's most distinguished black families, not looking quite black nor quite white, and the added dilemma of being a self-professed homosexual living in an open marriage with a Jewish woman, every aspect of the renowned science fiction writer's life is handled with transparency.  The walk-on roles of James Baldwin, Stokely Carmichael, and others are no more than what they are because all things considered, that's all they are. The early sexual attraction of a brilliant, extremely nerdy, maybe almost genius little boy to the dead bodies on the embalming table in his father's Harlem funeral parlor is handled quite matter of factly and offers a bit of insight at what lay at the root of the bizarre stories that Delany would one day become famous for - like Hogg and The Mad Man.  Upon the realization that by age 21, the author was having sex with old men, young men, and black & white men in Manhattan doorways, restrooms, truck stops, theatres and at the infamous Christopher Street piers - it all makes sense!  Mind you, this is all pre-1970's before the Sexual Revolution and pre-1980's before HIV/AIDS. 

But it's all about the motion and politics of life among the crowded streets and apartments in New York's Lower East Side in the early 60's.

I do not have Aids.  I am surprised that I don't.  I have actively had sex with other men weekly, sometimes daily - without condoms - for the last decade and a half.  Looking back, I'm sure that particular blurb on the dustjacket of The Mad Man must have been what made my father read at least half of the book.  Almost 20 years ago, I asked him to pick the book up for a friend at a bookstore near his house.  The friend never bothered to tell me what the book was about but my father did. 

DON'T YOU EVAH ask me to pick up that kind of filth for you, he told me. JUST WHAT KIND OF GARBAGE are you reading these days, he demanded to know. He also wanted to know WHO would read about such vile things but when I pointed out the fact that in between his repulsion and obvious intrigue, HE was the one who'd already read most of the book, he very quickly calmed down.  So at this juncture, I'm willing to wager that my dad was also captivated by the author's writing style!  Thus proving it wasn't totally about filth and vile things - the author's meat - but all about his motion!

Upon finishing The Motion of Light, I was totally left awestruck by the stylistic deftness Delany employed in telling his story.  I was also moved to admit to myself that I often fall into the trap of taking a mundane subject and trying to BUILD IT UP beyond what it really is.  There is nothing remotely simple nor ordinary about Samuel R. Delany, I'm just inspired to take my simple stories and tell them SIMPLY without flourish in style and wordage to make them seem more interesting than what they really are. Hopefully, they'll rest on their own merit!

 

 

 

 

 

 

HALLE BERRY CHANNELS LOUISE BROOKS

They say pictures are worth a thousand words!  I guess I could leave it at that and not say anything about the exquisite beauty of Halle Berry.  But that's almost impossible to do!  Captivating on film, her charms could once best be described as fragile and certainly no less than ethereal.  Still lovely at 43, Berry's allure is slightly more human and is aging to ... well, I was going to say perfection, but how much more perfect can you get?  Exactly how do you improve upon that which is already flawless?

One year ago this month, as the second woman of color to grace the cover of Vogue magazine's coveted September issue, Halle Berry was interviewed by Jonathan Van Meter.  Her face was was beat by Linda Cantello for Giorgio Armani Beauty and the hair was bobbed by Oribe for Oribe Hair Care.  She was dressed & draped and otherwise put the haute in the couture of Armani, Escada, Jacobs, Vera Wang, Fred Leighton, Stephen Russell, Lorraine Schwartz and the House of Lavande.  Photographed by Marino Testino, the end results were nothing short of amazing. Berry was the quintessence of glamour!

Yet, there was something that seemed vaguely familiar about the whole thing. I think it was the new cut.  It was very retro, very 20's, and most definitely very Louise Brooks.  Like Halle Berry, Louise Brooks was one of the most scintillating and photographed women of her time.  Also like Berry, she was cast in a score of lesser films (17 silents) before hooking up with the German film director, G.W. Pabst to collaborate on two signature films that would define her total career - 1929's Diary of a Lost Girl and Pandora's Box. 

Both were produced right at the advent of talking pictures but were filmed as silents, and both are notable for their frank portrayal of raw sexuality (including lesbianism) the likes of which would not have been considered in Hollywood.  More than anything, Louise Brooks is instantly recognizable today for THE LOOK!  Juxtaposed against her porcelain beauty, her true signature was her famous bobbed, black, shellacked haircut!

Brooks bucked the system and found herself blacklisted in Hollywood at the height of her fame.  She was eventually reduced to third-rate films and working as a prostitute to survive.  In the later stages of her life, she experienced a renewed interest in her career when she wrote a bare bones memoir called Lulu in Hollywood.  Louise Brooks died in 1985. 

The magazines often channel golden-era glamour through Halle Berry with startling results but the comparison to Brooks ends there.  Berry is an Oscar winning actress, an icon in her own time and I hardly doubt that she'll ever be destitute.  At 43, Brooks was hardly recognizable and was even less so in her older years.  Berry has the good fortune of good genes, and as the cultural daughter of Lena Horne & Dorothy Dandridge, the good fortune of good black!  But unless you consider Monster's Ball (whatever you think of it) and a few made for television movies like The Wedding, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, we're still waiting for those classic signature movies roles.  Oh, and maybe Frankie and Alice IF ANYONE EVER GETS TO SEE IT!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUCKER PUNCHED!

I love it when the tables get turned on folks, especially store owners who I believe are out to take advantage of their customer.  Whether it be through their own benign ignorance or an arrogant attempt to defraud, I've seen it all. But this time, let's just say they got beat to the punch!  More precisely, they got SUCKER PUNCHED!

Rummaging through second hand stores and junk shops for treasure is one of my favorite pastimes.  Yesterday, while out running errands with hubby, we decided to stop and visit a junk shop that we've driven by dozens of times but never saw open.  It's located in a now rather desolate part of town and when I say it was full of junk - I mean just that!  However, in the back of the store sat a punch bowl with 12 matching cups that made me stop dead in my tracks.  I certainly didn't go out looking for a punch bowl and I defy anyone to recall a time when I ever said that I needed one but you'll see here exactly why I just couldn't leave it sit there.

First off, I knew it was pressed glass as opposed to the more desirable cut glass; novice collectors and merchants often confuse the two. The only thing was that I couldn't exactly date it but figured it was probably from somewhere around 1940. I fully expected it to be priced anywhere from $50.00 upwards so I was a bit taken aback to see the $20.00 price tag.  I knew that it was seriously underpriced and that I was standing in front of a great bargain.  I decided right then that I had to have it.  I sized up the guy working in the store who looked like he couldn't wait for his next drink, and I surmised that I could get the bowl even cheaper.  I offered $15.00.  At first, he said yes then he said maybe then he said SURE!  I gave him fourteen dollar bills and four quarters and it was a done deal!

And then I came home to look for something comparable on Ebay and I actually found the exact same bowl several times over.  One auction had the punch bowl, 12 cups and a matching tray for $500.00.  Another listing was with the bowl, 26 matching cups, 17 various other cups and a pedastal for $297.00 (marked down from $350.00).  The last few listings offered the bowl, 12 cups and the matching tray for $278.00 while another had the bowl and just 15 cups for $129.00. The final auction was the only open bid starting at $75.00 with the bowl and tray alone.

Along the way, I learned the glass pattern is believed to be in what's called the "pinwheel and star" design possibly made by the Colony Glass Company from Indiana.  The bowl itself weighs in at thirty pounds and is dated sometime between 1930-1940.  The photos used here are from the aforementioned Ebay auctions.  There appears to be a matching pedastal in a lone auction on Ebay for $40.00 and while I think it's worth it - I also think I could find it CHEAPER!