my life has been impacted by a dream I don’t remember.

This is real: I was at my neice’s house. My sister—my neice’s aunt—was MIA the bulk of the evening I arrived. Another neice went to find and wake her and she then appeared. She breezed into the room and handed out hugs as if they’d been freshly baked, but said nothing to anyone. As a bee, she went from person to person, hugging them. I looked at her—she looked out of place, not herself. She looked like a troll—this sounds like a cap but its true. Her hair stood erect, carved. Her face bright and highlighting her freckles. She swam through us and vanished returning to sleep the rest of the day. I didn’t know she had pancreatic cancer. I wouldn’t see her alive again.

I remained at my neices house and she invited me to spend the night in her daughter’s bedroom. That night her daughter was attending a girls sleepover at the house next door.

In my younger neices’ bedroom, the walls were stapled and taped with images of boys, rappers in leather jackets, R&B singers standing in windstorms. They were all curly hair and mahogany skin and muscles and lips. She’d posted a letter on her wall from someone she knew in jail. His words were positive. More positive than mine, though I rarely said anything. Her pillows were tiny white pills. I laid down on my stomach, hugged a pillow, and slept.
I woke startled—just like in the movies. I lifted my head and saw it was nearing 1:30 the next afternoon. I leapt out of bed. I had never, not since I’d been a child in bed sick and on drugs, Ever slept that long. The night before nothing out of the usual happened. I hadn’t smoked much. I drank nothing. But I was taken aback in an unexplainable way. Something happened and I couldn’t explain what.

That next day was dark in my memory as if there were a lingering eclipse or an especially dark cloud shading everything. I don’t remember anything else: Except feeling uncomfortable like my clothes were suddenly two sizes too small. And I never came back to that house, I never returned to that city, and I never actively played family again.

Something rattled me deep.

My stepfather was the first to die within, maybe a month. Maybe longer, maybe not as long.

My sister, who passed out the hugs, was next.

I often think about that sinkhole in my memory. What did I see? Would it have frightened me to have held it and remembered? I think about that darkness instead of what I see clearly. The darkness whispered something that changed what I saw in the light.

That’s the purpose of dreaming, I presume.

****

In my dreams there are many houses.

After my grandfather died, I dreamed I visited his place in heaven.

His bed had a four tall posts and was positioned on a beach, between two huge basalt stones rising from the shallow of the shoreline. The hallways leading towards it were of glass and gold

***

The houses in my dreams are huge, busy with archetecture. Arteries of hallways. Multiple rooms as if it were a modern castle. Glass doors leading into generous bedrooms. The most recent house’s backyard was rolling green hills and a concrete path like a web connecting three neighbors. I distinctly remember my father with me in this house, his hands shyly in his pockets the whole time. I don’t recall if it was his place or he was just visiting like me. I was visiting and had to catch a bus to someplace else. I looked upon the backyard longingly and a little blond girl scooting on a small bike.

Every house has multiple stories.

Sometimes there are parties in gathering rooms in my dreams. I rarely recognize those in attendance (or they are all relatives) and I remain in the perifery overlooking the environment with the patience of a plant.

***

One dream ended in a huge field that didn’t grow anything. There was a single white house here and I sat on a motorcycle at the base of the steps while my best friend stood on the porch explaining how to ride. He stood with his arms folded, watching me and talking about how clutches work. He was supportive and parental and insistant I could do it without him. I never went inside the house, but started the cycle and sped over the ragged clods of tan earth and laughed.

***

There were a family ducks. I was last in line, towering above the animals who all focused on the lead duck as they went to a similar barren field as above. They obediently lined up and jumped down through a hole in the ground. Even the tiny bright yellow chick which went last. I stood over the hole they disappeared into; it was narrow and dark and deep. I reached my arm in up to the shoulder and felt nothing. I sat on my knees and gazed in, my heart thumping at my chest. I was too afraid to follow.

Black History month was fun. A challenge nearing the end of the month because I was running low on juicy ideas. There’s many folks to write about I hadn’t… but producing this daily plus having to work in a distracting office can be hard. Not to mention meditating on whom I wanted to write about.

Choosing a person or topic was totally up to what my brain found appealing. Respect: But I’m personally bored by Madame CJ Walker and Elijah McCoy. They get so much attention as to be black history cliches. I want to know about the history behind dissing fools in rap music or compel somebody to properly release To Sleep With Anger on DVD.

But the month was great exercise and a nice way to get my brain ready for writing poetry this April.

I hope I don’t get in trouble. I feel like a stalker– especially yesterday on the train. I keep imagining that if I have to write a poem, what would it be about? Last night I stood on a crowded train. I studied hands clasping the railing above. How hair rose off the back of this one dudes arm in tiny flames. The Indian dudes who all huddle together so tightly and talk like boys kicking soccer balls. The oceanic waves of brown hair on the woman next to me, the sweet and stale scent of her coat drying from an earlier rain. All nice– but nothing immediately striking me enough to want to write.

Until the train emerged from the tunnel. I turned to look back at the city and saw the city in a gray silhouette through the fog. Above the bowl of downtown, planetary clouds and the sun’s columns of gold light neatly slicing buildings at odd intervals and spotlighting random parts of the bay water. The clouds looked ragged as if something recently exploded.

This I could write about. And was compelled to make some notes. The poem, raw and as of yet loose & unthreaded, has promise.

This is just to say, I’m setting my intention to pay attention. To remain vigilant and search for good poems. My lesson from last year was that its possible to write and find a poem every day. Its hide and go seek in plain sight. Perhaps I missed the poem in the choreography of hair on the back of an arm, the stasis in a face that waits, the scent rising from another person. But that’s my loss. I just have to attend to a deeper attention, search for god & beauty in everything. And write without ceasing. Game on

There’s a lot to the life of James Weldon Johnson and I’m doing him a disservice just kinda glancing over his accomplishments… But this post was intended to focus primarily on his work, Lift Every Voice and Sing.

The song is the national anthem for African Americans and was something I took for granted without thinking much about it, or its author. But it occured to me I had no idea when it was written or why. Was there an event that triggered its writing?

James Weldon Johnson was a poet, writer, lawyer, diplomat and civil rights leader. He was born the second of three kids in Florida in 1871. His father, of mixed heritage and born free, worked as a waiter. Johnson’s mom was from the West Indies. She was a musician and taught public school and naturally encouraged her children to study music and read.

At age 16, Johnson went to college in Atlanta and wrote poetry– but poetry wasn’t his sole purpose. When he returned home to Florida he worked as principal of an elementary school and simultaneously studied law eventually becoming Florida’s first black lawyer. One of Johnson’s friends who worked in the law office told stories about passing as a white person. This friend would be the inspiration for Johnson’s famous novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

Johnson still worked as principal of an elementary school in 1900 when he wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing. The poem was written in acknowledgment of Lincoln’s birthday (Please note: Lincoln was born February 12) and as a way of introducing the days’ guest speaker, Booker T Washington. From my understanding the piece was read as a poem by 500 school children. It wouldn’t be set to music by Johnson’s brother until 1905.

In 1916, Johnson joined the NAACP as the groups first secretary. By 1919 the NAACP had christened the song The Negro National Anthem.

There’s a lot to Johnson’s story — here was a man with a lot of Firsts on his timeline. One of my favorites: Johnson helped inaugurate the first black newspaper published in the United States, the Daily American, though due to financial problems the paper was only published for about a year.

Johnson worked on Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential campaign in 1904 and was appointed US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua. It was during those six years served he wrote The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man, published anonymously in 1912 with him stepping up to claim its authorship in 1927 and underscoring it was a fictional work.

In 1938, Johnson was killed in a car accident– his car was struck by a train during a heavy rainstorm. Johnson was 67. His funeral was attended by over 2000 people. He was buried with a copy of his own book of poems, God’s Trombones.

Appropriately here, consider another of Johnson’s poems– his funeral sermon, Go Down Death.

Black History Month was hard. There were people I considered writing about but for a couple of reasons couldn’t or didn’t have enough time or Name Something.

I considered Bunny Wailer – whom I didn’t realize is practically Bob Marley’s brother– they stayed together as kids, Bunny’s dad fathered a kid with Bob’s mom. But a lot of what I was reading indicated Bunny is a bit of a recluse and could have been one of the reasons Bob and Peter Tosh went solo since Bunny wasn’t trying to leave the islands. Right now as far as surviving members of the band he’s the last man standing.

Florence Ballard came up, too. She’s one of the founding members of The Supremes, but her story is so tragic it even depressed me. Would make a good movie though.

Berry Gordy was so hard up for Diana Ross (and thought her voice would appeal better to white audiences) he railroaded Mary Wells and Ballard who was apparently a much stronger singer than Ross. Early in her career with the Supremes she was physically assaulted by a dude she thought she knew. She was never the same after that. This coupled with her being relegated to being Ross’s back up singer as opposed to member of a group, she was eventually asked by Gordy to leave the group which she did. And for years struggled with a solo career before giving up on music altogether. She ended up on Welfare and eventually died of a blood clot.

I doubt seriously I’d ever do a profile of Ross– but I may eventually give in if I keep up this blog over the years. And after learning about this and Gordy’s opinion of Marvin Gaye’s work on What’s Going On I may never seriously look at Berry Gordy either. A solid business man, yeah, but he doesn’t yet come off as someone I’d like to know. Feel me?

The man emblazoned on your Creme of Wheat box has a name. Its not Rastas– one of the holy trinity of black slavery throwback icons– but Frank L White. White was born in Barbados in 1867. He came to this country in 1875 and became a citizen in 1890. White worked as a professional chef in Chicago and was apparently photographed in 1900 in full chef’s gear for an advertisement which was reused by the folks at Creme of Wheat. Depending on which story you heard or believe he was either paid Nothing or Five Dollars. White lived in Leslie, Michigan and that was where he died in 1938. I looked around and couldn’t turn up any other information about him– there’s no word on what kind of family life he had, exactly where his restaurant was, whether he was married, Nuthin.

Well, there is ONE thing.

As mentioned he died in 1938. But his grave was unmarked until 2007.

Finally, there’s Willie Tyler and Lester

“You get in front of the mirror and try to talk without moving your lips,” He said. “It was frustrating, but I kept doing it. After delivering papers, I would come home and rehearse. Finally it happened several years later.”

IT would be the start of a career that, I daringly say, will never happen again. Not from another African American artist. I don’t see it.

But Willie Tyler and Lester were the most unique comedy team in history.

Willie Tyler was born in September, 1940 in Red Level, Alabama.

At about 10, he saw an advertisement promoting a correspondence course on ventriliquism and began practicing with a figure he painted brown. When Tyler was 13, he purchased his first nameless ventriloquist figure. He christened it Lester after a classmate who the figure resembled, adding glasses and an Afro.

“He came in three sizes,” Tyler said. “I had the small one. Then I got the medium one and when I started performing with Motown, I had to get the big one. That’s the Lester that you see today. This one has been around 30 years.”

Tyler joined the Air Force where he continued practicing. But the time of his discharge he signed with Motown and toured with pretty much every Motown act active in the 1970’s.

Tyler is the father of actor Cory Tyler who’s doing pretty well for himself.

Willie Tyler & Lester are both still alive and well and available for your next special event.

There are things I think I know– half stories I’ve heard over the years. I accept rumors moreso than wanting to delve into what really happened.

Earlier this month I decided to focus on Teddy Pendergrass’ accident that left him paralyzed. I’d forgotten what the real story was if I ever knew it. For Teddy that accident was something of a rebirth, setting him on a different path.

Same with the incident with Al Green. The accident he endured is joked about so much its nearly mythical– did it ever happen and why?

Looking around for ideas to finish up the month, I ran across a blog and blatantly swiped the story Green himself tells about what happened between him and Mary Woodson.

The PS to the story as I was reading it on Wikipedia is this incident is what led Green to gospel music. He became pastor of Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis in 1976. Briefly during this conversion, Green kept recording regular R&B but the vibe was wrong; the record he made failed and he suffered another unmentioned accident while performing so he gave up on R&B all together and remained in the church. I’m beginning to learn: Pain is about transformation. And should you choose to go there and fellowship here’s what you’ll get.

But I digress. Ladies and Gentlemen, Al Green:

“It was at one of those prison concerts for the inmates at the New York State Correctional Facility, that I first met Mary Woodson. She was the kind of woman that when you first saw her, you’d take a second look, and then a third look, and then, after a while, your eyes would just become accustomed to turning her way. Mary was a radiant and ravishing woman. Mary had a classy way of carrying herself: She was statuesque graceful and proud. She was at the prison visiting a friend but she never told me what her friend had did to land in prison. Mary had all kinds of secrets, more that I could have imagined at the time. I casually asked Mary where she was heading after the concert but I already knew the answer and it was “There’s nowhere else you’re going but home with me.”

But Mary didn’t fall under my spell quite so easily. She begged off my invitation to come back with me to the hotel. It was late, she had to get up early. So, I offered her a ride in my limo into the city. I wasn’t pushing anything. She was pretty and I liked having pretty women around me.” But Mary had other things on her mind, right from the beginning. She was a real woman, I loved the smell of her perfume, she was new and exciting.

After my tour, I returned home to Memphis, Mary was in town. The infatuation I had for her blinded me to all the warning signs. I didn’t care where she had come from or the baggage she’d picked up along the way. When I asked her about her past, she lied and told me that she had never been married and of course she didn’t have any kids. The truth was, Mary had left behind a whole family in New Jersey to come and be with me but I’d only find that out later, after it was way too late.

Soon, her husband had come down from New Jersey to bring her back. She refused but he wasn’t going to let her go and made it clear that she belonged to him and their children. She was living out a fantasy on borrowed time.

One night, I was in the studio working on new material when the door opened and a good looking woman rushed in and gave me a hug. It took me a minute to recognize her, her name was Carlotta Williams, a flight attendant I’d met on my travels.

When Mary came to the studio later, I introduced the two women and suggested that we all go back to my house.

The women seemed to get along fine as we all piled in my Rolls Royce. Carlotta sat up front with me and Mary sat in the back.

I kept glancing at Mary through the rearview mirror, disturbed by the strange expression she had on her face. Once she caught me looking at her and fixed me with a cold, appraising stare that sat my nerves on edge.

I went to my room to change my clothes. When I went to the kitchen, Mary was standing at the stove, stirring a big pot of water with a wooden spoon. She turned around and asked me had I ever thought about getting married, I replied, “Maybe we should talk about that in the morning.”

When I asked her what she was cooking, she didn’t answer me. Then suddenly, she whispered in my ear, “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

Carlotta was in another part of the house listening to music. I then decided to take a bath. After I got in the tub, I soon heard a noise, I looked up and Mary was standing with the steaming pot in both hands. In the next second, my world exploded into a thousand splatters of pure agony. Mary had added grits to the water, making a thick, boiling hot paste. With all her strength, she hurled it at me. The grits scorched my naked back. The pain was so intense that I started screaming.

Carlotta burst in. “Al!” she screamed. It was then that I saw the egg sized blisters rising on my burned flesh. Mary rushed out of the bathroom.

Carlotta called a ambulance and was tending to me as best she could-when suddenly, we heard a gunshot. Despite being in pain, I rushed to Mary, she lay on the floor dead, clutching a gun.

One of the reasons rap is so powerful and has such deeply penetrating roots in our culture is because it utilizes so many elements from the African American spoken word tradition. Part of the equation that adds up to rap is the Signifying Monkey– a toast from the old school. A toast is a rhyming narrative poem that, in this case is funny or it could be used as the framework for a morality tale. Many toasts were about The Game, the lifestyle of hustlers and pimps and whores and addicts and because of this toasts were popular currency in prisons. The most well known toast is the Signifying Monkey, featuring a character, the monkey, who is representative of the African trickster god, Esu from Yoruba mythology.

There’s a lot of stories and variations on this tale. The one you know and love is by Rudy Ray Moore. Here’s the extended text and here’s the video.

Way, way down in the jungle deep
The lion stepped on the signifying mokey’s feet.
The monkey said, “Motherfucka, can’t you see?
You’re standing on my god damn feet!”
The monkey lived in the jungle in an old oak tree
Bullshittin’ a line every day of the week.
Everyday before the sun go down
That lion would kick his ass all through the jungle town.
But the monkey got wise and started using his wit
Start telling “I’m gonna put a stop to this old ass kickin shit”
So he ran up on the lion the very next day
He said, “Oh, Mr. Lion. There’s a big, bad motherfucka coming your way.
And he’s somebody that you don’t know.
He just broke aloose from the Ringling Brother’s Show.
He talked about your people til my hair turned gray.
So Mr. Lion, you know that ain’t right.
So wherever you run up on the elephant I want you to be ready to fight.”
The lion jumped up in a hell of a rage
Like a young man smoking some gage.
He ran up on the elephant talking to the swine.
He said, “All right, you big, bad motherfucka,
It’s gonna be your ass or mine.”
The lion jumped up and made a fancy pass
But the elephant side-stepped him and knocked him dead on his ass.
He fucked up his jaw, messed up his face,
Broke all four legs and knocked his ass out of place.
They fought all night and all the next day.
Somehow the little lion managed to get away.
He drug his ass back to the jungle more dead than alive
Just to run into the monkey and more of his signifying jive.
The little monkey said, “Look here, partner, you don’t look so swell.
Looks to me like you caught a whole lot of hell.”
Said, “Your eyes is red and your ass is blue.
I knew in first place it wasn’t shit to you.
But I told my wife before you left
‘I should have whipped your ass my motherfucking self.’
Shut up! Don’t you roar!
‘Cause I’ll jump out of this tree and whip your dog ass some more.
And don’t look up here with your stuck ‘ol case
Because I’ll piss through the fork of this tree in your motherfuckin’ face!”
The little monkey got happy; started jumping up and down
His feet missed the limb and his ass hit the ground.
Like a ball of lightning and a streak of white
That lion was on his ass with all four feet.
Thus, rolls of tears came in the little monkey’s eyes,
Nothing he could see and nothing he could hear
But he knew that was the end of his bullshittin’ and signifying career
And SIGNIFYING CAREER!!!!

Word that Jimmy Scott was returning to San Francisco to perform went through me like a lightning bolt. I’ve committed to seeing more live music and certainly see performers considered legendary. I hold regret for not seeing Miles Davis at the Paramount. I missed Nina Simone. But after I was introduced to the hypnotic voice he has I became enthralled. NOT going is NOT acceptable.

I saw him for the first time maybe 2000 when I would’ve happily committed murder to get tickets. Now that he’s 85, I didn’t expect to see him on stage again– but he appeared at Yoshi’s San Francisco last night. I hadn’t been to the Yoshi’s in SF before– its situated in the heart of the Fillmore District, the city’s historically African American neighborhood with a long history of jazz music and musicians. The club was intimate– not intimate as in tiny, but intimate as in “Its like sitting with the band in your living room”. His band, the Jazz Expressions were bouncy and loose– a group of brothers become family and they skipped through the opening number.

Jimmy was wheeled by his wife onto the stage in a chair– I’d heard he recently broke his hip and for the tiniest moment I was startled and saddened. Those feelings were only mine. He looked great his skin vibrant and smooth as a silk lampshade. His cheeks full. He opened his mouth to free the first notes and coughed. The note stretched out over us only to tremble and collapse. Listening to his earlier work one does get the sense of delicacy of his singing– that what you’re hearing isn’t possible. That it sounds like a woman. There’s no way one’s chest could open and deliver such a pure lasting note. But he has more shattering moments on record like that to make him the greatest living stylist in jazz. He stepped across that moment and the room seemed to freeze as he inhaled and showed us his voice was Still There.

Listening to him sit amongst jazz musicians (he smiled like an infant, music being his heaven, the warm, strong arms embracing him) you realize his itself voice is a unique, well played instrument. His throat must be an antique cello of rare wood made from a prehistoric tree that doesn’t grow anymore.

He phrasing is unqiue; delicately disassembling the syllables of words and gently stepping over them. Stripping lines of songs like petals off a rose and leaving them to flutter in the wind. That’s what he sounds like. That’s why I was out in the rain to hear him. He performed the ancient standard Pennies From Heaven, but somehow erased the schmaltz and tradition of it and sang the song anew, as if he were making the lyrics up as he went along.

He is an elder with a heartbreaking gift. That he wasn’t in rare form is forgiven. At 85, I could only wish I’d even still be alive and even then, mobile. But he is a gifted elder and it was an honor to sit in audience and receive from a man so generous as to sing from a wheelchair as if his gift could heal him. Wasn’t his voice a miracle?

Scott’s life seems by product of a miracle. He was born with Kallmann’s Syndrome
a rare genetic condition which attacks the hypothalamus, delaying puberty in both boys and girls, keeping them short in stature, preventing the development of testosterone and effecting the ability to smell. This disease left 4′ 11″ vocalist Scott with androgynous, uniquely high soprano voice.

Scott was born one of 10 children to Arthur and Justine Scott in Cleveland, Ohio 1925. His mother was a musician and all of her children sang in church. Scott’s father wasn’t very active in his life, choosing to drink and gamble and chase women, so Scott doted on his mother. But Scott’s mother was killed in a car accident when he was 13.

First known as ‘Little Jimmy Scott,’ he began gathering attention in the 1940’s singing with Jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. Scott closed his show with the song he recorded with Hampton in 1949– Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. In 1963, he recorded an acclaimed album ‘Falling In Love is Wonderful’ produced by Ray Charles and released on Charles’ Tangerine Label. But within days of the albums release, it was yanked from store shelves because of some SHADY contract he’d signed with notorious Herman Lubinsky at Savoy records.

His career halted, albums recorded in the 60’s vanished and Scott (it was said Billie Holiday would show up to his shows nightly to hear him) was forced to get a job back home in Cleveland as a shipping clerk in a Sheraton Hotel.

Scott disappeared from the scene so quickly his fans thought he was dead. He gave up on his career, drank heavily, skipped through four marriages and by the 1970’s worked in a nursing home and as a clerk.

In 1991, musician Doc Pomus died and Scott sang at his funeral. Sire label head Seymour Stein was in attendance at that funeral and signed Scott to a five album contract the following day. His comeback album, All The Way, led to him touring the world and at age 67 finding a brand new audience.

Personally, I’d say start where I started, with Lost & Found Its a CD i’ve had to buy several times over after loaning it to friends only to have it never return. When folks ask me “Who’s Jimmy Scott?” I ask them which would they prefer: Unchained Melody or Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.

After first time listeners note he sounds like a woman, there are no further questions. Just appreciative, absorbing silence. I remember playing it for my former roommates and how the house totally shut down while they listened and the man’s voice shone in angelic light from the speakers.

In the 1990’s, a cure had been found for Kallmann’s Syndrome, and Scott apparently refused it, saying it would rob him of his gift.

Scott’s career has lasted nearly sixty years. He’s performed with Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Wynton Marsalis, Lou Reed, David Byrne, David Lynch, & Flea.

I’ll leave you with his elegant translation of Bryan Ferry’s Slave To Love.

Sheldon Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia in March, 1957. He has two brothers and one sister, Joie, whom you first saw in Do The Right Thing. His father, Bill Lee, was a jazz musician, his mother a school teacher– She was the one who nicknamed him Spike because of his attitude. His family relocated to Brooklyn, NY when Spike was still a child. Spike’s grandmother, a graduate of the all female Spellman college, convinced Spike to attend the all male Morehouse College where he graduated with a BA in communications while simultaneously taking film courses at Clark Atlanta. (Grandma was the bomb– she also helped finance his first film) He enrolled at the Tisch School of Arts graduate program in Manhattan. To this day he remains faculty there.

Lee made a few short films beginning in 1980– the most accessible being Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads in 1983; that 45 minute film earned him a student academy award. It wasn’t until 1986 when Lee wrote and directed She’s Gotta Have It with a budget of $175,000. The film earned seven million at the box office and was the start to what’s still developing as an impressive body of work and an essential artistic component for African American history. She’s Gotta Have It was historic for being a highly rare independantly minded African American film — before then there hadn’t been much African American presence behind the camera in Hollywood. Spike was an inspiration to others– Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle would follow She’s Gotta Have It the next year.

Spike still has goals– two biographical films on Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis he’s still struggling to get made. (Spike is a gigantic sports fan– baseball references get in every film and to say he’s into basketball is an understatement)

The films of Lee’s you must see:

1) I’m going to include Do The Right Thing here, since it is his strongest film and shamefully lost the academy award for best picture to Driving Miss Daisy. But what I really want you to do is throw down everything to see his adaptation of the Broadway show Passing Strange.

2) 25th Hour — Combines all Lee’s strengths; his sense of poetry, his love of New York

3) Clockers — Lee’s first book adaptation of Richard Price’s awesome 1992 novel. One of my favorite Lee movies that few people talk about– quit hating!

4) When The Levees Broke– haunting and essential documentary covering on Hurrican Katrina before, during and after the storm. Solid and classroom worthy. And there’s apparently a sequel in the works.

5) Malcolm X– Lee’s bio of the civil rights leader showcases one of Denzel’s best performances. I still remember cutting work to go see it opening day.

Lee has two children with his wife, attorney Tonya Lewis Lee.

The film that inspired him to make movies? The Deer Hunter.

Every Black History Month I have to profile at least one movie. Your Black Movie of the Month is 1972’s Blacula, starring William Marshall & SF native Vonetta McGee.

In 1780, an African Prince, Mamuwalde and his wife Luva approach, of all people, Count Dracula to compel the count into helping cease the slave trade. Drac makes a move on Mamuwalde’s wife (I don’t blame him– she’s hella fine) and he stands up to the honky of the living dead and says, all Shakespearean and everything: “Sir, are you ill?” He says I find your cognac as distastful as your manner!

Drac sics his henchmen on Mamuwalde but dude can throw down. Its only when Drac goes to get his tribe of undead bitches is he able to he hold Mamuwalde back. Drac bites him, puts a curse of the undead on him, then locks him into a coffin, throwing his old lady into the dungeon with him to die. Damn!

Flashforward 150 years later.

Enter two flaming gay-sambo interior decorators. They buy Dracula’s old furnature– including the sealed coffin– and ship it back to LA. They don’t even bother opening the coffin until its in their LA Warehouse, and even then they only unlock it– wink– because one dude cuts himself and meanwhile the unlocked coffin in the background opens.

When Blacula arises he is NAPPY!! And 150 years worth of thirsty for conveniently flowing blood. He looks as scary like an uncle who’s lap you don’t want to sit on for pictures.

With Blacula out and about, he hits up the club, of course (“How much you want for that cape? That’s Ba-aad!”) and runs into a woman who is the reincarnation of his lovely wife Luva (McGee).

Blacula is played by Shakespearean actor and acting teacher William Marshall, but you probably know him as the King of Cartoons. He’s a solid actor, born in Gary, Indiana in 1924. A stage actor who branched into tv and film– I would’ve loved to have seen his work in Othello, and his performances as Paul Robeson and Frederick Douglass. He died in 2003, victim of Alzheimer’s.

After all these years, Blacula is a surprisingly good movie. Blacula takes to pimp slapping cops (he noticably doesn’t bite many white people) and can turn into a bat just by lifting his cape. He has a coven of the Black Undead and doesn’t have patience for jive talking cab drivers. Its laugh out loud funny (there’s a character named Skillet!) and shamefully politically incorrect. If you’re queer and without a sense of humor you could very well be offended.

There’s a boneshaking scare in the graveyard that works well today and illustrates why Black people are too smart for horror movies. If you’re stepping to a brother from beyond the grave you Still need to come correct. There’s another good scare in the morgue, but I gotta confess– its not scary as much as funny and creepy. And somehow the film daringly cuts from that screamer to a love scene.

Blacula! I would have loved to’ve seen this movie in the 70’s with a packed house of my people! Wow. The film is a sweet love story with an unexpectedly heart breaking ending. Seriously. The ending is kinda gangsta. And the sequel’s not bad either– Scream, Blacula, Scream. Go get em!

Black History Quote #1: “My first names Mister. My middle name: Period. Last name T.” – Silver Spoons.
***
Black History Quote #2: “Mr T has conned America. He don’t just take the truth and stretch it. He turns it inside out.” Nate Tero, Mr. T’s brother.
***
Laurence Tureaud (Later shortened to Tero) was born the youngest of 12 in Chicago, May 1952. His father was a preacher, though he left the family when… um, Baby T was 5 leaving his mom to raise the brood on her welfare check in a three room apartment.

Mr. T was active in sports in high school — he wrestled and practiced martial arts– and received a football scholarship to Prairie A&M University, though he was expelled after a year. His skill in sports got him into other colleges in Chicago until he joined the army serving as military police. After his discharge, he was recruited by the Green Bay Packers until a knee injury put him off the field. He found work as a bodyguard for celebrities (Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali, LeVar Burton, more…) charging $3000 a day, bragging that he’d never lost a client. Before he was Mr. T he worked as a bouncer in the black disco club in Chicago Dingbat’s. He would wear items lost in the bars and clubs after fights–and wear them while guarding the door. He did this so apparently the owners could reclaim them, but few ever asked. His famous mohawk originates from a National Geographic article he read on Mandika warriors. I looked around for video of Mr. T’s winning the World’s Toughest Bouncer competition on the 1970’s show Games People Play– but no luck. Apparently his appearance and win on that show caught the attention of Sylvester Stallone who gave him a ‘cameo’ in Rocky III. In the film, Mr T’s character Clubber Lang is asked if he hates Rocky. “No. I don’t hate Balboa. But I pity the fool!”

Mr. T is not an actor. He’s an entrepreneur who’s figured how to sell his only commodity: his personality. And he’s kept consistently busy, maintaining a career – not necessarily because of a talent, but via a presence and personality that cannot be ignored. Its interesting how unforgettable and successful he’s been for such a long time. I mean he’s steady working… but where’s, say, Jaleel White? (Sorry, that was hella random, but he appeared in conversation this morning at random)

He reprised his tough boxer image in Penitentiary 2 and appeared in hella sit-coms before landing the role of BA Baracus on NBC’s The A Team. (The movie version is due this June) He’s been animated in cartoons. He’s recorded motivational videos for kids where his raps were ghost-written by Ice T— and no, they’re not related. But he did record a rap album in 1984.

He was Hulk Hogan’s tag team partner in Wrestlemania in 1985. Initially professional wrestlers were offended at an ‘actor’ entering the world of wrestling, but they hadn’t known he was an experienced athelete. Mr T would appear in the ring on and off again until 2001.

Mr. T is a born again Christian and was re-baptized in the Cosmopolitan Community Church in Chicago, 1978. He’s never been married. He has three kids. He wants you to treat your mother right.