To commemorate International Jazz Day 2023 , I nominated Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” for listing on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Established in 2002 as part of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The registry includes music, spoken word and historic speeches.
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the Class of 2024 on April 16, 2024. I scrolled the list with trepidation. When I saw Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder,” I jumped up in stunned disbelief.
A record 2,899 nominations were submitted for this year’s class. “The Sidewinder” is among the 25 audio recordings selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’ sound collection.
We will celebrate the listing on International Jazz Day 2024 when Edward Lee Morgan’s historical marker is unveiled.
The dedication ceremony is free and open to the public. To register for the unveiling, please go here.
Billie Holiday was born at Philadelphia General Hospital on April 7, 1915. Located in the Black Bottom, the public hospital was the “hospital of choice” for African American women during the Great Migration.
WKCR is hosting a special birthday broadcast in honor of Lady Day. You can listen to the 24-hour broadcast on 89.9 FM or stream it live here.
My appreciation for Billie Holiday is well-documented. I made some noise when I found out that Lady Day was not honored on Philadelphia’s Walk of Fame. I ruffled some feathers but Billie got her plaque.
It’s Lady Day’s heavenly birthday but April 2024 is Lee Morgan Appreciation Month. So I want to note that a little over a year after graduating from Jules E. Mastbaum Area Vocational Technical School, the trumpet virtuoso was performing with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. Lee was on the same stage as Billie Holiday.
Jazz Appreciation Month, also known as JAM, is an annual celebration held in April to honor and promote jazz and its cultural significance. JAM was conceived by the National Museum of American History in 2001.
Augusta Savage was a sculptor and arts educator, and an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, where she mentored and inspired many well-known Harlem Renaissance artists including Ernest Crichlow and Jacob Lawrence.
Like her monumental work, Savage’s story was almost lost to history. “The Harp” was created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The design was inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the Black National Anthem. Viewed by more than five million people, Savage’s sculpture was destroyed during the cleanup after the fair ended.
American Masters Shorts‘ documentary, Searching for Augusta Savage, recently premiered on PBS. The filmmakers said they “‘wanted to investigate why evidence of Savage’s accomplishments and her work appear to be erased. We wanted to know how someone so accomplished, so enterprising and so celebrated during her lifetime, could be missing from the annals of American history and the museum landscape.”
Monumental Women has launched a campaign to recreate “The Harp.” For more information, go here.
March 10-16, 2024 is Sunshine Week, a time to celebrate transparency, and the right to know what government officials are doing and saying behind closed doors. I used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Pennsylvania’s Right-To-Know Law to tell the story of the deteriorating condition of the John Coltrane House and the drama over ownership of the National Historic Landmark.
John Coltrane’s beloved “Cousin Mary,” Mary Alexander, sounded the alarm about the physical deterioration of the property as early as 1987.
From time to time I would check on the Coltrane House. Without access to the property, I reported illegal dumping and other violations visible from the public right of way. I am a cold weather person but on a hot and humid morning in August 2019, I felt an overwhelming urge to stop by the Coltrane House. I later learned that Cousin Mary joined the ancestors the same day that I was snooping around her former home. I vowed then that I would do whatever I could to preserve the historic landmark in public memory.
I successfully nominated the Coltrane House for inclusion on 2020 Pennsylvania At Risk. Designation does not bring any resources; instead, it brings renewed media attention to a historic landmark at risk of demolition by neglect.
News stories about the designation were published in February 2020. I had a conference call with Ravi Coltrane to explore next steps on March 13, 2020. I have not spoken with him since that conversation. However, news articles about the At-Risk designation were included as exhibits to the case that Ravi and Oran Coltrane filed to gain possession of the property on April 27, 2022.
Fast forward to May 2023, the parties reached an agreement in principle. The outcome was predetermined given the existence of a valid will. Under the terms of their grandmother’s will, Ravi and Oran should have gained possession of the property upon the death of Cousin Mary on August 31, 2019.
Norman Gadson is still listed as the owner on property and tax records. Last week, the New York Times reported the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “will assist in coordinating and financing the transfer of Coltrane’s home from its current owner back to his family.”
The Coltrane House is the first site selected for the new Descendants and Family Stewardship Initiative. Brent Leggs, executive director of the Action Fund, said:
Descendants and families have been doing this work for centuries on an informal basis. The initiative is about empowering descendants and families through historic preservation more formally. Our role is to give them the resources and technical expertise they need to protect and preserve the physical evidence of the past and share their profound stories with the American public.
It has taken nearly four decades, but the John Coltrane House will finally be restored. As I told Valerie Russ of the Phliladelphia Inquirer, my work is done. Mission accomplished.
I want to kick off Women’s History Month with Claudette Colvin who on March 2, 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white woman while riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The school student refused to move to the back of the bus when ordered by the bus driver. Claudette’s defiance led to her arrest. She was charged with violating Montgomery’s segregation ordinance, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer.
Claudette was a member of the NAACP Youth Council but the civil rights organization did not want the rebellious teenager to be the face of the bus boycott. Respectability politics forced the 15-year-old to take a back seat to Rosa Parks who nine months later similarly refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.
Claudette was one of the four plaintiffs in the court case that challenged segregation on Alabama buses. The case, Browder v. Gayle, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which on November 13, 1956 ruled Alabama’s segregated bus system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association voted to end the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott on December 20, 1956.
Colvin was almost lost to history but she is getting her flowers.
Sixty-six years after her arrest, Colvin’s record was expunged. A Black man, Judge Calvin Williams, signed the order to seal and destroy her juvenile court records.
Lee Morgan’s life was tragically cut short 52 years ago. Lee lingers in our hearts and memories. His game-changing album, “The Sidewinder,” captivated the public and rescued Blue Note Records from the brink of bankruptcy.
The title track was a rare crossover hit on the pop and R&B charts. “The Sidewinder” album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.
As we celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month in April, let us honor Lee Morgan’s enduring legacy. Join us on International Jazz Day for the unveiling of his historical marker at the former site of the Aqua Lounge on West Philly’s famed 52nd Street commercial corridor.
Edward Lee Morgan will take his rightful place alongside John Coltrane and Billie Holiday with a historical marker in Philadelphia.
Brother Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.
The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center is hosting an evening of prayers, performances and reflections to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the assassination of “our own black shining prince,” El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission approved my nomination of Lee Morgan for a historical marker in December 2022. However, due to supply chain issues, fabrication of the marker was delayed. On the first day of Black History Month 2024, I received notice that Lee’s marker has been shipped.
During the Black History Month celebration at the historic Johnson House, an Underground Railroad site, I slipped on the hat that Lee Morgan wore during his photo shoot for “The Sixth Sense” album. The hat and other artifacts are in the possession of his nephew and executor of his estate, Raymond Darryl Cox.
Join the Tioga-Nicetown Library on Friday, February 9, 2024, 1pm to 3pm for a community celebration of Lee Morgan and the Power of Art.
The event is free and open to the public. To RSVP, go here.
February is the shortest month but it packs a cultural wallop. I cannot think of a better way to kick off Black History Month than with “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” Composed by Anthony Davis (music), Thulani Davis (libretto) and Christopher Davis (story), the groundbreaking opera was workshopped at the Trocadero Theater in 1984 and premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in 1985 (the official premiere was at the New York City Opera in 1986).
The Metropolitan Opera’s staging reimagines Malcolm “as an Everyman whose story transcends time and space.” From the New York Times’ review:
The epigraph of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is a quote from an interview in which, asked about the cost of freedom, Malcolm responds, “The cost of freedom is death.”
That tension — between hope and reality, between liberation and limitation — courses through a new production of “X” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, in the work’s company premiere. This staging dreams of a better future, with a towering Afrofuturist spaceship that, at the beginning, appears to be calling Malcolm X home. But the beam-me-up rays of light are pulled away to reveal a floating proscenium, gilded at the edges and decorated with a landscape mural. It is a replica of the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.
Presented by Great Performances at the Met, “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” premieres beginning February 4, 2024 (check local listings) on PBS and PBS App.
All That Philly Jazz 