Black Lives Matter to Me

BLACK LIVES MATTER TO ME

There's a meme going around on FB that people are reposting: "I STAND FOR." The first thing on the list is "Black Lives." I find it curious that some of the people who are posting this have nothing to do with black lives.

I will say this: I am very much against BLM, a terrorist organization which scammed many generous, kind, giving Americans out of millions, maybe billions, of dollars and spent it on themselves and have been proven to NOT CARE AT ALL ABOUT BLACK LIVES. Why hasn't the IRS audited them?

As an artist, I work with wonderful black singers and musicians. I have spent a big chunk of my life studying the culture of American music, blues, rock & roll, R&B, and have traveled to the capital of the blues: Clarksdale, MS and have studied Black art and music (having been raised in Chicago) all my life. On my latest album, "Ghosts in a Time Machine," I explore gospel, R&B, blues and R&R... and even wrote a song dedicated to the Gullah of SC, which is the title track.

My song, The Color Line celebrates the writings of Frederick Douglass.

Much of my art is dedicated to the beautiful black people of Charleston, SC who I photograph, meet, talk to and ride the bus with all the time and one of my pieces was even chosen last year to represent Piccolo Spoleto: "Charleston Folks."

One of my favorite artists is Romare Bearden whose art I've traveled to many cities to see in person. Among my favorite singers are Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Howlin' Wolf (whose life I wrote about in my song, "The Wolf" and Mississippi John Hurt who is one of the greatest musicians of the Delta.

I love the blues and collect the records of B.B. King, Son House, Charley Patton, Lead Belly and many more. They are the backbone of American music. I have been to Memphis several times and walked Beale Street where B.B. King and Elvis Presley lived their lives. I studied Stax Records and their history and recommend the wonderful documentary on Stax. You can learn more about great Black Lives on my page: BLUES ROUTES.

I have studied the writings of Abraham Lincoln whose Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves... and who died trying to give Black Men the right to vote.

My point is - you shouldn't just say I STAND FOR BLACK LIVES without actually experiencing Black lives. The terrible direction America took during COVID when BLM destroyed many cities and thousands of people's lives that ended up putting a drug-addicted criminal on a pedestal should be replaced by teaching the lessons of Bob Woodson, Carol Swain, Shelby Steele, Alveda King and other Black Conservatives who have devoted their lives to building up and encouraging Black people to be the best they can be. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of nonviolent resistance, said it best: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" from The Declaration of Independence and "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Ghosts in a Time Machine

[LISTEN HERE]

Ghosts in a Time Machine

Intro: Aha-- aahh--- (x4) [rhythmic force] 

Sea island cotton on plantation

The enslaved lived in damnation

Call to worship the creation

And it was a transformation /

Freedmen through the tribulation

waiting for emancipation

lived so long for activation

As the War destroyed the nation

[REFRAIN:] Gullah ghosts, anointed people... led by Spirit

__________________________________________________

[CHORUS]

Ghosts... in a time machine... Bring it back, bring it back (rep)

They're witnesses to transformation

in the conscience of the nation

They whisper through the old oak trees

They're voices of eternity---

__________________________________________________

And another generation,

the Gullah made their declaration

Sense and sound, a cultivation

howlin' in their congregation

Freedom was a celebration

Cut the chains of indignation

- the end of pain and devastation,

liberty of concentration

[REFRAIN:] Gullah ghosts, anointed people... led by Spirit

[CHORUS]

To open up the conversation

It was their determination

to bring forth peaceful integration

(and) such high art imagination

...of no more discrimination

And, glory be, their liberation

They knew it was an obligation

to teach their children of salvation

[REFRAIN:] Gullah ghosts, anointed people... led by Spirit

Ghosts... in a time machine... Bring it back, bring it back (rep)

They're voices of eternity---

My Lost Chicago

MY LOST CHICAGO

[LISTEN HERE]

[nod to Frank Sinatra's "Chicago" theme]

Ooo-- Ooo--

Chicago, Chicago-- da-da-da-da-da-da / da-da-da-da-

Chicago, Chicago-- da-da-da-da / da-da-da-da- Ah---- 

1. Once upon a time so long ago

I had a home outside Chicago

In Second City, it snowed and snowed---

Now it's broken--- oh--- oh--

My old--- lost--- Chicago-- mm---

2. Buddy's still playing his blues licks

Came across Route 66, ooh--

from the South side that I fled

so many years ago--- oh--- oh--

My cold--- lost--- Chicago-- mm---

[BRIDGE:]

Sweet memories of snowy avenues

Where they played the Delta blues

[Blues riff:]

The Windy City's howlin' in my soul

it rages on, it's taken its toll

All of my life it's stayed with me

the bustlin' folk and the blues city - ooh----

____________________________________

[REFRAIN:]

Chicago-- Oh--- I miss--- my-- sweet home---

I miss--- my-- sweet home--- ooh---

[Repeat intro theme]

3. Haunted by-- Lake Michigan haze

frozen nights and windy days

In Old Town I sang at the 'Earl'

I was-- a-- young, creative girl--

in my--- lost--- Chicago-- mm----

[REFRAIN]

Hymn #9 - "I Can't Put it into Words"

LISTEN HERE

On August 20, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 spaceship on a one-way ticket to oblivion. Three weeks later, its sister craft, Voyager 1, blasted off with the same destination. Their mission for the first dozen years or so, as they cruised through the solar system, was to gather data from the planets. Their goal for the next 60,000 years or so, as they leave us far behind, is to carry a message in a bottle to the stars. 

Alongside an array of high-tech cameras, infrared instruments, and a large parabolic radio antenna, each Voyager bears a stylus, a phonograph record, and directions for playing it. This record is made of copper and plated in gold, created to last forever, to offer an audio and visual slide show of all things Earthly. This is who we are, it says. Or were. 

And at the very end, summing up the power and the pathos of everything that went before, are two singular pieces of music by two singular men who couldn’t have been more different. One was a deaf German whose song was recorded by a string quartet in a professional studio. The other was a blind Texan who played his song on a cheap guitar in a Dallas hotel room. The German is Ludwig van Beethoven.

Leading into it is a song recorded and played by a twentieth-century street musician, Blind Willie Johnson. The song is “Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground,” a largely wordless hymn built around the yearning cries of Johnson’s slide guitar and the moans and melodies of his voice. More... The Soul of a Man.

I can only hope and pray that my version did Blind Willie Johnson's masterpiece justice.  It haunts me and yet fills me with an intense joy that is hard to put into words.

Just as Lonesome as Can Be (Lonesome Blues)

 

[LISTEN HERE]

Just as Lonesome as Can Be (Lonesome Blues)

Darkness hovers at the edge of town

I'm so lonesome and there's no one around

Just a shotgun shack

and an old dirt-floor juke from the past

Shake Rag down in Tupelo, yeah

on the railway by the poor folks' shacks

There ain't no train on them broken tracks

No one to save me, no one to stand by me

I'm just as lonely - as lonely as can be

[CHORUS:]

Gotta get gone, gone, gone, gone

as far away as I can see---

So I jumped that long, black train

and rode off to my destiny

I am forgotten, no one knows I am alive

Nobody cares if I live or die

I'm just as lonesome, as lonesome as can be---

[CHORUS]

[BRIDGE:]

Heartbreak is no mystery

haunts like a dream just out of reach

"No" has been a gift; can't want for nothin' left to lose--- yeah--

I've been rejected since I was born

I am invisible and lovelorn, (so I've...)

[CHORUS]

The Color Line

THE COLOR LINE

[LISTEN HERE]

1. My Lord, he is sharing a secret -

belief in equality of man

No, we must never forget

or we'll stumble in the dark where we began

 

2. Hold on to the dream and surrender

to a life that was planned by the Divine

Just try to remember  

What the world was like without the color line-- whoa---

 

[CHORUS:]

Let's not draw--- any lines

Let us stay--- color blind

Tear down, tear down the color line-- whoa---

 

[BRIDGE]

"How do you know what I can see

until you can look through my eyes?"

Don't you see me prayin' on my knees?

Crying is a thin disguise

Hold me, I'm trembling so

I sing the blues to love my foe [rep]   whoa //

 

3. My love, I feel you so near me

But I'm swimming in the sins of my past

You can't catch my fall when I'm weakened

I know that this love may never last -- whoa---

 

[CHORUS:] 

Let's not draw--- any lines

Let us stay--- color blind

Tear down, tear down the color line-- whoa---

...so I am no longer blind [rep]

Redemption

 

REDEMPTION [I Won't Comply]

[LISTEN HERE]

1. 2020's gone, now we're paying the price

The innocent were the biggest sacrifice

covered faces muzzled and masked

by an evil mandate the people never asked (for)

            No- no- no--

2. Rainbow pills at an all-time high

Thinking not for themselves, they believed the lie

(but) many with sense saw the plan to control

I was not willing to sell my soul, oh, no---

 

[CHORUS:]  

No, no, no!  I won't comply (rep)   

[BU Vox: I Am American! A free American!]

- not EVER - to the BIG LIE

 

3. Shut down, lockdown, take away our rights

There are no heroes when a brave man fights

Submit to the shot though it's not a vax

while the frontline heroes were given the axe, oh, no---

 

4. Cower and bow to tyrannical rule

wicked enforcers were evil and cruel

Their laws were meant for 'we, not thee'

No truth for the church or the family--- oo--

[CHORUS]

[BRIDGE:]

(The) well-orchestrated plan brought the lame to one knee

The truth is it was crimes against humanity---

"Just as I Am" without one plea, yeah-- yeah--

Amen, brother, I am free! (rep)

Freedom is life, so I'm leaving behind

their senseless rules they forced us to mind----

But God and Constitution are never wrong

 

[CHORUS]

 

This is redemption-- (rep)

I am redeemed!

I Am That I Am ('His Master's Voice')

[LISTEN HERE]

1. "I am that I am"

said 'His Master's Voice'

where there is music in the air--

and the sweet, sweet sounds

on the wings of a dove

is what I'll be singin' in the rounds

[CHORUS:]

Oh, the grief, it tries men's souls 

the harder the burden, more glorious

The triumph comes on a mountain of gold

The story of salvation is told [repeat]

2. Mystic chords

in the tracks of time

(loving) angels everywhere--

and the heavenly presence

united by the sky

I'll be singin' when I die (when I die)

[SOLO] ooh--- aah---

3. The Rock is in my soul

and the preachers preach

a voice that is still unknown--

but a new life is mine

I can stop all of my cryin'

grateful to God that I have grown

[CHORUS]

[Spoken:] I am that I am

There is music in the air

and the sweet--- sweet sounds

is what I'll be singin' in the rounds--- oh--- mmm---

Ain't Done Sufferin' Yet

 

LISTEN HERE

1. This ol' world taught me

how to weep and moan

I ain't done sufferin' yet...

tryin' to find my way back home

I've been so lost and lonely

Got no one to call my own

ooh--- hoo---

 

2. Got an angel on my shoulder, now

the devil's not too far behind

(He knows) I ain't done sufferin' yet

- about to lose my mind.

My knees are worn, prayin'

the Lord won't be unkind

ooh--- hoo---

 

[BRIDGE]

I--- want love

I--- want sanity

I--- just want to breathe-- easily---

Take me to the water's edge

Drown me in tenderness

Give me just a moment of peace

Oh, please have mercy on me--- [continue verse rhythm]

 

[GUITAR/HARP SOLO]

 

3. 'Oh, Lord, let me suffer on

let me drink until I die,' ... mm--

said no one on this planet, now

and I'm not fallin' for the lie

I AM done sufferin' now

To that life, I say 'bye-bye'...  Bye--- Bye---

Rise Up Singin'

LISTEN HERE

Rise Up Singin'

1. How long is it gonna take?

Weeks, days, months... to shake

dying to be saved

It is the darkness that I craved.

Could mine be a life He'll save?

to keep me from an early grave.

[CHORUS:]

Rise up singin' - hmm- mm--

Bells are ringin' - whoa-oh-oh-oh - oh-oh-oh   mm--

Souls uplifting, minds are shifting

and the world can't do me no harm------

2. My magic magnifying mind

where the blind leading the blind

I'm confessing now

fall down on my knees, take a vow

in everlasting life, His will

is my destiny to fulfill.

[CHORUS]

[BRIDGE:]

Now I see and hear and feel

I have nothing to conceal

A choir of gospel singers stand

I'm just a singer in his heavenly band--- oh---

of life--- love--- liberty--- oh, free me now!

love--- liberty--- oh, free me now!

love--- liberty------

Sing out for the sinners--

Singin' for the suffering souls--

Sing out for the winners--

Sing the force of rock and roll--

Rejoice! Rejoice!  We have a voice!

A choice to sing it loud---

So the world can't do us no harm--- oooh---

Rise up singin' oh-----  A-men