"BOOGALOO: THE QUINTESSENCE OF
AMERICAN POPULAR
MUSIC" was about twenty
pages read by DJZigZag
before the Christmas
holiday. It is now twenty
pages short of being finished.
The non-fiction account of
basically three stories from
the history of New World
African Music is insightful
and extremely
well written by this Harvard man.
Author Arthur Kempton, an American of European descent, writes mainly about; Sam Cooke and his time which overlaps Berry Gordy Jr. and his era which leads into George "Funkadelic" Clinton and Hip Hop.
Here is an example of the more flamboyant side of the writing in which Mr. Kempton describes the California service that was held for Sam Cooke after his death. Renowned Gospel singer Bessie Griffin was much too filled with remorse to perform - the F.W. Alexander mentioned at the end of the vignette was a dear friend of Sam Cooke and leader of the gospel group the Pilgrim Travellers.
"The service in Los Angeles was convoked by Billy Preston playing "Yield Not To Temptation" on organ, and featured hymn-singing by Lou Rawls and Bobby Bland. The slain star was to have been sung to his eternal rest in the three-octave range of the great Bessie Griffin, who even her competitors said "could moan and move a mountain." But Griffin was unable that day to move anyone; she was so overcome by the spirit of the occasion, she couldn't perform.
Her incapacitation proved Ray Charles's opportunity to steal Sam Cooke's last show. He would find irresistible his chance at any room this charged and teeming, or any audience so exquisitely ripe for his taking. He stepped from the back of the church and was led down its center aisle, as the overflow congregation's murmurings at their unexpected first sightings of him became exhortations once his intentions were clear.
He teased them as he would a nightclub crowd, by asking if they wanted him to sing. Then, after a "Sam, baby, this is for you," as though addressing a colleague in the house who'd happened by some Thursday night to watch him work, Charles proceeded to sit at the piano and hold church so deep that even J.W. Alexander, holding the microphone for him and long inured to such theatrics as these, broke down and wept unabashedly."
BUY THE BOOK . . .
DJZigZag
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