From the breathless, infectious pop of "Fingertips" and "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" through the funk militancy of "Superstition" and "Higher Ground" and on to the MOR of "I Just Called To Say I Love Y
Curtis Mayfield is one of the titans of popular music - as a guitarist, singer, producer and, especially, as a songwriter. The former owner of the purest falsetto in soul, his influence extends through generations of soul singers and the beginnings of Jam
If there were ever a band that lived up to the cliché of 'defining the times' it was Sly and the Family Stone. For three brief years in the late 60s Sly Stone's happy-faced vision of integration and his charming synthesis of psychedelic pop
Micheaux believed the only independent future for the Black man lay on the Western Frontier. He sold his first novels about that experience door-to-door himself. He then realized the stories would make better movies than the ones which portrayed Black peo
Born in Woodville, Mississippi, and reared in Little Rock, Arkansas, William Grant Still (1895-1978) became the first African American composer to have a symphony performed by an American orchestra.
From the very beginning of their relationship, Bob Cole and the Johnson brothers seem focused on one major goal: elevating the lyrical sophistication of Negro songs. The team's first collaboration was Louisiana Lize, a love song written in a new lyri
Before his death at age 71 in 1949, the man who was born Luther Robinson had won more awards and recognition than any other black man in America. When he was still a child living in Richmond at 915 N. Third St., he was teased so much about the name Luther
At the age of six he began dancing for a living, appearing as a "hoofer," or song-and-dance man, in local beer gardens. Two years later, in Washington, DC he toured with Mayme Remington's troupe. In 1891, at the ripe age of 12, he joined a
