This is
Black History Month (
see link below) and today
is the birthday of
Sidney Poitier; he is 90 years old. WOW! I remember
when he began acting. The first film I saw him in was
Blackboard Jungle. This film not only introduced me to Poitier but
rock 'n roll as well (
link below).
So, I went trotting off to my
vinyl LP collection to see how I could honor him and came up with this vinyl gem,
Sidney Poitier in Poetry of the Negro, which features Poitier reading poems of the American Negro. Reading with him is
Doris Belack
who was an American character actress of stage, film and television.
She was born on February 26, 1926. She died on October 4, 2011. The
album was produced by her husband,
Philip Rose, who died on May 31, 2011.
Rose met Poitier while producing,
A Raisin in the Sun, a 1959 play written by
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry. Rose owned a
rhythm and blues label,
Glory Records, and asked Poitier to record a spoken
word album,
Poetry of the Negro, with liner notes written by the then unknown Hansberry.
The
title of Hansberry’s play is taken from a
Langston Hughes poem, called
“Harlem” in which the poet asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?/
does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?” In one critic’s words,
Hansberry wanted “to write a social drama about blacks that was good
art” (
npr.org). Because the project was considered risky, investors were
scarce, but idealistic record executive Philip Rose was willing to take
a chance and produce the play. He knew he had an asset in the star
power of his friend,
Sidney Poitier,
Hollywood’s first black leading
man, whom he met after the actor’s phenomenal success as a young
juvenile delinquent in
Blackboard Jungle (1955) which featured the song,
Rock Around the Clock (
link below).
vinyl LP, back cover
Hansberry was born May 19, 1930, in
Chicago, where her father was a prominent
real-estate broker and political activist who successfully challenged
the segregated city’s restrictive real estate covenants. These laws
denied equal housing to blacks, but Mr. Hansberry illegally moved his
family to a white neighborhood and then successfully challenged the laws
all the way to the
Supreme Court. The Court stuck down the covenants in
Hansberry v. Lee, 1943. By the early 1950s, she was writing essays and
reviews for leftist journals and was one of an avant-garde circle of
black intellectuals. In 1953, she married a Jewish writer and activist,
Robert Nemiroff, whom she met on a picket line. At 26, disgusted with
the stereotyped portrayals of blacks on stage, she wrote
A Raisin in the
Sun, produced in 1959. It was the first play by a black woman produced
on
Broadway, and Hansberry was the first black author to win the
New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, defeating fellow nominees
Eugene O’Neill,
Archibald MacLeish and
Tennessee Williams. Hansberry, erudite
and outspoken, wrote only two complete plays before her career was cut short when she died of cancer at 34.
The poets & their poems
with links to their work
Sidney Poitier With
Doris Belack –
Sidney Poitier Reads Poetry Of The Negro
Label:
Glory Records – GLP-1
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1969
Genre: Jazz, Non-Music, Stage & Screen
Style: Poetry, Spoken Word
Tracklist:
Side 1:
A1 The Creation 4:15
A2 Mother To Son 2:00
A3 When Melinda Sings 3:06
A4 Debate Of Dark Brothers 1:06
A5 To John Keats, Poet At Springtime 3:15
A6 At Candle Lightin' Time 2:39
A7 Yet I Do Marvel 3:01
Side 2:
B1 An Ante - Bellum Sermon 4:36
B2 Ere Sleep Comes Down To Soothe The Weary Eyes 4:16
B3 I, Too 00:37
B4 When You Have Forgotten Sunday 1:55
B5 The Debt 00:52
B6 Epigram 00:43
B7 We Wear The Mask 1:08
B8 Blues At Dawn 00:35
B9 Lift Every Voice 2:25
Credits:
Percussion, Piano –
Specs Powell
Net links:
IMBD bio
Sidney Poitier Filmography
Bill Haley ~ Rock Around the Clock
Black History articles
Happy birthday, Sidney!
Styrous® ~ Monday, February 20, 2017
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