Some Jazz Records: Abbey Lincoln Clippings (Part 2)
Comments on recordings from musicians and other actors of the jazz scene. Random and not-so-random listening cues from the archives.
E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1957).
Abbey Lincoln attributed the major shift that took place in her career in the late 1950s in part to non-musical influences. "Everywhere I went, I saw my people living in the slums and in the worst sections of the city," Lincoln told Barbara Gardner in a 1961 Down Beat profile. "They were the people I really wanted to identify with when I sang, but they couldn’t even come to the places I was working most of the time. And if they did, they were usually very uncomfortable there. So soon I saw that I had to accept one of two explanations: either they were really lazy, shiftless, and no good by nature, or else there was something very cruel going on. Something which I didn’t quite understand. […] I read a book, The Negro in America. It was all suddenly very clear. When you’re really ready to look, there is always somebody or something around to show you." The same title was given in a 1972 Jet profile. It is likely that Lincoln was in fact referring to sociologist E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro in the United States (Eric Porter reaches the same conclusion in his in-depth What Is This Thing Called Jazz? Lincoln chapter). Frazier’s 800-page historical and sociological textbook was first published in 1949 and appeared as a revised edition in 1957.
Abbey Lincoln, Abbey Is Blue, Riverside RLP 12-308 (RLP 1153), 1960, LP.
Abbey Is Blue was the first album of a key phase of Abbey Lincoln’s career. Asked when she started to write her own lyrics by the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program, Lincoln pointed to this album and to the song "Let Up." "My life was really becoming oppressive," she said. "I was in between my career. I was trying to be seen as a serious performer and there were many people making snide ugly remarks about Abbey Lincoln who wasn’t no singer, Max [Roach] ought to let her go and make some money because she ain’t no singer, and I was beginning to be frail, my stomach hurt all the time, and so I sang this […] They put a blue cover on it over my smiling face, and I wrote a song called 'Let Up.' Max wrote the melody to it and he said that it was mine, but it’s not, it’s his."
Max Roach, We Insist!: Freedom Now Suite, Candid CJM 8002 (CJS 9002), 1961, LP.
Beyond the classic version put to tape in 1960, Max Roach’s collaboration with Abbey Lincoln and Oscar Brown Jr. had an extensive performance history, notably at benefit concerts. "We performed the Freedom Now Suite one time for the NAACP in Philadelphia," Lincoln told the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program. The appearance took place on July 14, 1961. "When I started to scream, the guards broke in to the room with their guns drawn because they thought something terrible had happened, I guess. […] we would do things for CORE. We did things for the Muslims [the Nation of Islam]. I never did anything for Dr. King either. Nobody asked us. We were radical. The NAACP didn’t want anybody radical like us. They still don’t. I never was a fan of theirs either. […] So, I did know Malcolm X and we did things for him at Town Hall and sometimes uptown. […] Fundraising money. Yeah. Freedom Now Suite." Ingrid Monson’s research for her Freedom Sounds book complicates the picture, with canceled plans for a NAACP-sponsored tour, at least one King benefit, and the placement of the Nation of Islam-sponsored Town Hall event six months after Malcolm X’s break with the organization.
Abbey Lincoln, Straight Ahead, Candid CJM 8015 (CJS 9015), 1961, LP.
In its November 9, 1961 issue, Down Beat ran a particularly condescending review of Abbey Lincoln’s Straight Ahead album. In it, Ira Gitler, called Lincoln "misguided and naive" and a "professional Negro" using propaganda as a device, before suggesting reading material that could help her better understand African viewpoints on African-Americans. Shortly thereafter, Lincoln and Max Roach responded during a Down Beat panel on "Racial Prejudice in Jazz." "All art must be propaganda; all art must have an attitude; and all art must reflect the times you live in," Lincoln countered, following a line she would later revise. "Tell me, why is it that you never censured [Billie Holiday] for being an obvious masochist? Everything Billie Holiday sang was about unrequited love, nearly," Lincoln said during the panel. "Now, why is it nobody got after her about her subject matter? She sang about what was most important to her. And I, Abbey Lincoln, sing about what is most important to me. And what is most important to me is being free of the shackles that chain me in every walk of life that I live. If this were not so, I would still be a supper-club singer. […] I can’t sing about unrequited love because I don’t have unrequited love. I can’t sing about things except what I know about."
Extra: "I’m glad I had a chance to do it," Lincoln said of Freedom Now Suite to the Los Angeles Times. "But it really wasn’t my music, it was Max Roach and Oscar Brown Jr.'s music. At first I refused to do it because I said that all the screaming they wanted me to do wasn’t a part of music. I changed my mind about that […] after I heard Leontyne Price doing a really controlled scream." Help from readers familiar with Price’s work in identifying what piece of music Lincoln could have been thinking of would be most appreciated.