Obscured by time, this jazz singer leaves behind an impressive legacy.
When I'm Called Home: Remembering Abbey Lincoln
by Mark Anthony Neal
“I’ve always been concerned with the story I’m telling. This music is social. Our music is social. Nobody cares whether it sounds pretty or not. Can you tell the people what its like to be here?”—Abbey Lincoln in LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft
When Abbey Lincoln gave her last breath on the morning of August 14, 2010, she left a legacy, that though obscured by time and ignorance, marks her as one of the most singular Black artists of the 20th Century. Though it is important to remember Lincoln as one of the truly original jazz vocalists ever, there are few artists who could claim to have been as obsessed with using her art—as singer, songwriter, essayist (she contributed to Toni Cade’s groundbreaking anthology The Black Woman), painter and actress—as a vessel to explicate the full humanity of herself and the people, that she often claimed, were inside of her.
Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in August of 1930 in Chicago, Lincoln came of age on a farm in Calvin Center, Michigan. Like many aspiring artists from that era, Lincoln was profoundly affected by the music of Billie Holiday. As Lincoln recalled with journalist Lisa Jones in a 1991 New York Times interview, “My father worked in the houses of wealthy people who gave him recordings. The first singer I heard on record was Billie Holiday when I was 14.” Two decades later Lincoln would be favorably compared Holiday, though she would struggle throughout much of her early career to escape the shadows of both Holiday and the formidable mythology that has been erected in her name.
After apprenticing in various places including Honolulu and California, where she had initially moved after graduating high school, and taking the name Gaby Lee, Lincoln began to be managed by lyricist Bob Russell. It was Russell who suggested another name change—Abbey Lincoln—and who helped Lincoln sign with the noted Jazz label Riverside, where she recorded four albums beginning with Abbey Lincoln’s Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love (1956), That’s Him (1957), It’s Magic (1958) and Abbey is Blue (1959). On Lincoln’s debut, recorded with the Benny Carter Orchestra, Riverside tried to position Lincoln as the sexy, girl-next-door torch song singer and it was in that vein that Lincoln appeared in the film The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), wearing the same dress that Marilyn Monroe once wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). When Lincoln appeared on the cover of Ebony Magazine—in Monroe’s red dress—her fate as yet another “silent” pretty face seemed assured. But like her contemporary Eartha Kitt, Lincoln had another vision for herself.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
When I'm Called Home: Remembering Abbey Lincoln
by Mark Anthony Neal
“I’ve always been concerned with the story I’m telling. This music is social. Our music is social. Nobody cares whether it sounds pretty or not. Can you tell the people what its like to be here?”—Abbey Lincoln in LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft
When Abbey Lincoln gave her last breath on the morning of August 14, 2010, she left a legacy, that though obscured by time and ignorance, marks her as one of the most singular Black artists of the 20th Century. Though it is important to remember Lincoln as one of the truly original jazz vocalists ever, there are few artists who could claim to have been as obsessed with using her art—as singer, songwriter, essayist (she contributed to Toni Cade’s groundbreaking anthology The Black Woman), painter and actress—as a vessel to explicate the full humanity of herself and the people, that she often claimed, were inside of her.
Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in August of 1930 in Chicago, Lincoln came of age on a farm in Calvin Center, Michigan. Like many aspiring artists from that era, Lincoln was profoundly affected by the music of Billie Holiday. As Lincoln recalled with journalist Lisa Jones in a 1991 New York Times interview, “My father worked in the houses of wealthy people who gave him recordings. The first singer I heard on record was Billie Holiday when I was 14.” Two decades later Lincoln would be favorably compared Holiday, though she would struggle throughout much of her early career to escape the shadows of both Holiday and the formidable mythology that has been erected in her name.
After apprenticing in various places including Honolulu and California, where she had initially moved after graduating high school, and taking the name Gaby Lee, Lincoln began to be managed by lyricist Bob Russell. It was Russell who suggested another name change—Abbey Lincoln—and who helped Lincoln sign with the noted Jazz label Riverside, where she recorded four albums beginning with Abbey Lincoln’s Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love (1956), That’s Him (1957), It’s Magic (1958) and Abbey is Blue (1959). On Lincoln’s debut, recorded with the Benny Carter Orchestra, Riverside tried to position Lincoln as the sexy, girl-next-door torch song singer and it was in that vein that Lincoln appeared in the film The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), wearing the same dress that Marilyn Monroe once wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). When Lincoln appeared on the cover of Ebony Magazine—in Monroe’s red dress—her fate as yet another “silent” pretty face seemed assured. But like her contemporary Eartha Kitt, Lincoln had another vision for herself.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
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