 There are many types of music, but there isothing quite like the Blues genre. If you’re familiar with songs like Smoking Gun, Right Next Door, You Move Me, and Back Door Slam, then you are likely a fan of blues guitarist and singer Robert Cray and The Robert Cray Band. Cray is a five-time Grammy Award winner and has been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and earned the Americana Music Awards Lifetime Achievement for Performance.
He has played with artists like Albert Collins, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, and Eric Clapton [that’s a stellar list]. I had the pleasure of chatting with Cray about the legacy of his music that spans over 40 years. His love for music, like many musicians, began as an influence of his parents. “The love of music came through my parents and their vast and varied record collection that included people like Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke, Bobby Bland, and on and on and on, and then The Beatles hit, and I happened to be a boy at that time of 11 years old and after my parent’s music, they wondered why I was going in that direction and it’s because everyone else was, and the guitar was a really popular instrument at that time and also just listening to everything on the radio,” said Cray.
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 Revered American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders died Saturday morning in Los Angeles at 81. Pharoah Sanders, the legendary jazz saxophonist perhaps best known for his transcendent work with John Coltrane and for a solo run for Impulse Records beginning in the mid-1960s, and who helped define the so-called spiritual jazz movement, has died. He was 81. Sanders died Saturday morning in Los Angeles, his record label, Luaka Bop, confirmed on Twitter. The cause of death was not given. "We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away," read the label's statement. "He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace." Born in Little Rock, Ark., into a musical family, Sanders came up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he played alongside many of the area's best musicians, including fellow saxophonists Dewey Redman and Sonny Simmons, pianist Ed Kelly and drummer Smiley Winters. “My Girl” Traci Elaine Lee talks acting at age 9 and touring in her hometown for the first time9/21/2022  Broadway Dallas welcomes home Dallas native Traci Elaine Lee in the smash hit musical, Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations.
From community theater to selling out shows on a national tour, the audience screamed as the first female actress graced the stage in style. It’s none other than Traci Elaine Lee, as she magically portrays several roles in the production Ain’t Too Proud: Life and Times of The Temptations. Opening night for this Dallas native was surreal. She was so excited to have her mom in the audience for opening night. “Last night felt amazing. The energy, just knowing my family was out there. My mom invited everybody to come and see the show. The adrenaline was rushing through my veins.” We first see Traci on stage as Johnnie Mae Matthews, the Godmother of Detroit Soul and the Temptations first manager. If you know the story of the Temptations, then you know Johnnie Mae did not play about her money and leaves the Temptations with absolutely nothing. Traci so eloquently nailed this role before transforming into the beautiful and soulful, “Black excellence” as she describes her character, Mary Wilson, one of the founding members of Motown’s most successful female groups, The Supremes. “Baby Love is my favorite song by them” as we both broke out in a two-part harmony, singing the lyrics and snapping our fingers. Traci’s voice is powerful, unforgettable and a perfect depiction of the Motown sound from the 1960’s.  His paintings’ subjects seem to burst from the canvas in ‘Defiant’ exhibition.
“Defiant,” by Dallas-based artist Jeremy Biggers at Daisha Board Gallery, is a virtuosic solo exhibition that captures the everyday grandeur of Black Dallasites being their full, authentic selves. The subjects of these paintings seem to be bursting from the canvas, such is the life force, the ashe, that Biggers has captured with his brush. Biggers’ most recent exhibitions have been about showcasing the multidimensionality of Black people, specifically Black men. In his 2021 solo show “Unspoken Burdens” at the South Dallas Cultural Center, Biggers examined how insecurities and societal burdens affect Black men in the absence of spaces where they can feel safe being vulnerable. At the start of 2022, Biggers’ solo exhibition “Presence” at Pencil on Paper Gallery included portraits of Black fathers with their sons and daughters in loving, tender and vulnerable ways. |
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January 2023
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Photo used under Creative Commons from emerzon
