'Genius draws no color lines': nine historic performances
by Lou Papineau
February 25, 2020
Every February, The Current honors Black History Month, spotlighting black musical artists whose voices and songs changed the world, throughout the decades and across genres. We've also posted a series of features delving into a rich, enduring and ever-evolving body of work. In this final entry, we look at nine great performances, a mix of cultural milestones and historic moments.
Marian Anderson
On April 9, 1939, Marian Anderson, the extraordinary vocalist renowned for her interpretations of classical music and spirituals, performed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The historic concert was a significant bellwether of the civil rights movement due to its barrier-breaking backstory. The show was initially proposed to be held at Constitution Hall — but the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the venue, did not permit black performers. DAR member — and First Lady — Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization to protest the decision and provided vital support for the NAACP and other groups, which rallied support for the singer and successfully advocated for the concert to be staged at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday.
Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes introduced Anderson, saying, "In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free. Genius, like justice, is blind. Genius draws no color lines."
Anderson's genius was showcased for the 75,000 attendees and millions more who heard the broadcast on NBC radio. The 25-minute set by the singer and her pianist Kosti Vehanen featured "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)," arias by Donizetti and Schubert, and three spirituals.
The concert had a great impact on Martin Luther King Jr. In 1944, the then-15-year-old won an oratorical contest at his high school in Atlanta with a speech titled "The Negro and the Constitution," which eloquently summarized the historic day in the nation's capital. "[Anderson] sang as never before with tears in her eyes. When the words of 'America'…rang out over that great gathering, there was a hush on the sea of uplifted faces, black and white, and a new baptism of liberty, equality and fraternity." But the uplift was countered with stark reality: "That was a touching tribute, but Miss Anderson may not as yet spend the night in any good hotel in America."
Jimi Hendrix
On June 18, 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience played its first U.S. concert at the Monterey Pop Festival. The rising star was added to the bill of the landmark California gathering on Paul McCartney's recommendation, having built a massive buzz with shows in the U.K. The performance took place a month after his debut, Are You Experienced, was released in the U.K. and two months before it came out in the U.S.
The nine-song set showcased Hendrix's mind-blowing guitar prowess and flamboyant showmanship; it included four originals — "Foxy Lady," "The Wind Cries Mary," "Purple Haze" and "Can You See Me" — and five covers, including Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and the Troggs' "Wild Thing." During that closing song, Hendrix doused his Stratocaster with lighter fluid and set it on fire. The moment was captured in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of the fest and in a photo by Ed Caraeff. Gail Buckland, the author of Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, noted that "Hendrix kneeling in front of his burning guitar, hands raised, is one of the most famous images in rock."
Stephen Stills was one of many musicians who waxed ecstatic: "I almost melted, right along with that guitar. He was the most amazing thing I ever saw." Joel Selvin, the pop music writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, said: "The audience was completely overwhelmed by Hendrix. It was an epic, historic performance."
Reflecting on his set-ending theatrics, Jimi explained that "I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of a song as a sacrifice. You sacrifice things you love. I love my guitar."
Bonus track: After hours of debate, our panel of musicheads determined that Hendrix's sustained jaw-droppingness and transcendent turn at Monterey Pop surpassed his signature reinvention of "The Star-Spangled Banner" during his morning set on Monday, Aug. 18, 1969, which capped the three-plus days of peace and music at Woodstock. But that deserves a slot in this top 10!
James Brown
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis; that night, riots broke out in many major cities, including in the South End and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston, where James Brown was scheduled to perform on April 5. The Garden initially cancelled the show, but Tom Atkins, a black city councilman, told Mayor Kevin White that "there'll be thousands of black teenagers down at the Garden this evening, and when they find those gates are locked they're going to be pretty pissed off. King's death and Brown's cop-out will get all mixed up together and we'll have an even bigger riot than last night's — only this time it'll be in the heart of the downtown."
Atkins' advice was heeded: the show went on for about 2,000 people (the Garden held 14,000) — and was broadcast on a local TV station. There was a tense moment when a few fans jumped on stage, but the concert finished without incident.
Reflecting on the night, Brown said, "I was able to speak to the country during the crisis after the assassination of Doctor King and they followed my advice, and that was one of the things that meant most to me." The title of a 2008 documentary defined his accomplishment: The Night James Brown Saved Boston.
Sly and the Family Stone
Sly and the Family Stone were riding high in the wake of the release of their fourth album, Stand, in May of 1969, which helped land them a spot in the lineup at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival. The racially and sexually integrated seven-piece band were one of the few non-white acts to perform. They took the stage on Sunday, August 17 at 3:20 a.m., and the audience kept growing during the rousing nine-song set, which is often cited as among the fest's best.
"It was scary," Sly told The Guardian in 2013. "More and more people kept turning up … I just wanted to play the best we could, and that's what we did."
Bassist Larry Graham told Vanity Fair that the band "tapped into a new zone" at Woodstock. "It's like when an athlete like Michael Jordan realizes the extent of his gifts and goes, 'Oh, I can do that.' "
The Family Stone's electrifying takes on "Dance To the Music" and "I Want To Take You Higher" were standouts in the 1970 documentary and on the soundtrack album, and still exude positivity and soul power 50 years on.
Isaac Hayes
On April 10, 1972, Isaac Hayes made history when "Theme From Shaft" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Hayes was the first African American to receive an Oscar in a non-acting category, and he was the first musician to write and record the honored song. The performance at the ceremony was a dazzling extravaganza, with dozens of dancers cavorting to the theme song's insistent rhythm before Hayes rolled out to center stage on a light-filled platform, seated at a keyboard and draped in his trademark gold chain-mail vest — before disappearing a cloud of smoke (host Sammy Davis Jr.'s reaction is definitely worth a look). He changed into a tux before his acceptance speech, sharing the podium with his grandmother, Rushia Wade, to whom he dedicated the award. "This was the height of my career," Hayes said. "I grew up poor in Memphis. My mother passed when I was a year and a half and my father split, so [my grandmother] was like a mama to me. When I was young, I prayed to let her live long enough to see me do something big."
Marvin Gaye
On February 13, 1983, Marvin Gaye performed the national anthem at the 33rd Annual NBA All-Star Game at the Forum in Inglewood, California. The R&B star was enjoying a career resurgence, with the chart-topping Midnight Love album and its seductive single, "Sexual Healing." In his 1985 bio, Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, David Ritz wrote this account of the singer's take on the Anthem: "On Saturday night… [Gaye] and [guitarist/producer] Gordon Banks, working on a drum machine squeezed in a closet, developed the rhythm track … Dressed in a conservative dark suit, his eyes covered by aviator shades, Gaye walked into the center of the arena … and sang the most soulful version of the national anthem since Jose Feliciano had interpreted it for a World Series in the late '60s … Marvin drove the Forum crazy. The drum pattern, vaguely reminiscent of 'Sexual Healing,' lent the anthem a funky finesse that only Gaye could have realized. It was a great moment in his career, both defiant of tradition and respectful of the song itself."
Gaye's singular interpretation had a mesmerizing and moving effect. In a 2018 piece at TheUndefeated.com, the All-Star Game's participants shared their recollections: "We were two-stepping listening to the national anthem," Magic Johnson said. "We were just bouncing left to right. It blew us away. We just got caught into the moment of this man. People just forgot it was the national anthem."
Isiah Thomas enthused, "Before you knew it, you were swaying, clapping, and were like doing something to the anthem that you'd never done before in your life. Or since. It just wasn't the players. It was the whole arena. Everyone in unison almost caught the Holy Ghost."
Julius Erving summed it up: "You knew it was history, but it was also 'hood."
Prince
Prince's performance at the Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007, in Miami is the consensus choice for Best. Halftime. Show. Ever! In 12 dizzying minutes, Prince — accompanied by his ace band, the dancing Twinz (Maya and Nandy McClean), the Florida A&M University marching band, and relentless torrents of rain — tore through a bit of "We Will Rock You," then "Let's Go Crazy" and "Baby I'm a Star," delirious takes on Creedence's "Proud Mary," Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" and Foo Fighters' "Best of You." The set was capped by a majestic "Purple Rain," with an iconic shot of Prince silhouetted on a giant scrim.
In a must-read oral history of the event at The Ringer, CBS' Lesley Visser said, "Having been on the field to see Springsteen, and McCartney, and Tom Petty, Michael Jackson, and the Stones, I would say it was the greatest 12-minute, mystical, magical halftime."
Ruth Arzate, Prince's personal assistant/manager, had the last word: "You could tell he was very happy with his performance. I was like, 'You made history.' And he was like, 'I always make history.' "
Aretha Franklin
When discussing Black history, the election of Barack Obama as the first black president is among the most notable events. So it was fitting that Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, would be invited to sing "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)" at Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009. In 2016, after she performed at the Kennedy Center Honors, the president expressed his deep admiration for the singer: "Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock and roll — the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope. American history wells up when Aretha sings."
Despite the accolades for her stirring rendition of the Anthem, the Queen of Soul wasn't happy with her delivery: "It was just too cold out there to sing." A side note: in this viral age, Aretha's pillbox hat — made of grey felt with an oversized Swarovski-studded bow — garnered as much attention as her performance, inspiring thousands of memes (BuzzFeed collected some of the best under the headline "Aretha's Hat Is Everywhere"). A few years later, Aretha commented on the hat's impact: "People were calling me from Europe! … That was one fabulous hat, and everybody liked it … The hat took on a life of its own. I understand that the hat has its own Facebook page."
Beyoncé
On Saturday, April 14, 2018, in Indio, California, Beyoncé asked, "Y'all ready, Coachella?" Thousands of fans in the desert — and millions worldwide tuned into the live stream — answered in the affirmative. (She was slated to headline in 2017 but had to cancel due to her pregnancy.) But even the most rabid Beyoncé fans might not have been truly prepared for the epic two-hour extravaganza which has become known as Beychella. It spanned three acts and 32 songs, and incorporated a cast of tens, including a marching band and dancers, appearances by her husband Jay-Z and her sister Solange, a Destiny's Child reunion, covers of tracks by Nicki Minaj, DJ Khaled, and J Blavin, and namechecks of Nina Simone and Malcolm X. Beyoncé also acknowledged the history that she made that night, exclaiming: "Coachella, thank you for allowing me to be the first black woman to headline."
You can relive the experience in the 2019 documentary Homecoming; Time magazine says it "recontextualizes the show in a way that claims the most influential live music event in North America for black culture."
