Quincy Jones and the album ‘Body Heat’

Originally released May 8th, 1974, the Quincy Jones album Body Heat was shared with the world. The album features Jones on trumpet and vocals with Rhythm and Blues (R&B), Soul, Quiet Storm and Smooth Soul musicality. While including many jazz musicians on this album, the setting aside of jazz expectations for this album led to commercial success for this album that Jones never experienced with his own albums before or since.

(The cover art for the Quincy Jones album Body Heat).

Musicians supporting the Body Heat album include Chuck Rainey on bass, Max Bennett on bass, Melvin Dunlap on bass, Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie on drums, Dave Grusin on drums, electric piano and synthesizer, Grady Tate on drums, James Gadson on drums, Paul Humphrey on drums, Bob James on electric piano, Richard Tee on electric piano, Arthur Adams on guitar, David T. Walker on guitar, Dennis Coffey on guitar, Eric Gale on guitar, Phil Upchurch on guitar, Wah Wah Watson on guitar, Tommy Morgan on harmonica, Chuck Findley on horn, Clifford Solomon on horn, Frank Rosolino on horn, Hubert Laws on horn, Jerome Richardson on horn, Pete Christlieb on horn, Billy Preston on organ, Bobbye Hall on percussion, Herbie Hancock on piano, electric piano and synthesizer, Malcolm Cecil on synthesizer, Mike Melvoin on synthesizer, Robert Margouleff on synthesizer, Al Jarreau on vocals, Benard Ighner on vocals, Bruce Fisher on vocals, Carolyn Willis on vocals, Jesse Kirkland on vocals, Jim Gilstrap on vocals, Joseph Greene on vocals, Leon Ware on vocals, Minnie Riperton on vocals, Myrna Matthews on vocals and Tom Bahler on vocals.

Body Heat opens the album of Body Heat as the title track. Invoking a sensual night of physical intimacy, physical passion for two is on Quincy Jones mind.

Soul Saga (Song of the Buffalo Soldier) of course alludes to buffalo soldiers, African American cavalry regiments of the United States Army who served in the western United States from 1867 to 1896. I sense a hint of spirituals in this soulful, musically forceful testament to a past properly elevated to the level of saga, defined as “a long and complicated story with many details.” The song dignifies a past heroism and sacrifice too often lost to history, with uplifting sentiments of remembering.

Everything Must Change presents a smoother, mellow meditation on the inevitability of change. The male lead vocals backed with chorus with the medley of organ, piano and synthesizer instrumentation create beautiful movements of change, especially when the composition then changes to a horn based section coupled with drums and additional singing. The sentiment that accompanies plays alongside the music hits an uplifting note.

(Quincy Jones at his home studio in October 1974, five months after the release of the album Body Heat).

Boogie Joe the Grinder strikes me as a more sensual song with a musical feeling reminiscent of the song Body Heat. While the song’s messaging can and perhaps does speak more to the dance floor than the bedroom, the ability to see hints of intimacy are deliberate and well received.

Everything Must Change (Reprise) adds slightly more than a minute of a dreamlike feeling offered with the preceding Everything Must Change song.

The sensuality of One Track Mind both musically and lyrically is unmistakable. I find the reversal of having the female desire for intimacy taking a prominent expression, despite being expressed through the perspective of a male, interesting. The compositional and production value of the music of this song again breaks new ground when looked at from the overall album’s point-of-view.

(Quincy Jones in the year 2014, some forty years after the release of the album Body Heat).

The opening, yet mellow guitar opening and play throughout Just a Man hits me as strongly as the lyrical messaging of the song. The sensibility of a man’s dignity in being no fool in this world while not having advantages afforded others offers dignity and spiritual uplift for the soul.

The strictly instrumental Along Came Betty offers distinctiveness among other music on the Body Heat album. The force of the composition sustains the absence of lyrics, which compositionally aren’t needed given the appeal of the music.

If I Ever Lose This Heaven pairs well with the song Along Came Betty that precedes it owing to the ability of the music alone to stand on its own feet. That the song invokes the concept of heaven for the dreamy emotional state advances beyond the abstraction others convey with the emotional sanctity of, well, clouds. The desire to maintain the high, sensual or otherwise, leaves a feeling of warmth for the song and the album by being presented last.

Matt – Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Wil Haygood and the book ‘Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America’

Among his many legal successes arguing cases across the United States and in the south, Thurgood Marshall would be confirmed to the Supreme Court by the United States Senate after being nominated by United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The successful nomination was unprecedented on multiple scores, which is the subject of the Wil Haygood book Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America.

(From left, Supreme Court Justice and NAACP leader Thurgood Marshall and US President Lyndon Baines Johnson).

The five-day hearing of the U.S. Senate that confirmed Thurgood Marshall, of New York, the first African-American Supreme Court justice on July 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th and 24th, 1967 are the central timeline that Wil Haygood uses to share Marshall‘s biography. At state in Marshall‘s life story were the stakes of the American civil rights movement of the era, with Justice Marshall‘s career, preceding legal practice and social activity geared at moving the dial forward. Marshall led the legal case that legally struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine, which led to school integration (Brown v. Board of Education overturning Plessy v. Ferguson). Haygood documented scores of legal defenses for the underrepresented and unfairly attacked. These points and more established Marshall‘s candidacy for the supreme court. The establishing of that background, and the tactics used against him through the Supreme Court hearing, have been replicated in the Senate since.

(The book Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America by writer Wil Haygood was published September 15, 2015).

The Marshall nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in September 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy by southern US senators for many months. James O. Eastland of Mississippi, a noted southern US senator with a similar motivation through the Supreme Court nomination, aimed to stack the deck. The tactics of Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was given notable attention through this biography as well.

(This image of Wil Haygood shows the biographer alongside the original cover for his book Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America).

There is much to recommend the story of this book from an educational and entertainment perspective. There are life lessons and philosophical approaches to life and intellect that offer insight, along with the underlying drama and contributing actions of two separate presidents in aiming to successfully nominate a qualified jurist. The history lessons in the subject matter, the tactics and the humanity of the Thurgood Marshall path to the Supreme Court helps me grant Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America as written by Wil Haygood 4.5-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars.

Matt – Wednesday, September 6, 2023

David Zucchino and the book ‘Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy’

The historical record frequently is not known to the fullest extent that it can be. This point, combined with difficulty within the United States in having an awareness of the history that continues to exert itself within the social fabric of that country from actors both foreign and domestic, led to my engaging in the nonfiction reporting in the David Zucchino 2021 Pulitzer Prize winning book Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.

(David Zucchino wrote the 2021 Pulitzer Prize winning book Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy).

The Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898 occurred in a fashion wherein the “the multiracial … city government of Wilmington, North Carolina, was violently overthrown on November 10, 1898, and as many as 60 Black Americans were killed in a premeditated murder spree that was the culmination of an organized months-long statewide campaign by white supremacists to eliminate African American participation in government and permanently disenfranchise Black citizens of North Carolina” (Encyclopedia Britannica).

(This historical marker in remembrance of the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898 was installed in Wilmington, North Carolina to remember the violence and government overthrow committed in the name of skin color).

In the months leading up to the election of November 1898 in North Carolina, virulent hatred was stirred between predominantly white and black populations. The gains of African Americans in the south with Reconstruction following the American Civil War was not met well with those that lost political, economic and social control following the war. Social stereotypes were used to instigate angry or bitter disagreement spurred in part through “virulent racist propaganda” (Encyclopedia Britannica) perpetuated in large measure by newspapers in Raleigh, Charlotte and Wilmington. The notion was “to eliminate forever, by ballot or bullet, voting and office-holding by Blacks” (Encyclopedia Britannica) in North Carolina. The means of this were spelled out in Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.

(Editor Alex Manley‘s Daily Record office was burned in the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898).

The black-owned newspaper The Daily Record in Wilmington was a specific target of the coup and massacre in the build-up and conduct of the rioting that occurred as part of the coup. Alex Manly editorialized for The Daily Record. “In an editorial published August 18, 1898, Manly challenged interracial sexual stereotypes, condemning white men for taking advantage of black women. His assertion that it was no worse for a white woman to be sexually involved with a black man than a black woman to be sexually involved with a white man infuriated conservative local Democrats, who were able to capitalize on white fears of interracial intimacy at the ballot box” (Blackpast.org). This debate fanned negative sentiment against the multi-culturalism across North Carolina and the American south, in addition to putting Manly‘s life at risk.

(The Daily Record newspaper was burned in the Wilmington Coup and Massacre of 1898. This image is used on the cover of David Zucchino‘s 2020 book Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy).

The book itself tells the story of the above with an engaging degree of detail, intrigue, and depth. The information shared goes well beyond the notion of dates and names into identifying motivations, methods and precisely who had something to gain, to lose, and circumstances of both. I was stricken by the use of the media to fan popular opinion against reason, fairness and self-interest with such intensity. The power of group thinking overrode interpersonal motivation and the tendency towards stewardship for many. This is a clear story that David Zucchino captures with Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.

(David Zucchino wrote Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, which was released in January 2020).

There are many books on the relationships among groups in the United States that you can aim to learn from. It is my feeling that you can do worse than Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino; I grant the book 4-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.

Matt – Wednesday, December 8, 2021