Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance

Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance

Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance
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CD Details

Edition: Music CD
Format: Box set
CD Release Date: 2000-11-07
Music Label: Rhino / Wea
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. Negro Speaks of Rivers - Quincy Jones
  2. Cotton Club Stomp - Duke Ellington
  3. Harlem Strut - James P. Johnson
  4. Brother Low Down - Bert Williams
  5. Letter from Aaron Douglas to Langston Hughes
  6. There'll Be Some Changes Made - Ethel Waters
  7. Sounds of Africa - Eubie Blake
  8. Sweet Man O' Mine - Mamie Smith
  9. Weary Blues - Branford Marsalis
  10. Blues Ain't Nothin' Else But! - Ida Cox
  11. Kansas City Main Blues - Clarence Williams' Blue Five
  12. Indianola
  13. Hard Hearted Hannah - Rosa Henderson
  14. Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem
  15. St. Louis Blues - Bessie Smith
  16. Copenhagen - Fletcher Henderson
  17. Cake Walking Babies from Home - Clarence Williams' Blue Five
  18. Long Gone - Darius Rucker
  19. Railroad Blues - Trixie Smith
Music CD 2
  1. Smoke, Lillies and Jade! - Carl Hancock Rux
  2. (Lookie, Lookie, Lookie) Here Comes Cookie - Cleo Brown
  3. Charleston - Paul Whiteman
  4. Chili Pepper - Fred Longshaw
  5. Lucy Long - Perry Bradford's Jazz Phools
  6. Chain Gang Blues - Ma Rainey
  7. Mother to Son - Sylvia Rhone
  8. Deep River - Paul Robeson
  9. East St. Louis Toodle-Oo - Duke Ellington
  10. Lazy Drag - Thomas Morris
  11. How It Feels to Be Colored Me - Debbie Allen
  12. Sengalese Stomp
  13. After You've Gone - Paul Whiteman
  14. Dead Drunk Blues - Margaret Johnson
  15. No Images - Lou Rawls
  16. Woke Up With the Blues in My Fingers - Lonnie Johnson
  17. Worried Blues - Gladys Bentley
  18. Humpty Dumpty - Frankie Trumbauer
  19. Ham and Eggs - Johnny Dunn
  20. Sugar - Alberta Hunter
Music CD 3
  1. If We Must Die - Ice-T,
  2. Honey, I'm All out and Down - Leadbelly
  3. My Handy Man - Victoria Spivey
  4. Ain't Misbehavin' - Louis Armstrong
  5. Handful of Riffs - Blind Willie Dunn, Lonnie Johnson
  6. Bright Boy Blues - Cecil Scott
  7. Debt - Joshua Redman
  8. Harlem Fuss - Fats Waller
  9. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out - Bessie Smith
  10. Fare Thee Honey Blues - James P. Johnson & his Orchestra
  11. Soon - Gregory Hines
  12. Smashing Thirds - Fats Waller
  13. Do Shuffle - Fess Williams
  14. Wherever There's a Will There's a Way - McKinney's Cotton Pickers
  15. Dee Blues - The Chocolate Dandies
  16. Odyssey of Big Boy - Chuck D
  17. Minnie the Moocher - Cabell "Cab" Calloway
  18. Panama - Luis Russell
  19. Royal Garden Blues - Ted Lewis
  20. America - August Wilson
  21. Jesus Gonna Make up My Dying Bed - Josh White
Music CD 4
  1. I Want to Die While You Love Me - Alfre Woodard
  2. Stormy Weather - Ethel Waters
  3. Corrine, Corrina - Cabell "Cab" Calloway
  4. Sweetie Dear - Sidney Bechet
  5. Damnation of Women - LeVar Burton
  6. Baby! - Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall
  7. Happy as the Day Is Long - Harold Arlen, Leo Reisman
  8. I Got Rhythm
  9. Let's Get Together - Chick Webb
  10. Their Eyes Were Watching God
  11. Oh, Lady Be Good
  12. Symphony in Riffs - Benny Carter, Benny Carter
  13. Sendin' the Vipers - Mezz Mezzrow
  14. Down South Camp Meeting - Fletcher Henderson, Fletcher Henderson
  15. Day Breakers - Coolio
  16. She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain - Tiny Bradshaw
  17. Minor Mania - Claude Hopkins
  18. Sensemayá - Chant for Killing a Snake - Eartha Kitt
  19. Symphony in Black - Duke Ellington
  20. Echoes of Spring - Willie "The Lion" Smith
  21. (Lookie, Lookie, Lookie) Here Comes Cookie - Teddy Hill
  22. Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain - George Duke
  23. It Never Dawned on Me - Teddy Wilson
  24. Honey Dripper Blues - Georgia White
  25. I'm in the Mood for Love - Louis Armstrong

Music reviews of Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance

Music Review: Amazing, simply amazing
Rating: 5 Stars

The quality of music and poetry in this boxed set is superlative. It's so good, in fact, that it turned me on to early jazz after a lifetime of listening to other, largely unrelated, musics. This music is the roots of much of today's contemporary jazz, pop, soul, and r'n'b, and it still sounds sensational. My only gripe would be with Rhino's overfussy packaging, in which the discs are housed in elaborate and flimsy individual holders; Rhino should take a hint from Hippo's (Universal) beautifully compact packaging for Louis Armstrong's "An American Icon" box set.

Description of Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words From the Harlem Renaissance

Not since historian David Levering Lewis's Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader has there been anything remotely as expansive as Rhapsodies in Black. This four-CD set comes with an elaborately designed 100-page booklet, with the CDs tucked into graphically cool sleeves that bring the Harlem Renaissance's visual advances to life. What comes to life in the recordings are the era's poetic, literary, and musical traditions. The renaissance, of course, wasn't contained in Harlem, with smaller African American arts and culture movements throughout the U.S., but Harlem was, to use the title of Alain Locke's 1925 collection, the "Mecca of the New Negro."

Rhapsodies reaches back to 1918 for Wilbur C. Sweatman's Original Jazz Band and their recording of "Indianola," and it gathers in poems and excerpts from stories and essays, read by such luminaries as Quincy Jones, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Branford Marsalis, and Angela Bassett. Musically, the collection focuses in some depth on early jazz and the first iteration of "urban blues." Bessie Smith's 1925 "St. Louis Blues," Duke Ellington's 1929 "Cotton Club Stomp" and 1926 "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," Fats Waller's 1929 "Harlem Fuss" and "Smashing Thirds," Cab Calloway's 1931 "Minnie the Moocher," and Louis Armstrong's 1929 performance of Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'" all stand out indelibly.

Along with the famous tunes are lots of underappreciated gems. Guitarist Lonnie Johnson's 1927 "Woke Up with Blues in My Fingers" is an awesome solo guitar showing. Also tremendous are early looks at future jazz giants Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter, the former on Don Redman's "Wherever There's a Will, Baby" (from a 1929 McKinney's Cotton Pickers session) and the pair together on the Chocolate Dandies' 1930 "Dee Blues." The political core of the movement is alive here, too, with Claude McKay's "America" read by playwright August Wilson. Georgia Douglas Johnson's "I Want You to Die While You Love Me" and Helene Johnson's "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem" (read by Bassett and Alfre Woodard, respectively) capture the poetic spirit from a woman's perspective, and Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" are read by Veronica Chambers and Debbie Allen. --Andrew Bartlett

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