Jazz critic Leonard Feather called her “the most important singer to emerge from the bop era.” Ella Fitzgerald called her the world’s “greatest singing talent.” During the course of a career that spanned nearly fifty years, she was the singer’s singer, influencing everyone from Mel Torme to Anita Baker. She was among the musical elite identified by their first names. She was Sarah, Sassy — the incomparable Sarah Vaughan.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924, Vaughan was immediately surrounded by music: her carpenter father was an amateur guitarist and her laundress mother was a church vocalist. Young Sarah studied piano from the age of seven, and before entering her teens had become an organist and choir soloist at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. When she was eighteen, friends dared her to enter the famed Wednesday Night Amateur Contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. She gave a sizzling rendition of “Body and Soul,” and won first prize. In the audience that night was the singer Billy Eckstine. Six months later, she had joined Eckstine in Earl Hines’s big band along with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

When Eckstine formed his own band soon after, Vaughan went with him. Others including Miles Davis and Art Blakey, were eventually to join the band as well. Within a year, however, Vaughan wanted to give a solo career a try. By late 1947, she had topped the charts with “Tenderly,” and as the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, Vaughan expanded her jazz repertoire to include pop music. As a result, she enlarged her audience, gained increased attention for her formidable talent, and compiled additional hits, including the Broadway show tunes “Whatever Lola Wants” and “Mr. Wonderful.” While jazz purists balked at these efforts, no one could deny that in any genre, Vaughan had one of the greatest voices in the business.

In the late 1960s, Vaughan returned to jazz music, performing and making regular recordings. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s she recorded with such jazz notables as Oscar Peterson, Louie Bellson, Zoot Sims, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Don Cherry, and J.J. Johnson. Her recordings of the “Duke Ellington Song Book (1 and 2)” are considered some of the finest recordings of the time. While for many years her signature song had been “Misty,” by the mid-70’s, she was closing every show with Sondheim’s “Bring In The Clowns.” In 1982, while in her late fifties, Vaughan won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocalist for her album, “Gershwin Live”!

While she continued to work without the massive commercial success enjoyed by colleagues such as Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, and Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan consistently retained a special place in the hearts of fellow musicians and audiences alike. She continually performed at top venues, playing to adoring sell-out crowds well into her sixties. Remarkably, unlike many singers, she lost none of her extraordinary talent as time went on. Her multi-octave range, with its swooping highs and sensual lows, and the youthful suppleness of her voice shaded by a luscious timbre and executed with fierce control, all remained intact. In 1990, at the age sixty-six, Sarah Vaughan passed away. Shortly after her death, Mel Torme summed up the feelings of all who had seen her, saying “She had the single best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field.”

by Horace Clarence Boyer
This essay originally appeared as the introduction to a Sweet Honey in the Rock songbook.

INTRODUCTION

On February 28, 1927 in Memphis, Tennessee, the blind sanctified singer Mamie Forehand recorded a refrain based on Psalm 81:16. In this passage of scripture the poet and musician King David advised his people that if they would serve the Lord they would be rewarded by being fed “honey out of the rock,” the place where according to legend of that time, the sweetest nectar was produced. The song became widely popular among Pentecostal, Baptist and Methodist congregations but, as often happens, it underwent a slight textual change on its way to popularity. While Forehand titled her song “Honey In The Rock” and sang those words, random congregations soon added the adjective “sweet” to the title, and the song has come down through history as “Sweet Honey in the Rock.” Forty-six years after Forehand introduced the song, a quintet of African-American women, singing as a unit of the vocal workshop of Washington D.C’s Black Repertory Theater Company, organized an a cappella group and called themselves “Sweet Honey In The Rock.” It would not overstate the case to add the overworked – but definitely applicable – phrase “and the rest is history.”

A female a cappella group was a strange sight and sound in 1973. This in itself seemed strange, for female singing groups have been a part of African-American musical history since the first quarter of the 20th century, when African-American male a cappella groups were organized. But the groups remembered and written about have been the piano-accompanied groups such as The Hyers Sisters, The Ward Singers, The Shirelles and En Vogue. Completely forgotten are the trail blazers, among whom were the powerful Virginia Female Singers, whose 1921 recording of “Lover of the Lord” has recently resurfaced. Little-known facts that have surfaced about this group and others that followed are that they used the voice classification of the male quartets (tenor, bass, etc.) and arranged their own songs. Moreover the bass for the group could compete, without a handicap, with the bass of any of the male groups, including the famous Blue Jay Singers and the Birmingham Jubilee Singers.

Long forgotten are The Southern Harps, organized in New Orleans in 1935 and whose 1942 group was comprised of a lead, swing lead, alternate lead, tenor, baritone and bass. Of particular interest is the fact that the lead was Bessie Griffin, who, in the 1950’s, would emerge as a gospel superstar, while the tenor was Helen Matthews, featured in the 1970’s Broadway musical “Purlie” under the name Linda Hopkins. Their hometown compatriots were the Jackson Singers, organized in 1936, a group that produced a sound not unlike The Southern Harps, with whom they were often paired in concerts. Also forgotten are the Golden Stars of Memphis, organized in 1938, as well as the more famous Songbirds of the South, organized in the same city in 1940. Fortunately one of its members, Cassietta George, made a significant musical contribution as a member of The Caravans.

Indeed the African-American a cappella quartet or quintet was created during the last half of the 19th century, and became a staple of American minstrelsy. It came into modern entertainment in 1905 when Fisk University, realizing it was too costly to send out their large group of Jubilee Singers, dispatched a quartet to replace them. African-American colleges and universities throughout the nation quickly organized similar groups, which inspired a battalion of Jubilee Singers in Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, in the second decade of the 20th century. Beginning with the organization of The Foster Singers in 1915, quartets of Jubilee Singers sprang up around the nation. The Fairfield Four were organized in 1921, The Dixie Hummingbirds in 1928, and these groups, in turn, inspired the organization of such secular music groups as The Mills Brothers in 1922, The Ink Spots in 1934 and The Delta Rhythm Boys in 1935. Sweet Honey In The Rock thus joined one of the most prestigious companies of music makers in the history of the United States.

SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK AND THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN A CAPPELLA SINGING TRADITION

Sweet Honey In The Rock is uniquely distinct from all of these groups. She is even different from Mamie Forehand, though, like Forehand and these groups, she makes melody, harmony, rhythm and message. And therein lies her unique quality: more than any group on the music scene today, “Sweet Honey” as the group is affectionately called – carries a message. Absent from the group’s songs are the moon and June rhymes, the pretty melodies with senseless words and any sign of the slightest fear of topical subjects. In fact, Sweet Honey is known as the group that will go where no other singers will go, textually. At a concert of Sweet Honey, even before they open their mouths to sing, one is struck by the elegant, and yes, beautiful attire of the singers. Clad in colorful dresses of the finest African and eastern fabric, their heads are covered with striking (and intricately wrapped) turbans, or their hair is braided into elaborate designs adorned with ribbons and scarves. The singers grandly – and with a purpose – make their way to a group of chairs assembled in a semi-circle on stage and take their seats. Glancing briefly at each other they burst into sound, a sound unlike any heard in many years. As often as not they accompany themselves on rattles, gourds or sticks. The sound is that of sisters sitting around the fireplace singing songs of social commentary, a female choir in rehearsal, a congregation of Wednesday evening Prayer Services singers, or a village that has come together to sing through happiness, trials or death. Even as the melodies, harmonies and rhythms soar, one is immediately struck by the message of the songs, for the message is what Sweet Honey is all about. In writing about Sweet Honey in Epic Lives – One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference (Visible Ink Press, 1993), Jesse Carney Smith notes “despite their name, which comes from a gospel song, Sweet Honey In The Rock’s message is more often political (and social) than religious.” “I think everything is political,” (member Bernice Johnson) Reagon stated in People Magazine. “We are about being accountable.” To be sure, Sweet Honey has become the surrogate conscience of the United States in that her songs will not let us rest while there is still work to be done. Indeed the topics of the songs range from the controversial Joanne Little case to the instructively ceremonial “Seven Principles,” detailing, in English and Swahili, the principles of Kwanzaa. And the message is delivered without hostility or rancor but with the care of a friend and concerned loved one.

As the words of the songs become intense, Sweet Honey accents the meaning through a time-honored African-American practice of standing up and singing. The audiences, more than often, accept this as a sign for them, too, to show their involvement. They, too, stand, clap their hands and sway to the music. Before long the concert has turned into an ecstatic community revival. And clearly Sweet Honey is the leader of the revival. Just as clearly, the group is the Greek chorus, minstrels or community singers of our society, commenting on all matters of importance to the populace.

They are more than just community singers. These women, unlike the jubilee quartets of the 1920s, are not simply singers who, for lack of preparation or want of something else to do, or to make a living and contribution at the same time, fell into a singing group. They are educated (the group contains two members with earned Ph.D. degrees and professional women who have accepted the charge of reminding us that we are all God’s children.) They have taken their songs and message not only throughout the United States and Africa but throughout Mexico, Germany, Australia, Japan, England and Russia, among many nations.

However, their position as community singers is important when it is realized that Sweet Honey almost single-handedly kept the a cappella group tradition alive until 1988 when Take 6 joined them in what is perceived as a revival of the a cappella group. Happily, today there is a plethora of such groups, many of which, both male and female, were inspired to organize by Sweet Honey. In yet another unique move, Sweet Honey includes in her concerts sign-language interpretation for the Deaf and hard of hearing, a practice begun by the group in 1979.

THE MUSICAL STYLES OF SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK

While there is no doubt the uniqueness of Sweet Honey is the message, her musical sound is what attracts first-time listeners. Described in the magazine High Fidelity as breathtaking excursions into harmony singing and neck-hair raising in Downbeat, one is startled at the many musical guises through which the message may appear. At one time the message comes in the form of a low-down blues; at another it is presented through the 19th century Negro Spiritual; then as the song of a field worker or a chain-gang member; now as a mother singing a sweet lullaby to her child; often as ceremonial African chant with all of its rhythmic/melodic motives that border on becoming a mantra; again as a reggae song steeped in African punctuated rhythms; now as a rousing gospel song with congregational responses; or as a children’s song, with rhythms that crave a ring play.

Regardless of the guise through which the message is presented, the Sweet Honey sound dresses it in splendid attire. In her singing, the four- and five-part harmony sounds as spontaneous as friends meeting on the street corner, though it has the refinement of a conservatory ensemble. The richness of the individual voices and the natural vibrato, huskiness, and agility that they innately possess is a trademark of the group. Placing the high voices in their middle register forces the bass (yes, there are two in the group) to its lower register, creating a sound of substance and body. Like the sweet singing quartets of old, Sweet Honey celebrates close harmony, precise attacks and releases, and understated – yet firm – rhythmic accentuation. At a moment’s notice she can easily change to energetic and extremely intense solo and background singing, a preaching style of delivery, and the exaggerated rhythms of the hard-singing quartets.

The style for which Sweet Honey is most noted is the layered or polyphonic practice reminiscent of West African singing. In this practice the bass sets up a two- or four-bar motif (or ostinato) that not only sets the rhythmic base, but also the harmonic foundation. After several statements of this ostinato, a tenor or baritone enters with a contrasting motif that sets up a dual rhythmic and harmonic progression. On top of this, two other voices, perhaps a tenor and baritone or two tenors, add yet another contrasting motif and together the voices create a sonorous arabesque of harmony and rhythm that is as intricately designed as a tennis match is active. At the moment that the listener thinks she or he has been exposed to all of the material of the song, the lead enters with a soaring melody that, because it is totally different from the sounds already presented, can gallantly ride on top of the harmony and rhythm set up by what has become the response to a call. This practice is so effective because the message of the leader is all the more pronounced as it sits atop a mountain of sound.

Another Sweet Honey device is the folk choral response composed of a single statement presented in perpetual motion behind the soloists. This device, created by the Tidewater Jubilee Quartets, involves setting up a textual or neutral syllable response such as oom-ma-lank-a-lank-a-lank over which the leader/soloist weaves a story. Another favored device is the classic response wherein the background singers repeat the leader’s call, answer questions posed by the lead or complete statements begun by the lead. A favorite example of this device is found in W. Herbert Brewster’s “Old Land Mark” in which the leader begins a statement with ‘let us all go back’ while the response states a diminished repetition, ‘all go back.’ The leader continues the statement with ‘back to the old,’ while the background singers complete the statement with ‘old land mark.’ Acknowledging the ingenuity of Sweet Honey, one can expect endless variations on all of these devices. As if the use of the several devices at their command were not enough to provide variety in sound and technique, each member of Sweet Honey is a soloist in her own right and will lead one or two songs in each concert. This differs from such perennially single-soloist lead groups as The Supremes, where Diana Ross was the lead singer, and Martha and The Vandellas. Sweet Honey works in the tradition of such groups as The Roberta Martin Singers and The Caravans, groups in which each singer was also a soloist.

From the marvelous recorded library of the group – and a fine library it is – and the many articles and reviews written about them – and even articles by members of the group – plus their tours throughout the United States and other parts of the world, we can easily get to know and enjoy Sweet Honey, that is, unless I’m preaching to the choir. Enjoy!

Her first dream was to be a dancer. Growing up in New York, she was inspired by “Snake Hips” Tucker, studying his serpentine moves and practicing them constantly with friends. Then, one fateful night at the Apollo Theater in 1934, the headlining Edwards Sisters brought down the house with their dancing. Amateur Hour began immediately after, and a 16-year-old Ella Fitzgerald stepped on stage, but was too intimidated to dance. Instead, she sang “Judy,” silenced the awestruck crowd, and won first prize. It was the beginning of one of the most celebrated careers in music history.

Born in Newport News, Virginia in 1917, Ella Fitzgerald moved with her mother to New York after the death of her father. Living in Yonkers, Fitzgerald attended public school, where she sang in the glee club and received her musical education. After her early success at the Apollo, and as a popular performer at a number of other amateur venues, Fitzgerald was invited to join Chick Webb’s band. Within a short while she was the star attraction, and had made a number hits including her trademark “A-tisket, A-tasket” (1938). After Webb’s death in 1939, Fitzgerald led the band for three years.

During her time with Webb’s band, Fitzgerald recorded with a number of other musicians, including Benny Goodman. By the time she began her solo career in the mid-1940s, she was a well-respected figure throughout the music industry. Her vibrant and energetic voice showed an exceptional range and control. Performing with “Jazz at the Philharmonic,” her popularity grew beyond the music world. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she continued to perform as a jazz musician, but concentrated primarily on popular music. Rivaled only by Frank Sinatra, her recordings of work by Cole Porter, Ira and George Gershwin, and Rogers and Hart were incredibly successful.

One of the early “scat” performers, Fitzgerald found a place among the growing jazz innovators, making recordings with such greats as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. Her true genius, however, was not formal innovation or deeper expression, but artistic renderings of the enthusiastic songs of her time. “I’m very shy, and I shy away from people,” Ella once said. “But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling. I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.” More than anything, it is this love of performing that won her the hearts of millions throughout the world.

By the 1970s, she was performing with a trio headed by pianist Tommy Flanagan, and regularly with dozens of different symphony orchestras. Though her voice was not what it had been, Fitzgerald’s enthusiasm and charisma continued to excite crowds well into the 1980s. After a successful appearance in the United Kingdom in 1990, she retired due to ailing health. Two years later President Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Honor. Suffering continued health problems, Fitzgerald spent the last few years of her life in her Beverly Hills home. On June 15, 1996 she died at the age of seventy-eight.

Of Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis said, “She was the best there ever was. Amongst all of us who sing, she was the best.” From those early days on Harlem streets to the upper stratosphere of musical fame, Ella Fitzgerald’s life was the quintessential American success story. Through fifty-eight years of performing, thirteen Grammys and more than forty million records sold, she elevated swing, bebop, and ballads to their highest potential. She was, undeniably, the First Lady of Song.

by Roger Steffens

Music raises the soul of man even higher than the so-called external form of religion…That is why in ancient times the greatest prophets were great musicians. – Hazrat Inayat Khan, “The Mysticism of Sound and Music”

Without doubt, Bob Marley can now be recognized as the most important figure in 20th century music.

It’s not just my opinion, but also, judging by all the mainsteam accolades hurled Bob’s way lately, the feeling of a great many others too. Prediction is the murky province of fools. But in the two decades since Bob Marley has gone, it is clear that he is without question one of the most transcendant figures of the past hundred years. The ripples of his unparalleled achievements radiate outward through the river of his music into an ocean of politics, ethics, fashion, philosophy and religion. His story is a timeless myth made manifest in this iwah, right before our disbelieving eyes.

There will come a day when music and its philosophy will become the religion of humanity…If there remains any magic it is music.

Unlike mere pop stars, Bob was a moral and religious figure as well as a major record seller internationally. To whom does one compare him? In a recent Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure lead story, Stanley Crouch makes a compelling case for Louis Armstrong as the century’s “unequaled performer,” excelling not just in his instrumental inventiveness but in his vocal style as well, transforming the way music was made and listened to, and influencing performers of all stripes right down to this very day. But you don’t see thousands of Maori and Tongans and Fijians gathering annually to pay honor to Louis Armstrong; you don’t witness phalanxes of youth wandering the world sporting Louis Armstrong t-shirts. In fact, big as the Beatles were, you hardly see any Beatle shirts around anymore, except for those few featuring John Lennon’s sorrow-inducing visage. Can you imagine an image of Elvis sewn onto the sleeve of an armed guerilla? When was the last time you saw a Michael Jackson flag or a Bob Dylan sarong or Madonna rolling papers? All of these exist in Marleyite forms, his iconography well nigh a new universal language, the symbol, as Jack Healey of Amnesty International continues to tell people, of freedom throughout the world.

That music alone can be called real which comes from the harmony of the soul, its true source, and when it comes from there it must appeal to all souls…Music alone can be the means by which the souls of races, nations and families, which are today so apart, may one day be united…The more the musician is conscious of his mission in life, the greater service he can render to humanity.

Most of the pop stars thrown up over the past hundred years had entertainment as their first and foremost goal. Not so Marley. He was conscious of his role as the bringer of the message of Rastafari to the consciousness of the outside world. He cared nothing for earthly trappings, and loved nothing better than lying on Jah’s cool earth at night watching the heavens revolve above him, rock stone as his pillow. He was here to call people to God.

So we can’t compare Marley to other well-known musical figures. As for politics, he eschewed them, although his actions caused him to be perceived (and sometimes feared) as a profoundly radical political leader too. But his were the anti-politics of salvation through love and love alone, an unshakeable knowledge of the oneness of all humankind.

Music is behind the working of the whole universe. Music is not only life’s greatest object, but music is life itself…Music being the most exalted of the arts, the work of the composer is no less than the work of a saint.

As for innovation, Marley was a multi-talented synthesizer of new ideas and rhythms, beginning with his precocious “Judge Not” solo debut at the dawn of the ska era, right up through his ongoing experiments with gospel, r&b, rock, folk, jazz, Latin, punk, scat, disco, and even (in unpublished form) bossa nova. Bob understood that reggae had the magnificent capaciousness to absorb all other influences and anchor them solidly to the drum and bass underpining that is its essential element, the sweet seductive secret of its success.

Actually the real secret is that Marley’s music is about something. It has value. Bob’s art is life transforming, answering our highest needs. It answers in a positive way, the question that Carlos Santana says we must always ask before we begin any activity in life: how is this going to make the world a better place? Although Bob became a commercial artist, he was not making commercial art. His art transcended pop fluffery. Many are there who swear that his music literally saved their lives.

The use of music for spiritual attainment and healing of the soul, which was prevelent in ancient times, is not found to the same extent now. Music has been made a pastime, the means of forgetting God instead of realizing God. It is the use one makes of things which constitutes their fault or their virtue.

It is in the vast amount of adherents that Bob’s work continues to lure, that we begin to sense his obvious immortality, even from this early point of focus. Elvis Presley may have been the biggest single rock icon of all time, but are his songs (none, incidentally, penned by him) really saying anything beyond mere pop cliche? Bob Dylan may be the most respected poet of his generation, but his often deliberately obfuscatory lyrics stand in the way of clear translation, and limit his appeal to the non-English speaking audience. Marley, on the other hand, refined his lyric art to a steely perfection, using the language of the streets to attain the stars. His words were so perfectly simple that they achieved eloquence. Today, his elemental stories can be related to and understood by people anywhere who suffer and love and long for salvation. In other words, just about every one of us.

Marley’s ready embrace of herb, and the flaunting of his startling mane of locks that grew more ferocious as the ’70s wound down, contributed to his image as a rebel for all seasons, treated like a deity among defiant youth and seasoned revolutionaries alike, who recognized him as one of their own, embracing him in Harare during Zimbabwe’s independence, and sending him messages of solidarity from Peruvian jungles to Himalayan hideaways.

So it appears, at least to this writer, that Bob Marley has the clearest shot at being recognized as the Artist of the 20th Century, at least as far as music is concerned, and probably a lot more. I hereby predict with reckless confidence that hundreds of years into the future, Marley’s melodies will be as prevalent as those of any songwriter who has ever lived. “No Woman No Cry” will still wipe away the tears from a widow’s face; “Exodus” will still arouse the warrior; “Redemption Song” will still be a rallying cry for emancipation from all tyrannies, physical and spiritual; “Waiting in Vain” will still seduce; and “One Love” will be the international anthem of a coffee-colored humanity living in unity, in a world beyond borders, beyond beliefs, where everyone has learned at last to get together and feel all right.

(Man) loves music more than anything else. Music is his nature; it has come from vibrations, and he himself is vibration…There is nothing in this world that can help one spiritually more than music.

In his true heart of hearts, Bob Marley heard the harmony of the heavens, and shared that celestial sound with the god-seeker in each of us. Thus it is not surprising that the N.Y. Times, seeking one video to epitomize the past century, preserved in a time capsule to be opened a thousand years hence, chose “Bob Marley Live at the Rainbow, London, 1977.” Or that the same “newspaper of record” called Marley “the most influential artist of the second half of the 20th century.”

We are all ennobled by our proximity to Marley and his art, his eternal songs of freedom.

This essay was previously published in The Beat Magazine, vol.19#3, 2000.

Roger Steffens is an actor, author, reggae historian and curator of the current exhibition at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California called “The World of Reggae featuring Bob Marley/Treasures from Roger Steffens’ Reggae Archives,” on view through Sept. 30.

For information about the Queen Mary exhbition: theworldofreggae.com