- Just ahead on "American Black Journal," this year's Kresge eminent artist, jazz bassist, Marion Hayden is here to talk about being selected for this special honor.

Plus she is going to treat us all to a performance.

Also coming up, a candid conversation with Detroit techno pioneer, Carl Craig, about black music.

And we'll remember Detroit journalist, Al Allen.

Don't go anywhere.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [Narrator] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 2] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

My first guest was just named, this year's Kresge eminent artist, award-winning jazz bassist, composer, and educator, Marion Hayden is the recipient of what's considered Metro Detroit's highest arts honor.

Her award includes a hundred thousand dollars from the Kresge Foundation.

I am pleased to welcome my friend Marion Hayden back to "American Black Journal."

It is great to have you here as always.

And congratulations.

- Thank you, Stephen, and thank you so much for having me here at "American Black Journal."

I'm so excited to be here.

- Yeah.

So in the intro I said, this is considered our area's greatest arts honor.

Is that how you feel?

- I totally feel that way.

It's like getting a big giant hug from my community that I love.

I just love this community.

It's my passion.

It's my muse.

I carry the banner of Detroit wherever I go, so.

- Yeah.

- Yes, it feels great.

- Yeah, so I wanna talk about, what brought you to this point, but also pause a second to acknowledge that this is an award that recognizes everything that you've done, the span of your career.

So let's talk about that career and kind of how you got into music into the bass, which I think I've told you before, I was a tuba player in college.

I have a double bass at home and plunk around on it.

It is one of my favorite instruments.

So talk about how you got to this point.

- Well, I have to say, one of the wonderful things about growing up in Detroit, well, first of all, I should give complete credit to my parents.

My parents, Marion Ford, Hayden Thomas, she ended up getting remarried after my father passed, and Herbert E. Hayden.

And our little house that we grew up in, and the wonderful neighborhood of Russell Woods on Fullerton Street.

And they were just wonderful parents.

They never put any restrictions on me as a young woman, as a girl, as to what girls could do.

My mother was a chemist, so she knew no boundaries of that sort.

So, well, I just started taking cello lessons when I was about nine in our great Detroit public school, music education programs who I also loved.

Oh, public school music programs are so important and I'm always on my little bandwagon.

I'm always standing on my soapbox about continuing to support them for the young people that are in school now.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And so I was a little girl taking lessons in my school, took Coachella lessons at nine, and then when I got tall enough to stand up to the bass, 'cause I've always wanted to play bass, I was about 12, I switched over to bass and I had a lot of jazz in my household, care of my dad who was a huge jazz fan and record collector and kind of a closeted jazz pianist.

He was really good.

And he exposed me to such great music.

And then he made what I considered to be just such a wonderful gesture for me.

He took me to a summertime jazz camp, called Metro Arts, which was right here on Selden Street in Detroit.

And that's where I met the likes of Wendell Harrison, Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney, and so many of the great jazz musicians who'd become so influential for me and others.

- Yeah.

- And these were the torch bearers, the people that were really keeping the music alive at that time, which would have been the, you know, early 70s, you know, and that's how I caught the jazz bug.

- Yeah.

- And from then on, at some point you hear something and you just know this is something that you have to hear in your ears forever.

And that was what it was for me.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So I always think of music as a form of expression, and that expression is really important to the artist who is making that expression.

In a little bit, we're gonna listen to something that you're playing for us and our viewers.

Talk about that expression, the things that you're saying and trying to communicate when you're playing.

- Well, one thing about, especially certainly at this point in my career is, I have a pretty big mental library of things.

There's a lot of music that I've played and a lot of different genres.

I've played the music of Argentinian tango.

I played music from, you know, Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico and Cuban.

I have played folk music, some classical music of pretty much all types of jazz and all the different spheres that we work in.

And so I'm a collector of themes and a collector of musical moments.

And so when I play, especially something like a solo piece, then basically I try to weave those moments together and threads so that they can be interesting.

I've tried to find things that are interesting from my mental collection.

And it's very important, I think, especially for a bass player, that we have a lot of experience because the bass is a very ubiquitous instrument, - Yes.

- In all ensembles.

- So much more versatile than anybody ever thinks it is.

- It is.

It's the basis of so many different places.

And so I have an opportunity to really be very broadly expressive in so many different ways.

I mean, as I say, you know, rock, indie rock, all kinds of things.

Gospel of course, you know, all the branches of black music.

- Yeah.

- And so I try to bring all those things to bear when I perform and just try to be broadly expressive, really talk about the music that I'm playing in a way that is befitting of any particular thing I'm doing.

- Yeah.

So, you know, in that way you're as much a creator.

I know you don't like to call yourself a composer.

- No.

- But you're a creator in the sense of taking all of these things, all of these ideas, all these little bits of things that you've heard or played around with and putting 'em together.

- Very much so.

And I really love doing that.

One of the things that I enjoy doing a lot of is this idea of composing from a narrative point of view.

And so many times when I'm composing, I'm composing from an actual story.

It might be a story that I'm trying to tell.

I'll give an example.

One of the pieces that I wrote, this was a commissioned piece from our ex-Detroit, was about the city of Highland Park.

That's where my husband and I had lived, my husband Fell Gardner and our two young men Tarique Gardner and as Asakele Gardner, we raised our family there.

And Highland Park has an amazing history in the auto industry.

- Yeah.

Yes.

- And so I created a whole piece about Highland Park's history, and it included also interviews from Highland Parkers where they talked about the history of their town and how things had changed, - Yeah.

- Over the years.

- Yeah, right?

- And I have to say, I really loved delving into that.

And I took from that so many different ways of talking about the city and also ways to be able to kind of lay their beautiful narratives, you know, in a beautiful bed of musical flowers, you know?

- Yeah.

You have some performances coming up where people can actually come see you live.

Talk about this.

- I do.

I would love to have people come and please come out and see my band Marion Hidden Legacy at the Blue Llama Jazz Club in Ann Arbor.

I'll be there on April the fourth, and then I will be with my great band Straight Ahead that I'm a co-founder of, that band of wonderful women that's been together for many years.

Grammy nominated band.

- Not just random women.

I mean, these are women who are just stars, absolute stars.

- In their own right, each of them.

And we actually were the first all women group signed to a major jazz label.

- Yeah.

Right, right.

- So we will be at the Freight House series that's sponsored by University Musical Society in Ypsilanti on April the 13th.

And then we'll also be at the Cranbrook Project, Friday Night Live series on June the 13th.

So come on out and see us, everyone.

Love to have you there.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And again, you'll be doing all of the things that the Kresge eminent artist does during the next year.

- I am.

It's just been so beautiful and I so appreciate Kresge for this opportunity to, as I said, just be overwhelmed with gratitude.

- Yeah.

- I'm just overwhelmed.

- Yeah.

Well Mary, congratulations again.

Thanks for being here on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you, Stephen.

- Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig is one of the headliners at this year's Detroit Movement Festival over Memorial Day weekend.

This month, Craig rolled out his annual video series, "All Black Vinyl," on Instagram.

Every Wednesday and February, he selects a playlist of black artists from his massive record collections.

"American Black Journal" contributors, Bryce Huffman of Bridge Detroit and producer Daijah Moss talked with Craig about the importance of celebrating black music history.

- Happy 2025.

And we're back again with a new edition of "All Black Vinyl."

- So, Carl, tell me, why did you start your "All Black Vinyl" series and what does that medium for music mean to you personally?

- Mm.

During COVID, it was just hell.

(laughs) And, you know, everybody was doing streaming, but not really streaming with meaning.

Of course, George Floyd and all the things that were going on at that time had such a big impact.

But I really felt that there needed to be something that I could do that had meaning.

And for Black History Month, it made sense to do a project that was about the music, about the music that is good music, but that's music that's done by, whether it's people from Detroit or people from outside of Detroit that would celebrate Black History Month.

So "All Black Vinyl" just seemed to be an obvious thing for me.

And it was a lot of fun to do it, you know, instead of it being something where I would sit there and mix records for a day or something.

I liked the concept of doing one a day.

And I got so many people from not only inside of the United States, but outside of the United States that were looking forward to seeing the next day that I would do a post.

See, there's Miles up there.

- [Speaker] What about the eyes?

- [Bryce] You've been collecting vinyl for years now.

How big is your collection?

And is there one record that stands out as very important to you on a personal level?

- I can always say like, oh yeah, you know, we got all these records in stock and stuff.

Yeah I got, you know, 50,000 records, a hundred thousand records.

No, it's not like that.

It's something that I don't pay attention to collecting for the sake of collecting records.

I buy it because I love the music and I want the music.

So I don't have a Fela Kuti record or a number of Fela Kuti records because that was the trend.

I have 'em because I just like the music, you know?

The music that stands out really the most to me, Marcus Belgrave, Vibes from the Tribe from Phil Ranelin, you know, the Detroit stuff, ♪ Motown, and from Detroit - When you go through records that you haven't listened to in a while, is there an appreciation for the recording process, the artistry that goes into making the albums that you kind of rediscover?

- Those records that were being done in the 50s and the 60s and even the 70s, the process of making 'em and the care of making 'em was incredible.

And it's so much different than when you're using a laptop, you know, or I mean, MPCs sound great and stuff, but, you know, to have the guys in the studio going straight to tape, mixing console, left, right, center, boom, you're there.

- Now jazz, techno, hip hop, R&B, these are all genres that have been covered on the show and all genres that are really important to black history, especially music history.

Tell me, was there a genre that you think sounds best to you when it's recorded on vinyl?

- Mm.

You know, there was a whole disco sucks movement that happened in, what was it, 1979 in Chicago.

It was a baseball game between Detroit and Chicago.

Was it the White Sox versus the Tigers where they blew up all those pieces of vinyl.

And disco might've sucked because of all the novelty that happened with it, but a lot of those records are recorded so well.

They sound incredible.

You know, there's records from Barry White that just sound enormous on the sound system.

Moodymann, he's been playing the Isley Brothers at his gigs mixed with Thundercat and the Isley Brothers record sounds monstrous on the sound system.

- How do you go about talking to younger generations of music lovers, people who might not even know that they are history buffs through music?

How do you talk to them about that importance?

- I'm somebody that doesn't really force my musical ideas on my kids, and I try to use how I deal with things with my kids, to dealing with other people's kids if it comes to play.

So when I was learning how to play piano before, guitar was my instrument, but I was learning how to play piano, I hated the regiment, you know, that it was just really regimented, how you had to learn piano.

And when I met Francesco Triano, who's a concert pianist from Luxembourg, and he played the piano where he is banging on the sides and pulling the strings and doing all these things, I'm thinking like, why didn't we do that when I'm learning how to play piano?

That would've made me wanna play piano and stick with piano because it becomes more of a performance instrument.

You know, Elton John tried to make piano, or let's even go to Little Richard, because that's where it all comes from.

Little Richard, the way he was playing piano, standing on it and all that stuff was like someone standing there with a guitar and just show boating with the guitar and stuff.

So, you know, banging, turning it into a percussive instrument as well as a melodic instrument would've made it so much more interesting because I could see the vision of that.

I could see the vision of being a rock piano player by banging on the instrument instead of it being traditional and classical.

So I think with kids that you have to not only come down to their level, but you have to, you know, you have to show that it's entertaining.

You know, something that's entertaining to a grown man is different than what's entertaining to, you know, a teen.

(upbeat music) - As a lifelong student of black history, is there any record or group of records that you think newcomers to this history just have to listen to, to fully appreciate the strides that have been made?

- You gotta go to the roots.

With black music, you have to listen to Billie Holiday, you know, you have to hear "Strange Fruit."

You have to hear the political records, the Nina Simone stuff.

You have to know that music in the same way that you have to know Elvin Jones's records, or Count Basie or Duke Ellington or Miles Davis, or going into the blues of Muddy Waters and "Howlin' Wolf."

You have to go all the way down through it.

You have to understand why shiny suits were worn on stage.

You have to understand the Chitlin Circuit.

You have to understand why James Brown got on because he was impersonating Little Richard, you know?

It's like the knowledge and the history is really important to be able to pour into modern music because the blues is the music that has always dominated, you know, American music from the time it was race music, you know?

These are are important milestones.

They're like little flags.

They're everything.

So even gospel, gospel's another thing.

I grew up going to a Lutheran school, but my grandparents were preachers in the south.

And I didn't really get the gospel thing until I saw a film of Aretha Franklin playing Montreux Jazz Festival.

And it freaked me out.

It freaked me out.

It blew me away.

It was just another level.

So when I was watching another video of Miles Davis playing Montreux Jazz Festival, when he brought the electric organ on and wouldn't play his horn, you know, his roots are gospel, jazz, and the blues goes into his music.

He was able to morph it in the rock.

He was able to morph it into wherever he went.

So you gotta know the language.

It's like, you know, as a black man getting a job in Google or something, you have to understand the language that the people are talking, you know, within your environment in order to be able to advance.

(upbeat music) That's right.

"All Black Vinyl."

Once again, enjoy yourselves.

- We wanna take a moment now to acknowledge the recent loss of a Detroit broadcasting legend.

Award-winning reporter Al Allen passed away this month at the age of 79.

His long career as a radio and television journalist ended in 2012 when he retired from Detroit's Fox affiliate WJBK after spending nearly three decades there.

He was a guest here on "American Black Journal" in 2018 after releasing his memoir titled, "We're Standing By."

- [Interviewer] You got into radio, - Yes.

- [Interviewer] Before TV.

A lot of people don't understand, you weren't always the guy on Fox two in the morning on TV.

Talk about how you went into radio first and what you did there, how you made the transition into television.

- I tell interns this, and you know this industry that we're in, because you were in print and I was in broadcast.

It is not easy.

You knock on the door, ring the doorbell, or pick up a phone.

No, they're not concerned about you.

"We're not hiring today.

You don't have any experience."

So I did, I got my start in radio, Little Rock, Arkansas at KOKY was my first radio station.

I was the news director.

I mopped floors.

I washed windows.

It was on the air too as well.

I worked with the guy- - [Interviewer] Wait, wait, wait.

You cleaned up and, what?

- Oh, yes, you did everything.

You know, you were getting your start.

And I worked with a guy named Jocko Smith.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- He was nationally known because he coined the phrase soul music as dirty, filthy black music.

And everybody said it.

And you know, that's what he coined as soul music.

- Wow.

- So I worked with some of those.

I worked at WGPR in Detroit.

We came to Detroit.

I worked at GPR and I worked at JLB twice.

- [Interviewer] When it was AM.

- When it was AM.

Oh, don't talk about that.

We laughed when they said we're gonna switch from AM to FM and we said, "FM, that's not gonna work.

Nobody's gonna listen."

Well, we were wrong.

- Al Allen was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021.

We thank him for his dedication to his craft and for the legacy he leaves in broadcast journalism.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

We're gonna close with a performance from Marion Hayden, the 2025 Kresge eminent artist.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Enjoy and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat bass music) (upbeat bass music continues) (upbeat bass music continues) (upbeat bass music continues) - [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 2] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music)