Black History Month

The topic: For this post, I thought that we'd honor the African Americans who have influenced us through music...

Jen'comments:
There's so many....Aretha and Etta, Alicia and Whitney, Mary J and Tina....the list goes on and on and that's just the women! I have many men on my list as well. But when I was thinking about how African American musicians have influenced me, I realized that the majority of them were women. There is something about the power of them.....their spirit, their voice, their prescence! The first word that comes to mind when thinking about these wonderful women is STRENGTH. They are so strong! Even in a song telling a story of lost love or other vulnerable situations, these woman are strong. They give a voice to fears by facing it head on. So, for me, I would like to honor the women that give me inspiration to be strong. Even if the only way that they do it is through their song. Singing along in my car (although my voice is no comparison to theirs) makes me feel strong and helps me face problems or just to face another day. So, thank you to all of the powerful women who have such amazing strength, no matter your skin color....

Charlie Tee's comments:
I agree with Jen about being given the strength to carry on through song. For me especially since I am a musician much of my life has been shaped and re-shaped by the music that I listened to. I'm a person that is very easily moved to tears ( I know, it ain't pretty, but it's me...), and many times in my life it was people like Aretha that got me through feeeling akward about myself. When I was younger, I was outgoing, but unsure of myself, and songs like Aretha's "Baby I Love You," helped me to find my voice in the world...it was the first song that I ever sang out loud in public.
There are so many African American musicians that have influenced me that there is not enough ink in a printer to tell them all, so I'll say, short and sweet, that they've all come through for me...in one way or another.

Sherry's comments:
hi, i thought about this question quite a bit. it's not an easy question even tho it seems it would be. pittsburgh has always been an "oldies" town. do wop groups and such, most of those singers were either black or italians from philly(my friends tease!). so i heard do wop before most anything except for my mother's old rosemary clooney and some opera from one of my uncles and the obligatory italian songs and those old country songs of doom and gloom and 18 wheelers from my dad's side of the family. i never gave it much thought. i never really gave much thought as to the ethnicity of the singers anyway tho i do know that there were some parents that did. i thought that was not only basically wrong, but it was stupid to refuse to enjoy something as magical as music because one was dumb enough to think skin color or ethnicity mattered in any way for any reasons.so, i listened to pretty much everything, but my all time favorite, smoky robinson!!!!someone once said that smokey could burp a song and it would be a hit cause he was just that good. i think they were right. i had tons of his 45's, played them to death on an old plaid suitcase type record player with a needle that looked like a thick pencil lead, bet charlie remembers those! i knew all the flip sides,"fork in the road" is still one of my favorites!then the late 60's hit, i was in awe of hendrix, i loved that gorgeous white leather fringed jacket thing he wore, god i did! i watched him play and it was like the music was making an electrical circuit through his body, into the guitar and back into him. that was also when i started to get into the blues, tho you couldn't find many blues albums around those days, but i had found out that a lot of the songs that the english groups had out and a lot of janice's stuff were blues covers. at least the english groups were honest enough to credit them and were in awe of those old time blues singers.now, i listen to almost every type of music, from blues to old rock to tibetian singing bowls and native american chants to celtic goddess songs. there is so much to enjoy, but now and then, i dust off my old turn table, get out that round "thingy" for the 45's and listen to smokey the way i did back then, a little scratchy, but still, the best!