Anderson@Large

Lee Morgan and ChatGPT

Excitement is building as we plan the unveiling of Lee Morgan's historical marker.

We still have to finalize the marker text. Lee was an innovator so I asked ChatGPT, Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot, about the legendary jazz trumpeter. With the exception of “common-law wife,” the response is eerily accurate. A common-law marriage is not permitted in New York State. In any case, Lee was legally married to Kiko Yamamoto at the time of his death.

When I asked whether Lee has a historical marker, ChatGPT made stuff up. In AI-speak, the chatbot “hallucinated.”

In an interview with Lesley Stahl of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” cognitive scientist and AI researcher Gary Marcus called it “authoritative bullshit”:

I actually like to call what it creates “authoritative bullshit.” It blends the truth and falsity so finely together that, unless you’re a real technical expert in the field they’re talking about, you don’t know.

Check out the full episode, “ChatGPT: Artificial Intelligence, chatbots and a world of unknowns.”

Women in Jazz Month

March is Women in Jazz Month, a time to celebrate the contributions of women to jazz.

As a lifelong activist, I want to celebrate the role that women in jazz played in paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement. Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol, is the first protest song.

Ethel Waters’ “Supper Time” is not well-known. Written by Irving Berlin especially for Waters, the song is about a wife’s grief over the lynching of her husband.

For Lady Day and Ethel Waters, Black Lives always mattered.

Happy Presidents’ Day

The thought of a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024 is dizzying. If only we could turn back the clock to 1964 and “Vote Dizzy.”

Black History Month 2023

First started as “Negro History Week” by Carter G. Woodson in February 1926, African American History Month is a celebration of all things Black. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History chose Black Resistance for this year’s theme:

African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores. These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic society in the United States and beyond the United States political jurisdiction. The 1950s and 1970s in the United States were defined by actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walk outs, strikes by Black people and white allies in the fight for justice against discrimination in all sectors of society from employment to education to housing. Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Systematic oppression has sought to negate much of the dreams of our griots, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and our freedom fighters, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer fought to realize.

Billie Holiday denounced the terrorism of lynching in “Strange Fruit,” the first protest song. Bassist Charles Mingus observed that Lady Day resisted racial oppression before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From Louis Armstrong to Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, jazz is the music of Black Resistance.

Poet Langston Hughes said jazz transformed Black Resistance into an art form:

But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Jazz is the sound of struggle.

Celebrating Roberta Flack

A child prodigy, Roberta Flack began studying classical piano at age nine. Flack got her big break while performing at Mr. Henry's Upstairs, a jazz club on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

American Masters: Roberta Flack tells Flack’s story in her own words. The documentary features interviews with, among others, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Angela Davis, Valerie Simpson, Les McCann and Peabo Bryson.

American Masters: Roberta Flack premieres on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 at 9pm ET. The documentary will be available on PBS, PBS.org and PBS Video App. Check your local listing here.

Lee Morgan Historical Marker Approved

The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission approved the nomination of jazz trumpeter, composer and activist Lee Morgan for a historical marker.

Lee will join John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and his union, Union Local 274 of the American Federation of Musicians, with a historical marker in Philadelphia. The blue-and-gold marker will be installed in front of the former location of Music City where as a high school student Lee participated in instructional clinics and Tuesday night jam sessions with jazz luminaries, including Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and Miles Davis.

On June 26, 1956, trumpeter Clifford Brown left from Music City for a gig in Chicago. Brownie, along with pianist Richie Powell and Powell’s wife, Nancy, were killed in a car crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

There has been an outpouring of interest in attending the unveiling (Date TBD). However, we must limit attendance because the historical marker will be installed on a busy street with a lot of traffic. This tribute didn’t just happen. A small group of people made it happen. By the same token, a dedication ceremony doesn’t just happen. It must be planned and PAID for.

To join us at the dedication ceremony, please make a donation of $50.00 to help defray expenses.

Donations of $500.00 will be listed as Community Sponsors on social media and the website, Lee Morgan’s Philadelphia.

If you cannot attend but want to support this long overdue recognition of Lee’s musical virtuosity, please make a donation. No donation is too small to preserve Lee’s story in public memory.

Please click on the image to make a donation with PayPal, debit or credit card. Thank you!

Props to Pops

For years I could not get pass the optics of Louis Armstrong, mainly the broad grin and ever-present handkerchief. Fast forward to today, my love and respect for Pops’ musical genius and civil rights activism is immeasurable. At the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement, Armstrong cancelled a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of the Soviet Union in support of the Little Rock Nine. Pops blasted Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, a staunch segregationist, and President Eisenhower.

As a preservationist, I am in awe of Pops and Lucille Armstrong’s dedication to preserving his legacy in public memory. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, a National Historic Landmark, and the new Louis Armstrong Center provide a blueprint for historic preservation, as well as cultural heritage preservation.

Pops once said, “I don’t get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.” Behind closed tours, he had a lot to say about politics and racism. Decades after his death, the public will hear the full story of Louis Armstrong in the documentary, “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.”

The legendary trumpeter got his flowers while he was alive. Pops is now getting overdue props for his resilience and resistance to white supremacy. “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” premieres October 28 on Apple TV.