Soul-Patrol Newsletter: THIS DAY IN BLACK MUSIC HISTORY – By Jay Warner- 2,000 Black Music Facts for Every Day of the Year
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THE NEW BOOK
THIS DAY IN BLACK MUSIC HISTORY
Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts for Every Day of the Year
Soul-Patrol Newsletter Salutes: On This Day In Black Music History – by Jay Warner
* On This Day in Black Music History
(Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts for Every Day of the Year)
* BOOK REVIEW – On This Day in Black Music History
* BIOGRAPHY: Jay Warner
A Great New Book!!!
This issue of the Soul-Patrol Newsletter focuses on a new book entitled On This Day In Black Music History (Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts for Every Day of the Year. It’s writen by longtime Soul-Patroller Jay Warner and it’s a book that I think should not only be in every Black American household, but in the household of all music lovers. Read on to find out the reasons why. Also as a bonus, included in this issue is a Soul-Patrol.Net Radio EXCLUSIVE audio interview with author/historian Jay Warner. I conducted this interview with Jay at the 2005 Vocal Group Hall of Fame Inductions, where he was one of the hosts and I think that the interview will give you a pretty clear picture of Jay’s knowlege and commitment to the legacy of Black music…
–Bob Davis
earthjuice@prodigy.net
On This Day in Black Music History
Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts for Every Day of the Year
By Jay Warner
Foreword by Quincy Jones
I just wanted to give yall the sccop on a newly released book, called This Day In Black Music History. It’s written by Soul-Patroller, Jay Warner and it’s a winner. First some basic info…
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From The Foreword by Quincy Jones
“Jay Warner has taken on the monumental task of encapsulating more than 100 years of black music’s wide-ranging culture, values, trends, successes, and foibles with a unique twist that allows us to see events from different years, eras, and generations on a daily basis. Digestible for an ‘on the go’ generation as well as a reminder for past generations of our achievements and importance in the grand scheme of things.”
From a 1993 interview in the Los Angeles Times
“I got started,” Jay Warner says, “because I was a record collector…. We don’t want reissues. We want that original recording. We want to touch that original piece of plastic from 1953 or 1954.”
Jay Warner, avid record collector, author, lawyer, and six-time Grammy Award-winning music publisher has compiled an exciting and unparallel reference source on Black music and entertainment called On This Day in Black Music History: Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts for Every Day of the Year. The Foreword is by Quincy Jones, and the advance endorsements come from some of the greatest legends in Black entertainment-icons such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Patti LaBelle, “Baby Face,” Mary Wilson, Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, Carl Gardner of The Coasters, and many others.
A first-of-its-kind, On This Day in Black Music History will be heavily illustrated with photographs and will include information about what happened when, who did what, and who was who on any given day. Covering a 100-year spectrum of all genres of Black music, it offers an opportunity to celebrate, the achievements of so many beloved performers. Soul, gospel, r&b, hip-hop, rap, rock n’ roll-everything outside and in between is chronicled here for music and entertainment lovers of all ages.
On This Day in Black Music History is music history appreciation adapted for the 21st century and is perfect for our instant gratification age.
Publication Information-For Immediate Release, February 2006; ISBN: 0-634-09926-4; Softcover; Price: $16.95 US, $22.95 CAN.
BOOK REVIEW – On This Day in Black Music History
At the top I said that this book was essential.
I’m not kidding…
On This Day in Black Music Historyisn’t intended to be the type of book that you would pick up and read over the course of a rainy weekend, although you could do that, it’s intent is far different.
This book is quite literally something that you could reach for every day if you are a Black music fan. It’s designed to be a reference book that gives the reader an easy to use source of information about the people, places and events that comprise Black music history for that day. It’s 365 pages of information that you as a Black music fan need every day. Notice the title doesn’t say “soul music history”, that’s because musch like Soul-Patrol itself, the whole idea is to cover Black music. Therefore it’s covering Jazz, Rock, Blues, Doo Wop, Funk, Soul and more.
The image to your left is one of the pages from the book. It happens to be January 19th (which just happens to be my birthday in case any of you want to buy me a gift). As you can see it gives you a comprehensive view of important people, places and events from that day, sometimes including pictures. This Day in Black Music History goes back to the early 1900’s yet it is as up to date as last week, in the scope of it’s coverage. And that is what makes it an essential book to have in your household. Seeing the information laid out by day in 365 byte sized increments also makes the threads of Black music history easy to see for younger people to see as well. It brings the history of the music alive, illustrating the “connections and disconnections” in a way that doesn’t preach or is heavy handed. Yet the messages between the lines of this book are as heavy as the words of the most outspoken Black History advocate. It’s all about celebrating, remembering and taking forward the glorious legacy of OUR music & culture.
And I would suggest to you my friend that insuring that happens is what the whole purpose of the book. When you but this book, the very last thing that you would want to do is to put it on a bookshelf. Instead place it in your family room, right next to the TV set. Just so that your kids have easy access to the book and the information contained inside. You never know they just might pick it up and learn something about the history of Black music…
Pick up a copy for your family:
Click here
–Bob Davis
earthjuice@prodigy.net
BIOGRAPHY: Jay Warner
Chances are you haven’t heard him sing. It’s doubtful that you’ve overheard a DJ-other than himself-utter his name on-air. And, unless you’re in the biz, you’ve probably never even heard of him.
Yet Jay Warner has been a superhero to many singers, songwriters and musicians, including such heavyweights over the last three and a half decades as Barry Manilow, Larry Graham, Bruce Springsteen, the late Rick James, The Whispers, Steppenwolf, The Rascals, The Emotions, Mariah Carey, The Tokens and Gladys Knight, and hit songwriters like Ben Weisman (writer of fifty-seven songs for Elvis), Jimmy Webb, Jim Wetherly, Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown.
A six-time Grammy Award winner, Warner is a music publisher, author and music historian with a distinguished track record in pop, rock, country, R&B, and soul music. He’s a recipient of the Heroes and Legends Pioneer Award, various ASCAP awards, and is the only music publisher to be included in the distinguished Congressional Record. As a publisher, Warner is ubiquitous: he’s published songs in Oscar-winning movies like the recent Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, netted Grammys for smash hits like “You Can’t Touch This,” and tracked down errant funds for the estate of the late blues singer Mississippi John Hurt.
A prolific author, Warner is one of the only music publishers to write extensively about both music business and music history. His list of titles include several recently released by Hal Leonard, including the landmark how-to book How To Have Your Hit Song Published (Revised and Updated Edition); the first-of-their-kind, day-by-day entertaining references On This Day in Music History and On This Day in Black Music History; and the recently updated American Singing Groups: A History from 1940 to Today.
A compulsive list maker, record collector, and idea generator, Warner is constantly on the move. His love of music, he says, goes beyond a natural enthusiasm for all types of music-except when it comes to opera. “Can’t stand it,” he says. “I like to know what a writer is saying.” “I’ve been making lists since I was a kid,” he says, chuckling. “At thirteen, I started collecting list surveys from Top 40 stations in New York, and I created my own Top 40. I’d spread the records out on my bed, pile ’em up, and write down the titles in a spiral notebook. They hadn’t invented the word ‘nerd’ yet, but I was one.” “The first record I ever bought was ‘Mule Skinner Blues,’ ” Warner recalls. “The next 25 singles,” he qualified, “were all vocal group doo-wop-stuff like ‘In the Still of the Night’ and ‘I Only Have Eyes For You,’ which were oldies when I started buying them.” He continues, “I was also collecting classic jazz-Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie. I was playing classical piano, but listening to jazz rock & roll and R&B.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Warner confirms, when asked about his career aspirations, “but I knew that it had to relate to music.” He jump-started his career as a songwriter in his 20s, but quickly realized that publishing would be a better niche. His reasons were personal: “My father was an idea man in the plastics business who invented a formula for impressing doll’s hair into plastic,” the Brooklyn native explains. “The trademark and copyright were stolen, and he never saw a dime. From early on, I was very vengeful, and I vowed that I would find a way to protect rights. So in a sense, my work has always served as retribution for my dad’s lack of knowledge.”.
By 1976, Warner was living in Los Angeles and working as vice president of the Wes Farrell Organization’s publishing realm. A year later, he organized the West Coast arm of the Entertainment Company, and, in 1980, he founded the Creative Music Group, the worldwide publishing division of K-Tel International. Three years later, he formed his own company, The Jay Warner Music Group, which scored big with fourteen hit singles and seven chart albums in its first eighteen months. In 1984, Warner’s company merged with The Music Group, forming a conglomerate that he oversees to this day.
For every Rick James or Bruce Springsteen that he’s represented, however, there are also hundreds of lesser known artists that, says Warner, deserve equal treatment when it comes to protecting their music rights. “I see myself as somebody who likes to level the playing field. I’m colorblind and status-blind when it comes to protecting rights. It’s not a matter of rich or poor-it’s a matter of wrong or right.”. “Take Mississippi John Hurt. For the first time, his estate is earning money. I’m trying to restore things, and I’m starting to make money for his catalog, after uses of songs in films like Lackawanna Blues and Walk the Line.”. “The more you educate people the better off the whole industry is,” Warner maintains. “Maybe we’ll find the next Elton John or Smokey Robinson-you don’t know what’s out there.”
There’s one place that Warner doesn’t look for talent: on the wildly popular Fox TV program American Idol. “Simon Cowell should be interrogating terrorists,” he says. “We need him in the CIA, not on TV. The American public will do anything for fifteen minutes of fame, but you don’t have to beat up on people to get the most out of them. Cowell uses anger, intimidation, sarcasm, and nastiness-none of which count as entertainment. As a publisher, it embarrasses me.” . “It takes luck, timing, talent, and perseverance [to have a hit], and there are ways to do it that aren’t demeaning or demoralizing.”
In stark contrast, Just Walkin’ in the Rain, Warner’s 250-page account of wrongly-imprisoned singer Johnny Bragg, who was pardoned by Tennessee Governor Frank Clement in 1959, is an irrefutably heartwarming tale. Published in 2001, it’s a riveting account of America’s most famous all-convict singing group, the Prisonaires, and chronicles their true story of success while incarcerated in the Tennessee State Prison system.
“I worked on American Singing Groups for three years, and once the book was published, I sat down and read it from cover to cover. I was making automatic comparisons, and a lot of stories were similar-groups were found singing on a street corner, and they got a hit.”. “The Prisonaires,” explains Warner, “stood out as a totally unique group, because they were the only performing act that had ever succeeded while in prison. That’s mindboggling!”.
It took three months and dozens of phone calls, but he eventually located a Nashville lawyer who confirmed that Bragg, co-founder of the Prisonaires, was still alive. (The singer died in 2004, three years after Just Walkin’ in the Rain was published.)
“Every time Johnny opened his mouth, more and more incredible things came out,” says Warner. “I started calling writers from the Country Music Association and people in Congress, and I had [friend/singer] Dobie Gray running around Nashville looking for information, which I was able to corroborate as true.”. “There are so many layers to Johnny’s story-it’s a musical story, a political story, a civil rights story, and a history story and a “buddy” story-that it built itself,” he notes. During his research, Warner discovered that country singer Hank Williams, Sr. might have borrowed one of Bragg’s tunes as the inspiration for his massive hit “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”. “It could very definitely be true,” he claims today. “Back then, it was an acceptable idea: why shouldn’t a white man take a black man’s idea? Johnny was in prison-he wasn’t going to do anything with it.”
“Unfortunately, Johnny Bragg is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Warner, his instincts as a music publisher coming into play. “In most cases, if you don’t have protection, you’re not going to get paid.”
earthjuice@prodigy.net
THE NEW BOOK
THIS DAY IN BLACK MUSIC HISTORY
Over 2,000 Popular Music Facts for Every Day of the Year
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Bob Davis
earthjuice@prodigy.net
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