Happy Birthday

One of the reasons why the work of Nichelle Gainer is so important to me is that it keeps me abreast of all of history that I love regarding all of my favorite artisans!

Happy 88th Birthday Harry Belafonte [March 1, 2015]​! I said it last year on your birthday and I’ll say it again -Thank you Mr. Belafonte for more than 50 years of art and activism behind the scenes in Hollywood and on the frontlines of the civil rights movement. Thank you for speaking up early and often and for still speaking up and enlightening us today.

In this photo, Mr. Belafonte is on the set of ‘The Strollin’ Twenties,’ a 1965 television special he produced, with a script by Langston Hughes. The show, a celebration of the Harlem Renaissance, featured Duke Ellington, Diahann Carroll and other luminaries and aired on February 21, 1966. Photo: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images.

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Happy 78th Birthday Nancy Wilson [February 20, 2015] !! As I note in my book, Ms.Wilson, born in Chillicothe, Ohio, had a definite idea about her place on the food chain in music when she arrived in New York in the late 1950s and took comparisons to icons in stride. “Dinah Washington had a great deal of humor. If I were to describe myself, I’d say there’s a lot of Dinah - Dinah’s humor. I don’t sound that much like Dinah although people compared me to her. I think that the chit-chat, the general humor, is a lot of Dinah. The overall look would be Lena Horne. The sound is Jimmy Scott. So, it’s a combination of things and the bottom line: by osmosis. I became me from listening, absorbing things from everybody.” Photo (1968): National Archives, The Hague, Public Image Archive. Photo Collection General Dutch Fotopersbureau (ANEFO).  

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