Let It Be
Commentary by ChItown Kev
As news that the Queen of Soul, Detroit's very own Aretha Louise Franklin, was near death began filtering out, I remembered that Aretha had recorded a cover of The Beatles' ''Let It Be'' and it seems...appropriate now.
I decided to do a little digging on Aretha’s recording of this iconic Beatles song and learned that...well, this wasn’t exactly a cover of The Beatles at all.
In the liner notes to Aretha Franklin’s 2007 boxset, Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of The Queen of Soul, producer Jerry Wexler recalled how Aretha’s “Let It Be” came to be:
“Paul McCartney had sent me an acetate of ‘Let It Be’ with a note that it was written for Aretha. We recorded it. Afterwards, though, Aretha told us to hold up the release. She liked the melody but wasn’t sure what the lyrics meant. Time passed and the boys from Liverpool were tired of waiting. They put me on legal notice that we no longer had right of first release. They cut it themselves and, of course, enjoyed a huge hit. By 1970 Aretha saw the light and allowed us to include it, along with ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ on This Girl’s In Love With You.
Even with her hesitation, Aretha still beat the Fab Four by a couple of months. Her album came out in January 1970, while The Beatles issued “Let It Be” as a single in March. The aforementioned Aretha rarities collection unearthed a third Lennon/McCartney composition recorded during the same sessions for This Girl’s In Love With You, “The Fool On The Hill.” Even casual students of The Beatles are sure to note that all three tunes Aretha covered were principally the work of Sir Paul.
The Paul McCartney-written ‘’Let It Be’’ is one of my favorite Beatles’ songs.
I like Aretha’s version better.
I like Aretha’s version better.
How many times have I...and so many others... said those exact words?
Sang it Aretha…
Of course, Aretha doesn’t do too bad when she writes her own songs, does she?
(The live versions of ‘’Rock Steady’’ that I found on youtube all were performed a little too fast for my tastes...I have always preferred the speed of the recorded version of this funk classic...)
Or when her sister, Carolyn, writes the song.
Oh, and we hear you in that hauntingly beautiful operatic soprano in the background, Miss Cissy Houston.
As a singer of traditional black foot-stompin’ Holy Ghost gospel music, Aretha’s only rival is Mahalia Jackson.
‘’Your father looooooooved him some Aretha Franklin,’’ Mom told me last night.
I was born in the summer of 1967 in Detroit, Michigan, 10 days before the race riots.
Aretha Franklin has been a significant part of my life’s soundtrack for all of my life...even before I came out of the womb.
Whether it was the card parties that Granny would take me to on Friday and Saturday nights (where I would sit on her lap) or Sunday mornings at my aunt’s house as were were getting dressed to go to church, Aretha was there.
And even when I came out and started going to the gay clubs...Aretha was there.
Originally, I had planned to post a debrief of the fabulous time that I had in New Orleans at Netroots Nation and some of my impressions on the panels that I had the opportunity to attend.
And until earlier this afternoon, I didn’t know what I was going to do...and then I just decided to...let it be.
If The Universe has decreed that, yes, this is Aretha’s time to transition, may her transition be peaceful and glorious as she remains surrounded by family and friends.
Whatever happens, I can simply...let it be.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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What is driving the surge of incidents in which white people have called the police to report black people who are simply going about their business — hanging out at Starbucks, eating lunch in a “common room” at Smith College, barbecuing in a public park?
Part of the answer has to do with the ubiquity of cell phones and social media, which allow news of racist incidents (which have always existed) to spread quickly.
Yet there is also a sociological explanation. Many white people have not adjusted to the idea that black people now appear more often in places of privilege, power, and prestige — or just places where they were historically unwelcome.
When black people do appear in such places, white people subconsciously or explicitly want to banish them to a place I have called the “iconic ghetto” — to the stereotypical space in which they think all black people belong, a segregated space for second-class citizens.
A lag between the rapidity of black progress and white acceptance of that progress is responsible for this impulse. This is also exacerbated by the current presidential administration, which has emboldened white racists with its racially charged rhetoric and exclusionist immigration policies.
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A new video from AJ+ follows 77-year-old environmental activist Robert Taylor as he takes on the chemical plant that makes his hometown, Reserve, Louisiana, the “cancer capital of the United States.”
In “Breathing While Black,” Michelle Klug dives into why the majority Black city’s cancer risk is more than 700 times the national average.
“The predatory attitude that the powers that be have toward Black people has not changed since slavery. The methodologies have not changed. The effect, all of this is still the same. We’re still deep in slavery in America,” Taylor, whose family has suffered a devastating number of cancer deaths, says in the video.
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Maybe it was that introductory Sam Adams Boston Lager that longtime Michelob and Heineken guy Mike Potter drank more than a decade ago. "It had a completely different profile, a completely different taste, you know, completely different aroma," he says. "It just elevated my curiosity."
Or maybe it should be the bottle of Blue Moon that Day Bracey tipped shortly after he got out of college, thanks to $1 specials at a now-defunct bar in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. "That was the first time I drank anything that tasted relatively decent," says Bracey. In college, he and his friends drank "Natty Ice and Vladimir [Vodka]."
In any case, their tastebuds ultimately led them to found Fresh Fest, the first-ever beer festival for breweries owned by African-Americans, along with stand-up comic Ed Bailey.
A dozen such breweries will visit Pittsburgh's North Side at Nova Place [last] Saturday for the daylong festival. Fresh Fest's purpose is to celebrate black brewing talent and emphasize that craft beer, long implicitly seen as white territory, needs to get more diverse.
Fresh Fest co-founders Day Bracey (left) and Mike Potter (right) visit with Chris Harris, owner of Black Frog Brewery in Holland, Ohio, near Toledo.
Jeff Zoet/Courtesy Day Bracey
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The Police Athletic League in Jacksonville, Florida, has an inspirational slogan on the side of its building: “Filling playgrounds, not prisons.” But, ironically, it stands in stark contrast to the behavior of an officer who’s accused of handcuffing an 11-year-old boy who was dribbling a basketball inside the building.
“I can’t believe these officers did this to my son,” Bunmi Borisade told HuffPost. “It hurts. They didn’t even care he is a child.”
Borisade, 33, said she and her son, Fatayi, went to a youth basketball game at the West 33rd Street JaxPAL gym on Aug. 4. After the game, Borisade was chatting with friends when she was approached by a little girl.
“This 6-year-old came up to me and said, ‘Your son is being handcuffed for dribbling a basketball,’” Borisade said. “I was confused and went to find my son.”
When she found him, Borisade said, he was standing next to a police car, surrounded by four deputies from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. “My son’s hands were handcuffed behind his back and he was in tears.”
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A federal judge has ruled that the Memphis Police Department’s 2-year undercover operation violated a 1978 agreement against spying on protesters.
The City of Memphis entered a consent decree in 1978 when it was revealed that cops had secretly created an entire division dedicated surveilling anti-war protesters and other citizens who hadn’t committed any crimes.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Joe McCalla issued a 35-page order that basically said “same shit, different day.” The court documents details how the Memphis police department spied on Black activists using a number of methods including creating a McCarthy-style blacklist and creating fake social media accounts to find the friends and associates of Black Lives Matter protesters.
The ACLU of Tennessee filed a complaint against the City of Memphis accusing law enforcement officers of violating the First Amendment rights of activists in the city. According to the Commercial Appeal, Friday’s order allows the lawsuit to move forward for the non-jury trial, scheduled to begin on August 20.
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A senior opposition politician forcibly returned to Zimbabwe after being refused asylum in neighbouring Zambia has accused state security officials of carrying out an illegal abduction overseas.
Tendai Biti, a former finance minister and senior figure in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), appeared in court in Harare on Thursday to be charged over his alleged role in last week’s post-election protests.
On Friday Biti told the court that Zimbabwean security officials had pursued him on Wednesday when he tried to flee to claim asylum in neighbouring Zambia, but were stopped from wrestling him into a waiting vehicle at the Chirundu border post 220 miles (350km) north of Harare by a crowd of traders waiting to cross.
The next day masked and heavily armed Zimbabwean security personnel surrounded a Zambian police station where he was sheltering and forced him to return across the border with them despite a court order obtained locally stopping the handover, Biti said.
It came less than a week after results were announced in Zimbabwe’s presidential election, the first since Robert Mugabe was ousted in a military takeover last year after nearly four decades in power.
Hopes that the relatively peaceful campaign and voting would herald a political and economic transformation of the impoverished country have been dashed by violence and alleged human rights abuses since the poll.
Tendai Biti, center, leaves Zimbabwe’s high court in Harare. Photograph: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters
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