Say It Loud! A Celebration of Black Music in America
(Rhino) Quite an undertaking, this, charting the entire last century of black musical culture from Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Duke Ellington all the way down to … Coolio. This gargantuan 6-CD box set, 108 songs strong, doesn’t skimp on either signature hits or social conscience; unfortunately, it runs out of steam around 1984. A disclaimer on the inside front cover of the accompanying book notes “many key artists have proven to be unlicensable,” which presumably explains why there’s no Public Enemy, no Eric B & Rakim, no Notorious B.I.G. Otherwise, Say It Loud! is a damn fine chronologically arranged compendium of every other major genre of American music: blues (Son House, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, T-Bone Walker, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King); jazz (Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Bird, Monk, Ella, Miles, Trane, Mingus); R&B/doo-wop (Orioles, Nat King Cole, Drifters, Platters, Hank Ballard, Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner); soul (Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, Aretha, Marvin, Al Green, Temptations); gospel (Mahalia Jackson, the Soul Stirrers, Andrae Crouch); and rock (Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Hendrix, Sly & the Family Stone, Ike & Tina Turner, Living Colour). Whether it’s essential or not depends on how much of this music you own previously, though there aren’t likely to be a whole lot of other collections that feature Paul Robeson’s “Ol’ Man River” alongside “The Banana Boat Song” and Charley Pride’s “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?” Spoken-word exerpts from Booker T. Washington, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan add some non-musical context, though African-Americans’ struggles are laid bare equally effectively via Odetta’s “Cotton Fields,” Richie Havens’ “The Klan,” Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody (Part 1).” Given all that, plus the 72-page book containing a timeline and thoughtful essays from Quincy Jones, David Ritz, Gerald Early, Ingrid Monson, and Ernest Hardy, it’s easy to forgive Rhino’s omission of Jodeci and “Gin & Juice.”
This article appears in December 7 • 2001.