A00017 - Darwin Turner, A Literary Critic

Darwin Theodore Troy Turner (b. May 7, 1931, Cincinnati, Ohio - d. February 11, 1991, Iowa City, Iowa) was an African American literature critic, a poet, and an English professor who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 7, 1931.  His grandfather, Charles H. Turner, was the first African American psychologist; his father, Darwin Romanes Turner, was a pharmacist; and his mother, Laura Knight, was a school teacher.  Considered a boy genius, Turner enrolled into the University of Cincinnati at the age of 13 and received his undergraduate degree within three years with Phi Beta Kappa honors as the youngest student ever to graduate from the school.  In 1949, at the age of 18, he received his Masters degree in English and American Drama from the University of Cincinnati.  By the time he was twenty-five years old, he received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago. 

In 1949, the same year Turner earned his Master's degree, he married Edna Bonner and started his teaching career at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia teaching English.  He then accepted an assistant professorship position at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland in 1952, balancing both a teaching career and earning his doctorate degree.  A year after receiving his PhD, he held various administration positions at various colleges.  From 1957 to 1959 he was the chair of the English department at Florida A&M.  From 1959 to 1966 he worked at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and then accepted the Dean position at their Graduate School from 1966 to 1970 until he left for a position at the University of Michigan. During that time, he divorced Bonner in 1961 and remarried in 1968. His new wife was Maggie Jean Lewis, a school teacher. 

Turner became the chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Iowa in 1972 and was a professor there for nearly two decades.  In 1981, he was made the University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of English. 

Turner edited more than a dozen works of African American literature and published his own writing, including a collection of his poems in Katharsis in 1964, a book on American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter in 1967, and a literary critique, In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers and Their Search for Identity in 1971.  In a Minor Chord was an analysis on the writings of Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.  Turner edited The Wayward and the Seeking: A Collection of Writings by Jean Toomer in 1980, co-edited The Art of the Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory in 1982, and wrote for Haki R Madhubuti's Earthquakes and Sun Rise Missions in 1982.  His other major edited anthologies include Black Dramas in America and Black American Literature. Turner wrote dozens of articles for academic journals and anthologies as a literary critic of African American literature.

Darwin Turner died from a heart attack at the age of 59 on February 11, 1991 at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa.

A00016 - Ray Charles, The "Genius" of Soul

Ray Charles (also known as Ray Charles Robinson) (b. September 23, 1930, Albany, Georgia - d. June 10, 2004, Beverly Hills, California) was an pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader, a leading African American entertainer billed as "the Genius."  Charles was credited with the early development of soul music, a style based on a melding of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz music. 

When Charles was an infant his family moved to Greenville, Florida, and he began his musical career at age five on a piano in a neighborhood cafe.  He began to go blind at six, possibly from glaucoma, and had completely lost his sight by age seven.  He attended the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, where he concentrated on musical studies, but left school at age 15 to play the piano professionally after his mother died from cancer (his father had died when the boy was 10).  Charles built a remarkable career based on the immediacy of emotion in his performances.  After emerging as a blues and jazz pianist indebted to Nat King Cole's style in the late 1940s.  Charles recorded the boogie-woogie classic "Mess Around" and the novelty song "It Should've Been Me" in 1952-53. His arrangement for Guitar Slim's "The Things That I Used To Do" became a blues million-seller in 1953.  By 1954, Charles had created a successful combination of blues and gospel influences and signed on with Atlantic Records.  Propelled by Charles' distinctive raspy voice,"I've Got a Woman" and "Hallelujah I Love You So" became hit records.  "What'd I Say" led the rhythm and blues sales charts in 1959 and was Charles' own first million-seller. 

Charles' rhythmic piano playing and band arranging revived the "funky" quality of jazz, but he also recorded in many other musical genres.  He entered the pop market with the best-sellers "Georgia on My Mind" (1960) and "Hit the Road Jack" (1961).  His album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962) sold more than a million copies, as did its single "I Can't Stop Loving You."  Thereafter, his music emphasized jazz standards and renditions of pop and show tunes.  From 1955, Charles toured extensively in the United States and elsewhere with his own big band nd in gospel-style female backup quartet called the Raeletts.  He also appeared on television and worked in films such as Ballad in Blue (1964) and The Blues Brothers (1980) as a featured act and sound track composer.  He formed his own custom recording labels, Tangerine in 1962 and Crossover Records in 1973.  The recipient of many national and international awards, he received 13 Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 1987.  In 1986, Charles was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received a Kennedy Center Honor.  He published an autobiography, Brother Ray, Ray Charles' Own Story (1978), written with David Ritz. 

In 2003, Charles had successful hip replacement surgery and was planning to go back on tour, until he began suffering from other ailments. On June 10, 2004, as a result of acute liver disease, Charles died at his home in Los Angeles, California, surrounded by family and friends. He was 73 years old. His funeral took place on June 18, 2004, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles, with musical peers such as Little Richard in attendance.  B. B. King, Glen Campbell, Stevie Wonder and Wynton Marsalis each played a tribute at Charles' funeral. Charles was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery. 

Ray Charles Robinson was sometimes referred to as "The Genius".  He pioneered the genre of soul music during the 1950s by combining rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic Records.  He also contributed to the racial integration of country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records,  most notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.

Charles was blind from the age of seven. Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and country artists of the day, including Art Tatum, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown and Louis Armstrong. Charles' playing reflected influences from country blues, barrelhouse and stride piano styles.  His best friend in music was South Carolina-born James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul".

Frank Sinatra called him "the only true genius in show business", although Charles downplayed this notion. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Charles at number ten on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and number two on their November 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". 

A00015 - Betty Carter, Innovative Jazz Vocalist

Betty Carter (also known as Lillie Mae Jones, Lorraine Carter, Lorene Carter or Betty Bebop) (b. May 16, 1930, Flint, Michigan - d. September 26, 1998, Brooklyn, New York) was an American jazz singer who is best remembered for the scat and other complex musical interpretations that showcased her remarkable vocal flexibility and musical imagination.

Carter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory of Music in her native Michigan.  At age 16, she began singing in Detroit jazz clubs, and after 1946, she worked in African American bars and theaters in the Midwest, at first under the name Lorene Carter.  

Influenced by the improvisational nature of bebop and inspired by vocalists Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.  Carter strove to create a style of her own.  Lionel Hampton asked Carter to join his band in 1948.  However, her insistence on improvising annoyed Hampton and prompted him to fire her seven times in two and a half years.  Carter left Hampton's band for good in 1951 and performed around the country in such jazz clubs as Harlem's Apollo Theater and the Vanguard in New York, the Showboat in Philadelphia, and Blues Alley in Washington, D. C., with such jazz artists as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, and Thelonious Monk.

After touring with Ray Charles from 1960 to 1963 and making a recording of duets with him in 1961, Carter put her career on hold to get married.  Her marriage did not last, however, and she returned to the stage in 1969 backed by a small acoustic ensemble consisting of piano, drums, and bass.  In 1971, she released her first album on her own label, Bet-Car Productions.

Beginning in the 1970s, Carter performed on the college circuit and conducted several jazz workshops.  After appearing at Carnegie Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival in 1977 and 1978, she went on concert tours throughout the United States and Europe.  Her solo albums include Betty Carter (1953), Out There (1958), The Modern Sound of Betty Carter (1960), The Audience with Betty Carter (1979), and Look What I Got! (1988), which won a Grammy Award.  Determined to encourage an interest in jazz among younger people, in April 1993 Carter initiated a program she called Jazz Ahead, an annual event at which twenty young jazz musicians spend a week training and composing with her.  In 1997, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by United States President Bill Clinton.

A00014 - Richard "Blue" Mitchell, Jazz Trumpeter

Richard Allen (Blue) Mitchell (March 13, 1930 – May 21, 1979) was an American jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and funk trumpeter, known for many albums recorded as leader and sideman on Blue Note Records. 

Mitchell was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He began playing trumpet in high school where he acquired his nickname, Blue. 

After high school he played in the rhythm and blues ensembles of Paul Williams, Earl Bostic, and Chuck Willis. After returning to Miami he was noticed by Cannonball Adderley, with whom he recorded for Riverside Records in New York in 1958. He then joined the Horace Silver Quintet playing with tenor Junior Cook, bassist Gene Taylor and drummer Roy Brooks. Mitchell stayed with Silver’s group until the band’s break-up in 1964. After the Silver quintet disbanded, Mitchell formed a group employing members from the Silver quintet substituting the young pianist Chick Corea for Silver and replacing a then sick Brooks with drummer Al Foster. This group produced a number of records for Blue Note disbanding in 1969, after which Mitchell joined and toured with Ray Charles until 1971. From 1971 to 1973 Mitchell performed with John Mayall on Jazz Blues Fusion. From the mid – 70s he recorded, and worked as a session man, performed with the big band leaders Louie Bellson, Bill Holman and Bill Berry and was principal soloist for Tony Bennett and Lena Horne. Other band leaders Mitchell recorded with include Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Philly Joe Jones, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Al Cohn, Dexter Gordon and Jimmy Smith. Blue Mitchell kept his hard-bop playing going with the Harold Land quintet up until his death from cancer on May 21, 1979, in Los Angeles, at the age of 49.