Safe at home at Rickwood Field
Bill Chapman
There are 22 photographs by Chapman, as well as two by the man Chapman considers his mentor, the great
Bill Chapman, "Rickwood Field Bar-B-Que," 2008.
Bill Chapman
Most of Chapman's photographs in the show are portraits of long-retired Negro Leagues players, sitting in the stands at Rickwood. There are also photographs of Rickwood itself and activities going on there. What could be better than barbecue at the ballpark? The photographs are unframed and unmatted, which adds to their sense of openness and invitation.
Advertisement
The Negro Leaguers shown aren't famous, certainly not Josh Gibson-famous. Nor are they famous like the two former major leaguers seen: Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, photographed by Chapman on a visit to Rickwood, or Darryl Strawberry. Chapman photographed Strawberry sitting in the stands with several Negro Leaguers. Note that visible at the bottom of the picture is a
Bill Chapman, "Roosevelt Jackson," 2014.
Bill Chapman
That old-timers like Ernest Fann and Roosevelt Jackson and Odell Daniels aren't famous is fame's loss. As captured by Chapman's camera – 'cherished' might be a more accurate verb – their faces are as marvelous as their names. The appeal of 'The Gospel of the Negro Leagues' for anyone who cares about baseball history is obvious. More important, its appeal to anyone who cares about goodness and humanity – which, as recent events keep reminding us, isn't everyone – may be even greater.
Bill Chapman, "Ernest Fann," 2018.
Bill Chapman
That serigraph is a portrait of Willie Mays. Now
he
was famous: the Say Hey Kid, as fine a ballplayer as ever put on a pair of spikes – and maybe the finest. Mays, who died last year, played for the Black Barons.
Advertisement
You've likely heard of the Curse of the Bambino. The real curse that hung over the Red Sox for so long wasn't Babe Ruth related. It was the curse of Jackie and the Say Hey Kid. That those two would have lit up that lyric little bandbox is the gospel truth.
THE GOSPEL OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES
At Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St, Cambridge, through Aug. 1. 617-577-1400, multiculturalartscenter.org/
Mark Feeney can be reached at
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Five things to do around Boston, July 28 - Aug. 10
July 31 Latest Buzz Learn how to make your own café-quality espresso at George Howell Coffee's Home Espresso workshop. Baristas will share tips for setting up your home coffee bar — and show you how to use it to make delicious shots of espresso. From 1 to 2 p.m. at George Howell's Lovestruck Books location in Cambridge. Free. Sign up at Advertisement August 2 - 3 Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Blast From the Past Travel back to the American Revolution at Redcoats and Rebels. Hundreds of actors dressed in 18th-century Army regalia will gather at Old Sturbridge Village for New England's largest military reenactment. Step into a rebel camp, listen to drum and fife music, and watch live cannon and musket shows as you learn about our nation's history. From 9:30 a.m. each day. Reserve tickets, $32 for adult admission, at August 2 Boston Bash Indulge in the city's finest with Boston Globe Media's B-Side newsletter team at its Best Day Ever festival. This afternoon celebration, held at Artists for Humanity in Boston from 2 to 6 p.m., features all of B-Side's local favorites — from chefs to musicians. Browse a curated vintage market, sample foods from vendors such as Levain Bakery and Anna's Taqueria, enjoy live performances, participate in interactive art-making activities, and more. Get tickets — $15 VIP entry for B-Side members, $40 general admission — at Advertisement August 7 Skawesome Welcome to ska season! Celebrate the genre at Summer of Ska, an evening festival starting at 8 p.m. at The Rockwell in Somerville (doors open at 7). The night features live performances by four New England ska bands. Dance to their beats or just sit back and enjoy the show. Food and drinks will be available for purchase. $15 to $20. Share your event news. Send information on Boston-area happenings at least three weeks in advance to week@ Editor's note: This edition of Your Week Ahead covers two weeks. Look for the next Globe Magazine on August 10. Adelaide Parker can be reached at
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Singer Cleo Laine, regarded as Britain's greatest jazz voice, dies at 97
LONDON (AP) — Cleo Laine, whose husky contralto was one of the most distinctive voices in jazz and who was regarded by many as Britain's greatest contribution to the quintessentially American music, has died. She was 97. The Stables, a charity and venue Laine founded with her late jazz musician husband John Dankworth, said Friday it was 'greatly saddened' by the news that 'one of its founders and Life President, Dame Cleo Laine has passed away." Monica Ferguson, artistic director of The Stables, said Laine "will be greatly missed, but her unique talent will always be remembered.' Laine's career spanned the Atlantic and crossed genres: She sang the songs of Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg and Robert Schumann; she acted on stage and on film, and even played God in a production of Benjamin Britten's "Noye's Fludde." Laine's life and art were intimately bound up with band leader Dankworth, who gave her a job and her stage name in 1951, and married her seven years later. Both were still performing after their 80th birthdays. Dankworth died in 2010 at 82. In 1997, Laine became the first British jazz artist to be made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight. "It is British jazz that should have received the accolade for its service to me," she said when the honor was announced. "It has given me a wonderful life, a successful career and an opportunity to travel the globe doing what I love to do." Laine was born Clementina Dinah Campbell in 1927. Her father, Alexander Campbell, was a Jamaican who loved opera and earned money during the Depression as a street singer. Despite hard times, her British mother, Minnie, made sure that her daughter had piano, voice and dance lessons. She began performing at local events at age 3, and at age 12 she got a role as a movie extra in "The Thief of Bagdad." Leaving school at 14, Laine went to work as a hairdresser and faced repeated rejection in her efforts to get a job as a singer. A decade later, in 1951, she tried out for the Johnny Dankworth Seven, and succeeded. "Clementina Campbell" was judged too long for a marquee, so she became Cleo Laine. "John said that when he heard me, I didn't sound like anyone else who was singing at the time," Laine once said. "I guess the reason I didn't get the other jobs is that they were looking for a singer who did sound like somebody else." Laine had a remarkable range, from tenor to contralto, and a sound often described as "smoky." Dankworth, in an interview with the Irish Independent, recalled Laine's audition. "They were all sitting there with stony faces, so I asked the Scottish trumpet player Jimmy Deuchar, who was looking very glum and was the hardest nut of all, whether he thought she had something. 'Something?' he said, 'She's got everything!'" Offered 6 pounds a week, Laine demanded — and got — 7 pounds. "They used to call me 'Scruff', although I don't think I was scruffy. It was just that having come from the sticks, I didn't know how to put things together as well as the other singers of the day," she told the Irish Independent. "And anyway, I didn't have the money, because they weren't paying me enough." Recognition came swiftly. Laine was runner-up in Melody Maker's "girl singer" category in 1952, and topped the list in 1956 and 1957. She married Dankworth — and quit his band — in 1958, a year after her divorce from her first husband, George Langridge. As Dankworth's band prospered, Laine began to feel underused. "I thought, no, I'm not going to just sit on the band and be a singer of songs every now and again when he fancied it. So it was then that I decided I wasn't going to stay with the band and I was going to go off and try to do something solo-wise," she said in a BBC documentary. "When I said I was leaving, he said, 'Will you marry me?' That was a good ploy, wasn't it, huh?" They were married on March 18, 1958. A son, Alec, was born in 1960, and daughter Jacqueline followed in 1963. Despite her happy marriage, Laine forged a career independent of Dankworth. "Whenever anybody starts putting a label on me, I say, 'Oh, no you don't,' and I go and do something different," Laine told The Associated Press in 1985 when she was appearing on stage in New York in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Her stage career began in 1958 when she was invited to join the cast of a West Indian play, "Flesh to a Tiger," at the Royal Court Theatre, and was surprised to find herself in the lead role. She won a Moscow Arts Theatre Award for her performance. "Valmouth" followed in 1959, "The Seven Deadly Sins" in 1961, "The Trojan Women" in 1966 and "Hedda Gabler" in 1970. The role of Julie in Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" in 1971 provided Laine with a show-stopping song, "Bill." Laine began winning a following in the United States in 1972 with a concert at the Alice Tully Hall in New York. It wasn't well-attended, but The New York Times gave her a glowing review. The following year, she and Dankworth drew a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall, launching a series of popular appearances. "Cleo at Carnegie" won a Grammy award in 1986, the same year she was a Tony nominee for "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." A reviewer for Variety in 2002 found her voice going strong: "a dark, creamy voice, remarkable range and control from bottomless contralto to a sweet clear soprano. Her perfect pitch and phrasing is always framed with musical imagination and good taste." Perhaps Laine's most difficult performance of all was on Feb. 6, 2010, at a concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of the concert venue she and Dankworth had founded at their home, during which Laine and both of her children performed. "I'm terribly sorry that Sir John can't be here today," Laine told the crowd at the end of the show. 'But earlier on my husband died in hospital.' Laine is survived by her son and daughter.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Can Jamming Remotely Truly Match a Live Experience For Bands?
During the pandemic, we all got a hall pass to do remote work, mostly using Zoom to connect with coworkers, clients, friends, and even family members. But if you were a musician in a band, being remote created a particularly unique set of challenges. There were online music collaboration platforms and hacks out there at the time, yet most of them had quirks such as network latency delays, poor audio, and internet instability. The Virtual Jam Revolution Is Here Today, there is something that actually works: an advanced streaming solution that allows you to play with other musicians without the usual audio hiccups, workarounds, and lag time of previously released products. Think of the new online music collaboration platform, Lutefish, as a highly effective Zoom for musicians. It uses a dedicated hardware device that allows musicians to play in real-time jam sessions with players streaming in from as many as five different locations. The company advertises that musicians can be up to 500 miles apart, but some users report on social media that they can be 1,000+ miles away and still practice seamlessly. That creates a lot of new possibilities. More from Spin: The 10 Best Collective Soul Songs X and Los Lobos: Celebrating '99 Years of Rock n' Roll' Together 5 Things Everyone in the Music Industry Should Know But how big of an impact does Lutefish have for musicians? Orange County thrash metal band Trip To The Morgue has been experiencing a resurgence in popularity, leading to a very hectic schedule. They just signed to a new record label and are releasing an album, alongside maintaining a relentless national touring schedule. Recently, they needed to audition for a new backup guitarist, and found one who lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, while they remain in Orange County, California – a state away. Lead guitarist, James Patrick McCosar, explains that Lutefish was essential for helping the band adapt to their crazy scheduling, auditioning new faraway guitarists, finding one, then practicing together from different locations. 'So it was just in the nick of time that Lutefish came within our possession to be able to say this is going to work out perfectly… It's been super easy for us to not only collaborate on working with a new guitar player, but also with being able to write new music and being able to practice and get things up to speed for everything that's happening so quickly.' In fact, the band went from practicing online with their new guitarist on Lutefish straight into a live show in Las Vegas. They had never once had a face-to-face practice session. 'It was seamless,' adds McCosar. Check out the band's full online jamming experience on the Lutefish blog. Where Remote Rehearsals Meet Real Connections In addition to real-time collaboration, the Lutefish platform (sign up is free) connects users to a music community where they can meet like-minded musicians, find people to jam with, and even find new band members. Musicians and artists can also find gigs in their area and promote projects and shows. There are other musician-focused social platforms, but the difference is Lutefish users can start playing together right away, provided they've purchased the hardware. The platform allows people to share their music with the community, discover and play with strangers who have similar musical abilities, form a new band, or simply jam with new and old friends who live far away. Lutefish's technology also eliminates the time-suck of packing up and moving musical equipment and setup for band practice in yet another physical location. That's a lot of benefits. The platform also has a great track record with frequent updates and new features. The following features are all slated to arrive within the year: Stem Recording (aka multi-tracking) allows groups to record their individual audio streams separately, enabling more capacity for post-processing sessions. Live Streaming, musicians can livestream their performance to an audience. In-platform audio and video performance recording allows musicians to record audio and video from a performance, then adjust the start and end time of the media – all within Lutefish. Here's Why This Hardware Wins Lutefish's plug-n-play platform outperforms streaming platforms released in the past that relied on Wi-Fi and additional computer software to connect with remote players. If chat rooms are to be trusted, especially on Reddit, these other platforms exhibit a lot of issues with reliability, loss of live audio quality, time delays, and lack the ability to record with clarity and edit effectively. Lutefish's hardware, the Lutefish Stream, connects directly to your router using an Ethernet cable to deliver ultra-low latency and clear audio through high-quality preamps as if you're standing 30 feet away from other players. If you want to get really technical, that means devices can stream 48k audio with less than 30 milliseconds of latency. This helps reduce connectivity issues and lag times, allowing musicians to rehearse and record together via the Internet while being in sync. Having dedicated hardware is a big part of what sets Lutefish apart, as it provides the platform with key technical benefits: The operating system is optimized solely for real-time audio processing Third-party products and software like audio interfaces DAWs are not needed. Audio paths are tightly managed to prevent unpredictable slowdowns. These technical advantages are really what make Lutefish feel more like an in-person playing experience. Based in Minnesota, not Silicon Valley, Lutefish says it was founded 'by musicians for musicians' who created the technology to enable players of all abilities to share in the joy of making music together. And if you're looking for Minnesota's music cred, the star of the north state lays claim to Lizzo, Prince, Bob Dylan, The Replacements, and Babes in Toyland, just to name a few. Lutefish founders explain, 'We built Lutefish as a dedicated hardware unit to eliminate as many sources of latency and variability as possible, while providing an easy plug-and-play platform.' Skip the Tech Headaches—Here's How It Works 1. Purchase the Lutefish unit ($299 USD). 2. Activate your subscription ($12.99 USD/month, including 2 free months). 3. Plug in your gear and start jamming instantly. Once you have the hardware, simply plug it into power, connect it to your router via Ethernet, and then plug in your instrument and mic. Connect to the Internet through the Ethernet cable and fire up the app to connect face-to-face with five other performers in five different locations. Lutefish offers all the positives for a remote band experience in one product. Once you and your bandmates are on Lutefish, you won't need to leave your house or studio to make and play quality music. Unless, of course, you get signed to a major tour. Then rock on! To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
