Brother Yusuf Salim R.I.P

Baltimore native and Durham, North Carolina resident Brother Yusuf Salim (aka Joseph Blair), a master musician, pianist, composer and arranger, passed away at approximately 6:00 am, at the Veteran Administration Hospital, Durham, North Carolina, after a long battle with cancer. Salim moved to Durham in 1974 and quickly helped to make the Triangle North Carolina area (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill) a thriving, vibrant jazz community. Later, he hosted a WUNC-TV (PBS) thirteen part series called "Yusuf and Friends." He also operated a club called The Salaam Cultural Center, which offered workshops, which helped to train and further the careers of vocalists Eve Cornelious and Nnenna Freelon, two internationally- known jazz musicians. Yusuf received the North Carolina Arts Council Jazz Fellowship in 1999. He has written over 53 compositions. Some of them have been recorded by Gary Bartz, Mongo Santamaria and Cannonball Adderley. His latest album is titled "Yusuf Sings." A memorial service is planned for Sunday, August 3, in Durham, North Carolina.

YUSUF SALIM

Yusuf Salim (aka Joseph Blair) (1929-2008) was born and reared in Baltimore, Maryland. He began his musical career at age 14 as a pianist with the Ken Murray Sextet in Baltimore. Yusuf grew up in west Baltimore near the popular Pennsylvania Avenue in a home near the local musician union hall. His mother, "Miss Eleanor" or "Mama Blair" whom he called "Mother Teresa in Technicolor," was a kind, fun-loving, music lover who offered her home, good food and piano to union musicians and well-known traveling musicians, who played in his mother's living room in jam sessions which sometimes would last until dawn. Early on, Yusuf became fascinated by the music and learned his craft from many unsung master musicians.Salim was hired at age 17 as the house pianist with the nearby world-famous Royal Theater, where he stayed for seven years with a band headed by Tracy McClair, who had played with the Bama Collegians and Erskine Hawkins. While he worked at the Royal Theater, he performed with such greats as Sammy Davis, Jr., Moms Mabley and Redd Foxx. Later, in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, he went to New York City with The Bill Swindell Band and played at the Braddock Bar in Harlem. He participated and witnessed many a jam sessions at the world-famous Minton's Playhouse in Harlem and Birdland in Manhattan. He met Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and many others who would become jazz giants. He left New York City to tour with The Red Prysock Band for 7 years, where he played at The Apollo Theater, Savoy Ballroom, Chicago's Regal Theater, and recalled hearing about Charlie Parker's death on an intercom at Pennsylvania Train Station in New York on his way back to Baltimore after doing 90 one-nighters in 1955. Salim said he "grew on the road and the road grew on me." After the Prysock stint, he spent time in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he played in the Marine Band. Yusuf also participated in many jazz performances while in the service and made life-long musician friends.After his military service, he moved back to Baltimore and played at the clubs around the city. But jazz had fallen on hard times in Baltimore, so there weren't many places to play. In 1974. Salim moved to Durham, North Carolina. Later, he hosted a WUNC-TV (PBS) thirteen part series called "Yusuf and Friends." He also opened a club called The Salaam Cultural Center, which offered workshops, which helped to train and further the careers of North Carolina vocalists Eve Cornelious and Nnenna Freelon, two internationally-known jazz musicians. Yusuf received the North Carolina Arts Council Jazz Fellowship in 1999. He has written over 53 compositions. Some of them have been recorded by Gary Bartz, Mongo Santamaria and Cannonball Adderley. His latest album is titled: Yusuf Sings

WHAT IS JAZZ? by LARRY RENI THOMAS

Jazz is a term that was given to American classical music around 1900, by the New Orleans aristocrats who after visiting the whorehouses and hearing the black musicians play the sounds of freedom, sought to deny it its dignity when they realized that they couldn't play it and that their associates could not play it either. It has never belonged to black people nor will it ever. When the aristocrats realized that they could exploit it and make money off of it, the music, which is a reflection of the African-American musical reaction to the modern era, they took it over and have controlled it ever since. The first recorded "j-ass" (short for jack-ass) recording was performed by a group of people who the aristocrats selected. It would have been unthinkable and unprofitable to use black people to record black music.
American classical music has always had trouble with its African-American core because it has always been given a negative meaning. I interviewed Art "Buhania" Blakey several years ago after a concert at Duke University and he was highly ticked off because there were almost no black people in attendance. When I asked him was there a conspiracy to keep the music away from black people, he said, "Hell, no!" Buhania went on to say that black people don't particularly like it and have been told by black preachers not to listen to the music because it was "devil's music."
I have been a jazz radio announcer/writer for three decades and have heard many blacks tell me that they don't like jazz because it moves too fast or slow, there is not enough soulful singing, or that white folks like it. These are all absurd reasons of course, but that's reality. How do we solve it? How do we reverse decades of fear and ignorance? Good questions. Maybe we should ask the aristocrats--the 10 families or .001% of the world who run things. The answer is to keep on doing what we are doing by promoting it, playing it on the radio and by posing such questions and challenging the status quo when they keep trying to make it something that it isn't. It is BLACK MUSIC and it will continue to be for another 100 years. Just like we know that the Old Dixieland Jass Band was some watered down, mediocre music, we will know that most of the music we hear these days that passes itself off as American classical music (jazz) is as fake as a three-dollar bill.

THE LADY WHO SHOT LEE MORGAN RADIO SPECIAL

Listen to WCOM-FM, 103.5 FM, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, North Carolina, for Sunday Night Jazz with Larry Reni Thomas, on July 15, 2007, for the airing of a radio documentary called The Helen Morgan Radio Project. The 27-minute profile and interview concerns Helen Morgan, the North Carolina native who shot the trumpet legend Lee Morgan. The program is on from 9 pm to 12 midnight, on www.communityradio.coop.

THE LADY WHO SHOT LEE MORGAN BY LARRY RENI THOMAS, COPYRIGHT LARRY RENI THOMAS, 2007.

Excerpt from article:
Lee Morgan, the fiery-hot, extremely talented jazz trumpet player, died much too soon. His skyrocketing career was cut short, at age 33, one cold February night in 1972, at a popular Manhattan, New York club called Slug's when he was shot to death by his 46-year-old common-law wife Helen.

You can access the article here.

Larry R Thomas

  

Larry Reni Thomas (Aka Doctor Jazz)

Larry Reni Thomas is a veteran jazz writer/ radio announcer whose busy, colorful career has spanned close to three decades, and has included stints at seven, mostly non-commercial public radio stations, including WHQR-FM, Wilmington, N.C., WNCU-FM, Durham, N.C., and WCOM-FM, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, N.C.( www.communityradio.coop), where he is presently the host of Sunday Night Jazz. His work has appeared in such publications such as downbeat, The Urban Journal, The Spectator Magazine, and All About Jazz. com. He has interviewed and written about such stars Dexter Gordon, Woody Shaw, Betty Carter, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Carmen McRae, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Albert Murray, Wynton Marsalis, Percy Heath, Jimmy Heath, Jackie McLean, Sam Rivers, Roy Hargrove and Nnenna Freelon, who is featured in a seven-part taped profile series produced in 2000 at WNCU-FM in Durham, North Carolina, and partially funded by the North Carolina Arts Council, called THE CAROLINA CONNECTION, which showcased the significant contributions made to jazz by personalities who have a connection to the Carolinas (North Carolina and South Carolina).
Thomas is a member of the IAJE (The International Association for Jazz Education), served on the board of directors of The North Carolina Jazz Network, Inc., and The Triangle Jazz Society, Inc. Since 1984, his non-profit, cultural organization, Larry Thomas & Associates, Inc., has promoted and presented jazz concerts, which included such artists as Jimmy Heath, Eve Cornelious, Yusuf Salim, Bus Brown and Gary Bartz; and, has hosted, such extremely popular events as Jazz at The Know in Durham, N.C. Called "Doctor Jazz," by master musician/composer/pianist Brother Yusuf Salim, Thomas is a self-described "dedicated servant of the people." He considers himself foremost "a gentleman and a scholar" whose ultimate aim is to uplift the cultural awareness of the masses of the people. His blogspot is carolinajazzconnectionwithlarryrenithomas.blogspot.com.

WELCOME!

THANK YOU FOR CHECKING OUT THE CAROLINA JAZZ CONNECTION WITH VETERAN WRITER/RADIO ANNOUNCER LARRY RENI THOMAS. OUR INTENT IS TO PRESENT THE WONDERFUL CONNECTION BETWEEN THE AMERICAN-BORN FINE ART OF JAZZ AND ITS OVER FIFTY (50) AND COUNTING, PERSONALITIES. SOME JAZZ GIANTS WITH CAROLINA CONNECTIONS INCLUDE NATIVES DR. NINA SIMONE, JOHN COLTRANE, THELONIOUS MONK, MAX ROACH, DR. BILLY TAYLOR, GRADY TATE, AND PERCY HEATH. OTHERS ARE JAZZ GIANTS LIKE DUKE ELLINGTON, BILLY CHILDS, JIMMY AND ALBERT "TOOTIE" HEATH, MCCOY TYNER AND NNENNA FREELON, WHOSE PARENTS WERE BORN IN THE REGION. WE KNOW YOU WILL ENJOY FINDING OUT WHY WE THINK THE CAROLINA CONNECTION IS FASCINATING AND NEEDS TO BE STUDIED AND ENJOYED. CHECK IN WITH OUR BLOGSPOT REGULARLY TO NOT ONLY GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS AND INSIGHTS, BUT TO GET RARE RECORDED INTERVIEWS OF JAZZ PERSONALITIES, INCLUDING THE EXCLUSIVE, ONE AND ONLY, REVEALING ONE OF HELEN MORGAN, THE WIFE AND KILLER OF JAZZ LEGEND TRUMPET PLAYER LEE MORGAN.