"The Basin Street Revue" 1956 The Apollo Theatre

For African-American Music Appreciation Month we should remember that there's more to  African-American music than what we're hearing today. This movie I found on the internet archive is one of those gems that serves to remind us of our not too distant past. Filmed in 1956 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem "The Basin Street Revue" gives us a clear picture of the music scene of that time.
Watch it, enjoy it, share it and download it and help to preserve the past in order to show our future generations.

Musical variety filmed at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York City.


This movie is part of the collection: Feature Films

Director: Joseph Kohn, Leonard Reed
Producer: Ben Frye
Production Company: Studio Films
Audio/Visual: sound, black & white
Keywords: Short; Music
Contact Information: www.k-otic.com

Creative Commons license: Public Domain Mark 1.0

The BBC Soul Deep series is very informative.

The BBC did a super series
Soul Deep - The Story Of Black Popular Music
These were all very well produced and they are worth watching.
They available on youtube so there isn't much I can say that
you can't see for yourself. 

Soul Deep: The Story of Black Popular Music episode 6 - From Ghetto to Fabulous

Little Willie John

African-American Music Appreciation Month

Little Willie John Story Part 1 on the Chancellor of Soul's Soul Facts Show

LITTLE WILLIE JOHN STORY PART 2

We Have A Song, Let's Sing It!

The Harp by Augusta Savage

     Lift Every Voice and Sing
 — was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900, by 500 school children at the segregated Stanton School. Its principal, James Weldon Johnson, wrote the words to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington. The poem was later set to music by Johnson's brother John in 1905.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers died
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.^[5]


see also Augusta Savage, Sculptor