When I'm Called Home: Remembering Abbey Lincoln #WHM2012

When I'm Called Home: Remembering AbbeyLincoln by Mark Anthony Neal |theLoop21 (2010)
"I'vealways been concerned with the story I'm telling. This music is social.  Our music is social. Nobody careswhether it sounds pretty or not. Can you tell the people what its like to behere?"—Abbey Lincoln in LaShonda Katrice Barnett's I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft
WhenAbbey Lincoln gave her last breathe on the morning of August 14, 2010, she lefta legacy, that though obscured by time and ignorance, marks her as one of themost singular Black artists of the 20th Century.  Though it is important to rememberLincoln as one of the truly original jazz vocalists ever, there are few artistswho could claim to have been as obsessed with using her art—as singer, songwriter,essayist (she contributed to Tone Cade's groundbreaking anthology The Black Woman), painter and actress—asa vessel to explicate the full humanity of herself and the people, that sheoften claimed, were inside of her.
BornAnna Marie Wooldridge in August of 1930 in Chicago, Lincoln came of age on afarm in Calvin Center, Michigan.  Like many aspiring artists from that era, Lincoln was profoundlyaffected by the music of Billie Holiday. As Lincoln recalled with journalistLisa Jones in a 1991 New York Timesinterview, "My father worked in the houses of wealthy people who gave himrecordings. The first singer I heard on record was Billie Holiday when I was14." Two decades later Lincoln would be favorably compared Holiday, though shewould struggle throughout much of her early career to escape the shadows ofboth Holiday and the formidable mythology that has been erected in her name.
Afterapprenticing in various places including Honolulu and California, where she hadinitially moved after graduating high school, and taking the name Gaby Lee,Lincoln began to be managed by lyricist Bob Russell.  It was Russell who suggested another name change—AbbeyLincoln—and who helped Lincoln sign with the  noted Jazz label Riverside, where she recorded four albumsbeginning with Abbey Lincoln's  Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love(1956) That's Him (1957),  It'sMagic (1958) and Abbey is Blue(1959).  On Lincoln's debut,recorded with the Benny Carter Orchestra, Riverside tried to position Lincolnas the sexy, girl-next-door torch song singer and it was in that vein thatLincoln appeared in the film The Girl Can'tHelp It (1956), wearing the same dress that Marilyn Monroe once wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).  When Lincoln appeared on the cover of Ebony Magazine—in Monroe's red dress—herfate as yet another "silent" pretty face seemed assured.  But like her contemporary Eartha Kitt,Lincoln had another vision for herself.
Livingin New York City, Lincoln became professionally acquainted with a group ofprogressive jazz artists, including drummer Max Roach, who would not onlybecome Lincoln's musical mentor but her romantic partner; the two married in1960.  The increased influence onLincoln of musicians like Roach, Sonny Rollins and songwriter Oscar Brown, Jr.can be indexed in the changing style of her albums, culminating with her 1959classic Abbey is Blue, which wasreleased the same year as Holiday's death. Featuring legendary side-musicianslike Philly Jo Jones, Sam Jones, Kenny Dorham and Wynton Kelley, Abbey is Blue finds Lincoln interpretingMongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue," Kurt Weil's "Lonely House" (with lyrics fromLangston Hughes), Oscar Brown Jr.'s "Brother Where Are You?" and the DukeEllington classic "Come Sunday."  Abbey is Blue, not only served as atribute to some of the important Black songwriters of the era, it also signaleda shift in her art, as she more dutifully linked her music to the broaderstruggles of Blacks globally.
Lincoln'stransformation began to take place a few years earlier when she literally threwaway the Marilyn Monroe dress and was fully articulated with two recordings,1960's We Insist—Freedom Now with MaxRoach and her own Straight Ahead(1961), which would be her last recording with Roach and last studio recordingfor more than a decade.  Some ofthe lasting standouts on Straight Aheadinclude "When Malindy Sings," based on the Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem (Lincolnwould later point Maya Angelou to Dunbar's work as inspiration for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), "LeftAlone" a Billie Holiday song that she never recorded, but on which Holiday'saccompanist Mal Waldron appears, and Thelon us Monk's "Blue Monk."   Monk was in the studio whenLincoln recorded "Blue Monk" and famously told her "don't be so perfect" whichLincoln understood as a reminder that "if your voice cracks, it'll give youtexture."
Straight Ahead established Lincoln as a important artist in her ownright—the New York Times offered arare three column review—but also instigated charges by critic Ira Gitler thatLincoln was a "professional Negro"—using the Civil Rights movement to furtherher career.  The reality couldn'tbe further from the truth as Lincoln sacrificed, what was thought to be theprime years of her career, essentially banished from the mainstream because ofher willful linking of her art with her radical political beliefs.  As Lincoln reflected in a remarkable1961 interview with the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, "I haveviewpoints, outlooks and values…I cut my hair, and then stopped straighteningit, and I love it."  Explaining herpolitical beliefs more forthrightly two decades later, Lincoln told Marie Mooreof the New York Amsterdam News that "I'mvery outspoken because my great-grandmother and grandfather were slaves…I takeit personally that my people were enslaved and used as chattel and still are. Ido not separate myself from my life, What happened to my people happened and happensto me."
Inlater interviews, Lincoln was realistic  about the impact of her radicalism in the 1960s on hercareer, particularly in comparison to male instrumentalists like Roach and JohnColtrane whose radicalism in their music did not affect their careers to theextent that they impacted the careers of Lincoln and Nina Simone. "I took the weight because I was thevoice," Lincoln admitted to Lisa Jones in 1991, "I was the one yelling ineveryone's ear.  It hung with mefor a long time."
Lincolnsurvived the 1960s touring in Europe and eventually catching the eye ofindependent filmmaker Michael Roemer, who cast Lincoln opposite Ivan Dixon inthe now classic Nothing But a Man(1963).  Lincoln later appearedopposite Sidney Poitier in For the Loveof Ivy (1968).  Though Lincolnwas poised to pursue a full-fledged acting career—against Roach's wishes whowanted a domesticated wife—she found the Hollywood scene difficult to negotiate.In a 1968 Washington Post interview,Lincoln expressed concerns about "doing an imitation of a white women either asa woman or really as an actress." Lincoln was more direct five years later in another Pittsburgh Courier interview where she says that "the scripts thatwere sent me were not representative of the people I know and of the women I bring to the stage."  Lincoln goes on to say in the interviewthat "the people who have cared for me have always been the ones who werecalled 'niggers'—the people who are called 'niggers' are well spring where Igo."
WhenLincoln sat down with the PittsburghCourier in 1973, she was in another moment of radical transformation.  Her marriage to Roach ended three yearsearlier and she was living in Los Angeles with her mother.  Lincoln  recalls old friend Redd Foxx—then popularly known astelevision's "Fred Sanford" giving her money from time to time when she neededit.  She also took on twoadditional names; the names Aminata Moseka were given to her by GuineanPresident Sekou Toure and the Minister of Information in Zaire respectively, during a tour of Africa withMiriam Makeba.  While traveling inJapan in 1973, she also made her first studio recording in more than a decade, People in Me, the first in which shewrote the lyrics to all of the songs. Recorded with a few of Miles Davis's sidemen and not released in theUnited States until 1979, the recording laid the foundation for what would be Lincoln'srenaissance in the 1980s.  As FarahJasmine Griffin writes in If You Can't BeFree, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, "People in Me introducesus to the mature, independent artist…Like a phoenix, she is reborn from theashes of her earlier lives."
Bythe early-1980s Lincoln was performing regularly around New York City,primarily with a cadre of younger artists including saxophonist Steve Coleman,James Wideman—both of who, appear on 1984's Talkingto the Sun.  Though she isstill interpreting other lyricists, including Stevie Wonder whose "Golden Lady"and "You and I" she covers during this period, she not only is writing lyricsbut also composing music.  One ofthose songs is "Throw It Away" (GoldenLady,1980), which Lincoln told LaShonda Katrice Barnett in her book I Got Thunder, "helped save my life."  It was fertile period for Lincoln, ashe created the body of work that would sustain her for the rest of her career.
WhenLincoln appears as the mother of "Bleek Gilliam" in the Spike Lee film Mo' Betta Blues (1990) she is on thecusp of what would be her most sustained period of recording.  Signing with Verve in 1989, Lincolnwould record 11 albums over the final twenty years of her life, beginning with The World is Falling Down in 1990.Writing about Lincoln in 1996, New YorkTimes jazz critic Peter Watrous begins his piece with the simpleobservation that "sometime in the last 10 years, Abbey Lincoln came intogreatness as a jazz singer." Twenty years after she walked away from her music, Lincoln was now a "womanat her peak" and willing and able to take the kinds of aesthetic risks thatwould mark her as maverick in her later years.  One such moment is her brilliant collaboration with MavisStaples and the Staple Singers (including Pop Staples) on the track "Story ofMy Father."
WhenNate Chinen profiles Lincoln upon the release of her last recording Abbey Sings Abbey in 2007 much of thestory is about her songwriting and how far Lincoln had to travel to be able towrite the songs that allowed her the opportunity to tell her own stories.  That red Marilyn Monroe dress was longgone— a forgotten trinket of the Black woman that Lincoln was and the worldthat she helped to change, fifty years earlier.  Abbey Sings Abbeyhas the feel on an artist saying good-bye, not unlike listening to BillieHoliday's Lady in Satin (1957), whichpoet Fred Moten describes as the  "recordof a wonderfully articulate body in pain."  But unlike Holiday, one doesn't hear pain or trauma inLincoln's voice, but triumph.  As she told, Chinen, "I had the chance to be myself, and I was."  Farah Jasmine Griffin perhaps says itbest, "perhaps Lincoln's greatest creation is herself."[image error]