The third of three programs this month that focus on the original Black Power and Black Pride movements, with commentary by special guest host Ronald E. Smith, and by request. #blackpower #blackpride #blacklivesmatter

NOTE: Some tracks contain language and subject matter that may not suitable for all audiences.

Due to numerous requests, the biographical and historical notes that accompany each of these tracks for Part 3 are listed below the credits. Parts one and two will have notes for that program on the previous post page.

First Part

* Wake Up Everybody, 1975, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes* A Change Is Gonna Come, 1965, Otis Redding* Huey Newton’s Birthday (Free Huey), 1968, Stokely Carmichael* Who Will Survive America?, 1970, Amiri Baraka* Ooh Child, 1970, The 5 Stairsteps* Alabama, 1965, J.B. Lenoir* Yes We Can Can, 1974, The Pointer Sisters

Second Part

* Stop Singing and Start Swinging, 1964, Malcolm X* Love Child, 1968, Diana Ross and The Supremes* Release Speech, 1972, Angela Davis* Invitation to Black Power, 1969, Shahid Quintet

Finale

* Someday We’ll All Be Free, 1973, Donny Hathaway

“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.“Malcolm X

Love to you all.

Ben “Daddy Ben Bear” Brown Jr. Host, Producer, Webmaster, Audio Engineer, Researcher and Writer

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Program 3 Biographical and Historical Notes

Wake Up Everybody, 1975, Harold Melvin and the BluenotesOne of the groups that were signed to the greatest Black-owned label of the 1970’s, Philadelphia International, this act wasn’t fronted by bandleader Melvin, but a former drummer turned singer, Teddy Pendergrass. It was not uncommon for acts at the label to alternate between message songs and love songs, with many of them written or produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. This was the title track to the last album Pendergrass would record with the group before embarking on a highly successful solo career.

A Change Is Gonna Come, 1965, Otis ReddingOriginally written and recorded by Sam Cooke a year earlier about an incident where a whites-only hotel refused him and his entourage entry, this song has since become one of the most covered Civil Rights anthems in history. Redding idolized Cooke, and recorded many of his songs. This version, from the 1965 album “Otis Blue”, is considered by critics to be one of the best R&B albums of that decade. Like Cooke, Redding would not live to see the end of the 1960’s, dying in a plane crash in 1967. Redding would go on to have the very first #1 posthumous hit single, the classic “Sitting At The Dock of The Bay” in 1968.

Huey Newton’s Birthday (Free Huey), 1968, Stokely CarmichaelNow known as Kwame Ture, in 1968, he was one of the leaders of the Black Power movement, starting with his involvement in SNCC (“snick”), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Born in Trinidad but raised and educated in New York, he was often the target of secret surveillance by the FBI. He was also a very vocal opponent of the Vietnam war, which he saw as yet another attempt for the U.S.