Say Brother
DB_Cooper
Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
So, at the request of Kala, I looked into the availability of archival music footage from the WGBH series, Say Brother. The following link leads to the WGBH Open Vault, an ever-expanding collection of clips from a variety of series. Included are clips of:"Blast from the Past" with vocalist Miriam MakebaCannonball Adderley and the Cannonball ExpressMississippi Fred MacDowell"Blast from the Past" with musician Jerry "Iceman" ButlerMelvin Van Peebles interviewHowlin' Wolf in concertSuperfly"Dealin'" with African drummer Babatunde OlatunjiSixto Escobar talks about the cultural importance of folk musicInterview with Buddy Guy and Junior WellsSunfire perform "Soka Jame" in the Say Brother studioRonnie Laws talks about his early musical influencesCurtis Mayfield and The Impressions perform "Move On Up"Stevie Wonder speaks at Harvard Law School, tape 1Capoeiras of Bahia Dance Company performs capoeira[/b]and much more. I???m still looking into aquiring footage of many of the other great artists who performed on Say Brother. Here???s a write-up of a retrospective program of Say Brother performances to give you a sense of what???s out there:???The archives of SAY BROTHER (now BASIC BLACK) are bursting with a who's who of R&B groups: Patti LaBelle, The Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Curtis Mayfield are among the stars that performed in WGBH's studios over the past thirty years. The Best of Rhythm & Blues compiles some of these memorable performances and gives them cultural context, as local musician and scholar Salim Washington discusses the impact these groups have had on contemporary music.???Link to the Open Vault: http://openvault.wgbh.org/subject/arts?page=2&count=441&page=3&count=441&page=1&count=441
Comments
I think it's safe to say this would be a dream come true for a lot of us out here.
History of any medium is excellent.
Here is one with Muhammad Ali and his thoughts on the Vietnam War.
Muhammad Ali and the Vietnam War
Much peace and respect:
Adrian
I'm trying to get some info on that as well. Obviously, it's a lot harder to get the powers-that-be to allocate resources to a DVD release of this stuff than to just digitize it and get it on the web. And, since we're a non-profit PBS/NPR organization, allocating money is the second most heated debate around here, after editorial integrity.
I'll keep you all posted on my progress.
!! very cool.
Yeah, that shit is heavy. Real talk. Makes you think - where's that sort of dialogue today? Not necessarily in terms of race in the context of war, but just straight-talking about real issues.
But it would eventually make $$$ and pub for the station! But I know how this stuff goes with the non-profit sector.
A friend of mine was telling me that his band wants to put out footage that was on an Australian TV show (The Real Thing)in the late 70s, but the footage is owned by ABC TV. ABC will gladly liscense the footage for release for $1000 a minute (at aprox 60 minutes, that's $60k). Since the band is kind of a cult thing world wide, it would take them a while to recoup.
I would imagine that the problem with a DVD for sale is the variety of publishing companies that a show with multiple guests would entail, and clearances of all those songs.
Hey, I'm with you on this. I believe the next step is for us to make our entire television and radio archives available on the web, and provide DVD-on-demand, where we can create and provide copies of programs as they're requested. But keep in mind, I'm 28 and the decision-makers are almost all in their 50s and 60s. It's a very different model of media consumption these days, and they're trying to figure out how to transition successfully without going broke in the meantime.
I've seen that clip - I think the song is actually "We're A Winner." But because the repeating line is "movin' on up!," I can see how people can confuse this with the later Curtis Mayfield tune.
1-year anniversary show in the "vault?"
Unfortunately, I didn't see it in there. I checked our "shop" and there is only one episode of Say Brother available, called "Nantucket: Rock of Changes." It looks like I won't be able to score anything from the archive personally for a while, since we're moving the entire operation over the next few months, and Archives is one of the first departments to move. It's going to be killer if I can eventually get good access, though, as we have over 50,000 programs in the archive.
Funky jams for days, kiddit!
Uh, I mean, extensive quality performances, friends. Yeah, that's the PBS ticket.