Back in the 1970s, Jewish chicks were gettin’ soulful. Real soulful. Click the links below and you’ll hear what I’m talking about...1. “Shakey Ground” – Phoebe Snow
2. “A Love of Your Own” – Melissa Manchester
3. “It Keeps You Runnin’ ” – Carly Simon
(Backing band: The Doobie Brothers.)
4. “Believe in Humanity” – Carole King
5. “Jimmy Mack” – Laura Nyro
(Backing vocals by Labelle.)
Don't forget Linda Creed! Although she wasn't a singer, she wrote some of the best lyrics EVER, putting her stamp on the Philadelphia Sound. She wrote the lyrics for Greatest Love of All, Betcha by Golly Wow, Break Up to Make Up and a lot of other 70s classics.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Carly Simon was raised Catholic and is part black on her mother's side.
I LOVE Phoebe Snow. I saw her years ago in concert in the Rock and Soul Review when she sang her "medley of hit" No Regrets. Carole King is another fav. I burned a whole in the Tapestry album and had a major fight with my dad when he tried to steal it.
Thanks!
BTW, Carly Simon was raised Catholic and is part black on her mother's side.
ReplyDeleteYou beat me too it. :-)
Phoebe Snow has always confused me.
I was hoping to see Timi Yuro on the list but, after a quick search, I think she was Catholic.
As for the Carly Simon black mama thing... I remember reading that too... on Wikipedia, I believe. Then I checked Wikipedia again, and that's not there. In fact, the mom's ethnicity is spelled out with no mention of blackness.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the black ancestry is something Carly slipped into her personal narrative for reasons unknown.
Anybody have definitive sourcing?
Come on now, y'all! Carole King co-wrote The Locomotion, Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow, Oh No, Not My Baby, Up On The Roof, You've Got A Friend and Natural Woman. She was gettin' funky LONG before the '70's rolled around.
ReplyDeleteUBM, check out Carly's video "Hello Big Man". It's dedicated to her parents.
ReplyDeleteIn a 2004 interview by Michael Kors, she states:
ReplyDeleteCS: It's pretty interesting. It didn't matter as much because I'm a singer, not an actress, but my face is more acceptable in a way now than when I first came on the scene, because I'm part black. My mother's mother was black. I'm Jewish, black, Cuban, and French.
... I'm part black. My mother's mother was black. ...
ReplyDeleteSee, GG, here’s where it gets confusing. (And it seems Carly wants it confusing.)
On one hand, the meme has definitely taken hold that Carly Simon’s mom was half black: “Andrea Louise Heinemann is unmistakeably biracial and was very beautiful,” one reader wrote to the blog Light-Skinned-ed Girl.
But this is what it says in a 1995 Vanity Fair article about Carly Simon’s mom:
“Andrea was given to vivid statements that may or may not have been true. She claimed that her mother was Moorish, the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso of Spain -- although the Moors were expelled from Spain in the 17th century.”
Regardless of the words quoted from Carly Simon’s own mouth... I don’t believe she’s a quadroon.
UBM do you think she's an octoroon?
ReplyDeleteThe bit about being part Cuban was enough for me. As the Caribbean latins say, "We're all a little black behind the ears."
ReplyDeleteUBM do you think she's an octoroon?
ReplyDeleteI think her mom was a flake.
^ And even if Carly Simon's grandmother was half-"Moorish"... that doesn't mean Carly possesses anything we would recognize as a "mixed-race" identity.
ReplyDeleteSo the multiracialists who embrace her as part black... are reaching... just a bit.
I think her mom was a flake.
ReplyDeleteSo that would make her a moroon?
^ Touché.
ReplyDelete