Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul

Though I knew she had been ill for some time, it was still a shock to hear that Aretha Franklin (1942-2018) had moved to hospice care earlier this week and that yesterday, she passed away in Detroit. One of the greatest, most vocally gifted and agile singers of her generation or any other, with a rich, layered mezzo-soprano voice that could project with tremendous power and draw emotion out of each note, she set the standard for her peers and all who followed her, earning the title of the Queen of Soul in 1964. But as she proved throughout her career, in addition to possessing major talent as a pianist, she also could sing gospel, the musical genre she grew up hearing and learning in the church, New Bethel Baptist, led by her legendary father, Rev. C. L. Franklin; R&B, in which she became a superstar; pop, leading to her early fame; the blues, which suffused all of her music; rock & roll, as she proved in the 1970s; jazz; and even classical operatic music, as she demonstrated to the world (though close friends like Grace Bumbry knew it) when she stepped in for Luciano Pavarotti on national TV and sang "Nessun Dorma" at the 1998 Grammys. 

A path blazer as a woman in the music industry who at age 12 joined her father on his "gospel caravan" tour, Franklin also received acclaim as a strong supporter of the US Civil Rights Movement and of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., joining him on tour when she was 16, and singing at his funeral after his assassination in 1968. She attempted to post bond for Angela Davis after her arrest, and remained an ardent supporter of the Black fight for civil rights and equality, not just in the US but in South Africa and across the globe. After moving back to Detroit to take care of her ailing father, who had been shot twice at point blank in his home, she kept the city as her chief residence, supporting local artists and its communities through her philanthropy. LGBTQ equality was among the many other causes Franklin championed. (This summary only scratches the surface of her life, which included considerable challenges from childhood on through her final illness.)

Her catalogue includes over 40 studio-produced albums, twenty Billboard Number 1 singles, beginning with "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" in 1967 through "Freeway of Love" in 1985, and countless awards and honors, including 17 Grammys in categories ranging from Best Female R&B Performance to Best Soul Gospel Performance to Best Traditional R&B performance; Grammys Legend, Lifetime Achievement and MusiCares Person of the Year awards; American Music Awards; NAACP Image Awards; Kennedy Center Honors (she was the youngest person to receive the award when honored in 1994); the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987; induction into the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame and GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame; and a 1981 star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I would be remiss if I did not mention her brief but unforgettable turn in the iconic 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, in which she sang "Think," which won her a whole new slew of younger fans. Though she has now left the mortal plane, her music, perennial and enduring in its beauty and power, will always be with us as testimony to her greatness. 

Here are some videos of Aretha Franklin performing some of her countless hits. May she rest in peace and sing on in the great beyond.


Aretha Franklin ‎- Spanish Harlem (Single Version 45rpm / 1971) / HD 720p



Luther Vandross & Aretha Franklin - A house is not a home (live)



Aretha Franklin - Amazing Grace (Live 2014)



Aretha Franklin at Barack Obama's Inauguration, January 2009



Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer: her very best performance, October 9, 1970



Aretha Franklin Nessun Dorma Grammys 1998



Aretha Franklin & James Brown - Please, Please, Please - Soul Session - 1987



Respect - Aretha Franklin, 1967



Aretha Franklin - Chain Of Fools Live (1968)



Aretha Franklin - Think (feat. The Blues Brothers) - 1080p Full HD



Aretha Franklin - Bridge Over Troubled Water



Watch Aretha Franklin Make President Obama Emotional, Kennedy Center Honors, 2015



Aretha Franklin - Mary Don’t You Weep - Soul Train - 1979



Aretha Franklin - Freeway Of Love (Video)


 Who's Zoomin' Who?, 1985, Sony Music Entertainment


Aretha Franklin - Rolling in the Deep / Ain't No Mountain Live Adele Cover Version

Aretha Franklin "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", 1st Festival international de jazz à Antibes, ORTF, 1970.


Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Lee, 1986, Sony Music Entertainment

Poems: Doug Kearney

Douglas Kearney

Posting poems about art works and ones using ekphrasis has been illuminating, because one thing I've always known and even practiced myself but never really articulated publicly is how many different ways one can explore conversations between poetry, literature and visual and plastic art. (Seismosis, my collaborative book with artist and poet Chris Stackhouse does walk through various ways of initiating and sustaining the conversation.)

In his poems in response to the late genius artist and musician Terry Adkins (1953-2014), poet and performer Doug Kearney (1970-) shows yet another way to think and write about and with a fellow artist and the work of art. Doug is not just a brilliant, highly inventive poet, but an excellent performer as well. I don't mean simply that he performs his own poetry well, nor do I mean that he is a performance poet; rather, he understands in a profound way what performance can be, and elevates it to an art in conjunction with his poetry, which sizzles as poetry on the page but also serves as a graphic score, with latent possibilities that Doug activates when he is presenting his work live.

But back to this idea of graphic texts, concretion, and poems' visual components: Doug sees and often explores all of these, which is to say the materiality of the text alongside its semantic possibilities and the connections between the two. His "granted collaboration" with Adkins produced a score for a project entitled Freedom of Shadow, as well as poems that look almost all the ones I've shared on here so far. They started working together in 2013, yet Adkins sadly died but a year later, at age 60, of a heart attack. Doug decided to continue, and the result was a series of works that are as much visual art and poetry.

Doug discusses with moving insight the process of working with Adkins, and how he thought through a variety of approaches, only to lose his collaborator, at least in body, just a few months into the new (2014) year. The folio he presented in Poetry--and Adkins, who had created a persona named "Blanche Bruce," after the first black US Senator, from Mississippi, to serve a full term, during Reconstruction, did not want a "book" as the final product for their work together--is both a powerful tribute to Adkins and their thinking and working together, and yet another example of Doug's manifold gifts as a poet. You can read Doug's thoughts at Poetry's website. Below are the two of the drafts and final pieces (poems) that comprised Freedom of Shadow.

And, lastly, here is an image of Terry Adkins' "Muffled Drums," which spurred Doug's imagination, in conjunction with a different Adkins piece, as Lone Wolf, performing his "Muffled Drum Lynch," a sculpture recital about W. E. B. Dubois and his anti-lynching campaign while creating intelligent propaganda with the NAACP. (Via Atum53 on YouTube.)

The Music of Florence Price

Florence Price

The treasures of the past may seem lost, but often enough, they are merely forgotten, or hidden. Such is the case with the music of Florence Price (1887-1953), an African-American composer whose work has never entered the mainstream canon, but which was very much in the current of the classical music of her time. In 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performer her "Symphony in E," making her black woman to have her work performed by a US symphony orchestra. Yet, as Micaela Baranello reminds readers in today's New York Times, Price probably never receive a reply to her repeated requests for consideration from Serge Koussevitzky, the famous conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and champion of new music, who commissioned or premiered works by the likes of Alexander Scriabin, Maurice Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Albert Roussel, Bela Bártok, and Leonard Bernstein, just to name a few.

All were white men; Price did not register on Koussevitzky's radar, nor on that of many other major conductors. Baranello states, however, that she was well known among the major African American intellectuals of her era, corresponding with W. E. B. DuBois, among others. She also set poems by Langston Hughes and Paul Lawrence Dunbar to music. Price's background, in fact, primed her for success as a member of DuBois's "Talented 10th." Born the daughter of a prominent dentist in Little Rock, Arkansas, she showed musical talent early on, and enrolled in the New England Conservatory at the age of 14. Because of the widespread racism of that era, she passed as non-black person, claiming that she was from Pueblo, Mexico, and studied with the head of the NEC, the famed composer George W. Chadwick.

Yet numerous struggles marked her life from this point forward. Eventually she settled in Chicago, where she continued her studies in music and other disciplines at a number of institutions, including the University of Chicago and the Chicago College of Music (now a division of Roosevelt University), and, after a divorce, raised her two daughters as a single mother and worked as an organist for silent movies and under a pseudonym, wrote advertising jingles for radio. In addition to pieces she composed on her own, she also collaborated frequently with her former student, fellow composer and pianist, and frequent collaborator Margaret Bonds. It was a first prize win and public recognition for her Symphony in E in the 1932 Wanamaker Foundation Awards that led to conductor Frederick Stock's premiere the subsequent year of her orchestral piece.

Though Price's music did receive performances during her lifetime, including Marion Anderson's delivery, at her landmark 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, of Price's arrangement of spiritual "My Soul's Been Anchored in De Lord," in the years after her death from a stroke, a good deal of her work was thought to have been lost. In 2009, as critic Alex Ross relates in his recent New Yorker discussion of Price's life and work, homeowners Vicki and Darrell Gatwood found a cache of her manuscripts in what was her former summer house, in St. Anne, Illinois, outside Chicago. This has led to a mini-resurgence in interest in Price's work, including new recordings and performances, among them Janacek Philharmonic's  premiere recording of her First Violin Concerto, with University of Arkansas professor and violinist Er-Gene Kahng as soloist.

Price's oeuvre draws from a number of aesthetic springs, chief among black spiritual and vernacular music traditions, as well as American and European early 20th century Modernism. Her Second Violin Concerto "reflects the richly chromatic language of [American] composers like William Schuman and Roy Harris," and, as musicologist Douglas Shadle recently learned, she even studied with Harris briefly in 1940. To quote Baranello:

Marquese Carter, a doctoral student at Indiana University who specializes in Price’s work, said in an interview that she “uses the organizing material of spirituals. You may not hear direct quotation, but you will hear playing around with pentatonicism, playing around with call and response, some of these organizing principles that African-American scholars like Amiri Baraka have pointed out as indicative of black musical discourse.”

“Florence Price is a representation in music of what it means to be a black artist living within a white canon and trying to work within the classical realm,” Mr. Carter added. “How do we, through that, create a sound that sounds our culture, sounds our experience, sounds our embodied lives?” 

***

“Everything she was doing was musically mainstream but at the same time idiosyncratic,” he said. “Her music has kind of a luminous quality that strikes me as her own. Our understanding of American modernism of the 1930s and 1940s is not complete without Price’s contribution.”

Price's compositions are numerous, and despite recent interest, the question remains: who will perform, let alone premiere, many of these works? Baranello argues, and I agree, that if US symphony orchestras are serious about diversifying not just their audiences but their repertoires, composers like Price and Bonds--and María Teresa Carreño García, William Grant Still, R. N. Dett, Adolphus Hailstork, Anthony Davis, Tania León, and many others--offer a direct and corrective option. According to Baranello, the Fort Smith Symphony plans to record all four of her symphonies for Naxos, but far more orchestras need to step up, now and in the future. Yesterday, NPR featured Price's Violin Concerto No. 2 on its "Songs We Love" page.

Here are YouTube links to Florence Price's music:

Excerpts from Florence Price, Violin Concerto No. 2 (1952), dedicated to Minnie Cedargreen Jernberg, excerpts with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, Er-Gene Kahng, violin, Ryan Cockerham, conductor


Karen Walwyn, piano, New Black Music Repertory Ensemble, Leslie B. Dunner, conductor, from Albany TROY1295


New Black Repertory Ensemble, Leslie B. Dunner, conductor


Night by Florence Price, Amy Petrongelli, soprano, Blair Salter, piano, Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, MI

Hugh Masekela, Trumpeter & Activist, Passes

South African trumpeter and musician
Hugh Masekela at St. Lucia Jazz
festival, May 2012. (Reuters/Andrea De Silva)

This past week brought a number of homegoings, taking from us the South African musician and activist Hugh Masekela (April 4, 1939 - January 23, 2017), a trumpeter of impressive talent, and a freedom fighter against apartheid and for full equality for Black and brown South Africans. A native of KwaGuqa Township, Witibank, Masekela began his musical career at age 14, after seeing Kirk Douglas in the Hollywood film Young Man with a Horn, and his first trumpet was a gift from Louis Armstrong, via an anti-apartheid Anglican archbishop, Trevor Huddleston.

Masekela would go on to an internationally renowned career, traveling the continent and globe and playing with many of the most important jazz, pop and world-music musicians of his generations, but he never ceased agitating for his people's freedom. Throughout his oeuvre are numerous pieces that address the toxins of apartheid, racism, slavery, social, political and economic inequality, poverty, and other ills. After the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, in which South African authorities killed 69 protesters in cold blood, Masekela went into exile, and settling in New York, where he befriended US musicians and activists, and was able to study at the Manhattan School of Music, graduating in 1964, and briefly marrying the marvelous singer Miriam Makeba shortly thereafter.

Among Masekela's musical achievements were the chart-topping 1968 instrumental song "Grazing in the Grass," and his star turn with the pop R&B/jazz group The 5th Dimension, on their unforgettable hit "Up, Up and Away," in 1967. He also recorded with musicians ranging from Paul Simon to Abdullah Ibrahim to Kalahari, making a special point to engage other African and Black Diasporic, musicians, including Fela Kuti and Jorge Ben, and musical forms in his work. Throughout, he  enriched the century-long traditions of jazz music. Masekela founded the Botswana International Music School (BIMS) in 1985, an institution that continues, in different form but which still brings together young and established musicians from across Africa.

My introduction to Masekela's music came from hearing my father play both albums featuring his work and ones he issued, and then, in early adulthood, when he was one of the highlighted artists who participated in Paul Simon's famous album Graceland tour, which also included Miriam Makeba and brought to wider attention groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo. (I may even have the Graceland LP in my collection!)

May he keep blowing his horn and creating beauty wherever he is now, and may we keep listening. In tribute to him, here are a few clips from YouTube. Enjoy!


Hugh Masekela, "Grazing In The Grass"


Hugh Masekela, "Afro Beat Blues"


Hugh Masekela, "Don't Go Lose It Baby [Rare Version]


Hugh Masekela, "Stimela" (with Graceland)
Hugh Masekela, "Blues for Huey"


Hugh Masekela, "Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela)"

RIP Natalie Cole

The new year brought with it the saddening news that the golden-voiced Natalie Cole (1950-2015) had died of congestive heart failure, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, at the age of 65. One of the most talented singers of her generation, Cole debuted in 1975 with Inseparable, which was an instant success, with both the title song and "This Will Be" charting and confirming that she was not just the daughter of one of the greatest singers of all time, Nat King Cole (1919-1965), and former Ellington Orchestra Maria Hawkins Cole, but a major talent in her own right.

Nominated 21 times for a Grammy Award and recipient of 9, Cole posted platinum-level sales several times and scored many hits, including "Sophisticated Lady," "Mr. Melody"(one of my favorites of all her songs), "I've Got Love On My Mind," "Our Love," "Miss You Like Crazy," "Pink Cadillac," "I Live for Your Love," and the remarkable "Unforgettable," her duo with her late father, which would go down as one of her most popular recordings (and LPs) of her career.

In addition to her 4-decade musical career, Cole also acted on TV and in films, and published a memoir in which she discussed her struggles with drugs and challenges from a range of illnesses throughout her career. I grew up listening to Natalie Cole as a child and have been a lifelong fan, but her record Unforgettable touched me deeply, in part because by the early 1990s I had started to re-immerse myself in jazz, and her decision, after refusing for much of her career to cover her father's songs, struck me as a gesture of tremendous grace and tribute. The result was a treasure for the entire world, like so much of Natalie Cole's music.

Here are a few videos featuring Natalie Cole. Enjoy!

Natalie Cole singing "Inseparable" and "This Will Be," November 5, 2014, Hard Rock Café.
Natalie Cole singing "Stardust," LIVE at the Singapore International Jazz Festival 2014.
Natalie Cole singing one of her father's first hits, the folk tune "Straighten Up and Fly Right," in 1991.
Natalie Cole singing "Mr. Melody" live, from Natalie Cole: Love Songs
A heartbreaking duo, featuring Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston (RIP), singing "Say A Little Prayer"
Natalie Cole, at the "Unforgettable" concert in Los Angeles, 1992 Natalie Cole's complete concert from Bergen PAC, Englewood, NJ April 25, 2014 (in 1080p/24fr).

Remembering B. B. King

It felt momentarily like a light went out in the world when Riley B.--"B. B."--King (b. September 16, 1925, near Itta Bena, Mississippi) passed away last Thursday. One of the consummate and best known musicians of his generation, he excelled as a songwriter, singer, and guitarist in a range of musical genres, though he was without a doubt most renowned for his skills as a bluesman and as a pioneering instrumentalist who influenced several generations of blues, R&B and rock & roll guitarists, including Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. His skillful use of vibrato in his solos, and his style of singing, which matched restraint and deep emotion, are unforgettable once you have heard them. It is no surprise that he gained the nickname "The King of the Blues" and that he was considered one of the "Three Kings of the Blues," along with the late Albert King and the late Freddie King.

King grew up in Indianola and Kilmichael, Mississippi, the home of many of the greatest artists working in the blues, and sang in the church choir as a child, his immersion in church music evident to the very end. Self-taught on the guitar, he began performing as a traveling guitarist with the King John's Quartet while still a teenager, and eventually began to make a name for himself on the radio while playing in Memphis, Tennessee, another major home for the blues and black music. While DJing at WDIA radio station in Memphis, King gained the nickname "Beale Street Blues Boy," which became "Blues Boy" and then the lasting "B. B." by which he would be revered by music lovers across the globe. Although he began playing on an acoustic guitar, he would eventually shift to an electric guitar and develop the style that grew into his trademark.

By the 1950s King had formed his own bands, started composing, recording and touring the US, and garnering fame with the then burgeoning genre of rhythm and blues. Among his major hits from this era were "Woke Up This Morning," "Whole Lotta Love," "Every Day I Have the Blues," "Sweet Little Angel," and "Please Love Me," a number of which were later covered to great acclaim by other musicians. King founded his own record label in Memphis, Blues Boys Kingdom in 1956, allowing him to record and promote other important R&B and blues musicians. As his fame grew, he reached new audiences, appearing as the opening act for the Rolling Stones 1969 tour, recording with U2, Clapton and others, and charting on the R&B and pop charts, but he never lost his deep connection to blues or his distinctive performing style, as recordings and video clips up to the end of his life attest.

B. B. King received a Grammy Award in 1970, the National Medal of the Arts from President George H. W. Bush in 1990, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2006. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In its 2011 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, Rolling Stone ranked him #6. On May 1 of this year, he announced that he was in hospice care, having battled complications caused by diabetes for several decades.

We have his music, though, so that light still burns. Below are a few clips of King performing, from the late 1960s through 2011. They take me back to my childhood and adolescence, when my father would put his records on, sharing his love of the King's music and pointing out one of the sources of the r&b and rock & roll I was listening to. RIP, B. B. King, and do watch and enjoy the YouTube lips.

B. B. King giving what he felt was one of his best recorded performances

Sounding Out (1972)

B. B. King, live in Africa

B. B. King on Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual, in 1968

B. B. King performing "The Thrill Is Gone," in 1971

B. B. King and Buddy Guy, performing "I Can't Quit You Baby"

B. B. King, with Stevie Wonder and John Legend, performing "The Thrill Is Gone," in 2009

B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and Jimmy Vaughan, performing "Rock Me Baby"

Happy 86th Birthday & Cecil Taylor à Paris

Cecil Taylor

Today is pianist and composer Cecil Taylor's 86th birthday. One of the true originals of late 20th century American music, a pioneer in free jazz and a master in exploring the intersections between improvisation and notated European classical traditions, Taylor has been sparking admiration and dissent since founding his own band in the mid-1950s. Some years ago on this blog I wrote a short review of hearing him live at the Blue Note. On YouTube there are numerous videos of Taylor playing away, and several documentaries or trailers about, as well as interviews with him.

One of my favorites is Cecil Taylor à Paris: De l'autre côté du chemin de fer (mislabeled Les grandes répetitions 1968 on Youtube). This was one of five documentaries on contemporary music, under the title of Les grande répétitions, that were filmed for French TV in 1965 and 1966, and as the video shows, it was directed by Luc Ferrari and S. G. Patris, and produced by the great electronic musician Pierre Schaeffer. The short film features Taylor in several poetic, revelatory exchanges about his music and life, including some clever, controversial mythmaking by Taylor, bizarre clips by the filmmakers, and vibrant performances by Taylor's quartet, with Jimmy Lyons on saxophone, Alan Silva (misnamed Ron Silva in the credits) on bass, and Andrew Cyrille on drums.

Ferrari and Patris filmed the documentary shortly after Taylor had completed recording one of his greatest albums (and one of my favorites), Student Studies (The Great Paris Concert), and he and his combo are in exceptional form. Taylor's assured, percussive playing is especially thrilling, and it's clear that the excitement of the groove extends to all members of the combo, who rock the walls of their set in a room in the Place des Vosges, in Paris's Marais district.  I would have embedded the video but the original poster has removed that option, so please click on the title above to see the video, and here are some screen caps of Cecil Taylor and the film. Enjoy! 

Tanta Saudade: Cesaria Evora

Reading Fly Brother's blog entry today reminded me that back in the early 1990s, two different friends introduced me to the music of Cesária Évora (b. 1941), whose renditions of morna, a Blues-like musical form, and the more upbeat caldeira, both from her her native Cape Verde, made her and these genres global sensations some thirty years ago. Évora began singing in the 1960s, but gained international acclaim only after recording her first album, La Diva Aux Pieds Nus (The Barefoot Diva), in France, in 1998. She began touring, people couldn't stop listening, and the rest is history.  Évora passed away two days ago, after many months of heart trouble. 

I believe the first album of hers that I heard was Miss Perfumado, from 1992, but the first ones I bought were Cesária, in 1995, and Café Atlantico, in 1999, both issued by Lusafrica. Her voice, like her music, is often brimming with joy and saudade. Évora kept her home open to all, and reportedly was still receiving people and enjoying life just two days before she passed away. Here are a few YouTube clips, beginning with one of her most famous songs, Sodade (i.e., saudade), to remember her by. Enjoy!

Sodade (live, in Paris) Cabo Verde (one of my favorite songs of hers) Angola (live, in New Bedford) Africa Nossa Ligereza (live, in Moscow) Carnaval de São Vicente (live, in Paris) Isolada (live, in Paris)

RIP Nick Ashford

I was so sorry to learn of the death of composer, singer and hitmaker Nick Ashford (1941-2011), who with his fellow songwriter and later wife Valerie Simpson (1946-), wrote hit after hit that I and millions of others grew up on.  It is hard to believe that he was 70 years old.  He had suffered from throat cancer, and died in a hospital in New York on Monday. He leaves his wife, two daughters, and other family members.

A native of Fairfield, South Carolina, Ashford met Simpson in Harlem in 1963 at White Rock Baptist Church, where they began collaborating. Their early recording career did not pan out, but they began writing songs that a number of important figures recorded. These hits included Ray Charles's "Let's Get Stoned"; Marvin Gaye's and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "You're All I Need to Get By," "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing," "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)"; Diana Ross's versions of "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and "Remember Me." I had no idea that they had also written such hit songs as Teddy Pendergrass's "Is It Still Good To You"; The Brothers Johnson's "Ride-O-Rocket"; and, according to my mother, my childhood favorite Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" and "Clouds"; and Chaka Khan with Rufus's "Keep It Coming" and "Ain't Nothing But Maybe."

Ashford and Simpson also wrote for Gladys Knight and the Pips, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Supremes, The Marvelettes, The Dynamic Superiors, and other Motown groups.  Ashford lent his voice and instrumental talents to numerous other recordings over the years as well. As the group Ashford and Simpson, they saw their own recording career finally take off in the 1970s, with hits like "Don't Cost You Nothin'" (1977), " "Is It Still Good to Ya" (1978), "Found a Cure" (1979), "Street Corner" (1982), and the hit that was one of the songs my sophomore year of college, "Solid." ("Solid as a rock....") With his wife, Ashford established New York's Sugar Bar in 1996, at 254 W. 72nd Street on the Upper West Side, and it has become an important venue for seeing some of the best local and international talents in R&B, soul, jazz, and Caribbean music.  Yesterday evening, performers, including luminaries such as Freddie Jackson, honored and mourned Nick Ashford's passing at Sugar Bar.

Here are a few clips of Ashford & Simpson's songs, and of the incredible duo themselves, singing their way into listeners' hearts, and history. RIP, Nick Ashford.

Ashford & Simpson, "Solid" (no embedding) Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" Diana Ross, "Remember Me" Chaka Khan, "I'm Every Woman" Teddy Pendergrass, "Is It Still Good To Ya"