After Leaving Paris as a Star, Eartha Kitt Recorded "Santa Baby"

 

South Carolina native Eartha Kitt grew up in Harlem during the latter years of its renaissance. While a teenager she won a scholarship to study at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance.  By 1946, Kitt was performing in Dunham's dance troupe, the most prestigious dance troupe of that time. In the late 1940s she toured with them across the United States and to Mexico. 

In 1948, Eartha Kitt traveled to Europe with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe.  While they were in Paris, Eartha was offered a singing job in a nightclub, where she would earn much more money than she'd been making as a member of the dance troupe.  With that offer and other opportunities she was enticed to stay in Paris.  She made a life and early career for herself and eventually left Paris as a star.

In 1953, Eartha Kitt recorded the song "Santa Baby" for the first time with Henri René and his orchestra, in New York City.

Lenny Kravitz on His New Album, Paris, and More

It was interesting to see American actor, musician, rocker, songwriter, producer Lenny Kravitz on the Wendy Williams Show this morning, promoting his new album Strut, his first album in three years. 

Always down to earth and dressed sort of flashy cool, this morning Kravitz had on shiny gold shoes, black leather pants and a dark brocade jacket (with black lapels) over a white jersey-looking scoop neck shirt.  He talked to Wendy about his acting (The Hunger Games and Precious), his daughter Zoe Kravitz, his former wife (Lisa Bonet), who is Zoe's mother, and with whom he is still friends.  He also told Wendy where he lives. 

Kravitz said he lives part of his time in the Bahamas, in his trailer home, where he recorded Strut. He added that he also has a house in Paris, where he filmed the video for the new album. 

He talked about his love for Paris and how it's such an inspiring city in which to live.  He and Wendy also chatted briefly about another person who has a love for Paris in common with Lenny Kravitz.  That person is rapper, songwriter, producer, film director, and fashion designer Kanye West. 

The two talked briefly about how  Kanye West paid homage to Lenny Kravitz in a 20-minute monologue West did during a recent concert in New York.  Kravitz said he was in the audience and heard the tribute, and he felt honored by it. 

Before this morning's Wendy Williams Show, I had not seen much of Lenny Kravitz in the news or on TV for quite a while.  His explanation for his absence from the public eye was that he had been living low key, working on the music for his album and living the simple life in the Bahamas.

This morning was the first time he had ever appeared on the Wendy Williams Show.  The result was that the information he provided while promoting his new CD seemed fresh and alive.

Singer Madeleine Peyroux’s Paris and Blues Connection



Madeleine Peyroux

Yesterday on the CBS Sunday Morning show, journalist Terrell Brown talked with singer Madeline Peyroux.  Some interesting facts surfaced regarding the singer’s upbringing and how she became a professional.  The interview also revealed a little about her evolution towards the genre of music she now sings.

Terrell Brown

To introduce the segment about Peyroux, show host Charles Osgood said, “Not that long ago, Madeleine Peyroux was an American in Paris, singing with hat in hand.” 

Some of the singer’s Paris experiences highlighted later in the interview will be mentioned further along in this Paris Related Pieces post.

Early in the segment it was mentioned that Peyroux, who is 40 years-old, had at different times in her career been called a jazz singer, a folk singer, and a country singer.  Now,  she defines herself as a blues singer. When part of a video showing her performing on stage was played, one could hear strong influences of Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith in her voice.

Following is more about her Paris experiences.  When she was a child,  the interview revealed, she lived in Paris with her mother, Deidre Westgate, who still lives there.

In Paris, young Madeleine picked up a guitar for solace when she didn’t fit in at the French school in which she was enrolled.  She left school at the age of 15 and began singing on the streets, where people encouraged her to continue and develop herself as a singer.

Eventually Peyroux returned to the States.  She lives a quiet life in NYC, in Brooklyn. 

When asked if she is happy now, Madeleine Peyroux said yes, she’s happy with a little bit of pain to share with her fans.

The Degas/ Cassatt Exhibit and Lois Mailou Jones

Yesterday I visited the National Gallery of Art in DC and browsed the new Degas/ Cassatt exhibit there.   What prompted me to go was my knowing that Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt were both impressionist painters.  And that reminded me of the great American artist Lois Mailou Jones (1905 – 1998).  Jones was influenced by the impressionist school of painters.  Let’s look at some of her earlier accomplishments.

Lois Mailou Jones had been a designer; taught art at Howard University; and won prizes for her art in Boston, at Martha’s Vineyard, and in Harlem and elsewhere before she went to Paris to study.  

But her study and productivity in Paris, at the Académie Julian (1937 – 1938) helped her transition from being a designer and teacher exclusively to being a painter and artist. 

Some of her paintings influenced by the impressionist school of painting were:   Les Pommes Vertes; Chou-fleur et Citrouille, Paris; La Cuisine dans L’Atelier de l’Artiste, Paris; Rue Norvins, Montmartre, Paris; Dans le Jardin du Luxembourg, Pars; and Dejeuner, Place du Tertre, Montmartre.  

During that year in Paris she produced many and various other paintings as well. 

Once Mailou Jones finished her studies in Paris she transitioned to being recognized for her own creations.  She maintained a great relationship with Paris, returning many times through the years to paint and visit friends.  She enjoyed a long and illustrious career.  Her paintings are on display in galleries and museums all over the world.

The new Degas/ Cassatt exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington will be on display until next month, October 5^th.

Venus Williams and Her Two Companies

Was I the only one who didn't know tennis champion Venus Williams owns not only a fashion design business but also an interior design company?  I knew she designed some of the tennis outfits she's worn at the French Open and other tournaments.  But I was surprised to learn during her interview with Rita Braver on the CBS Sunday Morning show a couple of days ago that Williams has been designing other kinds of women's clothing as well.  And her interior design company has designed a number of  apartments in New York City and Miami. 

Her clothing design company is named EleVen.  And her interior design company, of which she is CEO, is V Starr Interiors. 

When asked why she gave her fashion design company the name EleVen, Williams said, "Because it's one more than ten."  Good answer.

Williams has a degree in fashion, and she indicated in the interview a couple of days ago that when an autoimmune disorder slowed her down, she took advantage of the free time to start the two new businesses.

Models of Color in the New Yves St. Laurent Bio Pic

The movie about the life of French designer Yves Saint Laurent (Aug. 1936 – June, 2008), released this summer, seems real and truthful.  It seems truthful not only in its portrayal of the physical image and personality of Yves St. Laurent (Pierre Niney), but also in its portrayal of Saint Laurent’s passion for both fashion design and his business partner, Pierre Bergé (Guillaume  Gallienne), whom he met in 1958.
    

The film is also truthful in terms of director Jalil Lespert’s use of runway models of color that Yves Saint Laurent himself used to model his fashions on the runway back in the 1970s and ‘80s.  In fact, Saint Laurent was one of the first fashion designers to employ models of color.

Kirat

Mounia

Models of color in the Yves Saint Laurent movie are:  Pat Cleveland, an African American; Kirat, a copper-hued American of Indian descent; and Mounia, a French Caribbean model.

For my readers who are interested in viewing the movie Yves Saint. Laurent, it may still be playing in a theater near you.  If you miss seeing it in a theater, you might see it on cable or as a video. 

 

About the Movie 'Midnight in Paris'

A few years ago, I wrote the following piece about my experience getting to a local theater and viewing the film Midnight in Paris. The piece was well received at a previous blog site, so I've decided to share it with my Paris Related Pieces readers.  Also, I want to say here that in Midnight in Paris, Josephine Baker was played by French actor Sonia Rolland, who is of African and French parents.  Rolland was born in Kigali, Rwanda, from a Rwandese mother, Landrada, and a French father, Jacques.

 

   

       

                                          GIVING MIDNIGHT IN PARIS A CHANCE

When the new Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris opened in Washington, DC, on the last Friday in May, I headed downtown to catch the E Street Cinema's earliest showing of it for that day: 12Noon. Since the theatre's doors were not open at 11:30, I went to purchase a bite to eat at AuBon Pain, a nearby café. I ordered a croissant and a cup of coffee, which I enjoyed very much, especially since I had not taken time to have breakfast at home.

After leaving the café a few minutes before Noon, I walked a couple of blocks to the theatre. The dim auditorium was less than half full, but I wasn't surprised: It was Noon and a work day for many people. The evening and nighttime audiences would probably fill the place if the patrons turned out to be both Francophiles and fans of actor-writer-director Woody Allen.

Although I was not a fan of previous films made by Woody Allen, I wanted to give Midnight in Paris a chance for two reasons: (1) I had enjoyed some older movies in which I'd seen this movie's stars, namely Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Marion Cotillard, and I wanted to see if I would enjoy their work just as much in this one; and (2) I wanted to find out if "Midnight in Paris" really puts the viewer in Paris. Following is what I found out.

Midnight in Paris puts the viewer in Paris from the start of the film, as images of the city amble across the screen behind beginning credits, and while jazz trumpeter Sidney Bechet is playing "Si Tu Vois Ma Mere;" And it keeps the viewer in Paris throughout the story, so much so that the city itself becomes a character.

Other outstanding characters in the film are Gil (Owen Wilson), a disenchanted Hollywood screenwriter-turned-novelist, and Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso's mistress and one of many people Gil encounters during his nightly jaunts to his favorite golden era, the 1920s.

In the present, Gil is in Paris with his girlfriend Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents, conservative Republicans in Paris on business. At night while Inez is dining, dancing, and otherwise hanging out with her parents and a couple of old friends she bumps into, Gil is traveling back in time to the 1920s and hanging out with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and others of the so called Lost Generation during the time known as The Jazz Age. Gil also enjoys Cole Porter's music and he encounters Josephine Baker and other extraordinarily talented expatriates.

Midnight in Paris, the 2011 Cannes Film Festival opener is sometimes light and breezy, other times gray and melancholy, but it's almost always romantic, and it ends as it probably should: Gil finds real love with a girl in present-day Paris; and after breaking up with Inez and her parents permanently, he remains in the City of Light and starts living his dream in the 21st Century.

Essays about Paris in Notes of a Native Son

  

 

 

Recently I opened Notes of a Native Son (originally published in 1955), by one of America's greatest writers, James Baldwin (1924 - 1987).  The Francophile in me made me turn first in this book of essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and Americans abroad to the two essays about his experiences in Paris, France.  As I was reading Baldwin's Paris essays, I was thinking how sad that his early relationship with the City of Light could not have been more positive.  However, as a quote on the Fantastic Quotes page of this blog states, "Everyone develops his or her own personal relationship with Paris."

 

One of Baldwin's two Paris essays, “Equal in Paris” reveals the hard times he had with surviving, adjusting to life, and making friends during his first year in Paris.  In the stark realism of this essay about Baldwin’s personal experiences, there are mentions of various places he frequented, including the historically literary landmark, Café de Flore:

… for as soon as I was out of bed, I hopefully took notebook and fountain pen off to the upstairs room of the Flore, where I consumed rather a lot of coffee, and as evening approached …

There is a general mention of the cafés of St. Germain des Près:

… in one of the cafés of St. Germain des Près, I was discovered by this New Yorker and only because we found ourselves in Paris we immediately established the illusion that we had been fast friends back in the good old U.S.A.

The Gare St. Lazare and Ile de la Cité are also referenced in "Equal in Paris."

The other Paris essay in Notes of a Native Son is titled “Encounter on the Seine:  Black Meets Brown,” which speaks to the differences between Africans’ and American Negroes’ experiences in Paris, based upon the differences in their histories.  Places such as Chez Inez, La Sorbonne, and the Place de la Concorde are mentioned in this essay.  
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*Note:  Baldwin's personal relationship with Paris, France, eventually became better; for he lived in the South of France for most of his later life, and he died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.

Celebrating Gwendolyn Bennett's Birthday

Writer, poet, and artist Gwendolyn Bennett's birthday is July 8th.  But since I believe a person's birthday celebration should not be limited to just one day in the month, I'm starting the celebration  early with this piece about Bennett's Paris-connected moment in time.

Gwendolyn Bennett was one of the literary lights of the Harlem Renaissance.  The Columbia U. and Pratt Institute graduate became a professor of art at Howard University in 1924.  In 1925 she received a $1,000 fellowship from the Sigma Alpha Theta sorority to study in Paris, and she arrived in the French capital in June of the same year.

During her year in the City of Light, she met writer Gertrude Stein, singer and activist Paul Robeson, poet and novelist René Maran, and other writers and performers.  She carved a place for herself in the African American Community there.

As she did not have a lot of money, Bennett spent many of her days painting and writing poetry,  and recording her observations in a journal.

About the City, she wrote in her journal:

            “There never was a more beautiful city than Paris… there couldn’t be.  On every hand are works of art and beautiful vistas. . . one has the impression of looking through at fairy-worlds as one sees gorgeous buildings, arches and towers rising from among mounds of trees from afar.”

While living in Paris, Bennett saw Josephine Baker perform, and met musicians, singers, and dancers.  She dated Louis Jones, a violinist, and she enjoyed dancing at Bricktop’s nightclub, and experienced nights on the town in Montmartre.

After the year ended, Gwendolyn Bennett returned to New York.  Although she never lived in Paris again, she paid homage to that great city in short stories that she wrote, such as “Wedding Day” and “Tokens.”   Her time in Paris had surely broadened her literary horizons,  just as it had done for other important African American writers of the 1920s,  

The Paris Reunion Band

Several years ago, I was reading an article about American saxophonist and educator Nathan Davis (now Professor Emeritus, U Pittsburgh), and a new album of his that was about to be released at the time.  The article led me to Davis’s website.  From his website and other sources I learned that Davis not only lived in Paris for most of the 1960s and played music with many other musicians there, but he was also co-founder of the Paris Reunion Band. 

 

In 1984, Nathan Davis co-founded the Paris Reunion band with British writer, historian and producer Mike Hennessey, who originally came up with the idea.  The two men co-founded the band with the assistance of legendary African American drummer Kenny Clarke, who at that time had lived and worked in Paris for nearly 30 years.

 

After Kenny Clarke’s sudden death in 1985, the Paris Reunion Band continued to perform and record around the world as a tribute to Clarke and the jazz scene that flourished in Paris in the 1950s and ‘60s.  The Paris Reunion Band--what a tribute to a beloved musician who moved from the United States to Paris when he was 42 years-old and never looked back.  In fact, a quote expressing his love of Paris appears on the Fabulous Quotes about Paris page of this blog.  Take a moment and check it out.

 

American Expatriate Musicians in France

Dee Dee Bridgewater

It's well known that a number of American jazz musicians have lived in Paris and other European cities, often because work opportunities have been greater there than in the States at certain times, like during the 1950s,‘60s, and ‘70s.

Drummer Kenny Clarke moved to Paris in 1956. He worked steadily, steadily, married and had a son.  He moved his family into a house, and he lived in France for the rest of his life.  


Tenor saxophone player Hal Singer settled in Paris in the early 1960s and still lives there, as does pianist and vocalist Bobby Few, who moved there in 1969.

Trumpet player, saxophonist and educator Nathan Davis also lived in Paris in the ‘60s.  He later returned to the States and pursued a dual career as a musician and as a professor and director of Jazz Studies at U. Pittsburgh.  He retired in 2013 and is now Professor Emeritus there.

Jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater moved to the City of Light from Flint, Michigan in 1986 and has said that France opened its arms to her.  She added that her time in France was one of healing, growth as a woman and artist, and the lives of her two daughters, as well as her own, have been deeply enriched, because they've lived in France.  She met her husband Jean-Marie Durand in France, and they have a son.

 

 

Spring Love Affairs

The calendar tells us springtime begins in late March.  However, some people think spring begins in late April or early May and that it lasts until early to mid-June; because in regions where four seasons occur, mild to warm weather used to arrive and settle in during these months.  But with the way Climate Change has been affecting the weather in recent years, no one has been able to predict spring's exact arrival month or how long it will last before we're plunged into hot, hazy summer weather.

Whenever spring has arrived and settled in, however, many people's thoughts have turned to romance or perhaps to a love affair.  The love affair could be with a favorite place or with a person, or it could be with both simultaneously.  One’s thoughts might even turn to an ended affair and how wonderful it was while it lasted.

As most people know, a person's love affair with a favorite city is described in the song “April in Paris.”

An affair with a beautiful person in a beautiful city is considered in the poem titled "April in Paris;" which is included in the poetry books, The Sound of Dreams Remembered and Something about the Blues.  Both books are by African American novelist, essayist, and poet Al Young. 

An ended love affair is described in the song “I’ll Remember April,” as its lyricists (Patricia Johnston and Don Raye) convey the beauty of April and the loveliness of the affair experienced during that month.  The song, composed by Gene de Paul, also speaks of the contentment and  gratefulness the lover feels for having had the affair at all. 

Sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller

Recently I was reading about Meta Warrick Fuller, the renowned African American painter and sculptor who was born Meta Warrick on June 9, 1877 in Philadelphia, and reared in the same city.  At the age of 18 she won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum and School for Industrial Art.  After graduating with honors in 1899, she sailed to Paris, France.

In Paris, Meta Warrick studied at the Academie Colaross, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and with figure painter Raphael Collin.  In 1902 she exhibited sculpture at S. Bing’s gallery, L’Art Nouveau and met and studied with master sculptor Auguste Rodin.  Her works, The Wretched and The Impenitent Thief exhibited at the Salon in Paris just before she returned to the United States. 

After she returned to the States, she continued creating and exhibiting various works of art.  In 1907, Meta Warrick married Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, who became the first black psychiatrist in the world.  After her marriage in Massachusetts, she continued her career into the Harlem Renaissance Era and beyond.  She died on March 18, 1968.