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.

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.

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,  

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.