Being one of the few artists that was introduced twice in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Michael Jackson also entered Guiness Book as the most successful showman of all times, won 13 Grammy prizes, had 13 singles at the top of all charts and sales of more than 750 million albums in the whole world.

Michael Jackson’s life was intensely covered by the media, dubled by a successful career, representing a significant part of the pop culture for almost four decades.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born on 29th August 19158 in Gary, Indiana, being the 7th out of 9 children. The five Jackson boys – Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael sustained their first concert as The jackson Five, when Michael had only 11 years.

The band was promoted by the popular Motown disc records and acknowledged world-wide success. After this moment, Michael launched his solo career.

He made his debut in 1972, and 10 years later he launched the album “Thriller”, which became a super hit. The album sold in 21 million copies just in US and 27 million copies worldwide.

At the beginning of the 80s, Jackson became a dominant figure for pop music, being the first afro-american showman intensely promoted by MTV.

On the stage and on his videoclips, Jackson made some inovations with his dance moves, such as the famous “moonwalk”.

The album “Bad” launched in 1987 sold almost as good the previous. Every new album signed by Michael, every appearance was a major event. People were copying his haircut, as well as his extravagant outfits.

Showbiz veterans such as Fred Astaire were praising him while Michael was making pictures with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House.

Paul McCartney made duets with him, such as “The Girl Is Mine” and “Say Say Say”.

Next launch from Michael, “Dangerous” (1991), entered first place in all the charts.

After this album, the artist’s private life put his career in the shadow. A double “greatest hits” album launched in 1995, “History”, had weak sales in comparison with his last performances – only 7 million copies.

A new album launched in 2001, “Invincible”, got even more disappointing sales.

Other aspects of his private life, such as his face in a permanent change, his excentric appearances and his weird behaviour, started to make the public sick. Also, numerous controverses affected his image in the last two decades.

In 1993 he was acused of molesting a kid, but police investigation were closed because of lack of evidence. Also, in 2005, Michael was again investigated for pedophilia, but was eventually cleared of all charges.

The artist had also a series of financial problems, even being on the point of selling his famous farm Neverland, in May 2008. Few months later, in november, he gave the property title of Neverland to a company started by himself and the company that owned a mortgage of 24 million dollars over the residence.

Michael Jackson was wedded twice, first with Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie Prestley.

Even if public interest decreased over the years, Michael never lost his fans.

Proof is in the 50 good-bye concerts he had scheduled at O2 Arena from London, starting with 13th July. 75 thousand tickets were sold in just a few hours.

He died less than a month before making his comeback on the stage, leaving behind three children: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson II.

Important figures in rock music had died before 1977: Buddy Holly, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison. But none of them enjoyed the iconic status of Elvis, and none of their deaths provoked the widespread outpouring of grief and adulation that followed Elvis’s demise. It had not, at the time, become customary for artistes to record songs commemorating the deaths of fellow rock musicians (Don McLean’s “American Pie” (1972) was the earliest of the musical eulogies to a fallen hero that I can recollect, and it was an aberration), but a number of lyrics written and sung by other leading figures in the world of rock mentioned Elvis’s death in the years that followed. What is remarkable is that some of them were penned long after we lost Elvis, demonstrating that those honouring him were still unable to come to terms with his death despite the passage of many years. The most memorable are Neil Young’s “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and its companion piece “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” from the Rust Never Sleeps album (1979), Bruce Springsteen’s 1983 rewrite of the Chuck Berry classic “Bye Bye Johnny”, and Dire Straits’ “Calling Elvis”, the opening track of the massively successful album On Every Street (1991).

“Hey Hey, My My” is one of rock’s most important anthems, containing within its lyric the assertions that rock music is eternal and that (as another commentator eloquently put it) the artiste’s reach must always exceed his grasp. How fitting that in that context, and in the aftermath of the dissolution of the short-lived Sex Pistols, Neil Young paid homage in the following words: “The king is gone but he’s not forgotten/ Is this the story of Johnny Rotten?/It’s better to burn out ’cause rust never sleeps/The king is gone but he’s not forgotten”. More evocative still was Springsteen’s “Johnny Bye-Bye”, in which Chuck Berry’s joy at the ascent to rock stardom of the country boy who could play turns to mournful despair as the lure of drugs takes his life. The rewrite yields one of the most moving songs in all of rock, as Springsteen sings: “I’ll be going down there [Memphis] if you need a ride/A man on the radio says Elvis Presley’s died/. . . Bye-bye Johnny/Johnny bye-bye/You didn’t have to die/You didn’t have to die”. Mark Knopfler’s tribute was a playful stitching together of Elvis song titles and phrases associated with the King (“let me leave my number – Heartbreak Hotel/oh love me tender – baby don’t be cruel/return to sender – treat me like a fool”), but it has nevertheless has an affecting moment when Knopfler sings (a full 14 years after Elvis died): “you gotta tell him – he’s still the man”.

Elvis’s death had the predictable effect of sending his then-recent studio album Moody Blue shooting up the charts (the album and its hit single “Way Down” both reached the top spot in Britain in the week ending 3 September 1977), and sparking an insatiable demand for copies of his recordings that, within a short time, resulted in his posthumous record sales exceeding those achieved in his lifetime. Several poorly packaged compilation and live albums were released by his record company, RCA, before it had the grace, many years hence, to anthologize Elvis properly – in three definitive 5-CD box sets released between 1992 and 1995: The King of Rock ’n’ Roll: The Complete 50’s Masters, From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential 60’s Masters I and Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential 70’s Masters. These compilations are where the serious Elvis fan should start, containing as they do 390 tracks between them, including all of the important material in Elvis’s catalogue, from the two songs he cut as an acetate recording in the summer of 1953 at the studio of the Memphis Recording Service to give to his mother Gladys, through his seminal Sun Records recordings, to highlights from Moody Blue, released in June 1977.

But there are scores of other compilations, and it is impossible to give a full account of them here. For the casual fan or the beginner, however, I would recommend the 1 and 2nd to None albums released in 2002 and 2003, which contain (respectively) the Number One hits and the second tier of really important material, such as “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Love Me” and “Little Sister”. Those who wish to delve a little deeper will get a good overview of the different facets of Elvis’s musical output from the six discount-price CDs released in 2006, Elvis Rock, Elvis Country, Elvis Inspirational, Elvis R & B, Elvis Live and Elvis Movies (although potential buyers should be warned that much of the songwriting on the Movies disc is of substandard quality).

For the aficionado, there are box sets galore (I own 14, and my collection is far from complete). Some are aimed at providing a bird’s eye view of Elvis’s career as a singer (such as the 3-CD Artist of the Century (1999)) or at commemorating milestone anniversaries (for example A Golden Celebration, originally released on vinyl in 1985, to mark what would have been Elvis’s 50th birthday). Others focus on particular phases of his career, for instance Live in Las Vegas (2001), or have been issued in order to make available previously unreleased outtakes or concert recordings (such as Today, Tomorrow & Forever (2002)). The ultimate set, though, is The Original Elvis Presley Collection, released in 1996 by BMG Nederland BV, which contains (apart from a catalogue documenting the collection and a certificate of authenticity) 50 CDs, incorporating every studio, live and compilation album released in Elvis’s lifetime, with reproductions of the original album packaging on each. (Copies of this magnificent set become available from time to time on Amazon.co.uk, normally second-hand, and generally for prices in the region of GBP400 to 450, excluding delivery charges. I was lucky enough to pick up a new set for only GBP200 earlier this year, so it is worth keeping one’s eyes peeled for a bargain on this item.)

As we approach the point at which Elvis will have been gone for a third of a century, I remember, with a mixture of delight and sorrow, some of the most incendiary moments of his incredible career: the seminal Sun recording of “Mystery Train”; the moment in his 1968 Comeback Special when, clad head to toe in black leather and looking as beautiful as any rock star has ever done, he tore first into “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, then (standing alone on stage, red guitar slung over his shoulder) into “Heartbreak Hotel”; the moment at the end of the 1970 concert movie That’s the Way It Is when he brings his Las Vegas audience to its feet, screaming with applause, as the curtain begins to descend at the climax of “Can’t Help Falling in Love”; the show-stopping performances of “American Trilogy” on the As Recorded at Madison Square Garden and Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite albums. And in honour to his memory I can do no better than sing back to him these lines from “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, that he delivered so magnificently in his concerts of the 1970s: “I can’t stop wanting you/Well, it’s useless to say/So I’ll just live my life in dreams of yesterday”.

Legendary Jazz singer Al Jarreau is currently undergoing various tests at a cardiac center in Marseille, France after suffering breathing problems and becoming “weak from the altitude” while in the French Alps last week.

According to his publicist, the 70-year-old Grammy Award-winner became ill July 22 in the southern French Alps which forced the singer to cancel a string of shows in Germany, Azerbaijan and France.

“Mr. Jarreau hopes to resume his tour at the end of the coming week,” according to a statement posted on his website. “Meanwhile, he has been quietly serenading the hospital staff to stay on point.”

Jarreau’s cardiologist, Dr. Jean-Louis Bonnet stated today that the singer could possibly be discharged this weekend before continuing his scheduled European concert tour.

The doctor added that “everything’s going well” and that Jarreau’s “state of health is coming along quite normally.”

The world was Lena Horne’s stage, and she owned it!

A fearless performer and activist, her passing last month saddened those who respected her work and loved her talent.

The Brooklyn, New York native got her first stage job — at the age of 16 — dancing and singing at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem, where she was mentored by the likes of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway.

Her undeniable talent took her to Broadway where she was able to display her acting chops, and in the 1940s Horne signed a landmark deal with MGM Studios (becoming the highest paid black actor at the time).

Remembered for such films as ‘Cabin In The Sky,’ ‘Swing Fever,’ and ‘Stormy Weather’ (of which the title song became her signature song), the Tony Award-winning, Grammy Award-winning diva was adamant about not playing stereotypical roles.

In commemoration of what would have been her 93rd birthday, we celebrate the life and times of the late, great, legendary Lena Horne.

I took a poll of some of my industry homies last week to get a sense of how”Thank Me Later,” the debut album for Drake, was going to sell. It turns out that out of those bold enough to make a prediction, my friends Michael Bivins (formerly of Belle, Biv, Devoe and New Edition) and Vigalantee (a rapper in Kansas City, MO), were closest. Vigalantee predicted 450,000 units and Mike Biv predicted 400,000. No matter how you slice it, Drake is now officially the shizzle.

It’’s not as if anyone is surprised by Drake’s stellar debut. He and the rest of the Young Money clique did an outstanding job creating buzz for the album and Drake proved that even in the age of massive Internet pirating, he can still make his money.

Drake’s sales are impressive, but don’t match the sales mojo of Eminem, who pushed out 608,000 copies during the first week of his 2009 album, “Relapse.” He will also most likely never match the amazing performance of his mentor (and I use that term lightly) Lil Wayne, who was able to push over a million in the first week of his album, “Tha Carter III,” released in 2008. Either way, Drake should be congratulated for kicking some butt both here and around the world.

Most of Drake’s songs have been commercial hits, hardly earning the respect of hip hop purists. But what I like about Drake, as opposed to Eminem, Lil Wayne, Jay-Zand others, is that his music doesn’t come with a destructive gimmick. He’s not bragging about packing a gun, selling drugs or being more blinged out than a diamond mine. Instead, he’s just a young brother with a serious flow doing his thing in the studio. While some might think that Drake doesn’t represent the essence of hip hop, I might be inclined to agree: Instead, Drake represents THE FUTURE of hip hop, and that cannot be denied.

In a world where beauty and youth are idolized, it makes one question whether there really is a place for women over 40 in the entertainment industry.

Ten years into her career, Macy Gray found herself a free agent. She had sold 15 million albums world-wide, scored two Grammy Awards as well as two MTV awards, but at 40 years-old the acclaimed singer found that her age rather than her talent was being put into question.

In a recent article penned for the Huffington Post, the raspy voiced songstress discusses her on-going battle with age discrimination and why the entertainment industry should reconsider what it means to be young.

GRAY ON THE FIGHT OF FORTY
“‘I don’t know how to get a 40-year-old woman on the radio. If she was 20, 25 then this record would be incredible.’ This quote comes from a powerful record label executive, just before she said no to signing me for my fifth album. And who would fault her? Everybody knows that a 40-year-old female recording artist is ‘geriatric.’ While a 46-year-old president is the ‘new kid on the block,’ a singer over 30 is just a few songs away from the nursing home of music.”

GRAY ON YOUTH IN A BOTTLE
“The obvious remedies: Age defying crème, botox, face lifts, brow lifts, hair dye, Perricone Promises, super foods and denial. Lying about our age was once a quick fix, but Wikipedia has ruined that for everybody. Cosmetic touch-ups and diet discipline may take ten years off, but how do you go ten years back? How do you sing songs that are relevant to teenagers and who are you fooling if you try?”

GRAY ON BEING YOUNG AT HEART
“The truth is that as a mother of three teenagers, I can tell you that the music industry drastically underestimates the souls of the young. And that there are over 40 million women, in the United States alone, in their 30s, 40s and beyond, that are starving to be musically inspired and lyrically represented. While the fans miss out on great music because of age discrimination, there is still BEAUTY IN THE WORLD.”

Basseterre, St.Kitts

Wyclef Jean met Infamus when he was invited to be the headline act at a Concert held at St.Kitts’ Warner Park Stadium.

The Haitian born artiste during his astounding performance told thousands that he heard a song playing the previous night and liked it.

Just as the beat for Inafmus’ first big hit ‘21 Gun Salute (We Miss You)’ began playing the crowd reacted with a massive uproar as they were thrilled to see their very own being recognized by the megastar.

Infamus entered the stage letting the viewers know that he was there to represent as he shouted his now famous line “Infamus a Represent !!!!!!”

He performed his two hit singles and did a impromptu performance with Wyclef Jean for ‘Feel like Crying’.

“I like your songs,” Jean declared. “Them tunes need to be on 106 & Park, We gotta work on that. I got to go back and talk to them people and tell them I saw something tonight.”

Jean’s statement followed with an eruption of cheers once more from the massive crowd and both artistes continued performing together with freestyles and an on the spot remix for Jean’s hit ‘Sweetest Girl’.

This collaborative performance came about after a member of Jean’s band along with his manager made contact with Infamus the night before.

According to Infamus’ Manager Diego Spanner, Jean’s manager was amazed at the crowd’s reaction when the DJ played ‘Feel Like Crying’ during his set. They then observed a young boy singing the song as if he knew every word.

“He then asked the little boy what was the name of the artiste, because it appeared to them as if it was an international song as everyone was into it,” he said. “The boy then corrected their initial assumption by boldly stating, “He’s from right here! His name is Infamus!”

When Jean’s manager managed to get in contact with Infamus later that evening he expressed his liking for the music and thought it would be good to have him perform with Wyclef Jean.

Upon Jean’s arrival to the island the following day, Infamus was thrilled to receive a follow up phone call from the international star, which confirmed the collaborative performance.

Jean’s team also highlighted their anxiety to have the young artiste record in there state of the art studio back in New York along with the possibilities of being contracted to Yclef Records. Yclef Records is a record label owned by Jean and their aim is to showcase talents from all hidden corners of the world.

Performing live on stage with Wyclef Jean has been the greatest experience in the career of this young artiste, who possess a unique singing style he expresses as “Life & Times”.

While it’s clear he underestimates his ability to do better in the fidelity department, it seems the singer has limited himself musically as well.

The Jim Jonsin-produced There Goes My Baby is instantly appealing, but upbeat club tracks including Lil Freak, featuring rap “it” girl Nicki Minaj, and She Don’t Know, with Ludacris, are catchy but disappointingly safe choices for 31-year-old Usher.

So Many Girls and the will.i.am-produced OMG border on disastrous as far as sound and lyrics go, but the real letdown of Raymond v Raymond is that those who listen to it won’t know any more about Usher Raymond, as an artiste or a man, than they previously did.

]]> http://www.askblackie.com/2010/03/same-old-usher/feed/ 0 http://www.askblackie.com/2010/03/2010-is-looking-brand-new-for-reggae-ballardeer-ernie-smith/ http://www.askblackie.com/2010/03/2010-is-looking-brand-new-for-reggae-ballardeer-ernie-smith/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:05:36 +0000 admin http://www.askblackie.com/?p=231 Reggae Legend, Ernie Smith in celebrating 42 years in reggae music has re-launched his website featuring significant changes to further promote his career.

The site is designed to enhance Ernie’s visibility on the World Wide Web. Producers, Performers, Promoters, Radio DJs and Sound System Operators are encouraged to visit Ernie’s website for information as well as to listen, and/ or download samples of his songs – old and new – for study/cover/collaboration.

Fans, Family and friends are also encouraged to submit photos of themselves and Ernie for review and possibly, periodic inclusion on the site.

All in all 2010 is gearing up to be fun-filled.

Ernie Smith is promoting his album “Country Mile” and will be visiting some Caribbean Islands, East Coast of the United States and Central America from late March to August 2010.

The Reggae Ballardeer recently told us “I am heartened by the responses I have been receiving from the album. I know now that my evergreen fans are enjoying it and lo and behold, I have a new crop of fans. I am blessed. It is my hope that Music Lovers everywhere will be satisfied after listening. I did try to touch on some key issues of social forms”.

Ernie is slated to perform on the 8th Annual Talent Search and Award Show at Giggles Comedy & Entertainment Centre, Long Island, on the 27th of March.

AVENTURA

The first 200 customers to make a purchase of $50 or more at Macy’s Fashion Store at Aventura Mall on the day of the event will receive a copy of K’Jon’s CD, and poster, which he’ll autograph.

Three lucky couples will be chosen on-site to participate in a Chicago Style Steppin’ contest. They’ll compete for a chance to win a pair of Jazz in the Gardens tickets and a Macy’s gift card.

K’Jon, knows how to set the scene! He has recently released his first full-length major label debut, I Get Around, a superb collection with nods to both his contemporaries, including KEM and Robin Thicke, and his predecessors, like fellow Detroiter, Marvin Gaye. According to Billboard, the Detroit native’s hit 2009 single, “On The Ocean”, has spent a record 72 weeks on the R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart, surpassing Usher’s record.

“On The Ocean” has become a huge hit within the Chicago Style Steppin’ community. In other parts of the country, the elegant adult style of dance is called “jazz dance”, “The Cakewalk”, “The Ringshout”, “The Jitterbug” and “The Swing”, spawning thousands of avid followers across the United States.

K’Jon has been singing since he was eight years old- but what started out as a hobby has morphed into an incredible career. In 2004, his song, “Miami” was featured on the soundtrack for 2Fast2Furious. He has opened for everyone from Ludacris and Ne-Yo to Raheem DeVaughn.