(What Did I Do to Be so) Black and Blue?

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(What Did I Do to Be so) Black and Blue? , often shorter Black and Blue , is the title of an anti-racist song by lyricist Andy Razaf from 1929 . The composition is by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks . It is in the song form AABA, comprises 32 bars and contains two beats in the melody. The song was created for the show Hot Chocolade . The lyrics are about an African American woman who is rejected by the African American man she desires because he only loves women with fair skin.

Impact history

The song caused a scandal when the show was first performed. The best known performer is Louis Armstrong , who recorded the song in 1929 with the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra . He changed the text to point out racial discrimination by whites by removing the following two verses: “ Brown and yellows all get fellows, gentleman prefer them light. “That way he could turn the song into a black man's lawsuit against racial discrimination . This is how the song was understood in its further impact history. The narrator of the key Afro-American novel The Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison wants (What Did I Do to Be so) Black and Blue? Hear it five times simultaneously in Armstrong's versions to feel its vibration . In the novel, the song, although actually a little cheesy, establishes its tone.

Black and Blue became Black and Blue, in particular through Armstrong's numerous recordings, but also through interpretations by Ethel Waters and Sidney Bechet , Wild Bill Davison , Roy Eldridge , Earl Hines , Peanuts Hucko , Albert Nicholas , Muggsy Spanier , Clark Terry , Dinah Washington and Teddy Wilson a jazz standard . As an instrumental title, it has also been interpreted by Ruby Braff , Dave Brubeck , Humphrey Lyttelton , André Previn , Edmond Hall , Booker Ervin , Zoot Sims / Joe Pass and Ray Bryant .

The song, which was subsequently performed by Armstrong with the shortened text, has been sung less often in the last few decades, as lines like “ I'm white inside ” and “ my only sin is my skin ” seem offensive due to the shortening . As if one had to be white on the inside, if not on the outside. In 2000 Rose Nabinger took up the title again with a modified text. “ I'm right inside ” and “ there is no sin in the color of a skin! “It says with her.

Armstrong's 1929 version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Songs 1900-1929
  2. ↑ Harry Brooks biography
  3. ↑ James Lincoln Collier Louis Armstrong. 1985, p. 241
  4. ↑ Thomas Huke Jazz and Blues in the Afro-American Novel: From the Turn of the Century to the Present. Königshausen & Neumann 1990, pp. 145f.
  5. ↑ Grammy Hall of Fame Inducts 26 New Titles Jazz recordings include titles from Miles, Coltrane, Louis & Ella (2015) in ( Memento of the original from December 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. JazzTimes @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / jazztimes.com