LEROI JONES' 'BLUES PEOPLE' INSPIRES 'SINNERS'
A 1963 music history book connects with a 2025 blockbuster
I haven’t done many Follow the Sound episodes recently because of the cold New York winter. But spring is here and i’ll be back to posting more. This one represents both the past and the present. I read Leroi Jones’ ‘Blues People’ when I was a college student interested in a career documenting music history. By the time I met him Jones had become Amiri Baraka and had evolved far from his days writing about music and writing plays. But the legacy of ‘Blues People,’ published in 1963, was a huge influence on my writing ‘The Death of Rhythm & Blues’ two decades later. I’d actually work at the Village Voice with one of his daughters Lisa, who has had a fine career as a columnist and screenwriter. Doing a ‘Follow the Sound’ on 27 Cooper Square, where he wrote ‘Blues People,’ lived with his first wife, writer Hettie Jones, and shared the walk up with jazz man Archie Sheep, was long overdue. The building is now towered over by a Standard Hotel, but there’s a plaque that documents his time at 27 Cooper Square. My first edition of ‘Blues People’ is one of my prized possessions.
MY FIRST EDITION COPY OF ‘BLUES PEOPLE.’
HISTORIC MARKER NEXT TO 27 COOPER SQUARE
In the press run for ‘Sinners,’ director/writer Ryan Coogler cited ‘Blues People’ as one of the books he read in preparing to write his screenplay for ‘Sinners.’ A more personal inspiration was his late Uncle. His music collaborator Ludwig Goranson had a connection to the blues via his guitar playing father. The video below details the musical journey of the ‘Sinners’ soundtrack, a journey that connects a 1963 literary classic with a 2025 blockbuster.
Both ‘Blues People’ and ‘Sinners’ are essential arguments for the centrality of black Americans to this counrty’s history. No erasure possible.
Speaking of music and America, my documentary about Gordon Parks, hip hop and Harlem — A Great Day in Hip Hop — continues its crowdfunding campaign. The Indiegogo link is below.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-great-day-in-hip-hop-the-film/x/11010058#/