OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With The Fabulously Fierce Barbara Dane!

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Greetings, favored whores, and welcome to another kicky edition of Music Manor Monday, today with extra social protest 'n such. What do I mean by that? Find out tonight at the Manor's "Sloppy Sausage" after hours club. There, DJ Li'l Scratch will be playing tunes by one of the best white blues singers ever. No, for reals. She was a genuine blues and jazz legend whose abilities are as "rare as a 20 karat diamond," according to no less that Louis Armstrong. Jazz critic Leonard Feather called her “Bessie Smith in stereo.” 


In other words, Barbara Dane is the real deal. A fervent fighter for social justice - when that meant more than tickling a keyboard - Barbara's career took off when she moved to San Francisco in the late 1940s. There, she caught the eyes (and ears) of blues devotees all 'round town. Even Ebony, in what was said to be the magazine’s first profile of a white woman, was impressed by both her music and her no-holds barred advocacy for racial equality.

In the late 1960s, she'd become so successful as a singer that she opened "Sugar Hill," her own swingin' club, and continued her activism throughout the Vietnam War era. Given her civil rights activities, she was burdened, to put it mildly, by the FBI, who were constantly monitoring her movements and investigating every aspect of her life, both personal and professional. Sometime they interfered. As The New York Times reported in 1959, "Ms. Dane was blocked at the last minute from joining Louis Armstrong on a State Department-sponsored tour of Europe because of her provocative views on race." "'I was blacklisted for not playing ball, for not being a butt-kisser,'" she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2002.


Yet what's most striking about her debut LP, "Trouble In Mind" from 1957, is the battle-scarred conviction of her voice. It's as if she'd endured every single heartache in songs like "Ain't Nobody Got The Blues Like Me" or "Mighty Rumbling Blues." Most likely because she had. She's that good - and that exciting. Still.


A few years back, a documentary about her tumultuous life, "The 9 Lives Of Barbara Dane," earned accolades on the festival circuit. It's not streaming yet, but this preview makes me want to see it now-now-now. 

If you'd like to hear the rest of Barbara's LP, "Trouble In Mind," go RIGHT HERE!

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: San Francisco Chronicle; Sam Francisco Records; Getty Images

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