When I first came up with the idea of a tribute to Black Movie Soundtracks at the Hollywood Bowl, I made a list of the songs that absolutely had to be in the show. I stopped writing by the time I got to 120 songs. Hopefully we’ll keep doing the show so I will eventually make it through my list. Here’s a list of albums that shaped this year’s edition of the Black Movie Soundtrack at the Hollywood Bowl.
By scoring Shaft, Isaac Hayes found a widescreen canvas to match his Cinemascope sound. Theme from Shaft is a classic, but don’t sleep on album cuts like Soulville and a pair of jazzy jams, Café Regio’s and Walk From Regio’s. Those two cuts turned the Village Café into a tourist destination when we visited New York as a kid.
Isaac Hayes performs “Shaft” at the Oscars in 1972.
Superfly, the movie is great, but without the Greek chorus effect of Curtis Mayfield’s song score commenting and critiquing the action, the movie wouldn’t be half as good as it is.
When I was a kid I would go see any movie that had Quincy Jones’ name on it as a composer. His name was the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. I loved the first movie of this franchise, Cotton Comes To Harlem, and the team up of Quincy Jones and the incredibly soulful singer, composer and pianist Donny Hathaway on the score was irresistible. The title cut is great, and “Little Ghetto Boy” was a hit for Donny — and a generation later for his daughter, Lalah Hathaway.
Marvin Gaye didn’t finish the score in time for the movie’s release, so what you hear in the film are rough demos. The final version of the music on the album is truly epic. Also, funk instrumental “T Plays It Cool” was one of the first legendary hip-hop break beats.
Earth, Wind and Fire scored Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, the first Blaxploitation film. Isaac Hayes won an Oscar. But Curtis Mayfield produced three legendary soundtracks: Superfly, Sparkle and Claudine, which he wrote and produced for Gladys Knight and the Pips. Both the film and the soundtrack are beloved.
Most people don’t know this album was a soundtrack, but it was so, and I’m happy to include it. The title cut is one of the all time great mid-tempos in soul music, but every cut is a banger.
Too easy. Purple Rain is one of the greatest albums ever made. Every track is magnificent and the movie stands alongside Enter The Dragon as a perfect piece of pop culture. But don’t sleep on Under The Cherry Moon’s expansive sound, and the ambitious reach of Sign Of The Times, which matches Prince’s 1999 as a totally successful double album.
Prince, along with Wendy and Lisa, accept the Oscar for Best Original Song for “Purple Rain” in 1985
Herbie Hancock does amazing work throughout this album filled with classic jazz tunes. This album has inspired a lot of movie and music making for me.
LA Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds broke into the soundtrack business with this album, which went double platinum, launched the career of Toni Braxton and yielded End Of The Road, which broke Elvis’ record for the longest single to stay at #1 on the Billboard charts.
Fresh off the success of the Boomerang soundtrack, LA and Babyface did it again with hit songs from Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Brandy and Toni Braxton. These two hit soundtracks, plus his work on Soul Food, The Preacher’s Wife and Prince Of Egypt established Babyface as one of the most important songwriters in film music.
Of course, these ten albums only scratch the surface. I still haven’t talked about the soundtracks of Black Orpheus, The Harder They Come, or Love Jones… or the incredible musical contributions of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Terence Blanchard or Wynton Marsalis. I guess that’s a list for another day.
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Reginald Hudlin, an Academy Governor, is a member of the Directors Branch. He received a Best Picture Oscar nomination for Django Unchained. His other feature film credits include Boomerang and House Party. Most recently he served as co-producer of the 88th Oscars.
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By popular demand, Grammy-winner Marcus Miller and acclaimed producer/director Reginald Hudlin reprise the Hollywood Bowl’s Black Movie Soundtrack event on August 31 with new clips and some funky favorites.
Film star and comedian Craig Robinson hosts this soulful celebration of black cinema classics with performances from Common; Philip Bailey, Verdine White, and Ralph Johnson of Earth Wind and Fire; Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds; Full Force; Lalah Hathaway; Gladys Knight; Alice Smith; Charlie Wilson; Marcus Miller; the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and special guests.
Click here to get your tickets to this memorable event.
Comment + PermalinkMONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2016 AT 4:45 A.M. BY JEFF WEISS
Reginald Hudlin, the producer behind the Hollywood Bowl’s “Black Movie Soundtrack” night, launched his career writing and directing the 1990 film House Party.
Before its release, most cinematic depictions of the genre were cash-ins, eager to capitalize on its swiftly rising stature in urban youth culture. It’s slightly reductive to say that House Party changed everything — that honor goes to the early work of Spike Lee — but the film’s genius lay in its accessibility, the charismatic performances of its young stars (Kid ‘n Play, Martin Lawrence, Tisha Campbell), a highly quotable script and the center stage it offered to the music.
If Lee demonstrated the incendiary power of hip-hop, his longtime friend, House Party director Reginald Hudlin, captured how much fun it could be. The dances, the freestyles, the high-top fades. Made for just $2.5 million, House Party grossed more than $26 million in theaters and remains one of the best hip-hop films in history.
“Most prior hip-hop movies had been made to exploit it — like, this is ‘the thing’ right now,” Hudlin says at his office in North Hollywood, where he’s in postproduction on Marshall, a film about a pivotal early case in the career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
“Hip-hop movies weren’t being made from the inside by people who were fans, and I was a fan who kind of knew nothing,” Hudlin continues with a laugh. “It felt like there was something really happening and we got to capture it.”
The roots of House Party stretch to the Illinois native’s days at Harvard. It was originally made as a short for his senior thesis, but the success of Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It opened up opportunities for other black directors, which ultimately led to then-fledgling New Line Cinema agreeing to finance a feature-length version.
Thanks to New Line’s successful lawsuit against the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff for sampling the theme from A Nightmare on Elm Street without permission, there’s an alternate reality where Kid ‘n Play were replaced by Will Smith and his DJ sidekick. “As part of the settlement, they were obligated to be in a movie for New Line,” Hudlin recalls, leaning back in his office chair, casually clad in a plaid button-up and jeans. After a quarter-century in the industry, he’s seemingly lost none of his enthusiasm for both music and film.
“I met with their manager, who at the time was Russell Simmons, and he was like, ‘We’re not going to be in your little movie; we got a big movie planned for them.’ I was like, ‘OK, they don’t want to be in the movie and I didn’t want you to force them to be in it.’”
The film’s success launched Hudlin’s career. He went on to direct 1992’s Boomerang, presiding over one of the greatest soundtracks of the era, and the unfairly maligned Great White Hype, whose soundtrack is a quietly unsung classic. Hudlin directed The Ladies Man and produced Django Unchained. He’s run BET and co-produced last year’s Academy Awards ceremony.
For his latest production, he spearheaded “The Academy Celebrates the Black Movie Soundtrack II” on Wednesday, Aug. 30, at the Hollywood Bowl. The stacked bill features Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Lalah Hathaway, Gladys Knight, Charlie Wilson, Common, the surviving members of Earth, Wind & Fire and Hudlin’s longtime musical collaborator, Marcus Miller. And, of course, you can’t overlook Full Force, the Brooklyn R&B group who played House Party’s villains.
“This is my dream,” Hudlin says. “I wanted all these great black scores … a chronological survey from the great jazz of the ’40s to the ’70s black exploitation scores, the rock and soul of the ’80s, up through today’s hip-hop. To do that in one night was the best show I could imagine.”
Comment + PermalinkBy Patrick Hipes, August 25, 2016 11:00am
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Buckner/Variety/REX/Shutterstock (5581765ah)
Anthony Anderson
47th NAACP Image Awards, Press Room, Los Angeles, America – 05 Feb 2016
The 48th annual NAACP Image Awards have been set for February 11, 2017 in a ceremony to air live as a two-hour telecast on TV One. Host Anthony Anderson is returning again as part of his multi-year deal with the event, which is being held again at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. TV One’s coverage will again include a live red-carpet preshow, with the production team including executive producers Reginald Hudlin and Phil Gurin returning as part of their own multi-year deals.
Nominations will be announced December 6 in categories covering the accomplishments of people of color in film, TV, music and literature. Last year, Creed scored wins in almost all of the categories it was nominated for including Best Actor and Best Director — Straight Outta Compton was tapped for Best Picture. Creed star Michael B. Jordan was also named Entertainer of the Year.
Here is the 2017 Image Awards timeline:
Tuesday, September 6
Submissions opens
Monday, October 3
Submissions closes
Tuesday, December 6
Nominees’ Press Conference
Saturday, January 28
Nominees’ Luncheon
February 10
Non-Televised Awards Dinner and Ceremony
Saturday, February 11
Red Carpet and Image Awards Telecast Airs Live on TV One