[A-List] The Loss of a Jazz Warrior-Abbey Lincoln, 1930-2010

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The Loss of a Jazz Warrior -- Abbey Lincoln, 1930-2010
Obituary by John Pietaro
August 16, 2010
submitted to portside

The struggle against racial injustice has lost a most
stirring cultural worker; another artist of conscience
is gone with passage of time. But wasn't that a time?

Vocalist, actress and activist Abbey Lincoln captured
the energy and drive of an era in the media of
recording and film as few others could, staring down
the camera's probing eye and shouting back into the
microphone with the sure-footedness of a warrior-woman.
She refuted the oppression of Hollywood's type-cast as
boldly she rebelled against song's harmonic structure,
over and beyond the accepted norms. Lincoln's art was
indeed her most telling weapon and she brandished this
with a certain fearlessness that would rock the
white-dominated entertainment industry during years of
social upheaval. Her most recalled work, 'We Insist!:
Freedom Now Suite' angrily challenged those singing of
overcoming some day; brimming with restlessness, her's
was not a protest art of patience.

Anna Marie Wooldridge was born in Chicago on August 6,
1930, when streams of unemployed workers roamed the
streets and the African American population, already
struggling against the heavy boot of apartheid America,
knew burdens of untold proportions. For those already
poor the Great Depression was a furtherance of the
deprivation they'd experienced in the so-called boom
years, but now with a new urgency, a new desperation.
The entertainment industry was one means to economic
salvation in the working class Black community and
Chicago--the site of Jazz' momentous development over
the decade prior--was a hotbed of activity. Though
largely raised in a rural suburb, Lincoln absorbed
through osmosis the fierceness of transplanted New
Orleans. Her singing speaks of the ages, smoky-throated
hipness informed by Billie Holiday, cool urban blues
and raw field hollers by way of sumptuous ballads and
sizzling swing.

The newly christened 'Abbey Lincoln', relocated on the
west coast, became an in-demand performer on the
nightclub circuit. A double threat, Lincoln recorded
her debut album the same year she was cast in the Jayne
Mansfield movie, 'The Girl Can't Help It' (1956) which
also featured Little Richard and a bevy of popular
musicians. With the hope of a glitzy film career
waiting in the wings, the beautiful young actress
instead refocused her efforts on collaborations with
drummer-composer Max Roach, whom she would be married
to from 1962 through '70. Starting with 1957, their
projects together were revolutionary on several levels:
woven not from the simple packaging of songs but with
the serious intent of a singular, unified message, they
recorded several concept albums, most powerfully the
'Freedom Now Suite' (1960), a hallmark of protest
music. Air-borne melodies descend into guttural moans,
interspersed with burning post-bop phrases and
expansive harmonies. But Lincoln stretched the scope
still further; her speech-song vocal on "Driva Man" is
a chilling lesson in the power of song as a force of
social protest, a "Strange Fruit" for the Civil Rights
era.

During the '60s Lincoln continued working with Roach
but also took to the stage or studio with other Jazz
legends including Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy.
However by 1964 she had successfully brought the
message back to the film genre, co-starring with the
grossly underrated actor Ivan Dixon in 'Nothing But a
Man', a bold depiction of the racism so rampant in the
deep south. Shortly thereafter she was paired with
Sidney Poitier in the moving 'For Love of Ivy' (1968),
where Lincoln was cast in the titular role.

By 1970 Abbey Lincoln became a common sight on
television and film, offering scant examples of her
power as a vocalist, but in 1980 she had something of a
musical resurgence. In the past three decades, Lincoln
performed widely and recorded numerous collections of
relevant Jazz works, often featuring her own
compositions. Though her lyrics had been a part of
several earlier collaborations, Lincoln's focus on her
own material began in earnest in 1972 while traveling
through Africa. She came to see her calling as that of
a story-teller and upon re-entering music performance
full-time, encompassed a large catalog of original
material. Over the course of a series of albums
exploring her career's expanse, she received
much-deserved critical acclaim in recent years. To most
in the crowded venues she played, Lincoln was at the
zenith of her art. Abbey Lincoln remained a thriving,
independent performer into her final years, never again
allowing the gauntlet to slip away, never once
refraining from speaking truth to the power that might
otherwise have sought her silence.

No, Driva Man. No.

--John Pietaro is a cultural worker from New York City-
www.flamesofdiscontent.org

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