Page 24 - Florida Sentinel 1-20-17 Edition

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FLORIDA SENTINEL
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2017
Heritage Festival Featured Concert Act:
Dazz Band Plans To ‘Let It Whip’ And Serve It Up On Saturday
BY KENYA WOODARD Sentinel Feature Writer
It’s been years since 70s R&B group The Dazz Band released any new music – 16 to be exact.
But that will change this year, says founder and lead singer, Bobby Har- ris.
The reason behind the nearly two- decade wait? The Dazz Band’s fans deserve the very best, Harris said.
“If you’re going to serve it up to peo- ple, you serve it up with class,” he said. “If you want a four and five-star meal, that’s how we’re going to serve it up.”
An exact date for the next album re- lease has yet to be determined. But those who can’t wait will hear the band’s new tunes when it takes the stage this Saturday in Curtis Hixon Park at the Tampa Bay Black Heritage Festival’s music concert.
The two-day concert is the bookend to a 10-day series of events celebrating African American history, achievement, and culture. Admission is free and open to the public.
In a telephone interview from his California home, Harris said the band is excited to present new material to its fans.
The old “danceable jazz” sound is there, but with a twist, Harris said.
“I’m not trying to find another “Let It Whip” or “Joystick”,” he said, refer- encing two of the group’s most popular songs. “I’m trying to keep the approach to that sound with all the bells and whistles.”
Founded in 1976, The Dazz Band was a sleeper jazz funk band, originally named Kinsman Dazz, through the 1970s and into the 1980s, until its most famous single, 1982’s “Let it Whip,” put it at the top of music charts and gained the band national and international at- tention.
The song reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and earned the Cleveland-based
The Dazz Band will be in Tampa on Saturday. The band then and now.
a former band member over ownership and usage of the band’s name.
It’s a fight that Harris says he’s seen other bands go through, but never thought he would experience.
Nonetheless, Harris said he’s not backing down from protecting the legacy of the band he founded 41 years ago.
The legal battle coupled with the loss of his mother and brother in the last two months made 2016 a tough year.
Harris declined to give details about the fight over ownership rights, but said he’s expecting a ruling in his favor to soon come through.
“I’m feeling very optimistic,” he said. “I’m trying to stay positive and keep my head up.”
If You Go
group a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
But prior to the breakout, there were some stops and starts.
The band was fortunate to land Marvin Gaye as the producer of its first album when it was still known as the Kinsman Dazz.
The project was dealt a blow, how- ever, when Gaye became sick and stepped down, Harris said.
“I would have loved to see how that came out, because I loved Marvin Gaye,” he said.
Phillip Bailey of Earth, Wind, and Fire stepped in to finish the pro- duction and the album, Kinsman Dazz was released in 1978. Bailey also pro- duced the group’s follow up album, Dazz in 1979.
After years together, the group ap- peared to be on track for success. There was just one problem: the band sounded like a hybrid Earth, Wind, and Fire, Harris said.
“We lost the identity of what we were in Cleveland,” he said.
Looking back, Harris said the strings and lush production was a harsh contrast to the heavier, more synthe- sized beats of disco, which was hugely popular at the time.
“I think we were a little ahead of our
time with the stuff we did early on,” he said.
It wasn’t until a name change to The Dazz Band in 1980 and the re- lease of Let the Music Play a year later did the band “get back to ourselves,” Harris said.
“We got back into a head space of our own music,” he said.
The Dazz Band continued to record into the 1990s, releasing its last single – “Girl Got Body” – in 1998.
The decline of funk and disco in the early 80s and onset of gangster rap and hip-hop in the 1990s pushed the group and many of its peers on “old school” touring circuit to stay afloat.
The Dazz Band found steady work overseas, mostly in Japan, Harris said. But it wasn’t until the release of 1999’s United We Funk All Stars – a live CD organized by Harris and fea- turing The Dazz Band, Charlie Wil- son, The Bar Kays, Con Funk Shun, The SOS Band, and Roger Troutman & Zapp – that the group regained visibility here in the U. S.,
Harris said. “That’s what got us through and
that’s what started flipping things back our way,” he said.
There have been some upsets for the group lately. For more than a year, Harris has been locked in a battle with
ANTHONY DAVID
DAVID SANBORN
The 17th Annual Music Fest, 10 a. m. to 7:30 p. m., with The Dazz Band and R&B singer, Anthony David on Saturday, Jan. 21. Jazz star, David Sanborn and The Voice, Season 5 singer, R. An- thony are set for Sunday, Jan. 22, in Curtis Hixon Park, 600 N. Ashley Dr., Tampa. Admission is free, but tickets for preferred seating is available. Visit www.tampablackheritage.org to pur- chase tickets.
R. ANTHONY
TOBA Dr. King Breakfast Keynote Speaker:
‘It’s Our Responsibility To Continue Building On Dr. King’s Cathedral’
BY KENYA WOODARD Sentinel Feature Writer
The work to right the wrongs of racism, discrimination, and poverty, we shouldn’t turn to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., for the answer.
Instead, we should look at our own hands.
That was the charge the Rev. Otis Moss, Jr. delivered to a sold out crowd at the 37th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Leadership Breakfast on Monday morning.
Rev. Moss – a former pastor of Cleveland’s Olivet Institutional Baptist Church and a close friend of both Dr. King and his father, Martin, Sr. – was the keynote speaker for the Tampa Or- ganization for Black Affair’s (TOBA) sig- nature event, hosted at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Tampa.
Monday’s program included recog- nizing honorees of the Unsung Hero, Ike Tribble Civic Leadership, and Jetie B. Wilds, Jr., Scholarship awards.
In his remarks, Moss said while Dr. King’s example always should serve as
Rev. Otis Moss address TOBA Leadership Breakfast Monday morning. (PHOTO BY LOMAX MCINTYRE)
inspiration, his work is completed. It’suptoustodoourparttocon-
tinue what Dr. King started, he said. “Martin Luther King left us with an unfinished cathedral and it’s our re-
sponsibility to keep building,” he said. At the time of his death, Dr. King was in Memphis to organize a march with the city’s sanitation workers. He had just left Washington to prepare for the upcoming Poor People’s Campaign
and had met with poor whites in Ap- palachia region.
He also met with Chicago gang mem- bers, who pledged to set aside violence and shore up support for the campaign.
Dr. King embodied the spirit of S. Hall Young’s poem, “Into the Sunset,” which opens with the line “let me die working,” Rev. Moss said.
“Martin lived that prayer,” he said. “He died working.”
Dr. King brought into the Civil Rights Movement a “moral mandate” of acting with dignity and integrity that ap- pealed to young people, Rev. Moss said.
When that mandate was used, “we won,” he said.
“When we do not use it, we become frustrated and often lose,” he said.
In his address, Rev. Moss shared accounts that highlighted his personal relationship with Dr. King, including the civil rights leader’s officiating Rev. Moss’ wedding to his second wife, Ed- wina, to whom he’s been married for 52 years.
In another anecdote, Rev. Moss
said he was a student at Morehouse when he and other students were lead- ing sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Atlanta businesses. Dr. King partic- ipated in one of the sit-ins and was ar- rested along with dozens of other students.
The students were released, but Dr. King remained imprisoned on charges of violating his probation from a traffic violation some months earlier. He had been sentenced to four months in prison when the presidential campaign of then- Sen. John F. Kennedy intervened on King’s behalf and convinced the judge to release him.
“So it’s true to say Dr. King elected President Kennedy and Vice Presi- dent Johnson from a jail cell,” he said.
It’s often asked what Dr. King would be doing if he was still alive today, but the real question is what are we doing, Rev. Moss said.
“We are in a last chance to choose be- tween chaos and community,” he said, referencing the title of the last book Dr. King wrote before his death. “The dream is in our hands.”