Portland has a long and vibrant history as a hub for Black music, centered around the Albina neighborhood. This summer, the Albina Music Trust is hosting a series of events aimed at preserving that history. Greaterkind will be playing at some of these events, reinterpreting local jazz, soul, funk and fusion compositions. Charlie Brown III, Musical Director for the Time Sound program and keyboardist for Greaterkind, joins us to talk about how the sounds of the past influence today. And Bobby Smith, archivist for World Arts Foundation, joins us as well.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: Portland has a long and vibrant history as a hub for jazz, funk, soul and gospel centered around the Albina neighborhood, but a lot of that history has been in danger of being forgotten. This summer, the Albina Music Trust in partnership with the World Arts Foundation is hosting a series of events aimed at preserving and celebrating that history. They include concerts this weekend and in August and Soul Conversation, an oral history panel, tonight at Alberta House in Northeast Portland. The keyboard player Charlie Brown III is at the heart of many of these shows. He is the musical director for the Time Sound program. He joins us now along with Bobby Smith, who co-founded the Albina Music Trust and is the archivist for the World Arts Foundation. It’s great to have both of you on the show.
Charlie Brown III: How are you doing?
Bobby Smith: Thanks.
Miller: Doing great. Charlie Brown III, first. Why did you want to take part in Time Sound?
Brown III: When Bobby reached out to me, I wanted to take part mostly to help Learn myself more about the soul and the history behind Portland,Oregon. Even though I am a super huge community person in the Northeast area and I grew up here, when he showed me this space and all the archives of all this work that’s been done, I had never heard of so much of this. I was just juiced and a lot of it is from a lot of mentors and teachers of mine that I just had no idea what they’re doing and what they’re up to.
Miller: Why do you think that is? I mean, why was this vibrant history not known? For example, to you, given that you knew some of the people who had been making it. Do you know why you didn’t know about it?
Brown III: Well, in Portland, Oregon, there wasn’t really an industry here; there wasn’t a label. A lot of the times they were recording and stuff, it was just making demos to get gigs and stuff like that. So there wasn’t a hub or industry for them to put that stuff out like that.
Miller: Bobby Smith, how did the Albina Music Trust get started?
Smith: We started in a community radio station at the XRAY.fm. I sat down with Calvin Walker, a lifelong musician here in town, for what I thought was going to be a short interview. And about four hours later we walked out of that space and he had laid out the legacy of the neighborhood and its musicians and essentially a pitch for why we should be preserving that. And so fast forward throughout the years, we have musicians coming into the studio, we are located in the Albina neighborhood and so it was just this touchstone for all these great legacy musicians to come and share their stories. And with that came like, hey, you wanna hear this reel to reel? I haven’t heard it in 40 years or maybe even a photo or a film. So we had to learn real quick how to preserve that material, get sourcing for the machines, and learn from engineers who put that together as well.
Miller: And part of what you’ve been doing is taking those reel to reels or those forgotten masters and then rediscovering them and then releasing them as new albums that have never been released before. One of them a couple years ago was by Slickaphonic. Who are they?
Smith: Slickaphonic was a group founded by Randy Smith in the early 1970s. They were contemporaries of one of Portland’s largest exports, the band Pleasure and they rivaled with Pleasure. They played in the parks and they made this great recording that never saw the light of day; it was sitting in a defunct recording studio for about 40 years until we worked with the group to fund it and get it put out.
Miller: Let’s listen to “Bubba” by Slickaphonics. [SONG PLAYS] It’s Bubba by Slickaponic, a Portland band that recorded this in the early 70s and then it was never released until it was essentially rediscovered and released recently. Charlie Brown III, this whole project though is not just about the past, it’s about bridging the past to the present and so it’s going to feature a lot of new musicians as well, the next generation. That includes Lo Steele. We’ll hear one of her tracks in just a second. But first, what can you tell us about her?
Brown III: She’s incredible. Her songwriting is spectacular and she’s just brilliant. We’re working on doing an album together and what she brings to the table is so powerful.
Miller: This is “Give Yourself Grace” by Lo Steele. [SONG PLAYS] That’s “Give Yourself Grace’' by Lo Steele. Bobby Smith, what kinds of conversations have you been having over the last couple of years with elders from Portland’s jazz and funk scenes? What has really stood out to you and what you’ve heard?
Smith: At the baseline, we start with music and from their conversations go a lot of different places. More recently we’ve really heard more and more and more about the civic disinvestment in Northeast Portland, redlining, police brutality, gentrification. But then it redirects back to the music, it’s very clear that this is just a source of joy for so many elders and preserving that language has felt very important due to those conversations.
Miller: Am I right that you’re releasing another album by a group called Transport tomorrow?
Smith: It is true, yes.
Miller: Who was Transport?
Smith: Transport was a group that was founded in the late 1970s, featuring Jimmy and Johnny Sanders, who would later go on to play with BB King for a number of years. It’s a phenomenal fusion record and never was released in its time and we’re doing it.
Miller: Let’s listen to one of these never-released tracks. The album is coming out tomorrow. This track by Transport is called “Latin Summer.” [SONG PLAYS] That’s the song “Latin Summer” by the group Transport recorded In the late 70s and being released for the very first time tomorrow Bobby, I imagine that some of the musicians who worked on these albums almost 50 years ago are still around. What have they told you about these songs finally being released broadly to the public?
Smith: Well, it’s different for every musician. We really try to capture a lot of the stories of the music in the liner notes. So, as much as we’re focusing on music, the oral history is equally important so a lot of these vinyl releases include massive booklets, the band telling their story in their own words. But I think generally speaking, I think folks are excited we’re really trying to do something that never was able to come to pass before and in the process ensure that these artists retain their publishing, ensure that they can do the things that they could do. It’s been a great opportunity.
Miller: Will any of these musicians get proceeds from the sale of the records?
Smith: Oh, absolutely, that’s built into each and every release. Many of these releases have been funded by local arts organizations. We felt that it’s important that in some respect, taxpayers are paying for this work. So if you look on the back of the jacket, you’ll see organizations like the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Oregon Community Foundation, the Oregon Cultural Trust and others who have funded this work.
Miller: From 50 years ago, we’ll zoom back to the present, Charlie Brown, with another track from a contemporary performer. We’re going to hear part of “In My Mind” from Arietta Ward and then we can talk about it. This is “In My Mind.” [SONG PLAYS] This is in my mind by Arietta Ward. Charlie Brown, what can you tell us about her?
Brown III: Oh, she’s brilliant. It’s actually a fun story. I took piano lessons from her mother when I was young growing up to be able to kind of just bridge the worlds and now work together and share the stage together with her, it’s come full circle. It feels really good.
Miller: How many of those connections do you see broadly in the music scene right now, kids of either your mentors or teachers or other luminaries from the scene in the 60s or 70′s or 80′s who are now with you making music, currently?
Smith: There’s a lot of connections and actually there’s gonna be a lot of them on the stage that we’re presenting at Cathedral Park. We have Tahirah Memory, the daughter of Thara Memory. We have Arietta, the daughter of Janice Marie Scroggins, and Lo Steele, the daughter of LaRhonda Steele. Just even on that stage alone, there’s a huge, huge gap of just people that were standing on the shoulders of.
Miller: This is to close at the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival tomorrow Sunday evening. What can people expect?
Smith: It’s a time capsule. We’re literally going to start from one end and end up at the other and kind of just go through generationally in chronological order of presenting some of this old music that’s never been heard seem to lie today. We’re gonna do it with our little twist on it all the way to some Greaterkind stuff to close it out. It’s going to be a huge time warp.
Miller: A time warp based on something called Time Sound. Bobby, what was it?
Smith: It started in 1981 by Thara Memory. Times Sound was an arts and education program that was put on by World Arts Foundation’s Ken Berry and Michael Greis. Put on this program to bring together folks to understand the music of the African American diaspora. There was everything from African drum beats to Tchaikovsky and oral history presentations and it really focused on local musicians. This was a program that ran throughout the 1980′s, and incorporated youth from Portland Public Schools. We were thinking back on it, how can we bring back some pieces of the past? And we were kind of directed through our archival work back to this legacy program.
Miller: Charlie Brown III and Bobby Smith, thank you so much for joining us and bringing these stories to us.
Brown III: Thanks for having us.
Smith: Thank you.
Miller: We’re going to go out with one more recently-recovered track. It’s “Le Funk” by The Gangsters recorded in the early 70s, released in 2018. [MUSIC PLAYED]
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