Black Fairy

From tragedy to triumph...

Children are the reward of life

-Afrikan proverb

On page 31 of the July 24, 1973, New York Times, at the very bottom, the following story was written:

Ona, West Virginia, July 23 (UPI) —A small airplane carrying four officials of the Chicago based Better Boys Foundation crashed in a field near here this weekend, killing all four.

The victims were the pilot, Edison Lee Hoard, 39 years old, president of the foundation's board of directors; Rita Cody, 30, director of the girls’ division; William Smith, 25, director of the boys’ division, and Lamont Zeno, 30, administrative director. All were from Chicago,

The police said the plane was flying from Gary, Ind., to inspect the 4–H camp of West Virginia State College. About 200 underprivileged children from Chicago's West Side were to stay at the camp.

The Better Boys Foundation (BBF) was a multi-faceted youth development agency that created and delivered innovative programming to meet the needs of the North Lawndale community on the West Side of Chicago. In 1973, the BBF opened the La Mont Zeno Theatre which showcased the talents of North Lawndale’s youth. Before the crash, Lamont Zeno had asked Pemon Rami, director of the Kuumba Theater, one of Chicago’s first African-American independent theaters, if he was interested in directing their new theatre. After the crash, Rami took over the leadership of the entire operation.

The theatre’s first play was Oscar Brown Jr.’s Slave Song performed in March 1974. The second play was Useni Eugene Perkins’s jazz/funk musical Black Fairy. During the summer of 1974, Black Fairy was performed for over four thousand children in Chicago. It then went on the road, and in April 1975 played to over two thousand children at Mercy College in Detroit.

This week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll explore the world of the BBF’s jazz/funk musical Black Fairy.

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The Better Boys Foundation was founded by Joseph Kellman. He was born on January 7, 1920, and grew up in the North Lawndale community area of Chicago. In 9th grade, he was forced to drop out of school to work in his father’s glass shop. After his father’s death, he and his brother assumed ownership of the glass business. Over the next forty-five years, the business grew into The Globe Group, the nation’s largest privately owned auto glass replacement company.

Kellerman vowed to never forget his humble beginnings. He committed himself to serving youth and their families in North Lawndale. Because of his interest in boxing, in 1961 he founded the Archie Moore Gym located at 1512 South Pulaski in North Lawndale. It served as an after-school boxing club for boys. You can see Moore’s portrait in picture below on the wall to the right:

Shortly after opening the gym, Kellman realized that sports alone could not change the direction of a young person’s life. He was often heard saying, “sports are a lure, not a cure.” Boxing, while positive in its focus on discipline and physical skills development, did little to improve long-term life outcomes for youth in the community. So in the mid-1960s, with the help of long-time friend and entertainer Buddy Hackett, Kellman transitioned the Archie Moore Gym into the Better Boys Foundation (BBF), a youth services agency offering after-school sports, arts, and theater programmings for boys (and later girls) in North Lawndale.

In 1973, BBF opened the La Mont Zeno Theatre and reached out to Rami, who after the tragic air plane crash, took on the role of artistic and managing director.

Useni Eugene Perkins wrote a children’s play called Black Fairy. It started as a traveling play for schools with the aim of enlightening and educating black children. Rami had been deeply influenced by Oscar Brown Jr. and Phil Cohran’s show Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadows, one of the first touring productions that went through the Chicago public schools. With this in mind, Rami collaborated with Perkins and turned Black Fairy into a musical with the goal of showing it at the La Mont Zeno Theatre. In a 2012 interview with Rebecca Zorach, Rami recalls:

The Black Fairy was a musical, which was about a little black fairy that didn’t have any magic, and she goes to Johnny’s house and Johnny goes, “Hey, you don’t got no magic, white fairies got magic.” So she meets a blackbird and the blackbird takes her on a trip throughout history and fundamentally at the end—because we wrote the piece, it was originally a play, we wrote it as a musical—at the end of it, it says, your magic is yourself, it’s you and your total being. It’s Ancient Egypt and the Middle Passage.

Based on the popularity of the musical, in 1975, Rami decided to produce an album. The first call he made was to one of his mentors, Oscar Brown Jr. Brown was a singer, songwriter, poet, author, performer, Civil Rights activist, television host, political candidate (he ran for the Illinois legislature in 1948 and U.S. Congress in 1952) to name a few of the hats he wore during his amazing life.

In Chicago, the Brown family were neighbors of the award-winning playwright, Lorraine Hansberry's family. In 1960, when her play A Raisin in the Sun debuted in Chicago (before its New York premier), Brown met Hansberry's husband, Robert Nemiroff, who worked for a New York based music publishing company. Nemiroff introduced Brown's music to New York, which led to a contract with Columbia Records and the recording of his debut album Sin & Soul, which added lyrics to such popular jazz instrumentals as Nat Adderley's Work Song, Bobby Timmons' Dat Dere, Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man, and Mongo Santamaria's Afro Blue.

Sin & Soul made Oscar Brown Jr. a national celebrity. Also in 1960, Brown collaborated with Max Roach on the landmark We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite. In 1961, he wrote the musical Kicks & Company, directed by Hansberry and co-produced by Nemiroff.

Rami’s second call was to Paul Serrano, owner of P.S. Recording Studios at 323 E. 23rd Street in Chicago:

Before opening his studio, Serrano was an experienced sideman and had a strong quintet that played in clubs around Chicago. While on tour in Chicago, Cannonball Adderley heard Serrano’s group and convinced Riverside Records to record them. On November 6, 1960, Serrano’s Quintet hit Chicago’s Universal Recording Studios and recorded Blues Holiday:

Bunky Green plays alto sax on this date. Green got his first break in New York when Charles Mingus hired him to replace Jackie McLean in the 1950s. For this session, Serrano’s rhythm section included Jodie Christian on piano, Donald Garrett on bass, and Pete La Roca on drums. Our journey previously covered both Garrett and La Roca. You can read more about Garrett here:

The Sea Ensemble

…and a little about La Roca here:

Joe Henderson

Blues Holiday consists of 3 tracks on both sides. Side 1 is all originals. Interestingly, the second track Dreams of Igor was written by Richard Abrams, who Serrano recorded with in 1957 on Bob Cranshaw and Walter Perkins’ Daddy-O Presents MJT + 3.

From Blues Holiday, here is Serrano’s spirited tune Me, Too:

Rami’s connection with Brown and Serrano paid off. Brown provided recording guidance and Serrano agreed to both engineer the album and assemble some of the top musicians in the area. In 1975, Black Fairy was recorded at P.S. Recording Studios. Here’s the original album issued by the BBF:

Once the play was scheduled to be performed at the La Mont Zeno Theatre, a colored jacket version was pressed by TAIFA Records and sold at the venue. Here is that version:

I encourage you to take time to listen to the entire album here:

This is the only instrumental on the album and features the saxophone of Chico Freeman, son of jazz saxophonist Von Freeman. This was Chico’s first recording:

Today, the Better Boys Foundation has been renamed Building Brighter Futures (BBF) and serves over 400 families each year through holistic, community-based human services. Here’s a link to their website.

Here’s one more for the road. Another wonderful, funky track from Black Fairy is The Streets of Harlem:

For the liner notes of Black Fairy, Useni Eugene Perkins wrote:

Black Fairy is a tale, but not a in the traditional sense. When writing this play, I did not want to re-create the types of fantasies which are so common in children’s theater… I do feel giving them a better understanding of their heritage can help them achieve their true potential. And those of us who are concerned with their development should try to expose them to knowledge that gives them a positive sense of identity. Although I do feel children’s plays should be entertaining, I also feel it should be educational. Also, because there are so few children’s plays which reflect the Black Experience, I wanted to write a play that Black children could identify with.

This is a noble cause. That’s what I like about the message of Back Fairy. It’s a universal message. The best solutions to a community’s problems will be found within, not without. The same goes for raising levels of educational achievement. That’s because policies can’t reach into the hearts of children and inspire them to greatness. It takes much more than that.

Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of Faruq Z. Bey and Griot Galaxy.

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Until then, keep on walking….