Fresh from yesterday's mail, in a package sent to me from a gracious eBay seller, is another winner from one of my favorites, Norm Burns. Today, Norm is going to share with us that he is "Black, and I'm Proud": Download: Norm Burns - Black and I'm Proud
Play:
Let's have a picture of Norm:
The writer of this song expressed a clearly focused (if not terribly original) point of view and clearly had deep feelings about what he was expressing in his song...and Norm Burns got to sing it.
The writer of this song expressed a clearly focused (if not terribly original) point of view and clearly had deep feelings about what he was expressing in his song...and Norm Burns got to sing it. As I said, I really love the Norm's stuff, but he's one of the whitest singers I've ever heard in my life, and since he was really one of only two or three singers at Sterling Records at the time, perhaps his boss, "co-writer" Lew Tobin, might have been better off referring this particular song-poet elsewhere.
The flip side, "Set Me Free" is not nearly as notable, although I do like that the fairly tortured lyrics flip back and forth between the singer's viewpoint and that of his ex-sweetheart, without consistently indicating who is "speaking". I also love the crazy degree of reverb on this record, which is particularly apparent during the spoken word segment.
2 comments:
Sterling, home of reverb.
So sincere, so poignant, so Norm. I'm sure every Native everywhere thanks him for his support.
Post a Comment