It was the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth this week. Not sure who he was? He was a familiar face I remember seeing on British television growing up in the 1970s, and when I was old enough I discovered what an outstanding and original thinker he was. Baldwin achieved so much in his life against such great odds: a beautiful mind, indeed.
A poet, author, essayist and civil rights activist, he was thought-provoking, tantalising, abusing and amusing. And he used words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing.
I devoured many of his texts as a teenager — and if I were to recommend I’d single out Giovanni’s Room, from 1956, as a must-read. It’s a Paris-based short story that lays bare his inner most thoughts as he struggles with his own sexuality and internalised homophobia.
Sonny’s Blues, too, from 1957, is very possibly the best fictional writing on a musician I’ve ever read. When asked if he wants to be a musician like Louis Armstrong, the jazzman derides the elder gent, “No. I’m not talking about none of that old-time, down home crap.”
For Armstrong — ole Satchmo — may be one of the most famous American jazz musicians of all time, but he and his carefully constructed persona represented “old” jazz and a generally non-political, mass appeal version of the black entertainer.
Was the man with the eternally big winsome smile and the bulging eyes a groundbreaker for black musicians, or was he another inoffensive iteration of a well-used stereotype?
More recently, Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of JB’s If Beale Street Could Talk opens with a quote from Baldwin, reminding us that he was one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century:
“Beale Street is a street in New Orleans, where my father, Louis Armstrong and jazz were born. Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street. Beale Street is our legacy. This novel deals with the impossibility and possibility, the absolute necessity to give expression to this legacy.”
Armstrong was taken to task for his warm embrace of mainstream white culture – in short, for being an Uncle Tom. Jazz greats including Dizzy Gillespie and, later, Wynton Marsalis criticised Armstrong before looking closer and changing their minds.
The criticism stung Satchmo, but it didn’t stop him pursuing a slightly more vocal presence. In later years he would publicly criticise President Eisenhower for dragging his feet on civil rights, and become the first Black performer to earn the right to stay in the luxury hotels where he performed.
Not only that, but half a century after he began performing publicly, Armstrong found himself as the singer of the song — and not just any song but the Gucci of songbooks – a James Bond theme.
Title songs for Bond films, as a rule, have the name of the movie in the chorus. That was a bit of a challenge with 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, so the 007 team opted to go with veteran composer John Barry’s stirring self-titled instrumental in the opening sequence.
Hal David was brought on board to write the lyrics to another song for the film — Australian George Lazenby’s only turn as the secret agent man — and they brought in the legendary jazz great to sing it.
An inspired choice on paper and a terrific tune, but 68-year old Satchmo was ailing and the tempo of this emotional ballad is a little too slow for him to hold a phrase. Satchmo’s gravelly gravitas is also locked into a backbeat that literally allows him no breathing room to flex his pristine musicianship. Every gap — and there are many — is filled by a noodling acoustic guitar that should be smashed, Bluto Blutarsky style, against a wall. Or round Sam Smith’s head. At almost 69, Louis was the oldest person to sing a Bond theme, and he would die 18 months later in Corona, New York on the sixth of July, 1971.
Talking of NYC, James Baldwin’s birthplace and resting place is also in the Big Apple, about half an hour from Satchmo, though he’d been a resident of the Gallic Republic for years.
A Francophile par excellence, Baldwin flocked south, and was based here on the French Riviera for the last 17 years of his life. By all accounts, he and his partner were lively socialites with an open-door policy in the village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, welcoming many of notable American friends such as Sidney Poitier, Ray Charles, Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis to stay whenever they were visiting or performing at one of the Nice Jazz Festival.
France‘s then president Mitterand paid tribute to by making him a Knight of the Legion of Honour and, in 1982 JB was awarded an honorary PhD from the same Nice University that got the Stranglers slung in jail a few years prior. He died aged 63 at his provençal house on Chemin du Pilon that had once belonged to the cubist painter Georges Braque, just a few minutes from the resting place of Village People founder Jacques Morali.
The date of Baldwin‘s passing generally believed to be late 30 November or early 1 December 1987 — my father’s 20th birthday, the day digging began on the Channel Tunnel to link the UK and France, and, for a gay man, even more stirringly symbolic, exactly one year before the inaugural World AIDS Day.
Steve Pafford
BONUS BEATS
Proving that you can‘t keep a good Bond theme down, We Have All The Time In The World became a huge belated hit in Britain in 1994, as a result of a Guinness beer commercial, after My Bloody Valentine chose to do dash off a rock cover it for charity. Armstrong’s version was then reissued and reached No. 3. The weepie has been covered by various other acts including The Specials (here), Iggy Pop (here), and the Fun Lovin’ Criminals (here). In 2005, a BBC survey found that it was the third most popular love song played at weddings.
The instrumental version of the theme reappears twice in the most recent James Bond film, the gloriously divisive No Time To Die, in addition to the lyrical variation being played at the beginning.of the closing credits. And like 007 himself, it will return.