Sunday, September 15, 2019

Paul Robeson

Artist: Paul Robeson
LP: Robeson
Song: "Deep River"
[ listen ]
Song: "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"
[ listen ]

I've been buying records like crazy again lately...crazy, because I still don't have anywhere to put them. I've even been buying some new music on vinyl, which isn't really like me, since, as you have probably noticed, I'm generally stuck in the 1930s and '40s and '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s. Just to prove that point, here's a lovely 1958 Paul Robeson LP I found in the dollar bins at Beats and Bohos about a week ago. 

By the time he was 27, Paul Robeson already had a law degree and was popular as an actor on the stage, but then he sang some "Negro spirituals" in public somewhere, and a whole new career in music was begun. He seems to have been a very well-known artist in the first half of the twentieth century (his "Othello" was legendary) so it's a shame he mostly goes unrecognized by the people of the world today. LP liner notes are included below.



[ Paul Robeson: April 9, 1898 — January 23, 1976 ]

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