Arts and Culture

Tammy Hall to Salute Jazz Organist Shirley Scott

Published

9 years ago

March 7, 2016

By Lee Hildebrand

Shirley Scott reigned as Queen of the Jazz Organ from the time she joined tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis’s combo in 1956 until her retirement in 1995.

Although inspired in part by fellow Philadelphian Jimmy Smith, her style was mellower, though no less swinging, then his take-no-prisoners approach to the Hammond B-3 organ.

She died of heart failure in 2002 at age 67.

She recorded dozens of albums during her career, including some during the 1960s with saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, her husband at the time. The first album to appear under her own name, in 1958 on the Prestige label, was titled “Great Scott!”

San Francisco keyboardist Tammy Hall will play two concerts comprising all eight selections form that classic disc at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 17, in the SFJAZZ Center’s Joe Henderson Lab, located at 201 Franklin St. in San Francisco.

She will be joined by bassist Ollen Erich Hunt, drummer Kent Byron and saxophonist Kristen Strom. Tickets for each show are $20.

“There’s a sparsity in her playing, and that’s what I appreciate so much about it,” Hall says of Scott. “The standard is that you go wild with the right hand. Even though she did that from time to time, that was not her signature playing. She was more chordal and percussively oriented, just like Trudy Pitts. They were more about the texture and chord construction and how that moved in a song. It wasn’t just about, ‘Look what I can do.’”

Born and raised in Dallas, Hall taught herself piano at age 4 and began talking classical lessons at 8. A year later, she learned to play organ by watching the two keyboardists at the Baptist church she attended.

“It was more sedate than what people think of as a typical Black Protestant church,” she recalls. “It was not a rock ‘n’ roll church. They played gospel, but we were not allowed to clap hands.”

Hall first came to the Bay Area in 1979 to attend Mills College on a scholarship. In recent years she has become the piano accompanist of choice by many of the area’s vocalists and has recorded with Rhonda Benin, Barbara Dane, Frankye Kelly, Veronica Klaus, Lady Mem’fis, Kim Nalley, Denise Perrier and Pamela Rose.

During the last week of February, Hall and Oakland vocalist Amikaela Gsaston took part in a State Department-sponsored cultural-exchange program in Turkminestan that included a revue of American musical theater songs titled “Broadway Abroad.” While in Ashgabat, the capital city of the former Soviet Republic, Hall conducted the Turkminestan Symphony Orchestra.

Unlike Scott, who played piano before focusing on organ, Hall has remained primarily a pianist. She does, however, play organ whenever the occasion calls for it.

“I don’t spend that much time at the organ,” she admits. “It takes me out of my comfort zone, but I’m going to do my best and pay a good tribute to her.”

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New Oakland Moving Forward

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Post Staff

Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.

Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.

So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.

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Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

Published

1 month ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

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Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

Published

1 month ago

April 28, 2025

Oakland Post

Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing, just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.