The new Broadway musical featuring the words of Tupac Shakur is a far cry from what New York theater is accustomed to seeing. Maybe that’s why so many seats were empty Sunday at the matinee of “Holler…
Category: Music
Metropolitan Opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ music box
Posted in Broadway plays, collectibles, Music, Performers, and Trinket box
The delicate little enameled music box was in a cardboard box full of nothing. Its lid had come unattached and lay bottom-up right next to it. The writing inside the lid was a tiny script…
Rubbing the Apollo’s fabled ‘Tree of Hope’
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, Black history, Music, and Performers
The real one’s on the stage, the young man behind the podium in the lobby of Harlem’s Apollo Theater was saying to me. I was enchanted with the figures carved into the slick surface of…
Reader asks about gospel music publisher Lillian Bowles
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Music
Fridays at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources for them to determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do…
Marvin Gaye ’64 passport symbolizes a heady time in his life
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Music, and Performers
Recently, a former employee of the Motown Museum in Detroit appeared on an episode of “Antiques Roadshow” with a 1964 passport belonging to singer Marvin Gaye. He found it inside a record album he had…
Don’t ride the (real) white horse
Posted in Music
You couldn’t miss the big white horse. Someone had leaned it against a wooden beam holding up the roof of an open shelter on the back lot of the auction house. It was looking over…
Dust & dirt don’t silence piano player’s big sound
Posted in collectibles, and Music
The piano player in the auction house photo was singing his heart out. His scarlet lips and wide open mouth were a little off-putting to me, but I could feel the exuberance of his performance. He wasn’t a…
Falling hard for the Temptations’ “Silent Night”
Posted in Music, Performers, and Records
I first fell for the Temptations’ “Silent Night” like a woman in love. I couldn’t get enough of hearing Dennis Edward’s stirring lyrics and Melvin Franklin’s deep barrel of a voice. And who was that…
A book of “My Spirituals” by Eva Jessye
Posted in African American women, Books, and Music
On its website, the auction house was advertising a massive sale of books, 3,000 of them. The idea of so many books was so overwhelming that I wondered if it would be worth the effort…