STOKELY CARMICHAEL’S FREE HUEY REISSUED BY MOTOWN RECORDS’ BLACK FORUM LABEL

By Harvey Kubernik Copyright 2021 

    On the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party (BPP) – Motown Records’ Black Forum label has just reissued Stokely Carmichael’s Free Huey. 

    One of the most popular and influential leaders of the Black Power movement, Carmichael (who later adopted the name Kwame Ture) delivered the landmark speech in February 1968 at the Oakland Auditorium in Oakland, CA. 

    Thousands had gathered to celebrate the birthday of Huey P. Newton and call for his freedom. Newton, a co-founder of the BPP, was in a cell at a nearby courthouse, accused of the fatal shooting of a police officer. The event also coincided with the BPP’s new partnership with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

    “Tonight we have to talk about several things,” Carmichael began. “We’re here to celebrate brother Huey P. Newton’s birthday. We’re not here to celebrate it as Huey Newton the individual, but as Huey Newton part and parcel of black people wherever we are on the world today…And so, in talking about brother Huey Newton tonight, we have to talk about the struggle of black people, not only in the United States, but in the world today, and how he becomes part and parcel of that struggle, how we move on so that our people will survive America.”  Black Forum originally released Free Huey in 1970-the year Newton’s conviction was reversed. 

    Berry Gordy Jr.’s Motown Records was founded to provide black artists and executives space to pursue their personal dreams through music and sound. But as a label birthed in community, Motown has always deeply understood that achieving black dreams has always been about something more significant than a single individual. 

    Thus, in 1970, Motown established Black Forum to be where the collective dreams of black communities were pursued, protected and given permanence.     During 2018 the Black Forum label reissued on vinyl Elaine Brown’s self-titled 1973 album from the first and only female Chair of the Black Panther Party.        “These are love songs expressing Elaine Brown’s deep and abiding sense of oneness with all oppressed humankind,” wrote Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton in the album’s liner notes.  

    Elaine Brown was the eighth and final album release on Black Forum, Motown’s imprint focusing on African-American consciousness.

   In 1994 I interviewed Berry Gordy, Jr. one afternoon inside his Bel-Air, CA. mansion during a promotional tour for his autobiography To Be Loved.  I asked BG about his Black Forum label.     

Q: You had a spoken word/music label at Motown, the Black Forum, where the voices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughees, Stokely Carmichael, Elaine Brown, Margaret Danner and Imamu Amiri Baraka, among others, were recorded. 

A: I put out several things by Dr. King, including The Great March To Freedom in Washington, probably the biggest, I Have A Dream. One of the things in those days, in the ‘60’s, there was a civil unrest and the various people who had things to say.  I was very closely connected to Dr. King and liked his philosophy and he taught me the wisdom of non-violence. 

    As I said in To Be Loved, I was never like a “turn the other cheek kind of guy,” you know? I wasn’t brought up that way. In the inner city you don’t do that.  But he taught me the wisdom of non-violence. While we were victims, others were victims, too. White people were victims when they let their prejudices hold them back. He was more with my philosophy of communicating with people around the world. Understanding. 

     I think we all want the same kind of thing. We all want peace, we all want love and we all want togetherness. And I think one thing that music has done is brought people together with the same ideas. Forgetting what color of their skin is and all that. Are you hip or square? There are black people that are not hip, and there are white people that are hip and it’s like, “Are you hip or are you square? Are you this, or are you that?” And then you forget about whether you are white or black, or this or that. And so, we had a family of people that were dealing with that fundamental thing about communicating love.” 

   (Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop, and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972.   

    Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. For November 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for the publisher. 

   Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. Kubernik’s writings are in book anthologies, most notably The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski.  Harvey has written liner notes to CD reissues of Carole King’s Tapestry, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special and the Ramones’ End of the Century. 

    Kubernik’s 2021 published articles on reggae icon Bob Marley, film director/producer/writer Melvin Van Peebles, vocalists Merry Clayton and Otis Redding, George Harrison, Tina Turner, Ice Cube, Nancy Sinatra and 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee keyboardist/songwriter Billy Preston can be viewed on Kubernik’s Korner at www.otherworldcottageindustries.com