Weary Blues is an album by poet Langston Hughes, recorded in March 1958 in New York and was released on the MGM label in 1959. Hughes recites several of his poems, from his 1926 debut collection by the same name, over jazz accompaniment composed and arranged by Leonard Feather and Charles Mingus. It was later reissued on Verve Records.The gritty poems, all featuring the rhythms of daily Black life in Harlem, swing between narrative and lyric with sometimes breezy, sometimes dirge-like reverberations. Feather and Mingus’ compositions set the tone for each poem, guiding the emotional weight and hue of Hughes’ poetry, from swing to blues to be-bop.In the summer of 2000, Quraysh Ali Lansana had the privilege of reprising this album at the Chicago Jazz Festival with a 7–8-piece band comprised of members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a seminal organization for experimental music founded by the late Sun Ra. We're bringing the magic to Dallas, join us!
Tickets: $50 or included in a festival pass (https://writersgarret.org/festival-passes/)