S.F. bandleader Marcus Shelby pays tribute to blues royalty.
Marcus Shelby wasn’t supposed to be a jazz musician.
For starters, he was born in Alaska, hardly an outpost of cultural import. Then, after his military family relocated to Memphis and later Sacramento, Shelby became enraptured with sports, skilled enough to be a four-sport high school athlete who earned a basketball scholarship to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
But it was during his time at Cal Poly, studying electrical engineering, that his life was redirected. While talking to his father about an upcoming date with a girl, his dad suggested taking her to a Wynton Marsalis concert. Seemed like a good idea. It was so much more.
“From the first note, I forgot about her. I got hooked on the music,” Shelby recalled. “It hit me upside the head.”
The music by Marsalis, a lion of the contemporary jazz scene, struck Shelby so hard, he was transformed. Shelby backtracked into music, got a bass, an instrument he played during his teen years, woodshedded in earnest and joined a church to start playing regularly.
After graduating, he ditched electrical engineering and migrated to Los Angeles, where he studied under musicians Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden and James Newton.
What followed was as much determination and hard work as talent or serendipity. Shelby moved to the Bay Area, formed his own record label, Noir Records, and focused on creating music that embraced social awareness. On that path toward creative enlightenment, Shelby’s education included reading “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism,” a book by author and activist Angela
Davis that examined the careers of singers Bessie Smith, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Billie Holiday through a feminist prism.
“I read ‘Blues Legacies and Black Feminism’ 10 or so years ago as I was seeking all things that could tie up my understanding of the blues. I had read every scholarly work I could get my hands on,” Shelby said.
“When I came across the Angela Davis book, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the most articulate account of the blues I’ve ever read.’”
Like the Marsalis concert, it left an impression on Shelby. Now a decade later, Davis is slated to join Shelby, resident artistic director at SFJazz, and his quintet on Friday, May 24, for a performance inspired by her book as part of a four-day run at SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium. Davis, as spoken word artist, is expected to offer her feminist commentary on the lyrics and performances of Smith, Rainey and Holiday.
Guest artists Terri Lyne Carrington, Tia Fuller, Paula West, Tiffany Austin, Kim Nalley and Tammy Hall will also be on hand to lend their voices and musicianship.
“Sometimes I’m not sure of their effect on the culture, because we have to keep rediscovering them,” Hall said about Smith, Rainey and Holiday. “It’s a shame that people don’t know who they are.”
Shelby hopes to change that, and further educate Bay Area audiences during his string of concerts that blend history with music.
Kicking things off is “Green and Blues” on Thursday, May 23, a collaboration of the Marcus Shelby Orchestra with author Daniel Handler, most famous for his children’s stories, “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” They have assembled a musical history of famous and infamous San Francisco neighborhoods from the indigenous Ohlone tribe, to the evolution of Hunters Point and the Gold Rush era’s inception of the Barbary Coast redlight district. They’ll also describe the flora and fauna peculiar to each neighborhood, juxtaposing them with a blues backdrop.
The third show brings Shelby’s intimate knowledge of athletics into union with his music. “Black Ball,” scheduled for Saturday, May 25, is a musical suite examining Negro League Baseball, which is where most African American players before 1947 — when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier — got their professional start.
“My research shows that black folks have been playing baseball pretty much as long as America at large,” Shelby said. “Ironically, the first African American to play professionally was a fellow named Fleetwood Walker in 1884, decades before the game became segregated.”
Shelby’s series of concerts concludes Sunday, May 26, with a look at a legend as he explores the legacy of Duke Ellington, an artist whose music also had an impact on Shelby’s life.
“Ellington’s body of work hit me hard … I found that the deeper you swim in his water, you’ll likely find the essence of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith,” he said. “If you swim deep enough, you will find (proto-jazz musician) Buddy Bolden.”
It’s a week of concerts that dive deep into the black experience with a theme of social justice for all.
“There’s a sort of celebration and buoyancy of these aspects of black life,” Shelby said. “Admittedly, some of it is sad, yet out of it came songs that helped us in the struggle.”