This Sidebar is a long time in coming; I originally wanted to talk to Daphne last year, when I noticed, holy cow, she wrote the liner notes to two of my favorite box sets of the year: Tammi Terrell’s solo collection, Come On and See Me and Take a Look, the complete Columbia recordings of Aretha Franklin.1
I’ve known Daphne for…damn, 15 years now! We first met at UCLA’s disChord Conference on popular music, back in 1997. I was but a wee newbie grad student at Cal; Daphne was close to finishing her PhD at UCLA before moving on to become a professor of English at Princeton. As much as she’s a friend, I also consider her a mentor as well, given how she’s blazed a trail into the heady world of race and popular music. She’s too modest to ever claim to be one of the best out there but seriously, she is. 2
In any case, Daphne and I finally caught up via Skype and as originally planned, spoke about Terrell and Franklin but also Whitney Houston (since Daphne wrote an incredible piece about Houston back in Feb., after the singer’s death).
The Sidebar #30: Daphne Brooks
[podcast]http://latinboogaloo.com/sounds/podcasts/daphne.mp3[/podcast]
Music used in this episode:
- Tammi Terrell: What A Good Man He Is3
- Sinner’s Devotion4
- Come On and See Me
- Aretha Franklin: Swanee5
- Somewhere Over the Rainbow
- Whitney Houston: Star Spangled Banner
- Frank Ocean: Sweet Life
- I errantly called the Terrill box set Come See About Me, which is a Motown title…but not the right one. ↩
- I’m also ever tickled by the fact that her sister, Renel Brooks-Moon, is a former voice at KMEL and is now PA announcer for the S.F. Giants. What a remarkable family. ↩
- All Terrell songs from Come On and See Me ↩
- I referred to this as “Lover’s Devotion” but as previously noted: I’m an idiot. ↩
- All Franklin songs from Take a Look. ↩
chatter