Best gig in Phoenix last week - by far - was Bobby Seale at Phoenix College. Architect, engineer on the Gemini Missile program, actor, jazz musician, author, celebrity cook, activist, Chicago 8 defendant, co-founder and former chairman of the Black Panther party - yes, that Bobby Seale.

Best gig, you say? Absolutely. For two hours, Seale moved easily from dialectical materialism to stand-up jokes, from political awakenings to Huey P. Newton and Martin Luther King impressions, from African-American history to a poetry recital, all with the consumate ease of a seasoned professional entertainer.

First, a little grounder for those who need it. During his eight years as Co-founder and Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Seale served as the key national coordinator for coalition-organizing and a number of nationwide community based service programs.

In 1969, Seale gained international recognition as a defendant in the 1969 Great Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial, where he was chained, shackled, and gagged and tied to a chair for three days during the trial. While in jail, he wrote the book Seize the Time.

In 1974, he resigned from the Black Panther Party and released his autobiography, A Lonely Rage.

Today, Seale acts as a Community Liaison with the Department of African and African-American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia.

His talk formed part of the College’s Gold, Gods, and Glory: The Global Dynamics of Power lecture series. Slated for 45 minutes, with a 15 minute Q & A, Seale rapped for an hour and a half, and then took a further 30 minutes of questions.

The hall was pretty full and although a wide variety of ages and ethnicities were represented, the majority were young students. They demonstrated not only a knowledge of Seale’s achievements, but through their cheers and applause, a degree of support for Seale’s type of social activism which made The Grid all warm inside and optimistic for Phoenix’s future.

Here is Seale, probably from 1967, explaining the Party’s 10 point program. Spotable in the audience/on stage are Stokely Carmichael,Angela Davis and members of the Brown Berets/Young Lords.

Seale took time to detail the events which led to the creation of the BPP. His arrest for reciting Ronald Stone’s anti-war/anti-draft poem in May 1966 on an Oakland street corner resulted directly in the drafting of the initial 10 point plan. At first reluctant to recite this (”My wife doesn’t like me using cuss words”), he eventually produced a powerful reading of this poem that resonates today as strongly as it did 40 years ago:

Uncle Sammy don’t shuck and jive me,
I’m hip the popcorn jazz changes you blow,
You know damn well what I mean,
You school my naive heart to sing red-white-and-blue-stars-and-stripes songs and to pledge eternal allegiance to all things blue, true, blue-eyed blond, blond-haired, white chalk white skin with U.S.A. tattooed all over,
When my soul trusted Uncle Sammy,
Loved Uncle Sammy,
I died in dreams for you Uncle Sammy,
Died in dreams playing war for you Uncle Sammy,
No, I don’t want to hear that crap,
You jam your emasculate manhood symbol, puff with Gonorrhea,
Gonorrhea of corrupt un-reality myths into my ungreased, nigger ghetto, black-ass, my Jewish-Cappy-Hindu-Islamic-Sioux-sure, free public health penicillin cured me,
But Uncle Sammy if you want to stay a freak-show strongman god,
Fuck your motherfucking self,
I will not serve.

For a pretty good idea of what went on, here he is at Sonoma State University in 2005 (88 minutes worth!)

Seale became emotional at times when remembering those that had fallen in the struggle - 28 BPP members died in the late 60’s/ early 70’s - but was largely optimistic for the future, pointing to the numerous committed social activists now in position to enact changes through the democratic process. Amongst these (and in the audience) was Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Democratic representative for California’s 9th district, a former volunteer at the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party’s Community Learning Center who also worked on Panther co-founder Bobby Seale’s 1973 Oakland mayoral campaign.

Overall, it was a very human performance, actually aided by his occasional self-aggrandizing. If you had any thoughts of putting the guy on a pedestal, here was the kicker; he’s human, just like the rest of us, and prone to moments of ego and vanity. And probably weakness and indecision and who knows what. But who the fuck has the credentials to throw the first stone? Started any Breakfast for Children or Free Preventative Healthcare programs recentlty? Organized any nation-changing social movements?

Thought not.

As a P.S., Wilma Mankiller speaks on April 16, 2008 as part of the same series on ‘What It Means to be an Indigenous Person in the 21st Century’. These are people that have, and continue, to make history. Get your ass down there, Phoenix, and learn why. You can always see that emo band next month.

There are a number of versions of the tale which finds bassist and singer Arlester ‘Dyke’ Christian,  guitarist Alvester ‘Pig’ Jacobs and saxophonist J.V. Hunt arriving in Phoenix in 1965: that the band they were backing (The O’Jays) bailed on them at the end of a tour, stranding them without return air fare to the East Coast; or that they followed an entrepreneurial DJ out to the the valley and stuck around town when he left for L.A. Either way, they soon recruited organist Rich Cason, bassist Alvin Battle (Dyke switching exclusively to vocals), drummer Rodney Brown and tenor saxophonist Bernard Williams, and Dyke & the Blazers was born.

The following year they released the Dyke composition Funky Broadway Pts 1 & 2 on the Phoenix Artco label. Cut at the legendary Audio Recorders studio on N. Seventh St. (Duane Eddy, Lee Hazelwood, 3000 gallon water tank), it was edited down to 45-length from a 25 minute workout. Representing their gritty, sweaty form of early funk, the song was written by Dyke while he lived near 24th St. and Broadway Rd. It became a huge local hit before being picked up for distribution by L.A.’s Original Sounds and going national, hitting both the R&B and Top 100 charts. It was also the song which popularized the term ‘funk’ - radio had stayed away from titles containing the word because of its sexual connotations, but the time must have been right - Funky Broadway was the first.

The group toured to support the hit, playing the Apollo in Harlem and Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1967. Funky Broadway was soon covered by Wilson Pickett, Atlantic Records’ muscle pushing it to even greater heights (it has also been covered by the Supremes, Jackie Wilson, Sam & Dave, Terence Trent Darby and even the Godfather, J.B.). With that came the fat royalty checks and the Cadillacs - for Dyke, the song’s writer; the rest of the band had to settle for $100 for a gruelling five shows a day, five days a week. Before long the original Blazers had all thrown in the towel…

But the story doesn’t end there. Dyke, now working with a group of West Coast musicians, continued to cut raw, vibrant material, such as the stomping We Got More Soul. These guys formed the nucleus of what became the Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band, reaching new levels of funkdom when they joined forces with Charles Wright (Express Yourself, etc.).

By this time, however, Dyke Christian unfortunately was no longer around to spread his gospel. In an apparent argument/tussle with a dealer, he was shot dead on March 13, 1971 in the vicinity of 12th Ave. and W. Buckeye. He died just a few blocks away from the street he immortalized. The name of the street: funky funky Broadway.

While the American Bandstand performance of Funky Broadway has proved impossible to find, here is a storming version by the Wicked Pickett, from 1968’s Dance Crazy. TURN IT UP!!

Buffalo’s Soul Men from The Buffalo News / Sunday, August 11, 1991

Interview with Dyke’s drummer, the legendary James Gadson