This Week in Literary History: Maya Angelou’s Calypso Record Causes a Stir

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THIS WEEK IN

MAY 9   -   MAY 15

Maya Angelou’s Calypso Record Causes a Stir

On May 13, 1957, Billboard ran a short review of Maya Angelou’s one and only record, Miss Calypso, giving it a 66 (rude) and predicting that the “singer’s name value . . . should increase some as a result of this wax.” (If only they knew!) Here’s the review in full:

Tho calypso addicts will question the authenticity of this package, Miss Angelou has enough sell in her voice to offer dealers a promising set. Selections include such oldies as “Run Joe,” “Stone Cold Dead in the Market,” and “Calypso Blues,” all of which are handled with finesse. Singer’s name value is a rising commodity via her nitery dates, and should increase some as a result of this wax. Competition is heavy, of course.

Calypso was having a moment: That week, Harry Belafonte’s “Calypso” was the most played album on American airwaves (if you think you’ve never heard it, you have: the single was “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)”). Angelou had been dancing and singing professionally for years by then, and even toured Europe as part of a production of Porgy and Bess. By all accounts, she was an incredible performer. She was also a successful actor—later, she would get a Tony nomination for her role in a 1973 production of Look Away, and an Emmy nomination for her 1977 turn in Roots—and a major trailblazer. Her 1972 screenplay Georgia, Georgia was the first original script written by a Black woman to be produced in this country, and she was also the first Black woman to direct a major American motion picture: 1998’s Down in the Delta. Whew.

But despite her success in pretty much every artistic field, Angelou was not destined to become a household name for her music, or for her acting, or for her directing, or for her screenwriting—because as you know, she had another major talent.  

Her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), is one of the most beloved memoirs in literature and a defining text of its time—despite being so often challenged in schools and libraries that it inspired Banned Books Week. Her first poetry collection, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was a bestseller and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her poem “Still I Rise” is one of the most iconic poems in the English language. In 1993, she became the second poet (and one of only six to date) to perform a poem at the inauguration of a United States President. She is the subject of at least one very good SNL skit. There is even a Maya Angelou Barbie. However, the Barbie does not sing. 

MORE ON MAYA ANGELOU

Did You Know That Maya Angelou Wrote the Poetry in John Singleton’s Poetic Justice?

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Apart in County Jail

5 Writers Who Should be Feminist Saints

Essential Wisdom

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues,
because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

–MAYA ANGELOU

In other (old)

news this week

Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is published (May 9, 1814) • A dispute over Shakespeare leads to a deadly riot in New York City (May 10, 1849) • C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien meet for the first time (May 11, 1926) • William Shakespeare makes it to television for the first time, with a 30-minute except of Twelfth Night on the BBC (May 14, 1937) • Emily Dickinson dies at the age of 55, with absolutely no sense of how famous she would be for centuries to come (May 15, 1886) • American humorist Gelett Burgess coins the term “blurb” and dooms us all forever (May 15, 1906)

REREADING MRS. DALLOWAY AT THE SAME AGE

AS MRS. DALLOWAY

J.M. BARRIE’S HANDWRITTEN MANUSCRIPT OF PETER PAN

“For heaven’s sake, publish nothing
before you are thirty.”

–VIRGINIA WOOLF

Published Mrs. Dalloway this week in 1925 (at the age of 43)

“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist—the only thing he’s good for—is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it’s only his view of a meaning. That’s what he’s for—to give his view of life.”

–KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

Born this week in 1890

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