Black Blues and Shiny Songs : Poems by Tommy Scott Young ☆ NF First Edition PB

Tommy Scott Young • Black Blues and Shiny Songs: Poems

Charlotte, NC: Red Clay Books, 1977; First Edition. Paperback. 72 pages. Covers illustrated with photo by Thomas Burroughs. VG+ Crisp, clean, and square. Spine scuff; edges lightly brushed; mild rubbing to covers. Pages are clean, bright, and free of markings.


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The first time I saw Tommy Scott Young perform he Was smoking Pulling on a cigarette he whispered to the audience that he was trouble, that he was the debbil, which made us laugh; then suddenly offended, he hollered, flipped his cigarette into the air, leapt at us off a four foot stage and stomped out the sparks. Better than good Southern preaching where the voice is pushed full range from wheezing to a shout thrown like a punch in the gut, this poetry reading also had visual aids: a Hollywood handsome poet and real fire to scare the hell out of you.

For the next two years I followed Tommy's careers as a poet, actor, director and entrepreneur whose passion for bringing black artists into the South has changed the cultural climate. The Dance Theatre of Harlem came; Alvin Ailey came; Dizzy Gillespie came; James Brown came; SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND was produced; musical scores were written and SOUTHERN FRIED had its world premier. Tommy was responsible for these things and many more, most of which he toured into those small rural areas of the South where he grew up. But implementing a better cultural environment for Southern blacks has not depleted his energy for dreaming forward or looking back.

The poems collected in this first book by Tommy Scott Young give witness to a past in which oral tradition was the recreation, the history, and the sustenance of a culture. There was preaching and praying, incantation and legend, shouting to tear the soul, and singing to mend the heart. With amazing memory, Tommy recalls those rhythms of his growing up. There are blues, poems about play, ghost stories, superstitions brought back to life. And Tommy ventures to sing his own new songs, poems that affirm not only the uniqueness of black experience but also testify to universal loneliness and fear, the experience of love longed for or given. In the work of Tommy Scott Young, we relearn what all good poetry teaches: that different rhythms may beat in various cultures, but when there is music we all can hear.

- Charleen Whisnant Swansea, Editor