Special guest John Clare joins Ross Ogden on Wednesday 13/7/2005, 3:00pm to explore the legend of Jack Johnson, through the soundtrack to the Ken Burns doco, “Unforgettable Blackness”, composed by Wynton Marsalis, and Miles Davis’ 1972 homage to the fighter – “Jack Johnson”.
Marsalis set his compositions firmly in the music of Johnson’s time, while Miles’ effort could have been mistaken for outtakes from the Bitches Brew sessions. The music is representative of the starkly different perceptions of Johnson, who had to come to Sydney to fight Tommy Byrnes for a World Title in 1908 because no white champion in the USA would fight him. His crime – not biting opponents ears off like Mike Tyson, but being a black man married to a white woman, and perhaps having a surfeit of talent.
