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In anticipation of the throngs about to stroll through my house tonight for my annual Sound of Soul fundraiser with Pacific Radio Archives not to mention a celebration of the culmination of The Color Purple First National tour I thought that my James Brown whistle from the Godfather’s little known late 50s TV show, a rare item indeed, was the perfect Kitsch O’ The Day today. I rotate my collection fairly regularly but for this particular party everything in the house is part of my African American Pop Culture stash. As I said yesterday, it was James Brown himself who encouraged me to keep collecting these Soul artifacts as there was usually no budget to market these products on a national let alone worldwide level so they were only popular regionally. Like my game of Slang-A-Lang, Black Bingo, that was manufactured in 1969 in Detroit probably never got on shelves farther away than Cleveland.
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So I’m spending the day swapping white memorabilia and otherwise for black, painting posters, moving heat lamps around – no rain in LA, yay! but still very chilly – setting out tables for fried chicken, ribs, yams, greens, peach cobbler and the like, and tweaking the house all while limping around on on a leg I wrenched a muscle in yesterday. Which means I will be blowing my James Brown whistle A LOT today trying to get everyone’s attention as we get ready for the barrage.
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