It was pure
coincidentally that I started looking for Rosa King on Youtube yesterday.
Listening to music I went looking for blues and all of a sudden Rosa came to my
mind. About 30 years ago a friend wanted me to listen to an album he had bought
and he thought I would like it. He was wrong. From the very start, I simply
loved it. He told me the artist was Rosa King, a woman born in Georgia, who
came to Amsterdam in the seventies and decided she wanted to live there. She
had opened a jazz café in the center of the city and also toured a lot through
Europe. Not long after I had eaten this information (That’s my way of saying I
don’t just take the information for what it is. Instead I somehow install it
somewhere in between the grey cells called brains) Rosa King played in a bar in
my hometown. My friends and I had a ball that night. Strange enough I never saw
records of her in the stores and I never ordered any. Words cannot describe how
much I regret that.
Who was Rosa
King? She was born on March 14, 1939, in Macon, Georgia. At the age of 17, she
started dancing in a group that toured through the United States. Once in New
York, she decided to stay there. She had a few jobs on the side while still
dancing. Since she really loves d music very much she bought a guitar and taught
herself how to play it. The guitar was not enough and so she learned how to play
drums and the saxophone as well. It did not take long before she was asked to
play in a band. And it was only a matter of time before she played with big
names like Little Richard, Ben E. King, and Lionel Hampton. Just to name a few. She
now formed a band of her own and started touring through Europe. She loved
Amsterdam very much and decided to leave New York and settle down in the
capital city of the Netherlands. A Dutch
bass player suggested they together started a new band and Upside Down was
born. Soon they played all over the country, turning each festival into a big
happening. Rosa was a real stage person who also showed a lot of humor. During
The North Sea Jazz Festival in 1978 she had a ‘saxophone battle’ with other great
players like Stan Getz and became the glorious winner that night. She played
the festival for another 8 times and also toured a lot throughout Europe. The Netherlands, however, was her favorite country and she did not mind to appear on
3 different places in the country on one day. Yes. She liked traveling and
playing. She went to play in New York in 1981. For 2 months the club she played
was sold out and she later said that she could have played there a few months
more but that would have been too boring for her. She just had to hit the road
again. Her band became a playground for several musicians. Amongst them was
also Candy Dulfer (yes, the very same who played with Prince later). Members of
her band loved Rosa King, being everybody’s ‘mama’.
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Rosa King, superstar nolens volens
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As I am
writing now I realize that I never really followed Rosa King at the time. Sure
I saw her on stage several times and was never disappointed. As a matter of
fact, I think she recognized me because she started winking at me and throwing
hand kisses. But she never became the big star that so many artists want to be.
She did not even want to become that famous and her own, good reasons for that.
“I now can play whatever I feel like and I do not have any commitments to the
record industry”. That makes sense. She just got the right amount of attention
and had a big group of fans anyway.
In December
2000 she had seen doctors because she had had a few minor heart attacks. The
doctors, however, had told her it was only indigestion. A week later she played
in Italy and the show was to be broadcasted. There were about 100.000 people
who watched her live on stage. The show was a giant success. Within 12 hours
after the show, it was announced Rosa King had died of heart failure.
Although I
do not believe in heaven I am convinced if there were one, Rosa King would have
a party up there. And she would be surrounded by other great names. Today it is
exactly 77 years ago that she was born.
Love the ones you’re with and be
loved in return.
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