His eyes sparkling with expectations and satisfaction, or indeed the kind of complacency of the kid in the school courtyard who had come up with a puzzle he was sure no one could crack. I last met Ben a couple of months ago, when he presented to me – grinning and as delighted as a ten-year-old boy – his new walking stick. This script is for, on, of, about, and with Ben Patterson and the vacuum he leaves behind in that space of Darker than Blueness. That kind of love that reverberated in and out of, and caressed the horn, the air and the ears of all when Coltrane tenderly breathed out ‘a love supreme.’ That compassion that betrays frailness and convokes strength when ‘Mbizo’ Dyani strikes the cords in reminiscence of the great one in ‘Song for Biko.’

This script is a chant of grief and a pronouncement of love. This script shall sing praise of and for the one who struggled, but who was the rope in that tug of war between the visible and the audible. This script need not be categorized, for it tells a tale of someone uncategorizable in person but also in his genius. Actually you can’t write a eulogy about someone you loved dearly, but didn’t really know. Check out Billy Valentine’s excellent cover of “We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” here.This script is not a eulogy. The vocal and instrumental arrangement sets the appropriate tone for the song’s reflective lyrics, which thematically are as relevant as the post 1960s civil rights era when Mayfield penned this polemical number. Valentine’s tenor soon follows, sweet and melancholy as it dances around a jazzy piano. The version plants feet firmly in the jazz side of town with an opening that features a dance between an upright bass and saxophone. The polemical classic is a tune that Mayfield himself remade on his 1996 album New World Order, and Billy Valentine does the tune justice with his powerful reinterpretation.

Billy Valentine shows that he can keep it real with on this jazz infused remake of Curtis Mayfield’s classic “We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue.” They could come with the romance, or they could get gritty and real, as their hit “Money’s Too Tight to Mention” demonstrated. (January 11, 2023) The Valentine Brothers were equal parts R&B, jazz, blues, and gospel.

We people who are darker than blue