Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, Dave Brubeck among Kennedy Center honorees

Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, jazz musician Dave Brubeck and opera singer Grace Bumbry are this year’s recipients of Kennedy Center Honors, which will be bestowed at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6 and telecast on CBS-TV.

The recipients will be feted by President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House before the performance gala at the Kennedy Center, where each honoree will be saluted by various peers from the arts world.

-- Randy Lewis

For Motown artists, Obama presidency is the recognition -- and revitalization -- of a legacy in song

When Motown singer Brenda Holloway was a little girl growing up in south L.A., she played violin at the Zion Hill Baptist Church near the Inglewood cemetery. One day, a young preacher arrived at the church to rally support for his civil rights causes.

“I’m just there playing my violin, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. comes up to me and tells me to keep on playing,” Holloway said. “He came up to talk to me! Before I go to heaven, I need to get back into the violin.”

For many African American musicians who lived through the political tumult of the '60s, the music they made gave a personal resonance to the struggle for civil rights. Perhaps no institution embodied that hope more than Motown Records. Artists including Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson gave voice to the changing tide in society with generation-defining hits like “What’s Going On” and “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” while the label itself became probably the most well-known African American owned business in America.

In the months leading up to the 2008 election, many of these artists lent their support to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” became the de facto campaign theme, and artists like Robinson and the Temptations each performed on behalf of the campaign. Just over a month into Obama's administration, Motown artists who sang about the yearning for change and the realization of the civil rights dreams are still getting used to the fact that it’s happened and their own place in that living history.

Merle Haggard on Barack Obama

Country Music Hall of Fame member Merle Haggard was among the millions who tuned in Tuesday to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African American president.

Unlike most everyone else who got caught up in the pageantry, Haggard was sufficiently inspired to step into his home recording studio and lay down a new song reflecting his feelings about the day, which he played for me in demo form Wednesday when I met with him at his house outside Redding, Calif. (A full profile of Haggard is coming in Calendar next week.)

It’s called “Hopes Are High,” and even though Haggard says he didn’t vote for Obama, the song celebrates the arrival of a new era for the country in exceedingly optimistic tones.

We got a new style with a sincere smile

And a new song to sing along

Cause there’s sunshine and a blue sky

And hopes are high

“I don’t remember any politician ever getting that much reaction,” Haggard, 71, said. “And I will say this: Even before Hillary Clinton was eliminated from the primaries, the first time I saw Barack on stage, I told my wife, he’s the only one that steps up to the mike and looks like a president."

“The rest of 'em just didn’t have the stage presence for it,” the composer of “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me” said. “You gotta be somewhat of an entertainer to be president of the United States and pull it off correctly, which is what made Ronald Reagan such a master of the game.”

“I heard Bill Clinton talking the other night, you might have seen the interview with Elvis Costello,” he said, referring to the Sundance Channel’s new music-interview show “Spectacle,” hosted by the British rocker. “He was talking about how much music had influenced his life, and how much he couldn’t have done without it. I was impressed with that. He understood improvisation, he understood jazz, and he said without that knowledge he couldn’t have pulled it off. He was really right about all those things.”

--Randy Lewis

Photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Whose house? Obama's house.

Of all the acres of Obama-centric paraphernalia released since he began his White House run, this shirt that, we hear, began as a meme at the 2008 BET Awards in L.A., has got to be our favorite. Did anyone really imagine a day when a presidential inauguration would be such a bull market for bootleg hip-hop shirts? Though now that he's in office, Obama's surely got a whole new magnitude of geopolitical dirt on his shoulder that's going to need some brushing off.

-- August Brown

Photo and link via The Stranger

Aretha at the inauguration: The future had been written

When Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin took the stage today to sing at the inauguration of Barack Obama, the scene may have felt slightly familiar to students of pop music. While the words spoken by George Clinton in the 1975 funk song "Chocolate City" didn't exactly come to fruition, many of the principals name-checked in the tune were present at today's ceremony, in which Obama took the oath of office as the nation's 44th president.

Thirty-four years ago, Parliament's "Chocolate City" outlined a vision for what our nation's capital might look like after the election of our first black chief executive. Parliament had Muhammad Ali as the one in office. Today, Ali watched the proceedings from the VIP section (pictured above).

Aretha was present in the cut as well, but as first lady, rather than performer. As for the other celebs in the song, Richard Pryor and James Brown have passed on, but Stevie Wonder, who Parliament envisioned as secretary of fine arts, has been an active participant in inaugural activities, performing Sunday as part of the "We Are One" concert.

So, the details aren't exactly the same, but what was once a playfully prideful refrain in a song has turned out to be a rather prescient pop-cultural moment.

-- Todd Martens

Photos: Aretha Franklin and Muhammad Ali. Credit for both: EPA

Bono, Springsteen and Beyonce to appear in inauguration special

Show Tracker brings us the following item:

A slew of A-list talent has signed on to kick off next week’s presidential inauguration festivities. The official organizing committee announced today that “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial,” which will air Sunday on HBO, will feature performances from the likes of Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Josh Groban, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am and Stevie Wonder.

Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington will read historical passages at the two-hour free event. HBO will televise the celebration at 7 p.m. on an open signal, so it will be accessible to anyone with cable or satellite television.

"This is a great opportunity to capture an historic event in a very meaningful setting," said producer and director Don Mischer, whose past credits include the Olympic ceremonies and Super Bowl halftime shows. "We will have the statue of Abraham Lincoln looking down on our stage and a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people lining the mall -- a tableau any director would relish."

-- Matea Gold

(Photo courtesy AP)

Rihanna, Sting, Sam Moore and Elvis Costello to turn out for Obama's inauguration

Other presidents have come into office concerned about the arms race. This one, the economy.

But when you're planning the parties that celebrate a new president's inauguration, the real issue on your mind is the battle of the bands.

Right now, anyone who can turn on a microphone or knows somebody who plays an instrument probably could get a gig in Washington the week of Jan. 18. Simply put: The laws of supply and demand seem to apply to musical talent just as they do Wall Street.

Party planners who score A-list acts can consider themselves lucky.

Here's a glimpse at the lineup so far at various parties:

This week, Feeding America, the nation's hunger reliever, and the Recording Industry Assn. of America announced that "multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning global superstar" Rihanna will perform at their inauguration charity ball on Jan. 20. (In this competition, the booking is the equivalent of Obama's Iowa victory.)

Read the rest of Tina Daunt's Cause Celebre column...