Duke Ellington Orchestra Player Says Sarah Palin Engaged in a "Racist" Incident

[Elisa Keisha]

Duke Ellington Orchestra Player Says Sarah Palin Engaged in a "Racist" Incident

PROUD TO BE BLACK NEWS PROUD TO BE BLACK NEWS


When Charles Gregory Royal, a noted Black Jazz musician with a light complexion, was in Alaska with the Duke Ellington band in 1990, he says he chatted up a young lady in a fast food restaurant who said her name was Sarah Heath. "I was a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. That's how we I ended up in Anchorage." (On May 28, 1990, the Anchorage Daily News reported that the Duke Ellington Orchestra had played to a sold-out house at the Atwood Concert Hall in the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts on May 12, 1990.)



Both Charles Royal and and Sarah Heath Palin played instruments and their conversation went swimmingly at first, says Mr. Royal. Although he had a trombone on his shoulder and the young woman said she played flute, and her last name was "Heath", like a famous Jazz musician, yet the small talk didn't last long. As soon as Mrs. Heath Palin saw the rest of the band members with whom Royal was traveling, says Royal, Heath's body language changed dramatically. "You could see it. The body language. There was a visceral reaction." When Royal asked Heath if something was wrong, Royal reports, Heath responded, "Excuse me, but I don't mess with Black men."

Royal says he told Heath, "But, I'm a Black man," to which Heath responded, "But, you're not really Black." (Heath says that, with light skin, whites have often believed he is white as well.) Royal says Heath seemed only to realize that Royal was Black when she saw his clearly Black bandmates. Then she lost all interest in talking with him. Since his bandmates' skin color and Heath's attitude toward Blacks precluded any further small talk, Royal says he told Heath not to worry about it and to have a nice day.

Gregory Charles Royal is an internationally known Jazz trombone musician, who was mentored and trained with lengendary drummer Charles Blakey and, according to Wikipedia, "has recorded as a sideman on several labels including Sony, Music Masters and Verve and has performed on the Arsenio Hall Show on FOX, the Tony Awards on CBS, the Today Show on NBC, and with the Ellington orchestra on PBS and the BBC and the Universal Pictures release Life starring Eddie Murphy." The Washington Post has noted Royal's "charged" trombone style in its Style Section.

Charles Gregory Royal, is a judge at America'sHotMusician.Org and director at American Youth Symphony, Inc. and once a Jazz trombone player who toured for ten years with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, says he had a "racist incident involving me and [Sarah Heath] Palin when I was traveling as a musician with the Duke Ellington Orchestra some years ago in Alaska.." Royal reports that the incident occurred in 1990, when he was touring with the Duke Ellington Band, which visited Anchorage, Alaska. He says the incident occurred when he and his bandmates stopped to eat at a fastfood restaurant near the Anchorage Airport.

I had my horn with me and the standard approach is, 'Hey, how you doing, what's going on?' She clearly latched onto the fact that I had a horn on. I mentioned, 'Hey, I'm just traveling through with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and I had stickers of the Jazz Festivals. Trombone.

She said, "I'm not really into Jazz, but I play the flute."

Then, I said, "Hey, you're not into Jazz, but you might be into this Music, the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) who took Jazz out of the nightclub and brought it into the concert hall. I started dropping names of people who were in MJQ, including the name 'Percy Heath'. And she said, 'Hey, that's my name!'

When I got there, she was already eating. She didn't mention that she was married or that she had a kid. But, from what I understand she was probably a few months pregnant then. Had I known she was a pregnant woman, I wouldn't have been speaking with her.

Mr. Royal says Palin "looked totally different at the time" (e.g. she did not wear glasses) he never would have connected that incident with the Sarah Heath Palin, now 44 years old, who is now running as the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party had it not been for a report biographical report he saw on a national news program that reported about the nominee that :

(a) she was in Anchorage at one time;

(b) she played the flute;

(c) her maiden name was Heath, like the Jazz musician he had mentioned so long ago in the fast food restaurant, prompting the woman to exclaim, "My name is 'Heath!' ";

(d) and the image of her at the time when she worked as a sports anchor at KTUU-TV Anchorage matched his recollection of the woman who told him, "I don't mess with Black men".

When Mr. Royal saw the biographical report on Sarah Heath Palin, including all of those specific biographical details, he said he was shocked. It was then that he concluded that the woman who is running as the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party is the same woman who, as Royal said in an initial e-mail to this blogger, engaged in a "racist incident involving me and Palin when I was traveling as a musician with the Duke Ellington Orchestra some years ago in Alaska."

He was also surprised to learn from television that Palin had been married and even given birth to a child in 1990, the year that they engaged in amorous small talk at the fast-food restaurant. "I wouldn't have spoken to her had I known she was married and pregnant," says Mr. Royal.

Royal says was about 28 years old at the time. He says he does not recall telling anyone about the incident at the time (or thereafter), except perhaps to say to his band buddies, "she's not into Black guys."

As a Duke Ellington Band musician who played hundreds of concerts in hundreds of locales and chatted up many women, he was not inclined to make a big deal of the incident. In any case, refusing to engage in conversation with a Black man was not illegal and was a minor incident on a long concert tour.

Jazz saxphonist Shelley Carrol traveled
to Anchorage with Royal.

According to an article in Wikipedia, "Gregory Charles Royal has had feature articles in several publications including the Washington Post October 6, 1991 and Los Angeles Times (February, 11 1997) and is listed in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (Leonard Feather, Oxford University Press 1999)."

Mr. Royal says he is not a political person, adding, "I'm not active, but I support Barack Obama and will vote for him in November." He says his wife, Susan Veres, who works at Demos in New York, volunteered for Kerry in 2004.

Gregory Charles Royal's account raises once again the question of whether Sarah Heath Palin is aroused by the skin color of others to engage in ideation, emotion and behavior that is averse to Blacks and others. (In a September 5 article entitled, "Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is "Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean" Charlie James, a writer at the LA Progressive, says an anonymous waitress informant told him that Palin told a table of friends at a restaurant, "So Sambo beat the bitch" in response to Barack Obama's primary victory over Hillary Clinton.)

However, Jazz trombonist and ex-Duke Ellington Orchestra player Gregory Charles Royal may be the first well-known and credible eye-witness participant in such an incident has come forward to publicly report what he saw and heard. Hopefully the Republican vice presidential nominee would have a clear recollection of such an incident and either acknowledge or deny it, unless she so regularly responds or responded to Blacks in this way that it would not have seemed unusual to her.
The Francis L. Holland Blog: Trombone Player Who Accuses Palin of "Racist" Incident Has Reputation for Truthfulness

[Tenkamenin]

This is not suprising, I'm sure all the other presidents, vice-presidents, and presidential candidates and even Baracks running mate Joe Biden have had "Racial incidence". Afterall this is America......

[SpitfireLeo]

But seriously, is that really racist? Most of us on here don't mess with white men.

I guess it was rude for the guy because he was the one courting the white lady. Of couse I wouldn't mistake a black guy for a white one....or a white guy for a black one.

[THE-TROLL]

can't mistake him for being white

[GoodTimes]

I dont put it past ANY White person to say something racist. Whatsup with the brotha being so surprised??