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HUGH MASEKELA

“GRAZING IN THE GRASS”

(Philemon Hou)

Uni 55066

No. 1   July 20, 1968

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Hugh Ramapolo Masekela was born in Wilbank, South Africa, on April 4, 1939, the son of a famous sculptor.

 Hugh’s grandmother raised him until school age.   He attended missionary schools, and learned how to play

the piano by age seven.   When he was 13, Hugh saw Kirk Douglas in Young Man With a Horn (1950), the film

biography of Bix Beiderbecke.   His future appeared to him with crystal clarity–within a year, he had his first

trumpet.

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Masekela played in the Huddleston Jazz Band, until the group’s leader–a priest and anti-apartheid advo­cate,

Father Trevor Huddleston-was deported.   Hugh formed the Merry Makers of Springs.   In 1958, he played in

the orchestra for the road company of the opera King Kong, which starred MIRIAM MAKEBA (his wife from

1964 to 1966).   Thereafter, he toured with the Jazz Epistles (reportedly the first black band to record a jazz

album in South Africa), Dollar Brand, and Miriam Makeba.

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In 1959, British orchestra leader John Dankworth arranged for Hugh to receive a scholarship to the Royal

Academy of Music in London;  the following year, Harry Belafonte lined up a four-year scholarship for Hugh

at the Manhattan School of Music.   In 1965, Masekela formed his own band and started recording on his own

label, Chisa.   A number of his instrumental albums, then leased to MCA’s Uni label, sold quite well–Hugh

Masekela’s Latest (1967), Hugh Masekela Is Alive and Well at the Whisky (1968), and The Promise of a

Future (1968).   In addition to topping the charts with “Grazing in the Grass,” Hugh made the pop listings with

“Up, Up and Away” (#71, 1968), “Puffin’ on Down the Track” (#71, 1968), and “Riot” (#55, 1969).   His duet with

Herb Alpert, “Skokiaan,” registered at number 87 on the R & B charts in 1978.

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As for the tune by which Masekela is best mass remem­bered, “It was all very contrived,” he told Rolling Stone’s

Gordon Fletcher.   “It happened because I came along about the time Herb Alpert was making it big with his

‘South American sound,’ so MCA figured that they would make me into a black Herb Alpert.   I did it but it

wasn’t what I wanted–I wanted the fulfillment of playing something that was me.”

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Less than a year later, Floyd Butler, Jessica Cleaves, Harry Elston, and Barbara Jean Love–the Friends of

Distinction–did a vocal rendition of “Grazing in the Grass” that, likewise, went Top 10 on both the pop and R

& B list­ ings (#3; R&B: #5, 1969).