King, Mahalia Jackson and Stevie Wonder at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival - which is the subject of the upcoming Questlove-directed documentary “Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” - was a memorable moment with the 5th Dimension. So we never stood out enough.” “Blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons” is the new album from Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.īut funnily enough, added McCoo, “We’ve run into Berry many times through the years, and he says, ‘You guys got away from me!’ ”įor McCoo and Davis, playing alongside B.B. “Because we were up against the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops.
“We had gone to Motown hoping to get a record deal, which didn’t come together,” said McCoo. Surprisingly, though, the 5th Dimension got rejected by Motown before their Grammy-winning glory. “So the first time we find out that we were nominated. “At that time, there was no Grammy Awards on television,” said McCoo. In 1968, the 5th Dimension won four of their six Grammys for “Up, Up and Away,” which took home Record of the Year the same night that The Beatles picked up Album of the Year for “Sgt. Of the latter, McCoo said, “It kind of lent itself to Rosa Parks’ story and the bus boycott back in the ’50s as a result of her refusing to give up her seat.” The 5th Dimension Michael Ochs Archives On “Blackbird,” Beatles gems such as “Help!” and “Ticket to Ride” take on a whole new meaning.
“I mean, my wife is scared for me to go out after all these years,” said Davis.Īnd, McCoo added, “I’m always glad when he walks through the door.” With such ’60s and early ’70s classics as “Up, Up and Away,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “One Less Bell To Answer” and, of course, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” the pioneering pair that made flower-power pop something that crossed the color lines in the midst of racial divisiveness still feels that there is so much work to be done in the Black Lives Matter movement. That’s so many of these young people that have been killed recently, they’re our blackbirds.” “You think about the blackbirds being the babies that leave their mother’s nest, and they go out to discover the world and to find out what life is about,” said McCoo, 77. It’s like they’re our own sons and daughters that are being killed.”Īs their new album “Blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons,” a collection of Beatles covers, arrives on Friday, the “You Don’t Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show)” couple is still fighting the good fight for the black struggle. “In 2021, you would think that we had moved on so much farther past that. “It’s come back with a vengeance,” Davis, 82, told The Post about the racial injustice that has arisen from George Floyd to Daunte Wright. So the husband-and-wife duo, who have been married for 52 years, can’t believe just how far we haven’t come since the ’60s. helped to let the sunshine in after the darkest times of the civil rights movement. How Bob Dylan talked his way into his first recording session 60 years agoĪs two-fifths of the 5th Dimension, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. Peter Jackson’s Beatles doc brings us back to that shared place we once belonged Charles Mingus is still the great American rebel, 100 years on