Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Foreword ix
4. Acknowledgments xi
5. INTRODUCTION Change the History: The Blackbird in Song, Story, and Transatlantic Flight 1
6. CHAPTER 1 Flee (Free) as a Bird: The Legacy of the Ring Shout, Flying Africans, and 21
7. CHAPTER 2 Sing a Song of Blackbird: Pre-Twentieth-Century Transatlantic Flights in Black Music, the Beatles, and Liverpool 40
8. CHAPTER 3 I’m a Little Blackbird: Florence Mills, Blackbirds of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Beatles’ Jazz Age Predecessors 55
9. CHAPTER 4 Flying Across the Ocean: Lead Belly, “Grey Goose,” and the Beatles’ Liverpool Skiffle Scene 72
10. CHAPTER 5 You Can Fly Away: Lord Woodbine and Lord Kitchener, “Yellow Bird,” and Calypso in the Beatles’ Liverpool Club Scene 93
11. CHAPTER 6 You Ain’t Ever Gonna Fly: Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” and Revolutionary Responses to the Beatles 108
12. CHAPTER 7 A Blackbird on a White Album: Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Diana Ross, and Other Winged Inspirations in and around 1968 121
13. CHAPTER 8 Like a Bird Up in the Sky: Billy Preston Flies to the Beatles in London and Circles Back to Los Angeles with “Blackbird 144
14. CHAPTER 9 Y’all Ready, Girls? “Blackbird” Soars in San Francisco with Sylvester, Two Tons O’ Fun, and the Band 159
15. CHAPTER 10 I Was Just Seeing Myself Singing: Bettye LaVette on Interpreting the Beatles and Singing a Bridge of Blackbirds 174
16. CONCLUSION Twenty-First-Century “Blackbird” in Paul McCartney’s Legend, for #BlackLivesMatter, and into Transoceanic Flightpaths 192
17. Notes 201
18. Bibliography 228
19. Index 243