{"id":36690,"date":"2014-06-11T20:44:45","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T20:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36690"},"modified":"2015-03-22T01:48:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T01:48:48","slug":"if-id-chosen-to-live-my-life-passing-as-white-id-have-never-been-able-to-sing-with-duke-ellington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36690","title":{"rendered":"If I\u2019d chosen to live my life passing as white, I\u2019d have never been able to sing with Duke Ellington."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cHe [<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Herb_Jeffries\" target=\"_blank\">Herb Jeffries<\/a>] told me he had to make this decision about whether he should try to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">pass<\/a> as white,\u201d the jazz critic <a href=\"http:\/\/garygiddins.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gary Giddins<\/a> recalled in an interview for this obituary. \u201cHe said: \u2018I just knew that my life would be more interesting as a black guy. If I\u2019d chosen to live my life passing as white, I\u2019d have never been able to sing with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Duke_Ellington\" target=\"_blank\">Duke Ellington<\/a>.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>William Yardley, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=36538\" target=\"_blank\">Herb Jeffries, a.k.a. \u2018Bronze Buckaroo\u2019 of Song and Screen, Dies at 100 (or So)<\/a>,\u201d <em>The New York Times<\/em>, May 26, 2014. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/27\/arts\/music\/herb-jeffries-singing-star-of-black-cowboy-films-dies-at-100.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/27\/arts\/music\/herb-jeffries-singing-star-of-black-cowboy-films-dies-at-100.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHe [Herb Jeffries] told me he had to make this decision about whether he should try to pass as white,\u201d the jazz critic Gary Giddins recalled in an interview for this obituary. \u201cHe said: \u2018I just knew that my life would be more interesting as a black guy. If I\u2019d chosen to live my life [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17492,17406,2640,2327,14587],"class_list":["post-36690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-gary-giddins","tag-herb-jeffries","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-william-yardley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}