Key & Cleary – A Man + There Are Troubles (1972)



“In the early ’70s, Jessie Key and Sylvester Cleary – two passionate idealists living in Buffalo, New York – formed a close friendship based on a mutual mission to better their city. The Attica State Prison Riot of 1971 was a burning memory, and the Arthur vs. Nyquist lawsuit – brought against the City of Buffalo for creating and maintaining a racially segregated school system – was on the docket. Key was once a cotton-laborer in Mississippi, who journeyed north for school where he met his kindred spirit, Cleary. The two struck up an intense friendship, bought a drum machine and recorded their first 45, “A Man,” a paean to self-actualization and Black American empowerment, which they custom pressed and issued privately.” Source

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