MUSIC
Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame inductees Otis Williams (second from left) an Bootsy Collins (second from right) P H O T O : K AT I E G R I F F I T H
Stars of the Queen City Progress continues on downtown Cincinnati’s forthcoming Black Music Walk of Fame, with the first four stars on temporary display at CVG BY K AT I E G R I F F IT H
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ajor chapters in Cincinnati’s unsung Black music history now are being spotlighted and celebrated in a permanent way. Hamilton County Commissioner Alicia Reece is heading successful efforts to install a Black Music Walk of Fame in front of the Andrew J. Brady Music Center downtown, the first
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four stars of which were revealed in November at their temporary home, the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG). Among the inductees are Bootsy Collins, Otis Williams, The Isley Brothers and Charles Fold, who are also recognized as founding members of the Walk of Fame in conjunction with Reece and her team. “I had heard from a lot of people
JANUARY 12, 2022 - JANUARY 25, 2022
who were in the industry and were questioning how can we capture the history of African American artists that are from this area,” Reece tells CityBeat. “And it really sparked me.” Reece credits her parents’ musical nature for her piqued interest and knowledge of rare and lesser-known facts about Black music history in Cincinnati. Her father, Steve Reece, started an independent record label in Cincinnati called S.R. Records in the late ’60s, which recorded his future wife and Alicia Reece’s mother, Barbara Howard’s album On The Rise. The record was granted a reissue in 2019 by local record company Colemine Records. “Growing up, I would hear the stories. (My parents) knew Bootsy and just different stories about different
people,” Reece says. “And I said, wow I know these stories but where can I find these stories? So I was really interested in capturing the history of music. And then what really sparked me was that I was at a press conference event with Otis Williams from Otis Williams and The Charms and he pointed over at the (Andrew J. Brady Music Center) — we were at the Freedom Center — and he said, how do we become included, our stories included, and he cried. “And that’s when I said man, I gotta figure this out because we have this great music venue on The Banks. We have the Paul Brown Stadium that hosts the Cincinnati Music Festival, which is the oldest African American music festival in the country. And we bring all of these artists to town and we have this eyesore on the corner that was just
