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A really good article for anyone curious about Miles Davis' favorite fighter.
Link- Honey Boy Bratton:
The Boxer Who Inspired Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali
Link- Honey Boy Bratton:
The Boxer Who Inspired Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali
The look and sound of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s was strikingly different from the rest of America. During that time period, it was estimated at one point that more than 3000 African Americans per week were moving to the Windy City from various Southern states. Outside of New York, it housed the largest black population in the northern states.
Workers from the fields of Mississippi and Arkansas now were employed in Chicago packinghouses, and brought with them the sound of southern blues—the songs of labor. That familiar 12-bar riff was their soundtrack, but a welterweight slugger named Johnny Bratton was their action hero. For black children now living in Chicago, the sight of Bratton being chauffeured around in a white Cadillac, dressed in a $400 all-red suit gave hope that the dream their families had chased migrating north could become reality.
Workers from the fields of Mississippi and Arkansas now were employed in Chicago packinghouses, and brought with them the sound of southern blues—the songs of labor. That familiar 12-bar riff was their soundtrack, but a welterweight slugger named Johnny Bratton was their action hero. For black children now living in Chicago, the sight of Bratton being chauffeured around in a white Cadillac, dressed in a $400 all-red suit gave hope that the dream their families had chased migrating north could become reality.
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