Langston Hughes emerged from the Harlem Renaissance insisting that Black vernacular speech, blues form and jazz rhythm belonged in serious American poetry, publishing 'The Weary Blues' in 1926 and never letting up. He performed his poems live to jazz accompaniment for decades, treating the reading itself as a kind of composition — most memorably captured on record and television in 1958 with backing from Charles Mingus, Leonard Feather and the Doug Parker Band. He died in 1967, having built the template — poem as music, vernacular as high art — that generations of soul, spoken-word and hip-hop artists would later claim as a foundation.

the sound in question

1958

The Weary BluesLangston Hughes