Remembering Clayton Riley

                 Clayton Riley- 1935-2008

Les Payne

10/29/08

Clayton Riley and I became friends fairly recently, at a point when each of us had figured that we’d have to make do with the buddies we had. 

Years earlier, when I was rookie news reporter, Riley caught my attention through the cultural pages of the New York Times. His by-line over a Sunday review triggered an excitement like no other. During the Hollywood era of dusky films exploiting black folks in the early ‘70’s, his reviews in the Arts & Leisure section bristled with downtown verve and uptown street savvy.

The big studios were cranking out ghetto flicks after Melvin van Peebles’ independent, ’71 release of “Sweetback’s Baaadasssss Song” earned an impressive profit margin.

A forerunner of Spike Lee, van Peebles wrote, directed and starred in his transitional film as a Black Panther saved from cops by a prostitute who evades “the man” with community help and, curiously, that of the Hell’s Angels. The true-grit film delighted Negro mass audiences—as did other arts generated during the “black power” period. However, this new cultural wave befuddled mainstream reviewers.

Into this white noise of orthodox criticism strode Clayton Riley with a reality filter. In addition to film, the former actor wrote stage-play criticism and mused in the Times and elsewhere about his beloved jazz as high art.

As cocksure as he was level-headed, Riley measured van Peeples’ earnestness against his execution of the story as film drama. He judged it in the Times as a genuine but troubling piece of cinema verite.

"Sweetback, the profane sexual athlete and fugitive, is based on a reality that is Black,” Riley wrote. “We may not want him to exist but he does.” He was less tolerant of “Shaft,” another ’71 film, this one directed by Gordon Parks. John Shaft, an indestructible, uptown Afro-detective blasted his way through his fight to keep the Mafia from retaking Harlem.  

Park’s film, Riley wrote, was "an extended lie, a distortion that simply grows larger and more unbelievable with each frame." Whereas “Sweetback” conjures reality, “there has never been a John Shaft and there never will be,” wrote Riley, who knew something of real private detectives “who work hard at dull jobs for small pay.” After praising Parks as a photographer, composer and “skilled novelist,” Riley concluded: “Parks does so many things so very well, directing films is not one of them.”

With Hollywood oozing out cheap inferiors like mudslides, the “distortion” turned downright intolerable for Riley with the onset of such numbers as “Super Fly,” “The Legend of Nigger Charley” and the ’73 film “Hell Up in Harlem,” written and directed by Larry Cohen.

The flinty social critic in Riley made him despair of the superhero as stifling even to escapist black moviegoers.  Ultimately, this “pretended glamour,” he said, demeaned “black life as an exercise in passive unreality.”  A self-described radical of the Left, he eschewed the requisite mouthing of dogma, choosing instead to work toward a constructive engagement built on ideas and action. 

An athlete in his youth and football player in the army, Riley variously acted in such plays as “The Dutchman” and “In White America.” In addition to freelance criticism of film, music and theater, he scripted TV documentaries such as “I Remember Harlem;” taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Cornell University and the New School; and, in the early ‘80’s, worked with the father of Martin Luther King, Jr. on his autobiography, “Daddy King.” In the latter span of his career, Clayton Riley became best known to New Yorkers as a broadcaster on commercial as well as listener-sponsored Pacifica radio, WBAI.

****

Making his rounds about town as a celebrity in the ‘90’s, Riley encountered a devoted listener who heaped praise about his earlier work as a film and music critic for the Times. He and I discovered mutual links to Hartford, my family’s adopted hometown, and his stopping-off place for a few memorable years of his adolescence. Connecticut talk aside, Riley had morphed into an unmatched maestro of radio jazz and a provocative socio-political voice of on-air black empowerment.

Never much given to compromise, Riley was part existential and part troubadour rebel. In the workplace as in life, he would take his principled stand, throw-down if necessary, and move on if required.

Clayton didn’t tolerate fools; some days he didn’t care much for wise men either.

When WLIB released Clayton in 1994, I wrote in my Newsday column that his bosses had cowardly deprived New York City of a critically needed broadcast treasure. Striving for a more non-controversial tone, the black station said it would not abide Riley’s put-down of listeners. Such sparks and patter during drive-time was the very hallmark of radio hosts on popular, commercial stations with mega-ratings.

“This voice of thunder from the left, with a caustic but discerning tongue, was fired last week by his black-owned radio station” I wrote in my Newsday column. “That dark hands wielded the ax will unfortunately lead some who would otherwise defend him to walk away from Riley, much as they dismiss crime when it's black-on-black… Riley stands alone and unemployed…he has discovered that winds that others withstand are sufficient to panic his bosses. There must be a spot on the dial for his voice of thunder.” There was.

Hosting a talk show on listener-sponsored WBAI, Riley took to telephoning me, years later, from his Sag Harbor summer place to discuss, hot-button, socio-political issues. My wife and I paid him an East End visit, where Clayton delighted guests with scrumptious samples of his prized recipe for potato salad and deep-South, flour biscuits. We took to hosting each others families at our Village and Harlem digs; then celebrating each others birthdays; and after he sat through my ’03 UConn Commencement address at Storrs; I looked in on his wedding to Joy Vida Jones. The bride had earlier traveled with us to China on a tour arranged by our daughter Tamara.

A nattily dressed Clayton graced his wedding reception sporting, among other touches, a color-coordinated pair of spats. He’d worried London tailors all over Saville Row to get them fitted in time. Ever the dandy when out on the town, his impeccable wardrobe was a throwback to Beau Brummel, with pleated, woolen trousers, sleek Italian shoes, ascots, and god what rakish hats. This discriminating taste extended to wine, dining and the beaux arts.

Clayton was a throw-back to an age when gentlemen dressed impeccably, groomed carefully, spoke with precision, cultivated good manners and pursued life with boundless curiosity and savoir-faire.  He had traveled the world and absorbed a few things about the good life—and, occasionally, he’d let you know that he knew a lot.

Within the last 18 months, we took to having outdoor Thursday lunches at a quaint, Italian restaurant near his Village apartment. Conversations ranged over politics, jazz, family, social happenings, and methods of bridging from the good old days to a better black future.

His pulmonary fibrosis saddled him with a portable oxygen tank which Clayton so stylishly incorporated into his wardrobe that he made healthy onlookers feel under-dressed.

Clayton dubbed our Thursday lunches, “A Salon” There was only two of us at this “Salon,” but there was no shortage of ego at the table. Occasionally, we would be joined by his good friend Carney, Faith Childs, Earl Caldwell, and several times, the New York Secretary of State, Randy Daniels. We’d rap and jive, scheme, philosophy and laugh our way from the hors d'oeuvre through the Gelato.

One Thursday session between Clayton and me ended once again on a political note. A GOP critic of Sen. Barack Obama had characterized the presidential candidate’s statement about blacks being unable to catch City cabs as woefully “out of date.”

As Clayton remained seated with his oxygen tank, I stood up upraised hand in the afternoon sun on Greenwich Street. After the first, then second empty Yellow Cab passed me up with his vacancy light, Clayton was furious. When the third cabbie did likewise, I glimpsed this blur out the corner of my eye.

With oxygen tank under his arm, Clayton stormed into the street banging on the trunk of the taxi, yelling “You can’t do that, this is America… “The Middle Eastern driver hunkered down sheepishly and screeched away when the light changed.

Clayton took down the taxi number and reported the incident to the Taxi and Limousine service. The hearing drew a demerit for the driver and no satisfaction for Clayton.

Once again the uncompromising stickler for justice had stood his ground. There was no back-down in him. He was indeed an existential rebel, a strong presence, a black man in ascendance—an American in full.

Clayton Riley died Friday; he was 73.