The Lost Treasures of R&B. Nelson George

      I’VE GOT DREAMS TO REMEMBER

      D Hunter had been having sad, traumatic, musical, sometimes unspeakable, oft times prophetic dreams since he was eight. All three of his brothers had been murdered in Brownsville by then, so there was no doubt that this trauma had twisted up homeboy’s subconscious.

      But did these dreams really contain prophecies? He never understood them while they were happening. Not until well after the fact was their truth revealed. He certainly didn’t think he deserved foresight and he sure as hell didn’t want it, since it felt more an affliction than a comfort. D’s dream on his last night living in Manhattan had gone like this:

       A soul singer, resplendent in a shark fin–silver suit with three buttons open on his white shirt, was onstage at some Chitlin’ Circuit palace that could have been Harlem’s Apollo, Chicago’s Regal, Philly’s Uptown, or DC’s Howard back when a Negro’s big-city life was trapped within a few square miles per metropolis.

       But the soul singer wasn’t singing. From his open mouth came the percussive sounds of bass, drums, and even keyboards, as if Doug E. Fresh had been teleported back to the ’60s. Break beats—“Funky Drummer,” “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat,” “Tramp,” songs recorded before D was born and reanimated by DJs and B-boys—exploded in a barrage of rhythm.

       D sat alone, orchestra center, row E, seat twenty-four, his eyes locked with the shark skin–suited beat boxer as the lights went down and the singer became a living black-light poster with his teeth, cuff links, and pocket square radiating a blue neon glow.

       Three female background singers appeared floating behind the singer, cooing some nonsense doo-wop sounds like street-corner kids from the ’50s. Yet they were garbed in matching red Adidas sweat suits, classic white-shell toes, and the kind of red Kangols that LL used to rock. Doo-wop and hip hop, the neon blue lights, and the beats assaulted D and sent him scurrying out his seat, up the aisle, and into the lobby’s blinding white light.

      And then D woke up.