September 15, 1947 – January 16, 2017
“Bobo did it his way,” said childhood friend and longtime music collaborator George R. Sams. “He came out of this city, and he made it throughout the country – and the world.”
Sams offered a lifetime of memories to honor his dear friend, avant-garde jazz drummer and Black Artists Group (BAG) co-founder Charles “Bobo” Shaw. He passed away in hospice care last Monday, January 16, after a series of health setbacks. He was 69.
“There comes a point where you’re considered too old to be a prodigy and too young to become a master, so you have to wait for people to rediscover you again,” Sams said. “Unfortunately, Bobo’s health caught up with him before he could resurge.”
Shaw’s musical career began like many notable musicians in the area, through the rich legacy of the drum and bugle corps offered to black youth through the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). As members of the American Woodsman drum and bugle corps, Sams, Shaw and a handful of other teen musicians made a pact one night after practice that they would become successful jazz musicians. They all followed through.
“His name is well known over the planet,” Sams said. “I always knew that. But when the New York Times called me the other day, I said, ‘Well, damn.’”
He was born Charles Wesley Shaw Jr. on September 15, 1947 in Pope, Mississippi. His mother gave him the nickname of Bobo. The Shaw family moved to St. Louis as part of the Great Migration when he was a child. They owned a restaurant in the historic Ville neighborhood.
Shaw was barely out of his teens when he helped form BAG in 1968. The multidisciplinary arts collective included St. Louis jazz players, actors, poets and dancers, including Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Floyd LeFlore, Shirley LeFlore and J. D. Parran.
It was a creative response to the Black Power movement – using the arts to express a deep love of self and empower a generation during tumultuous times of the 1960s. Organizations like it were popping up wherever there were large concentrations of African Americans.
“Detroit had its equivalent to BAG, Chicago had the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), which is what ours was kind of modeled after,” said Sams.
In the early days of the group, renowned trumpeter and BAG member Baikida Carroll shared an apartment with Shaw on Nina Street near DeBaliviere, which became a vibrant neighborhood of creatives. “Right next door was Malinke Elliott, James Marshall and Vincent Terrell,” Carroll said. “Across the street was Richard Franklin. Down the Street was Julius Hemphill – and J. D. was around the corner.”
The original BAG building, where they held meetings, rehearsals and performances, was nearby. They spoke to the black experience in their art and helped uplift the community in the process.
Legacy of BAG and beyond
By 1972, BAG was over – but the impact of what was started, with the help of Shaw, never faded.
“Today, so many of the people they inspired are at the forefront of movements for social change – whether as artists or through activist and community work,” said Ben Looker, author of the book “’Point From Which Creation Begins’: The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis. “Given the direness of our current political circumstances, the legacy of a group like BAG is especially crucial. So Shaw’s achievements with BAG and afterward are perhaps more relevant now than ever.”
Last year for the Whitaker Jazz Speaks Series, Jazz St. Louis presented “BAG – a Celebration of the Black Artists Group” with Oliver Lake. There was not an empty seat to be had in the Ferring Jazz Bistro or the overflow area.
“I didn’t expect it to be that many people,” said poet and BAG member Shirley LeFlore. “It was so great to see everybody there and to get together again.”
It was one of the last times the public would see Shaw.
“He was a great drummer,” LeFlore said. “He had a special kind of tempo that made it so he could play with just about anybody. I’ll miss performing with him. So will everybody else. They’ll miss hearing him play too.”
Shaw’s contributions were bigger than the music.
“Beyond his talent as a drummer, one thing that stands out about Shaw’s career in St. Louis and New York is his sheer versatility as an arts worker,” Looker said. “He came into BAG as an actor as well as a musician. He cofounded a St. Louis record label, Universal Justice, that gave recording opportunities to so many local experimentalists of the early 1970s.”
He also created the Human Arts Ensemble as a collective that was inclusive of other races.
Soon after BAG disbanded, Shaw moved to Paris as part of a quartet led by Lake that also included Carroll and Joseph Bowie. They toured throughout Europe.
“Those were some of my favorite times with Bobo,” said Carroll. “Being on the road making music and memories – and sharing wonderful stories.”
By the mid-1970s, Shaw and other St. Louisans from BAG had moved to New York and become major figures in Manhattan’s loft-jazz scene, where musicians converted disused industrial spaces into alternative performance spots.
“As with BAG, the loft scene gave musicians a chance to innovate outside the constraints imposed by traditional music clubs,” Looker said. “It also broke down some of the typical boundaries between audience and performer. Shaw was always central to BAG’s do-it-yourself ethos, and his New York years saw him using that St. Louis experience to help enliven a creative and pioneering arts scene in the lofts and elsewhere.”
Shaw returned home in the 1980s, but never stopped performing until his health made it impossible to do so. His last major national show was in 2015 when he performed with Bluiett’s Telepathic Orchestra during the Vision Festival in New York City.
Carroll’s wish is that artists of every sort honor Shaw’s memory by keeping his determination and commitment to creating in mind as they work.
“I hope they’ll see how to go forward and not let anything keep you from keeping your art going,” Carroll said. “That’s what BAG did and what Bobo did – it wasn’t about waiting for someone else to show you the way. It was about showing people to make your own way and stay strong as an artist.”
Shaw is survived by a sister, Marian Shaw Matthews; six daughters, Concere, Antasiah, Myah, Erica, Tracy and Lorene Sabbane Shaw; and a grandchild.
A memorial service for Charles “Bobo” Shaw will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, January 26 at Eddie Randle & Sons Funeral Home, 4600 Natural Bridge Ave., St. Louis, MO 63115.
