Langston Hughes

Hughes is America's preeminent African-American poet. In 1995, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings provided an invaluable service to poetry and blues enthusiasts when they released The Voice of Langston Hughes, a representative sampling of the poet reading some of his best work. Listeners will find a number of selections from his first and most famous collection of poems Weary Blues: "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers," "I, Too," and "Mother to Son" are all recorded. A number of Hughes' blues-poems may also be heard, delivered in his remarkably gentle and refined voice. Together with Weary Blues and Hughes' astounding and highly unconventional 1958 collaboration with jazz legend Charles Mingus, the recordings offer an excellent survey of his mature work. Hughes was a visionary artist and thinker whose relevance just keeps increasing as time goes on.