Blackbird: how Black musicians sang the Beatles into being - and sang back to them ever after

Introduction : change the history : the blackbird in song, story, and transatlantic flight

Flee (free) as a bird : the legacy of the ring shout, flying Africans, and gospel in Black music and the Beatles

Sing a song of blackbird : pre-twentieth-century transatlantic flights in Black music, the Beatles, and Liverpool

I'm a little blackbird : Florence Mills, blackbirds of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Beatles' jazz age predecessors

Flying across the ocean : Lead Belly, "Grey goose," and the Beatles' Liverpool skiffle scene

You can fly away : Lord Woodbine and Lord Kitchener, "Yellow bird," and calypso in the Beatles' Liverpool club scene

You ain't ever gonna fly : Nina Simone's "Blackbird" and revolutionary responses to the Beatles

A blackbird on a white album : Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Diana Ross, and other winged inspirations in and around 1968

Like a bird up in the sky : Billy Preston flies to the Beatles in London and circles back to LA with "Blackbird"

Y'all ready girls? : "Blackbird" soars in San Francisco with Sylvester, two tons o' fun, and the band

I was just seeing myself singing : Bettye LaVette on interpreting the Beatles and singing a bridge of blackbirds

Conclusion : twenty-first-century "Blackbird" in Paul McCartney's legend, for #BlackLivesMatter, and into transoceanic flightpaths.