Black Music Sunday: A musical meal brings a soulful start to the holiday season

Before diving into the music, I wanted to share probably one of the funniest commentaries I’ve ever read about Black Thanksgiving, which was written by James Beard Book Award Winner, food author, and historian Michael Twitty, whose blog, Afroculinaria, is well worth visiting. Back in 2015, he wrote a satirical piece called ”How to Survive Black Thanksgiving as a Non-Black Guest.” In it he offers 40 points of advice.

Here are three favorites.

10. Like any ethnic household expect people to talk about food while eating food.
You will likely be eating roast turkey, barbecued turkey, deep fried turkey, glazed country ham, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes mashed and covered with marshmallows, corn, cornbread, yeast/potato rolls, black eyed peas, rice, gravy, potato salad, cranberry sauce from the can, sweet potato pie, cornbread dressing, “fried apples” (think Boston Market apples), chitterlings, apple crisp, chess pie, fill-in-the-blank cobbler, ice cream, caramel cake, deviled eggs, “green salad,” and something almost Afrocentric.

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14. Avoid Uncle Pete. He smells like whiskey for a reason and will go up in flames if anywhere near open flame. Do not go to his car with him. He keeps his nickels and dominoes in a Crown Royal bag after he “dranks that brown.”

Sit next to Aunt Pearl. She’s the first college graduate and is sadiddy as hell and “think she better than the rest of the family.” She’s the one that looks like Prince at the award show. Sitting next to a white person will validate her feelings of personal achievement.

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15. Leave all white soul food at home including green or red or pink gelatin based “salads,” casseroles and “hot dish,” see rule 1. We don’t like food that twerks, bubbles long after cooking or sounds like it cannot be cis-identified. Green bean casserole…naw gurl.

You might also want to read Twitty’s book, The Cooking Gene.

While laughing my way through his list, I thought about Thanksgiving dinners in my family, which often had white or Puerto Rican guests, and resembled Twitty’s witty descriptions. Things have changed, even as I try to carry on the tradition (I’m already prepping for Thursday). Now, it is not just what to do with the “no pork” and vegetarian youngsters, it’s also the gluten-free folks. Oh well. I guess they will figure it out, ‘cause I’m making almost everything on Twitty’s menu, except chitlins. I hate them, and won’t stink up my house cooking them.

Interestingly, the first song that dealt with what to do with a vegetarian at the table was 1947’s “Save the Bones for Henry Jones (‘Cause Henry Don’t Eat No Meat),” which was written by Danny Barker and Michael Goldsen, and recorded by Johnny Mercer and the King Cole Trio. 

Enjoy this clip from The Nat King Cole Show, recorded in October 1957. Mercer was Cole’s guest and they performed a lively duet.

Lyrics

We’re gonna have a supper

We’ll eat some food that’s rare

And at the head of the table

We’ll place brother Henry’s chair

Invite all the local big dogs

We’ll laugh and talk and eat

But we’ll save the bones for Henry Jones

‘Cause Henry don’t eat no meat

Today I’ll go to market

Buy up a lotta fish

Well, that will thrill brother Henry

‘Cause fish is his special dish

Get a large can of molasses

Have something really sweet

But we’ll save the bones for Henry Jones

‘Cause Henry don’t eat no meat

Henry is not a drinker

He rarely takes a nip

He don’t need a napkin

‘Cause the things he eats don’t drip ‘ blip!

One day we had a banquet

It really was a bake

They started off with short ribs

Then finished off with steak

But when the feast was over

Brother Henry just kept his seat

And we served the bones to Henry Jones

‘Cause Henry don’t eat no meat

Our banquet was most proper

Right down to demitasse

From soup to lox and bagels

And pheasant under glass ‘ class!

We thought the chops were mellow

He said his chops were beat ‘reet!

We served the bones to Henry Jones

‘Cause Henry don’t eat no meat

He’s an egg man

Henry don’t eat no meat

He loves a pullet

Henry don’t eat no meat

A vegetarian

Henry?

Coming mother!

Soup’s on

Nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer are an interesting pairing. Despite their disparate backgrounds, there is a visible ease in their duet. They were brought together by Mercer’s founding of Capitol Records, according to The Songwriter’s Hall of Fame—of which he was the founding president.

In 1942, together with fellow songwriter (and film producer) Buddy De Sylva and businessman Glen Wallichs, [Mercer] founded Capitol Records and became Capitol’s first President and chief talent scout. Soon, he had signed up such performers as Stan Kenton, Nat “King” Cole, Jo Stafford, and Margaret Whiting, and by 1946 Capitol was responsible for one sixth of all records sold in the U.S.

Unlike many white “Tin Pan Alley” songwriters of his time, Mercer grew up in the South, around Black people and their culture.

Johnny grew up listening to his parents sing. His mother loved to sing ballads while his father favored turn of the century standards.

When he was six years old, Johnny began singing in the choir at Christ Church.  

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Johnny grew up in coastal Georgia in the early 20th century, a time when racial segregation affected many areas of life. However, segregation didn’t necessarily extend to children and black and white children were allowed to play together until they were about 14 years old. Johnny had playmates who were often the children of black servants employed by his family.

In the summers, the Mercer family would escape the heat of Savannah for their home Vernon View on Burnside Island. A community of African Americans lived on the island, and their ancestors had been slaves before the Civil War. This group of people spoke an African-American dialect called Geechee, which was unique to the low country of Georgia. Johnny, who was always interested in language, became fluent in the Geechee dialect during his summers at Vernon View, as did his mother. For the rest of their lives Johnny and his mother would sometimes speak to each other in Geechee dialect.

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Unlike many other songwriters of his time, Johnny was exposed to the music and language of southern African Americans. When Johnny was growing up and began writing songs, popular music had begun to absorb influences of black musical culture, such as jazz and blues. Segregation was so prevalent that it could dictate that whites should only listen to white music and blacks should only listen to black music, but Johnny contributed to the merging of music into a new sound.

RELATED STORY: The Gullah-Geechee have owned land since the 1800s. One terrible law allows their land to be stolen

Nat King Cole was also born in the South, though he grew up in urban Chicago. Like Mercer, he sang in church. The Alabama Hall of Fame has more.

Montgomery native Nathaniel Adams Coles – better known by his stage name, Nat King Cole – earned prominence as a jazz pianist before switching to a singing career that would ultimately carry him to musical immortality. The son of a butcher who yearned to be a preacher, Cole relocated to Chicago with his family when his father became pastor of True Light Baptist Church. Cole learned to play music from his mother, who served as the church organist. At the age of four, Cole made his musical debut with a performance of the novelty tune “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”

Inspired by Earl Hines, Cole spent much of his teenage years in the clubs of Chicago, listening to performances by jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong and Earl “Fatha” Hines. He earned his nickname “King” (inspired by the nursery rhyme “Old King Cole”) and dropped the “s” from his surname when he began playing piano in the Chicago clubs. Eventually, Cole and his older brother Eddie formed a jazz sextet, Eddie Cole’s Swingsters, and made their recording debut for Decca Records in 1936. The brothers went on the road with the all-black musical revue Shuffle Along the following year. When the tour ended in Los Angeles, Nat Cole decided to remain there and pursue his career as jazz pianist.

Fronting the King Cole Trio, Cole wrote, sang and played piano on “That Ain’t Right,” recorded for Decca in 1941. The song became a No. 1 hit on Billboard’s Harlem Hit Parade (later the rhythm-and-blues charts) in early 1943. The success of a second single for the Excelsior label, “All for You,” resulted in a recording contract with Capitol Records. The group’s first Capitol session, “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” topped the black charts in 1944 and also crossed over to the folk and pop charts. That success was followed by “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You” and a No. 1 album, The King Cole Trio.

“Save the Bones for Henry Jones” had a resurgence almost three decades after Cole and Mercer’s version as a 1975 Pointer Sisters cover. The Sisters capture the flavor of 1930s and ‘40s Black harmonic girl groups like The Dandridge Sisters.   

Fans of The Pointer Sisters are probably unaware of the fact that their sassy sister act was born in a very strict religious Black household, which is documented on their website.

“The blood that Jesus shed for me way back on Calvary
The blood that gives me strength from day to day
it will never lose His power”
 
It was some four decades ago when those words were sung in the Church of God in West Oakland, California. There, the Reverend Elton Pointer and his wife Sarah both ministered over a small congregation while raising their six children: two boys, Fritz and Aaron, and the four girls who gave voice to “The Blood”–Ruth, Anita, Bonnie and June–the same girls who would go on to achieve worldwide fame and secure a place in pop music history.
 
The Pointer Sisters’ stunning success certainly belies such humble beginnings, but those who know the true story of their upbringing only marvel at their achievements all the more. Because, despite the fact that the sisters first hit it big with a song called “Yes We Can-Can,” the deep-rooted religious beliefs held by Elton and Sarah made “no” a predominant word in the Pointer household. “No jewelry, no makeup, no dancing, no movies, and certainly no rock music,” Ruth told Essence magazine when recalling her childhood in 1981. “Daddy wanted to protect us from what he called ‘the devil’s work,’ and he worked hard to make sure he did.” And with six children to raise, Elton and his wife worked hard just to make ends meet–but more often than not, they found that difficult. Anita, in fact, once said she received a new dress only twice a year: once on Easter, and once at Christmas. “We thought we were the poorest people in the world,” Ruth told an interviewer in 1980. “Most of our clothes came from the Salvation Army, Father Divine’s thrift store and church rummage sales.” “Times were pretty tough,” June agrees. “All we really had to make us happy was our voices.”
 
Sure enough, the Pointers’ knack for singing had already become apparent. In fact, June says, the sisters had been singing before they could even walk–a joy that only grew as the girls did. Sometimes, they’d mimic the songs they had heard on television–occasionally, they were allowed to watch a harmless Western. Other times, they’d sing the gospel numbers they’d heard in their parents’ church. But most often, when they were safely away from the prying ears of Sarah and Elton, they’d sing a different type of music–the kind they’d heard on the radio in friends’ and neighbors’ homes. And to accompany it, they’d use the only “instruments” they could find. “Our folks would leave the house, and we’d get in the back room and beat pie pans with spoons, making that rhythm and jamming together,” June told an interviewer in 1981. “When they’d come home, Grandpa would say, ‘Better whip their butts–they were in there popping their fingers and shaking their behinds, singing the blues! Terrible! Terrible!’ And we’d get a whipping, too–you’d better believe it.”

In the blues, there are a lot of food references. However, this Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee rendition of “Cornbread, Peas and Black Molasses” isn’t praising this diet. instead, it’s a rejection of the food once given to work gang prisoners—for the darkest reasons.

Lyrics

I don’t want, no cornbread, peas, black molasses
I don’t want, no cornbread, peas, black molasses
At suppertime, Lord, Lord, Lord, at suppertime
I got a letter, a letter from my mother this morning
I got a letter, a letter from my mother this morning
She said, “Come home”, Lord, Lord, Lord, “Son, come home”
I ain’t got no, got no ready-made money
I ain’t got no, got no ready-made money
I can’t go home
If I could make June, July and August
If I could make June, July and August
Then I’d go home, Lord, Lord, Lord, then I’d go home
‘Cause I don’t want no cornbread, peas, black molasses
‘Cause I don’t want no cornbread, peas, black molasses
At suppertime, Lord, Lord, Lord, at suppertime

In a 2008 paper published in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, John Middleton explains how that diet was used in medical experiments on incarcerated people, designed to identify the root cause of a once-rampant disease we now know is caused by niacin deficiency. 

In his book Blues fell this morning,¹ Paul Oliver, the celebrated historian and biographer of the blues, describes a conversation with Sonny Terry, the blind virtuoso blues harmonica player. Cornbread, meat and black molasses was a ‘field holler’ – a song sung by prison farm inmates on hard labour field detail.

‘Boy, I’m gonna tell ya about this song – now this is a chain gang song. And now the boys on the chain gang, don’t eat, they don’t feed on nothin’ but cornbread, meat and molasses.’

Prisoners, black and white, across the Deep South of the USA were aware of Joseph Goldberger’s experiments, which were designed to find the cause of pellagra by assessing and modifying the diets of prisoners at Rankin Prison Farm, Mississippi. The archives of the State of Mississippi hold evidence of the extensive public controversy, involving outraged victims of the crimes of these inmates, the general public and Governor Brewer, who had sanctioned Goldberger’s experiment and the offer of pardon to the volunteers.

But back to the music.

Peter Stone and Ellen Harold, editor and translator at the Alan Lomax Archive at Hunter College, have posted biographies of both Terry and McGhee on the The Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) website. 

Sonny Terry

Harmonica player Sonny Terry (1911–1986) and his long-time partner, blues singer and guitarist Brownie McGhee, were among the first folk blues artists to reach a national (and international) audience and to bridge the gap between folk and pop music. They started out as street musicians, made numerous “race records,” were among the original Almanac Singers, recorded for Moe Asch’s folk music labels, performed with jump-blues bands (the precursors of rock and roll), toured internationally, acted on Broadway and television, and became part of the 1960s folk revival.

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Born Saunders Terrell on October 24, 1912 (some say 1911), in Greensboro, Georgia, Sonny lost the sight in one eye as a child and injured the other in his teens, leaving him with minimal vision. At five or six he began learning harmonica, which his father, Reuben Terrell, a farmer, played at social functions. The boy also honed his musical skills singing at tent revivals. Debarred by his poor eyesight from making a living from farming, he became a blues singer, beginning by working the streets in Shelby, North Carolina. “In them days I just as soon died — except for my harmonica. It was like a friend who didn’t give a damn if I could see or not.”

After a stint in a medicine show, he went on the road, working the streets and playing at dinners and dances in North Carolina’s tobacco belt cities (Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Durham). He also worked briefly at a factory for the blind, and occasionally sold liquor. Eventually he formed a musical partnership with local musical celebrity, blues singer-guitarist Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen), the preeminent exponent of Piedmont-style guitar picking (in which the thumb plays the bass line while two or three fingers limn the melody and harmony, giving an effect that imitates ragtime piano and scat singing). Often accompanied by washboard player George “Bull City Red” (or “Oh Red”) Washington, they picked up tips on the streets outside the tobacco auction warehouses of Durham, where the musical scene also included the Reverend Gary Davis (then Blind Gary Davis), and Brownie McGhee.

Brownie McGee:

Walter Brown McGhee was born on November 30, 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Shortly afterwards the family moved to Kingsport, Tennessee. In 1918 Brownie contracted polio. As he grew older, he got around in a cart, which was pushed and navigated with a pole by his younger brother Granville — born in 1918, and destined to become a fine guitarist in his own right — who, for his efforts, earned the sobriquet “Stick.”

The family was musical: Brownie’s uncle, John Evans, a fiddler, made a banjo for him. His father George (or Duff) McGhee, a construction worker who often sang and played guitar with a mixed race band, taught him guitar and piano chords. Another influence was family friend Lesley (or “Esley”) Riddle, who accompanied A. P. Carter of the Carter Family on song collecting trips, and whose style influenced that of Maybelle Carter. Brownie played the organ at Solomon Baptist Church and sang in the choir of Sacred Baptist Church and in the 1930s with the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet. In 1937 a successful operation sponsored by the March of Dimes lent him greater mobility, enabling him to move about the Southeast with tent shows and perform with his father’s gospel group. During these travels, he met washboard player George “Bull City Red” Washington, who arranged for him to meet the talent scout for Okeh-Columbia records, James B. Long, of Durham, North Carolina.

Durham had a lively musical street scene outside its tobacco auction warehouses and was the hometown of Brownie’s hero, Blind Boy Fuller, the pre-eminent exponent of Piedmont-style guitar picking. He was J. B. Long’s principal blues artist. Long arranged a two-day recording session for Brownie McGhee in Chicago with Okeh in 1940, that included “Me and My Dog,” “My Barking Bulldog Blues,” and “Picking My Tomatoes.” Meanwhile, Sonny Terry, upon returning to Durham, had continued to play regularly with Fuller and also occasionally with Brownie McGhee. In 1941, after Blind Boy Fuller’s death at the age of 33 from blood poisoning, Long promoted Brownie McGhee as “Blind Boy Fuller #2”; his second recording of Okeh included the musical tribute, “Death of Blind Boy Fuller.”

A contemporary version of the Terry-McGee classic is performed here by Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder on their 2022 album Get on Board.

Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr. is known by his stage name, Taj Mahal.

Taj’s exploration of music began as an exploration of self. He was born in 1942 in Harlem to musical parents––his father was a jazz pianist with Caribbean roots; mother was a gospel-singing schoolteacher from South Carolina––who cultivated an appreciation for both personal history and the arts in their son. “I was raised really conscious of my African roots,” Taj says. “So I was trying to find out: where does what we do here connect to what we left there?” In the early 1950s, his family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts––a microcosmic melting pot for immigrants from across the globe: the Caribbean, the American South, Europe, the Mediterranean, Syria, Lebanon. “Music was everywhere,” he says.  “Things were different in those days. There weren’t a lot of places that African Americans had to go out to entertain themselves. So people did a lot of entertaining in their homes. Friday or Saturday night, you’d move the furniture, mop and wax the floor, and set things up so people could pop over and hear all the music.

From the beginning, Taj found the blues magnetic, even as most artists around him in the Northeast were exploring other sounds. “I could hear little strains of the blues coming through––you could feel that energy in the music that was being played,” he says. “I could also feel that energy of the blues inside myself.” Piano lessons didn’t stick––“I’d already heard what I wanted to play”––so when a blues guitarist from

North Carolina moved in next door, Taj found an early mentor and was off.

Ry Cooder has been a part of the Black blues music world since he was a youngster, so it is no surprise to find him recording with Taj Mahal. Calen D. Stone and Ronnie D. Lankford Jr. wrote his biography for Musician Guide.

Cooder’s musical education began at the age of four, when his father taught him some basic chords on a four-string tenor guitar. As his hands and abilities developed, he progressed to a full-size Martin, by which time the eight-year-old had become proficient enough to play folk songs from his parents’ record collection. Four years later Cooder heard the haunting slide guitar work of Blind Willie Johnson and set out on a path to search for, and absorb, as much of the old acoustic blues as he could find. A local mailman opened up an entire world for Cooder by turning him on to obscure artists like Skip James, Reverend Gary Davis, Leadbelly, Blind Blake, and Jesse Fuller. After losing an eye to a knife accident, the youngster bypassed normal childhood activities like Little League baseball in order to master these peculiar styles. The effect of a Big Joe Williams record helped to plot Cooder’s path. “It moved me up—it got me to sweat!. … I wanted to hear that slam, you know? So I declared myself on the side of the energetic movement,” he told Guitar World.

Most young people of his age were enamored with the early rockers like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, so Cooder experienced limited musical exchange with his peers. Instead, his education took place in a small club called the Ash Grove, where Cooder was able to experience up close the techniques of his idols. “I was lucky,” he told James Henke in Rolling Stone. “I saw a lot of good things firsthand, and I heard them the way they were supposed to be heard.” Cooder began to work closely with Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence, whose use of open tunings made a lasting impression on Cooder’s own style

Back to those peas: I can hear the opening words to “Pass the Peas,” a funky tune from the JB’s.

“Hey Bobby, why do you like soul food?
Because it makes me ha-a-a-py”

The JB’s were James Brown’s backup band, who played a key role in the foundation of funk.

RELATED: Funk music is as unapologetically Black as the musicians who pioneered it

From the JB’s biography by Steve Huey over at All Music:

The J.B.’s were the legendary supporting cast of musicians behind James Brown, earning a well-deserved reputation as the tightest, best-drilled instrumental ensemble in all of funk. The name J.B.’s is most often associated with three hornmen in particular — saxophonists Maceo Parker and Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis, and trombonist Fred Wesley, all of whom originally joined Brown’s backing band at various points during the ’60s. As a recording entity unto themselves, however, the J.B.’s enjoyed a distinctly defined heyday from 1970-1975, under the musical directorship of Wesley (though Brown, naturally, remained a strong presence). The J.B.’s were billed under a variety of alternate names on their own singles and albums — Fred Wesley and the J.B.’s, Maceo and the Macks, Fred and the New J.B.’s, the James Brown Soul Train, the Last Word, the First Family, and more. The core group of personnel, despite some turnover on the periphery, remained fairly steady from 1971 on, at least until Brown’s creative downturn precipitated several important defections.

The first official version of the J.B.’s was formed in 1970, after the notoriously demanding Brown’s regular band (excepting organist/vocalist Bobby Byrd) walked out on him. Caught in a pinch, Brown recruited a Cincinnati-based R&B band called the Pacemakers, who’d already toured behind Brown favorite Hank Ballard. Brothers Phelps “Catfish” Collins (guitar) and William “Bootsy” Collins (bass) anchored the lineup, as well as the first J.B.’s single, 1970’s “The Grunt.” The Collins brothers, of course, would play a crucial role in Brown’s transition to heavy, groove-centered funk. One by one, some of Brown’s previous bandmembers returned to the fold, including Fred Wesley, who accepted Brown’s offer to become musical director of the J.B.’s in December 1970. However, the lineup splintered with the departure of the Collins brothers just a few months later, leaving Wesley with only guitarist Hearlon “Cheese” Martin, drummer John “Jabo” Starks, and tenor saxman St. Clair Pinckney. This nucleus was quickly fleshed out with bassist Fred Thomas and saxophonist Jimmy Parker (who’d never played alto prior to joining the band); soon, there was also a trumpet section, usually featuring Jerone “Jasaan” Sanford, Russell Crimes, and Isiah “Ike” Oakley.

Brown began to release recordings by the newly constituted J.B.’s on his own People label with some frequency beginning in 1971, and the group scored a couple of Top 40 R&B hits with “Pass the Peas” and “Gimme Some More.” By 1972, previous Brown guitarist Jimmy Nolen had returned alongside Cheese Martin, and conga player Johnny Griggs was back in tow as well. That year saw the release of the first J.B.’s full-length, Food for Thought. Wesley was still the band’s only real soloist, so in early 1973, Brown convinced legendary alto man Maceo Parker to rejoin. His first record back with the group was “Doing It to Death,” a long jam with guest vocals from Brown that topped the R&B charts in edited form; it was also the title track of their second album, and the first single credited to Fred Wesley & the J.B.’s, affirming that Wesley was still without question the leader.

A well-known version of “Pass the Peas” came from this amazingly joyful 2002 performance by Prince, live at the Aladdin in Las Vegas, with the one and only Maceo Parker.

If that didn’t get you wanting to dance, you got a hole in yo’ soul.

There’s a funny story behind the collaboration, as told by Nick DeRiso at Ultimate Prince.

Mutual admirers, Prince and Maceo Parker were introduced by pure happenstance. Both of them separately came upon the idea to collaborate on a new project in the late ’90s. The only problem was, Prince thought the legendary saxophonist was dead. “I remember a conversation at the piano at Paisley and we were talking about Maceo, about how much I loved him, about how much Prince loved him,” Candy Dulfer, an occasional member of the New Power Generation, told the Current in 2018. “But then Prince said to me, ‘Yeah, he’s not alive anymore is he?'”

…

No small amount of credit for the meeting goes to Dulfer, who broke the happy news to Prince. “I said, ‘Are you killing me? He’s so alive!'” she said. “‘He’s very much alive and doing great.’ And he said ‘Get him over here.’ And then I had somebody call him, and from then on we were together.”
…

Over the next decade, they became all but inseparable – both in the studio and on the road. Parker appeared on Prince’s One Nite Alone … Live! in 2002, then 2003’s C-Note, 2004’s Musicology, 2006’s 3121, 2007’s Planet Earth, 2008’s Indigo Nights and 2009’s Lotusflow3r. Asked back then if he still enjoyed working the concert circuit, so long after his outsized successes in the ’80s, Prince said: “Are you kidding? I get to say: ‘Maceo, blow your horn!'”

In 2020, Parker released Soul Food: Cookin With Maceo.

Though none of the tracks on the album are about food, the songs are certainly food for the soul. And so I’ll close with “M A C E O,” as I’ve got cooking to do.

Pass those peas please, and join me in the comments for even more nutritious notes to kick off your holiday season.

Be sure to post your musical foodie favorites!

Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock defends his Georgia seat against Herschel Walker on Dec. 6. If you can, please send a donation to Team Warnock now, or write letters to Georgia voters with Vote Forward! Let’s help Georgia deliver a 51-seat Democratic majority!