TeaPartyDude
Banned
So the pinnacle of Alt Rock culture is a bunch of European White guys doing poor imitations of "negro" blues musicians? Somebody please pass me the sick sack I feel nauseous.
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- Thread starter jasonharper2013
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So the pinnacle of Alt Rock culture is a bunch of European White guys doing poor imitations of "negro" blues musicians? Somebody please pass me the sick sack I feel nauseous.
Very few musical forms have been spontaneously generated because practically no group of people is totally isolated on this planet.
If some alternative artists were influenced by blues musicians... or perhaps they were influenced by someone who was influenced by someone who was so influenced... it is actually a great thing that we can appreciate, as people, the achievements of others and flatter them by imitation or adaptation.
I'm a guy with Celtic heritage whose favorite music comes, with modification, from the Yoruba with influences from modern jazz and other genres. I was exposed to its earlier roots as an adolescent and so it's part of my personal culture.
People like what they know; musical tastes are for the most part formed in early adolescence and don't significantly change thereafter. You can't arbitrate or legislate taste.
If you were Lawrence Welk and grew up in North Dakota in the early 20th Century, you liked polkas and "sweet music". You were not exposed to bomba and plena or to blues and jazz so you did not play that music or, likely, have much liking for it. This is all a matter of experience, exposure and the cultural group you belong to. Don't try to make it into a "diversity" issue when it is one of taste and personal preference.
TeaPartyDude
Banned
I think it is an issue of historical racism. "Negro" Blues music was always around probably since the days of slavery it was people probably like your parents who wouldn't allow White kids to listen or buy "race" music. The Brits got wind of blues records and tried their best to emulate them. When the Brits came to the USA they "introduced" this unique AMERICAN music form to adoring White American teens. Colonel Tom Parker realized he struck gold when he found a "White man who could sing and dance like a N*gger." One of my favorite albums is by Gene McDaniel where they didn't put a picture or likeness of him on the album cover in hopes that the potentially buyers would not discover he was a "negro".
So there you go it is much more than an is of mere taste!
So there you go it is much more than an is of mere taste!
No trying to be argumentative, but does anybody really think the Brits "introduced" R&B styled music to the USA? The "British Invasion" was a huge thing, but I think most people - especially of my age (baby boomer) knows that rock music was heavily influenced by R&B in the early-mid 50s and was around for at least a decade before the Beatles/Stones. etc.
You are right that many white performers made their careers on covers of hits originally done by African-Americans. Pat Boone, for example.
Stop there. Who says our parents "wouldn't allow... to listen or buy "race" music°? That's certainly an exaggeration of the real facts.
Alan Freed became famous as a Disk Jockey by playing Black artists and then doing integrated and mostly sold-out shows almost a decade before the British Invasion.
The music of the fields of the days of slavery had its roots in the music that the captured slaves brought from Africa. It was tempered and modified by the mixing of different African tribal cultures, and then evolved in a purely American way. In fact, the same blending of African musical heritage produced a number of other music forms elsewhere in the Americas, such as Salsa and Merengue in the Caribbean, Cumbia and Montunita in Colombia and Panamá and all the steps that led to calypso, socca and reggae in the non-Spanish colonies of the West Indies and Caribbean.
So, yes, there have been parents and people in general who rejected new forms of music. Some were purists, some were ignorant and others were bigots.
But saying that there was no influence of Blues or of African Americans in general is a gross exaggeration.
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Along the eastern seaboard, WLAC Nashville introduced a lot of white teens to R&B at night with their 50kw signal. While they didn't play Pat Boone covers, two of their most popular deejays were white men who purposely talked like they were black. Hoss Allen sold a ton of hair straightener, while John R. hawked baby chicks so folks could feed their families "lip smacking" fried chicken. Teens would order R&B songs from the Randy Record Shop and have them sent to different addresses so their parents didn't know they bought "race records". So the Brits may have brought R&B in through the front door, but in reality it already came in through the back.
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TeaPartyDude
Banned
True there always was a small "black market" where White teens could secretively buy "race music". The legendary "Wolfman Jack" was assumed to be "Negro" by a substantial share of his teen listeners. The XERB radio signal covered most of the western USA at night so there was a good number of teen listeners.
TeaPartyDude
Banned
This Album, "Spanish Lace" was released in December 1962. The record companies knew they could sell more records to Whites if they didn't put Gene McDaniels pic on the album cover and they didn't do so. Maybe some of the people will now stop being apologist or deniers of the racist practices that were used during that period.
Attachments
The XERB signal did not cover "most of the Western USA" at night. It had a big, narrow, narrow lobe that shot at Santa Barbara and covered the San Diego and LA markets at night, but you could barely get it inland as near as Palm Springs. The signal went on northwards, being more of a DX type of reception towards Salinas, San Francisco and the Oregon and Washington coasts. To illustrate, XERB in San Francisco had about the signal that San Francisco's KGO had in Los Angeles.
The idea that The Wolfman was Black is more urban legend. A friend (and Wolfman fan) who did middays on XERB at the time the show was on had never even heard that story. I checked with Sergio Ballesteros, the manager at XERF before the show moved westward, and he was similarly amused by your attempts to rewrite history. More accurate is that The Wolfman sounded "cool" and anti-establishment, with his different expressions, enormous personality and less mainstream music.
You are making up or exaggerating facts to support your case, which may be anecdotal but did not reflect the era when kids parent's bought Platters and Nat "King" Cole records.
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Yet in the same era, albums by artists like Chubby Checker featured photographs on the cover.
There were other record albums that did not have the artist on the cover, too. The artists were of all ethnicities... two examples would be the Yellow Submarine (most releases) cover and the Byrds' Live at the Fillmore covers... but there were plenty more.
Question: did you live through that era yourself? In the period under discussion here, I was the "token white kid" working at an r&b AM and all-jazz FM in a major market.
While that list is extensive, it's interesting to note that just before "the day the music died" Buddy Holly was considering doing a collaboration with several Black artists in mind, as he had early on been influenced by r&b and had even played the Apollo with Alan Freed's show.
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Hot Hits
Guest
Came in like a local in Bakersfield! I'm surprised your friend was taken to hear of that Wolfman comment. I thought that was well believed, not just an Urban Legend or whatever they called it. As we know there were a ton of White Jocks who sounded Black, like the great Jim Wood. He sounds more Black than Don Tracy on this KGFJ scope, brilliant. Of course this is turning into a wild thread so I've got to go! Stay cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Js24r34es8
I don't recall that Wolfman Jack particularly "sounded Black" - more just "cool" as David states. But people might have taken it for granted because, ad Hot Hits states, many soul DJs of the time DID try to sound Black. For example, before Russ O'Hara was at KRLA, he was at KGFJ, and sounded rather different. IIRC, most people thought Hunter Hancock was African-American.
If listeners thought Wolfman was Black, I'm sure that impression was corrected with his appearance in American Graffiti (1973, I think), and as co-host on The Midnight Special on NBC later in the 70s.
If listeners thought Wolfman was Black, I'm sure that impression was corrected with his appearance in American Graffiti (1973, I think), and as co-host on The Midnight Special on NBC later in the 70s.
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Hot Hits
Guest
Heck this comes right from IMDB, and if you Google 'Wolfman Jack' & 'Negro' lots of stuff pops up.
"Carol's parents won't let her listen to Wolfman Jack partly because he is a "negro." Wolfman Jack in fact is not African American, but because Rythmn and Blues and rock have African American roots, her parents during that era, probably figured that Wolfman was African American."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069704/goofs
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