Playing the Race (Music) Card
In ‘All You Need is Cash’, Eric Idle’s 1978 spoof documentary on his spoof Beatles, The Rutles, there’s a scene in which Idle as an inept interviewer grills a veteran bluesman called Ruttling Orange Peel; Mr Peel claims he invented the ‘Rutles Sound’, despite the intervention of his irate wife who informs Idle that every visiting film crew producing a documentary about the origins of white music is met with the same claims by her husband. In a subtly canny moment of a magnificent parody, Idle taps into one of the enduring strands of pop mythology, that of the jobbing black musician struggling to pay his rent while wicked white thieves steal his ideas and make a million.
The nature of racial segregation as it stood in mid-twentieth century America affected music as much as every other aspect of life; the record charts published by the likes of ‘Billboard’ and ‘Cashbox’ were divided not only by genres, but race – indeed, what eventually became the R&B Chart was originally known as the Race Chart. Elvis Presley had been born into the deprived social conditions of the Great Depression, a significant leveller in the Deep South, so it was natural that he should feel more affinity with his equally poor black neighbours than the rich white folk – and this extended to the music he felt spoke to him. The reason he rose to prominence with such swiftness was in part due to the fact that he was one of the most charismatic performers the world had ever seen, but also because no black artist could have achieved the same instant mainstream success in a nation that was so racially segregated. And it’s worth remembering that whilst the 1970s saw Elvis embraced as a Middle-American icon on a par with John Wayne, twenty years earlier he’d been received with savage contempt by the establishment, viewed as a ‘white nigger’ whose only viable castration could come via Hollywood and the US Army.
Elvis wasn’t just influenced by already active black acts like Little Richard and Chuck Berry; he didn’t simply borrow a black sound, but blended it with (amongst others) Country, a rural white genre derived from the indigenous folk music of the British Isles, brought to American shores by successive settlers. The resulting mix was not the Blues, Rockabilly, R&B or Country, but a hybrid of them all that influential DJ Alan Freed christened Rock ‘n’ Roll. The breakthrough of Elvis may have opened the door to other white rockers inspired by the same sources, but it also facilitated the considerable commercial success of black acts that wouldn’t have got a look in without it.
When the British Invasion hit the US in the mid-60s, Eric Burdon of The Animals met one of his own personal idols, Nina Simone; the famously feisty Ms Simone snarled at the soulful Geordie and accused him of stealing and polluting her music, to which he retorted by reminding her she had made a handsome packet singing songs penned by black guys doing time in state penitentiaries without acknowledging their predicament. Shocked that Burdon should know anything of her oeuvre, Simone’s prejudicial attitude was indicative of the grievances many American black musicians felt towards white ones. But the Blues is the sound of the oppressed and dispossessed. Whilst post-war white America prospered, the bomb-sites of Britain echoed with the sounds of guitar-strumming natives who recognised in the Blues the story of their own experiences. Keith Richards himself put the blame on Adolf.
Such was the influence of the Blues in Britain, perhaps even more than the brief blip of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the generation that understood its language venerated the men who made it and gave them credit by covering their songs and name-checking their heroes whenever they could. When US TV’s ‘Shindig’ gave over an entire edition to The Rolling Stones, the band could easily have chosen to eschew guest stars in favour of promoting their own career, but they insisted that Howlin’ Wolf appear, so in awe were they of one of their chief inspirations, sitting cross-legged at the feet of the guru as he ran through his thirty-year-old set-list.
Yes, the Blues always played a crucial role in the sound of Led Zeppelin, and it’s true the band weren’t always honest about the origin of their riffs; but as Robert Plant himself said, the Blues is a family of beggars and thieves. Besides, Led Zep were another act who used the Blues as a launch-pad for a sound that gradually incorporated more widespread influences and became uniquely their own, which is what great musicians always do. Could Robert Johnson have written ‘Kashmir’ or ‘The Battle of Evermore’? And while white acts such as The Bee Gees absorbed R&B to create a platinum music machine, it’s not as though black acts suffered in silence throughout the 60s and 70s – Motown, Stax, Funk, Reggae, Philly Soul and Disco were hardly cult genres immune to commercial success.
Music is genuinely colour blind, as are the ears that hear it; Bob Dylan was as great an influence on Jimi Hendrix as Hendrix himself was on every white axeman to follow. When New York DJs discovered the cold European electronica of Kraftwerk and laid the foundations of Hip Hop, they were simply turned on by the novelty and newness of the sounds they were hearing, just as The Beatles and Stones had been twenty years earlier. Colour didn’t come into it. The Beatles and Stones developed beyond this starting point and blossomed into something wholly original, as Hip Hop went on to do. And now Hip Hop has travelled along the same long and winding road by finally reaching its own equivalent of the vapid vacuity of 80s Stadium Rock, saying nothing new anymore and falling back on the same clichés so photocopied over the past couple of decades to be rendered as meaningless as every wannabe Jimmy Page churning out tired old rock riffs. Kanye West embodies this descent into a superficial vacuum of bling and brag, lacking the incendiary linguistic venom of Ice Cube or the ability to weave the multi-layered sample tapestries of Dr Dre, and more concerned with playing at Posh and Becks with his wife and her gargantuan posterior. He is the Shakin’ Stevens to Chuck D’s Elvis.
The pathetic, petulant reaction of Kanye West to Beck winning the Best Album at the Grammys last week rather than Beyoncé was a thinly veiled burst of mortification that a white artist had scooped a gong that should be reserved for black acts, such is the pre-eminence now of Hip Hop/R&B on what remains of the American charts. Had this situation been reversed and Beck had embarked upon a similar public protest that Beyoncé had won rather than, say, Katy Perry he would have been instantly accused of racism. Yet Kanye West can’t, of course, because not only is PC America terrified of playing the race card, but Kanye West could easily wheel-out the now redundant moral fable of the poor black musician being robbed of his rightful millions by white charlatans – despite the fact that he is one of the richest and most profitable brands in US showbiz and a leading member of the Afro-American Musical Mafia, some of whom appear to desire the retreat of pop back to segregation.
When Muhammad Ali won plaudits for refusing to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, stripped of his world heavyweight title as a consequence, how many of those on the white liberal left who sang his praises were aware he had addressed a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in his capacity as a Nation of Islam convert? Both ends of the extreme racial spectrum shared the same aim, to keep black and white apart; and by making such distinctions in music, an art-form without prejudice is stifled. The more incestuous white and black become, the better their offspring.
Petunia Winegum
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February 18, 2015 at 9:41 am -
The two founders of rock ‘n’ roll were Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, a white man who played black music and a black man who played white music. Both were extremely unlikely figures, and Berry who of course is still around, is famously temperamental. Black musicians had never been embraced by white audiences before? Scott Joplin might disagrees, as might Satchmo and countless others. It’s the “anti-racists” who have caused all the problems in race relations, in music as everywhere else. As Mr Ali said, bluebirds fly with bluebirds.
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February 18, 2015 at 11:15 am -
Ragtime and Jazz were undoubtedly mainstream black success stories, I agree; but I decided not to go back further than Rock ‘n’ Roll with this piece, otherwise it’d have gone on much longer!
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February 18, 2015 at 1:43 pm -
Ragtime, yes; Joplin was the leader. But Jazz had plenty of white and Creole musicians from its earliest known days; it was not only racist to indoctrinate people with the belief that it was an all-black music, it was the policy of the American Communist Party before WWII (and during and afterwards too, for all I know). It’s remarkable how many bits of Communist and Nazi propaganda linger on in our society long after those nasty forms of socialism came crashing down.
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February 18, 2015 at 10:02 am -
The problem wasn’t the popularity of the music with ordinary folks, black artists and dancers are very visible in movies from the 1930’s and 40’s. The problem lay in the rules of society such that Sammy Davis Jr would have to book into a different hotel from Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, even though he would be performing on the same stage in the same hotel the next evening, until Frank put his foot down.
“Davis was initially denied residence at the Sands Hotel until Sinatra threatened to pull the plug on Rat Pack shows unless Davis got his own suite. Hotel-casino brass acceded to his demands, opening the door for other black performers who had been forced, post-show, to find accommodations in boarding houses and motels in West Las Vegas.
http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/sammy-davis-jrSammy then upset the liberals too. He didnlt seem to believe in the pack-mentality, ironically.
Davis led a controversial life. He converted to Judaism after his accident. He overcame addictions to drugs, gambling, and alcohol. He dated actress Kim Novak, and was the victim of racist threats when he married Swedish actress May Britt; that interracial relationship cost him billing at President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural ball in 1961 due to concerns about the political fallout from his appearance. While Davis was active in the civil rights movement, he broke with many in the African American community by openly supporting President Richard Nixon in his 1972 bid for re-election—most African Americans opposed him.
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February 18, 2015 at 10:08 am -
…. and I should add that one of the things the black Americans liked about coming to Britain was that the hotels over here did not segregate in the same way. So long as their money was the right colour, so were they. Puttin’ on the Ritz.
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February 18, 2015 at 11:00 am -
I can certainly say from personal experience that the Savoy can make you feel welcome and absolutely not being out of place far more than many hotels at the opposite end of the budget scale can!
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February 18, 2015 at 10:08 am -
I didn’t know that about Mohammed Ale: has it been airbrushed from history because it is inconvenient?
I don’t know a lot about this sort of music. I hate “the Blues” for example. Rock and Roll passes me by. However, I do unfortunately seem to recognize the name Kanye West, because I get his dross piped at me in the gym from time to time. Ghastly, talentless, self aggrandizing man as far as I can tell and thus ideally suited to making large amounts of money from the useful idiots who inhabit this vale of tears. I think he is married to the Kardashian creature, and their festival of vacuity even spread into my Sunday Times this weekend.
Ghastly.-
February 18, 2015 at 10:11 am -
Ali said that about “birds of a feather” on a Parkinson Show. I recall my mum saying, “See!” and my dad replying that, “the man was talking rubbish”…. More family discord…..
I imagine the Ministry of Truth have erased the tapes long ago.
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February 18, 2015 at 10:28 am -
It’s here: http://www.amren.com/news/2011/04/muhammad_ali_on/
Perhaps it should be seen in this context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali#The_Nation_of_Islam_and_religious_beliefs
It seems unlikely that he was sympathising with the KKK, however much its sympathisers might have wanted to believe that.-
February 19, 2015 at 8:50 am -
Seems most likely he was just influenced by the dogma of others.
“On instructions from Elijah Muhammad, Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X meets with Ku Klux Klan officials, who, like Malcolm, support racial segregation. Malcolm solicits the Klan’s help in obtaining land to create a separate nation for black Muslims.”
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1961_01_28Another famous Ali moment on Parkinson was when he ripped a book up, in some tirade about “learning” or some-such. I cannot now recall the exact context. At the time Parky was blamed for deliberately provoking an embarrassed Ali, who Parky knew was a “slow reader” into looking a bit dumb (academically) on TV and Ali reacted just as Parky had hoped. I suspect this was a subtle move by the Ministry of Truth to discredit Ali after his “racist” outburst but it actually back-fired because most ordinary folks in my neck of the woods saw it as just what it was – Propaganda; and whether we agreed with Ali’s sentiments on the birds of a feather, we still admired him greatly and thought of him still as, The Greatest.
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February 18, 2015 at 10:08 am -
Telephone, tyres, penicillin, Elvis and …
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/gospel-truth-hebrides-invented-church-spirituals-87730.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042001918.html…and him too?!
“Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell)” (Wikipedia) -
February 18, 2015 at 10:15 am -
I think you’re being a bit hard on Kanye – he does break musical boundaries all the time (have you heard “Yeezus”?), he’s very inventive and musically curious. Although he can be a melodramatic drama queen, isn’t that all part of his “larger than life” personality schtick? It’s just entertainment. I saw the Beck incident as akin (obviously not exactly) to Jarvis Cocker disrupting Michael Jackson’s performance at The Brits.
I really like Beyonce’s music, and the best thing Beck has done recently is his remix of Philip Glass (phenomenal).
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February 18, 2015 at 10:19 am -
In ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Land online, you won’t have to travel far to find tales of how what the Americans so charmingly called “Black Music” was co-opted by “The Illuminati”. Crazy ravings a lot of it, but – like everything – sufficiently based in indisputable fact to give these “sacrificed to the Il-lum-in-adi” stories a sprinkling of credibility.
Hip-hop, they will tell you, was polluted by “the New World Order” and this is why the genre of Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel, Public Enemy, De La Soul & NWA turned into the ‘Bling Bling’ world of Mr & Mrs Kanye West, Mr & Mrs Jay-Z and a whole heap of wannabe’s with nothing to say but bang on about sex, money and product and a fanbase of young men sloping around with their designer jeans around their ankles and females who think “giving up da bootie” is ’empowerment’. Why it went from being as eclectic and ‘out there’ as Bob Dylan to insidious boasting welded to whatever old record or Eurobeat they fancy co-opting.
Sure, there was always a Salt-n-Pepa to your KRS-One’s just as there was your family-friendly alternatives to Elvis, Chuck and Jerry-Lee – but the pop-rappers of the 80s & 90s weren’t given to declaring themselves Royalty and invading the stages at Award Ceremonies to declare people should “respect artistry” and give an award to a 21st Century Diana Ross instead of a man who can play 14 different instruments and has been making critically-acclaimed (and successful) music for over 20 years.-
February 18, 2015 at 10:31 am -
* sufficiently based in indisputable fact to give these “sacrificed to the Il-lum-in-adi” stories a sprinkling of credibility *
One of the rappers, Kelly summat? was supposed to have been giving golden showers to a 13yr-old in an online vid I recall, which gave the cue to a massive US paedo-frenzy as I recall. It all fizzled out in the end cuz they zed it wasn’t him, but rather an impersonator, or sampler perhaps, to fit the groove of rap with a silent c.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2008/06/long_live_the_little_man_defense.html
He’s bloody lucky he wasn’t in the UK…..-
February 18, 2015 at 10:43 am -
Whilst we’re talking inverse musical racism – look at the faux-scandal surrounding Robin Thicke & ‘Blurred Lines’. Scant mention of the tracks’s co-star Pharrell Williams – and no mention whatsoever of the casual “misogyny” littering the music of black Hip-Hop artistes.
Just like nobody mentions Marlon King in the same breath as Ched Evans.-
February 18, 2015 at 10:58 am -
Noticeable that in the fields the chatterati disapprove of then colour is no bar to vilification. Mike Tyson springs to mind and hopefully my defense should I be down a dark alley with some hoodlums one day…
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February 18, 2015 at 11:13 am -
Having looked up who he is, I wouldn’t think Marlon King was a good contrast to Ched Evans, and he’s “only” a drink-driver, a transgression not unique amongst footballers. The Evans case has more to do with the fact that his conviction is for something regarded as beyond the pale, while other ball-kickers get accepted back into the fold regardless of the severity of their offences. Had Evans merely beaten the woman up, rather than having sex with her, he’d probably be back on the pitch already.
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February 18, 2015 at 11:24 am -
King was jailed for violent sexual assault (a crime he committed whilst playing for Hull City) before he got locked up for drink driving – in between jail sentences he’d signed for Coventry City with no ‘online petitions’.
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February 18, 2015 at 11:39 am -
Note that Marlon King also played for Sheffield United, where Jessica Ennis-Hill was conspicuous by her silence….all praise to Charlie Webster, who protested against both Mr King and Mr Evans.
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February 18, 2015 at 11:37 am -
Evans didn’t get prison for having sex with her because the black guy had had sex with her a few minutes before…
Nobody can say Ched is racist at least. Quite happy to be come where the black folks have been before.-
February 19, 2015 at 9:11 pm -
So nicely put
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February 18, 2015 at 10:26 am -
Lovely article.
A brief anecdote about Nina Simone – whom I adore – from the Nick Cave biopic (?), “20,000 Days On Earth”:
Nina is backstage at the Cave-curated ‘Meltdown’ festival at the RFH, and not looking to be in the best of health nor mood. Someone dares to check in on her, to whom she barks out her list of demands:“Bring me cham-pagne, co-caine, and… sausages!”
She played a blinder, apparently. Wish I had been there…
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February 18, 2015 at 10:33 am -
How do you play The Delta Blues backwards?
“Boss gave me a raise, my dog won Best Of Show, my wife can’t get enough of me & then I won the state lottery …”
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February 18, 2015 at 11:12 am -
Dwarf wins the Internet!
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February 18, 2015 at 11:02 pm -
Or the shortest blues song…’I didn’t wake up this morning’
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February 18, 2015 at 10:35 am -
Those who look into the history of the blues, should remember that it’s renaissance in the UK was in large part due to a white man, Chris Barber.
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February 18, 2015 at 1:45 pm -
Ah yes: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, amongst others.
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February 18, 2015 at 10:48 am -
‘…The more incestuous white and black become, the better their offspring.’
Absolutely. There is enough nonsensical bigotry in the world already. Keep music out of it.
The more I read from the new incumbent (without wishing in any way to ‘diss’ the Venerable Raccoon) the more I know this
blog is in good hands. Still rooting for Madame, however…-
February 18, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
“The more I read from the new incumbent (without wishing in any way to ‘diss’ the Venerable Raccoon) the more I know this blog is in good hands. Still rooting for Madame, however…”
Watching proceedings from the attic of Raccoon Towers as I do – I reckon the blog is in better hands than it ever was…
In fact I’m becoming less and less inclined to put my meagre offerings up for inspection alongside these fantastic articles. Long live Petunia and all who sail in her.
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February 18, 2015 at 12:08 pm -
You can’t wave 100,000 words at us one day and then go silent the next. That’s not playing the white man.
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February 18, 2015 at 12:10 pm -
Do you fancy ploughing through this material with me Moor? Some intriguing stuff, and I’m not at my best right now…
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February 18, 2015 at 12:12 pm -
If you give me some pointers I can certainly try…
The weekend is closer than it was yesterday.
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February 18, 2015 at 2:10 pm -
Meagre? Never! Every sliver that drips from the Raccoon quill remains a clean glass in a sink of dirty dishes (or at least dishes with splatters of Heinz’s finest rigidly glued to them).
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February 18, 2015 at 5:44 pm -
Madame Racoon… Your words are a series of pearls without price.
“If a king owned a pearl without price, a gem he cherished above all. Would he hide it away, bury it from sight afraid others would take it? Or would he display it proudly, set it in a ring or crown, so that all the world could behold its beauty and see what richness it brings to his life? You are my pearl without price.”
attr. Colleen Houck.
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February 18, 2015 at 6:30 pm -
“remains a clean glass in a sink of dirty dishes (or at least dishes with splatters of Heinz’s finest rigidly glued to them).”
I’m gonna have to upgrade me my Oompas to Homunculus 2.01.
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February 18, 2015 at 11:06 am -
You’re quite right. Music is blind – or should be anyway.
I was a professional guitarist in the 70’s in a british blues band. I remember playing a lot of stuff by people like Robert Johnson – in fact I just recorded one for my latest CD (No – that’s not a plug as I give them away free so I’m not after the money!). They use to say “can white men play the blues?” until they heard Eric Clapton and Peter Green do it!
Music is music. It’s subjective and you either like it or not. It’s individual. Pigeonholing it is pointless in my view. I try to play in all styles – although I’ve never mastered jazz.
Just plug in, tune out and enjoy. That’s my motto. And bugger counting the royalties because your next album will be on Pirate Bay the day your release it – guaranteed!
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February 19, 2015 at 9:13 pm -
Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs did some nice blues as did Alvin lee from 10 yrs After
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February 18, 2015 at 4:00 pm -
GREETINGS! TRA LA LA! Now SPECIAL FRIEND Gildas the Monk is being a grump at the moment, and I happy to know he is more DOWN WITH THE KIDS on the black than he likes to admit, and regularly throws some shapes and sly MOVES after he has had a few glasses of his favourite brew. He was a regular at Manumission, by the way, where we met, and for a while he was in house at Ministry of SOUND. AND likes a touch of Beyonce as well as some OLD SCHOOL anthems!
Just to embarrass the old Grump here are some of his favourite boogy tunes! (just skip the ads!)
Beyonce and Shakira – Beautiful Liar (Freemasons Remix only)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vstT-sYykbg
Freemansons (AGAIN) ft Amanda Wison – I’ve got love on my mind!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vstT-sYykbg
Boogie Pimps – Someone to LOVE (A CLASSIC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6HSlZBNwUQ
AND last but not at all least, the OUTRAGEOUS “Guilty” by De Souza, ft Shena ( a personal favourite).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pasdDicu0Ms
As the old joke goes: Q: Where’s the soap! A: Yes, doesn’t it!
In Love and light! TRA LA LA!
Sister Eva!
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February 18, 2015 at 6:37 pm -
” AND likes a touch of Beyonce as well as some OLD SCHOOL anthems!”
I read that ‘anthems’ as ‘uniforms’ and was about to tweet Grandmaster Marky Willy ‘Yo Tree’ ThomACE, like.
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February 18, 2015 at 4:09 pm -
BLOCK not black! (OK, so I have been to a long lunch with my friends from Hereford)!
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February 18, 2015 at 4:58 pm -
Maybe a typo – still read ok to me!
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February 18, 2015 at 4:51 pm -
SisterEva, you reminded me of this group of peripatetic satirists, who I think would be top choice for a musical soiree at the Raccoon Arms
Fascinating Aida – Down With The Kids
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February 18, 2015 at 5:09 pm -
They are rude , clever and brilliant! Seen bits of their stuff before. Thank you!
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February 18, 2015 at 5:12 pm
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February 18, 2015 at 5:56 pm -
February 18, 2015 at 10:12 pm -
Early ’70s, on a training course in Chicago, we’d done the big steaks & porno movie house bit, and looking for a change chanced upon a concert theatre.
John Dankworth & Cleo Laine.
A lot of blacks in the audience. During & after a great show they were on their feet applauding. We wimpish whites were more reserved.
Got out the old turntable some weeks back, repaired it & dug out some vinyl from those days.
Joni & the like I’m afraid, but I like it. -
February 18, 2015 at 10:27 pm -
One of the silliest and most annoying notions invented by the identity politics job creation industry is the “concept” of “cultural appropriation” – witness countless idiotic pieces in the Guardian.
As Benjamin Franklin put it: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
Thank God the likes of George Gershwin and Artie Shaw “appropriated” stuff from the likes of Louis Armstrong who appropriated stuff from old Irish/Scottish/English/French folk songs as well as rythmns and tunes from Mali etc etc
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February 18, 2015 at 11:52 pm -
What I always find interesting is that the really innovative, talented and influential are unknown or scorned by a large majority of the music industry.
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February 19, 2015 at 4:05 am -
Elvis also seems to have been heavily influenced by Sister Rosetta Tharpe who was also an original and influential electric guitarist. Interestingly Hugh Laurie has adopted one of her most famous songs, Didn’t It Rain.
The blues scale differs slightly in having a couple of flattened blue notes, but essentially any musician can play in the idiom, and music is ever evolving. White blues musicians have in some case developed the blues sound beyond its orginal black roots, notably in the singing of Mick Jagger whose terrrible impersonation of a Delta bluesman is sui generis.
Howling Wolf came to England in about 1969 and recorded an album with members of the Stones and some other British musicians, which is not bad, and I have it somewhere. Has Little Red Rooster on it. He died not long after. The British musicians found his musicianship and sense of time erratic, but he may already have been old and sick at the time.
British musicians did a lot to revive interest in blues music, and several important figures travelled to England and recorded there in the late 60’s not least of which there was the above mentioned Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The Parchman Farm of the song is still there as the Mississippi State Penitentiary Complex and there are several prisons there.
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February 19, 2015 at 11:31 am -
The Howlin’ Wolf ‘London Album’ was recorded in 1970 (released ’71), according to Wikipedia. I’d never heard mention of it before, and shall give it a listen when I can.
His ’69 effort – which I had confused with the afore-mentioned – was an abomination; persuaded to delve into psychedelic rock with a backing band of longhairs, it didn’t turn out well!
“According to guitarist Pete Cosey, during the recording sessions, Howlin’ Wolf “looked at me and he said ‘Why don’t you take them wah-wahs and all that other shit and go throw it off in the lake — on your way to the barber shop?’”
Ouch! His biography is pretty atypical – wealthy, successful, happily married family man. Who’d have known?
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February 19, 2015 at 9:31 am -
I’m sorry, I’ve got and love my early rockers, American and British Bluesmen (and women), British Folk, (old and new), Jazzmen, Swingmen, African drummers, Bulgarian ladies, Russian men, Americana, Motown, Muscle Shoals, Memphis Sound, not to mention Albinoni, Bach, Berlioz, Copland, Dvorak, Elgar, Faure, Goreki, Holst, etc. but for the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would want to assault their ears with this gutter, derivative, ‘Hip-Hop’ _rap ‘music’. Especially when there is real creative talent like Sarah Jarosz out there.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:48 am -
I am in awe of the musical knowledge displayed in this blog. I have heard all of the different genres performed in my lifetime. From Caruso to the Four Tenors. Through Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk to Dolly Parton. The start of The Beatles and The Stones till the torrent of pop groups coming and going through the sixties and seventies. Flower power, hippies and the first big pop concerts. The drugs and groupies and the fat cats making money out of the rising talents. The odd high profile suicide or drug OD and the drownings in swimming pools. Screaming girls at airports. It has been a fascinating experience to see skinny boys grow into balding men, who look like they should be playing dominos in a corner of the Racoon arms. The creativity of music is amazing and so varied in the influences that inspire musicality and performance.
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