BLEACHING OUR ROOTS

RACE AND CULTURE

IN AMERICAN POPULAR
MUSIC

DAVE LIPPMAN
2
1
 CONTENTS
Commentaries 4
Foreword 5
Introduction: The Inaudible Beat 6
1 In the Beginning... 10
2 Early Fusion Music 12
3 The Plantation 16
4 Minstrelsy: Whites Acting Black? 31
5 Sleepy Time Down South 44
6 Cowboys: The West Was White? 61
7 Sea Chanteys 70
8 Old Time Religion 73
9 Time for Rags 79
10 Hollers, Jooks, and Levees: The Blues 84
11 Black Barbershops 90
12 Jazz Marches In 94
13 Jazz: What Is It? 102
14 Latin America: US 106
15 Up River: The Bleached Chorus 114
16 Broadway: Operetta Meets Jazz 125
17 Swing and Its Kings 137
18 Broadway, Part Two: The Great White Way 146
19 Crooners and Their Sweet Inspirations 147
20 New South, New Country 153
21 Western Swingers 172
22 Bluegrazz 176
23 Rhythm And...Rock 180
24 Rapping Up 207
25 Last Chorus 219

2
 Discography 229
Videography 230
PodCastography 231
Bibliography 231
Notes 243

COMMENTARIES

3
Bleaching Our Roots: Race and Culture in American Popular Music is a fascinating
multi-media read with important film clips of
performers who represent the history. Bleaching
Our Roots is a welcome addition to the history of
American popular music that will an important
resource for courses on American music.
—
William Ferris, author, film-maker, founder and director
of the Center for Southern Folklore in Mississippi and
Chair of the National Endowment for the
Humanities;co-editor of the  Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture.

It kicks off with a bang. The information is really

strong, really useful. I appreciated the dedication to
covering the connections with the Latin heritage, and the
Swing era. I really liked the interactivity of the
substitutions. Thorough research.
—Michelle Shocked

Really like the spirit, openness,

language. All to the good. All direct.
-Charles Keil, author, Music Grooves, Urban Blues

Engagingly written. I learned lots. Some listeners to US popular

music know of its tragic long roots in the appropriation of Black
songs by White performers in blackface disguise.
More know something of the African American roots of rock and roll.
But few will be prepared for the contributions of this ambitious and
remarkable study, which considers the mixing of cultures, and the role
of Black creativity, in everything from bluegrass to barbershop
quartets, from crooning to country, from Elvis to Doris Day."
—David Roediger, author, How Race Survived US History

An extremely successful, popularly written, prodigiously researched, very

smart and very funny work of music, cultural, and social criticism. I
learned a great deal from it. Equally sensitive to the intricacies of racial-
cultural interaction and the exploitative racial results of American music's
commercial marketing...it is rare to find both of these stressed (as both
must be) in a single work. The tenacity of investigation of America's
"mulatto" music (as critic Albert Murray calls American culture generally)
is heartening, and it leads to fresh insights (country-inflected Black singers
and Black-inflected country singers, say) and fresh areas. To my ears you
don't miss a beat in recounting the complexities of stylistic formation in a

4
whole variety of musics, nor do you muffle at all the at once mind-bogglingly
intermingled and socially segregated strains of American song. This, along with the
work's accessibility, is a real achievement, and ought to help find it the audience it
deserves. A meticulous, morally astringent, and compelling narrative.
— Eric Lott, author, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American
Working Class

FOREWORD
This book’s been a long time in the factory, and it shows: some of my
references that were once timely, if not quite hip, are now old and moldy. But
then, they’re history, so they’re saved here, for better and worse.

I started the project in 1993, searched out a lot of people and sources, and here
we are. I’ve decided to publish it here, on line, with mixed media inserted, so as
to make it easier to comprehend what the hell I
might even be talking about.

If you find something wrong or questionable

herein, or just want to converse about it, feel free
to contact me at david3 at lippnet dot us . I’m
able to make changes as long as the tome sits
here, so fire away.

A NOTE ABOUT NOTES

There are two types of notes here: footnotes and endnotes. The first set is
substantive, or at least (allegedly) informative. The second set records the
sources, for the scholars among us. 

A NOTE ABOUT BLACK AND WHITE

In most cases I capitalize both Black and White, out of respect for all cultures
and peoples and because that is now the accepted practice, except for AP Style,
which will catch up.
In quotations, I have left in place the lower-case when it occurs, just as I have
left in the n-words: it seems important to look our history in the eye.

5
 Thanks so very much to: Jerry Parsons at the Library of Congress for interest
and helpful direction, Judith Gold for research assistance; Peter Sokolow for a
virtuosic interview about Broadway and jazz;  Peter Lippman for enthusiastic
and combative editing; Dom Flemons for cowboy lessons, and Glenn Hinson for
unpacking Gospel. And for essential feedback: Richard Wolinsky, Cecilia
Conway, George Lipsitz, Robin D.G. Kelley, Archie Green, David Roediger, Ted
Vincent, Eric Lott, and Ken Bilby.

INTRODUCTION: THE INAUDIBLE BEAT

There’s an experiment I used to do when I was a high school teacher. I would
ask one of my musically inclined charges whether she knew where rock and roll
came from. I particularly liked one response I got, from a student who looked at
me as if I were a side dish she hadn't ordered. It came, she explained confidently
if not patiently, from a juke box.i

Not long after that enlightening interchange, in pursuit of my night job as an

alleged (never convicted) satirist/songster, I was hard at work on—or more likely
idly toying with—a parody version of “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” as a
comment on our unfolding invasion of Panama. You guessed it, “Has Anybody
Seen My Canal?” I hoped it would be at least minimally thought-provoking, as
viral hadn’t been invented yet.

But a question had been eating at me about the sources of the songs I was in
the habit of plundering for my own political purposes: where had they been
plundered from in the first place? I had already learned that many songs I
picked up from 1960s rock bands had been picked up by them from 1930s blues
singers. What about the rest of the songs I was personally heisting? I began to
badger fellow musicians and music teachers who might help me with knowledge
about such things. I started with one area that had been mystifying me: the
relationship between Broadway musicals and jazz. A few responses:

"Jazz musicians play show tunes."

"Jazz musicians are classically
trained."
i
A loudspeaker apparatus in the corner of a bar or malt shop, stocked with 45 rpm records. Kind
of like a DJ without the DJ. Or kind of like Spotify.

6
 "There isn't any relationship."
"There are a lot of things you could analyze, but doesn't that take the fun
out of things?"

These answers set me to thinking. As a musician who grew up on music

from all over the world, I always thought of myself as both a musically and
socially aware kind of guy, conscious of racial and cultural conflicts, sensitive to
injustice. I knew about the blues origins of rock and roll; I knew there used to be
some jazzy Broadway tunes, before Oklahoma! Now I was beginning to learn how
much I didn't know, and coming to realize that many other people didn't know
even more than I didn't know.

And my questions, which had percolated for years, weren't only about
music: Why are so many White (and other) youths always imitating Black styles
in speech, music, dress, etc.—as I myself had done and continue to do, without
even noticing it? Why is last week's slang out of date, and why do I have to go to
an inner city high school to catch up? In this nation of "minorities," what is the
"mainstream" popular culture? Is there one?

When a barbershop quartet singer told me that barbershop quartets were

originally a Black phenom,
I had to sit down and catch
my breath. Not because I
felt any jealous attachment
to my "White heritage," but
because even my most
paranoid inner voices
hadn't prepared me for this
level of historical
befuddlement. Now I was
forced to take another listen
to some other "White" musical
styles as well. I was

beginning to hear things I hadn't heard before, and was reminded of Ralph
Ellison's "Invisible Man," unacknowledged by society. Was there an Inaudible
Beat as well?

This is how I began to read between the musical lines to find some of the
hidden relationships among the strands of American musical culture. When,

7
where, how and why did they first weave together? Starting with an exploration
of the roots of Broadway show tunes, I was led backwards into Vaudeville and
further back to the horrid yet fascinating minstrel shows of the 1840s, then on to
the African American barbershops of Florida in the 19 th century, through
Ragtime to New Orleans and various permutations of jazz, then to Swing and
Rock ‘n’ Roll, and later back to the music of the Texas cattle trails of the 1870s.
After this, I was tired. But I was also energized: I had found patterns of
intercultural interaction that had been hiding in plain sight, but covered by
layers of societal misconception and denial.

They say that music tells you who you are. That sounds like something
worth knowing; but it only tells us that if we know what to listen for. Maybe, I
speculated, a closer look and listen could help sort out the truths hidden behind
the tapestry of sound surrounding us.

AN AID TO LISTENING

When one musical genre interacts with another, the product is a new
variation, with changes from the previous, suddenly un-hip generation. The beat
has evolved, either subtly or brazenly; the use of melody and harmony has
morphed, the quality of the tone altered. There are changes in choice of
instruments. And of course, hair styles.

Much of this story has been told before, but here I try to knit together the
persistent processes that recur through many generations of musical evolution.
Along the way, I’ll suggest some sources you can use to flesh out my efforts at
explaining these evolutionary steps.

I’ll also suggest an exercise for you, one you can do right there inside your
mind. Because we carry inside our heads the sounds of various singers and
instruments we’ve heard before, we can understand something of the
relationships between musical cousins and nephews and nieces by substituting,
in our mind's ear, one for the other. If you want to hear the influence that swing
jazz had on western swing, you could find a Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
song that features a clarinet playing along with the fiddles. But even without the
record, you can play—once you’ve heard it twice— "Yellow Rose of Texas" in

8
your mind and add in your own version of Benny Goodman playing along. To
understand the relationship of rhythm and blues to rock and roll, you can listen
to the early to mid-Rolling Stones and superimpose Muddy Waters' voice over it.
You can sing like Muddy inside your head, because nobody else can hear it. It’s
safe.i

Of course it’s easier to leave it to the experts, and I’ll try to steer you to some
folks who pop up now and then with new/old syntheses of various roots-related
sounds, sometimes mixed with the very post-post-modern styles of today’s
clubs.

Let us now begin this exploration somewhere near the start. But when do
stories start? Depends who’s telling it, doesn’t it? Let’s have a look.

1 IN THE BEGINNING...

People traveled from many countries and cultures to what would eventually
become the United States. Some came from Europe, where they were persecuted
and impoverished, and found themselves making America safe from the
Americans—those people Columbus bumped into. Some came from western
Africa, and were guaranteed full employment for themselves and their children’s
children, as we know. The Africans brought with them a culture quite different
from that of Europeans, though much of it was obliterated to ensure control on
the plantation. Their languages, dress, and religion were suppressed, their
families broken up, their drums prohibited.

The African culture went underground, took on disguises, metamorphosed,

and resurfaced in an American version. West African music re-emerged as
spirituals, "field hollers," and other new forms that would change the face of
music in North America and ultimately around the world. African music
adapted to American life, assimilating influences from White America just as
Whites, especially in the South, assimilated West African influences into their
music.

i
To give the Stones their due, Buddy Guy asserted “the Rolling Stones only agreed to
appear on the popular show Shindig! if [Howlin’] Wolf came on the show with them.”
Patrick Doyle, “King Bee,” Rolling Stone 11-19-15 p. 47. Likewise, the Rascals, one of
the only White bands popular with Black audiences, refused to perform without a Black
band on the bill.

9
 It's normal for neighbors to absorb something of each other's culture. In the
case of a land newly settled by various uprooted populations, there is exceptional
cultural dislocation and mutation. Africans absorbed the widest array of
influences of any group in America. Snatched from their homeland, their culture
driven underground, they looked to their new surroundings for anything that
would sustain them. This was true throughout the Americas; in North America
and particularly in New Orleans they blended influences from French, Spanish,
German and English colonizers, as well as Native Americans and, of course,
Africa.i

See video: New Orleans and African Parades

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSAtHds9WeQ

The suppression of African culture made Black innovation inevitable. In music,

religion, and so many other areas, African-Americans were forced to invent
themselves anew, molding a new culture by combining the remnants of their
roots with whatever they found around them. This helps explain why in the
succeeding centuries it has usually been African-Americans who jostle us all into
each new style of music, among other things. It is because their culture in this
country is founded on innovation for survival. ii European settlers retained more
of their cultural birthright, which was modified over time to reflect their new
circumstances and influences, including different climates, residence patterns,
political structures, and the presence of new neighbors, such as African-
Americans.

African- and European-Americans in the South interacted on a daily basis

over three centuries; yet today we are basically unaware of the ways each culture
influenced the other. It's like trying to separate and identify the strands of the
music at other cultural crossroads like the Balkans, Madagascar, or for that
matter most of the western hemisphere, where European, African, and
indigenous cultures collided and mixed in so many variations. Most people can
hear the blues in rock and roll from the mid-twentieth century, though I’m not so
sure that remains true as we get further from those years. But what about, for

i
Other overlapping sectors of American society have made major contributions that have been
forgotten, suppressed, or distorted; one might mention women, workers, and gays, for starters.

ii
Parallel examples can be found in the other African colonies throughout the hemisphere, though
they take different forms because the suppression of their culture was different in form and
degree.

10
example, the influence of slavery era field hollers on country music, via the
hollers’ descendant, the blues? Who hears that?

Stephen Foster, John Philip Sousa

and the White minstrels in blackface
used the music of Blacks as their
main source. Foster wrote about the
Swannee River but never saw it.
Michael Bolton, like the Righteous
Brothers before him, while clearly
white of skin tone, has some other
color in his musical tone. But how
"White" was the work of Bing
Crosby, Hank Williams, or Judy
Garland? How "Black" was the
music of Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington, Michael Jackson, or
Prince? Did White America
apprentice itself culturally to Black
America?1 Was the interaction
between the cultures a musical theft, a commercial rip-off, a mutual borrowing, a
sharing—or was it all of these and more? And what is it today?

If at any point it begins to grate on the reader that I repeatedly point out the
race of individuals mentioned, I can relate. But I would quote jazz historian
Gunther Schuller who, in his book, The Swing Era, explained such writing as a

way of documenting what is in fact a reality—one which black

musicians know only too well, for they live with it day in and day
out—while the average American suppresses and ignores it...every
manifestation of [Blacks'] creativity—from minstrel music (mid-
19th century), ragtime (turn of the century), jazz (first half of the
20th century) to rock and roll (the 1950s through the 1980s)—has
been taken from them and commercialized by whites.2

The fascinating, terrible, fantastic story of American folk and popular music
can be understood through the windows of race and culture. These are windows
that America has preferred to keep curtained; let us draw back the curtains and
see what shines through.

11
 2 EARLY FUSION MUSIC

African-American music, down through the centuries, has always been a

product of a series of compromises and blendings between West African styles
and West European forms. African polyrhythm, for example, is widely
considered the most complex rhythm in the world: a singer, chorus, hand-
clappers, bell players, and drummers typically produce seven to ten different
rhythms at a time, in a way that makes sense to the musicians and their audience.

This African rhythmic universe is more complex than the "western" mind is
accustomed to, and has therefore, by some logic, been called "primitive." And
yet, as musicologist Melville Herskovitz wrote in 1941, for a European

to master a simple South African piece on the marimba which

requires the player to follow a 4/4 beat in the left hand, and a 9/4 in
the right—with a rhythmic consonance every 36 beats, is well-nigh
impossible.3

Such “primitivism” has never really sold big here in its original form. It has
been transformed into a number of musical practices including syncopation, or
off-the beat emphasis, originally called "mistakes" by the Euro-American music
authorities. The echoes of polyrhythmic musicality are heard in Afro-Latin
rhythms and in the blues, jazz, and everything that came after. One particular
rhythm from Ghana, for example, has been traced through the samba and
ragtime to the Charleston.4
See video: The African American roots of the Charleston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7KCjRCgcts

West African traditions place even stress on all beats, as opposed to only the
"strong beats" (one and three, out of four). This approach was expressed by
Africans in America not only as syncopation, but also as added stress on the
formerly weak offbeat, which seems to shift the rhythm backwards while it's
moving forwards—hence the term "backbeat"—setting up a rocking motion in
the music and the dancing.

The result is a blend of African rhythmic feeling with European musical

forms. The backbeat is the Black beat: for the most obvious example, listen to an

12
audience clapping to Country music,i then to audience response to any form of
Black popular music. (It would be even simpler to listen to the clapping in White
churches as opposed to Black ones, but we White folks don't clap so much in our
churches.) With the backbeat competing with the downbeat, it's as if two
different rhythms were coexisting—the closest you can come in 4/4 time to the
West African concept. Robert Cantwell, in Bluegrass Breakdown, even supposes
that

[T]he strong backbeat which suggests sexual thrusting is only the

grossest and most violent of the many subtler kinds of erotic
interplay between musician and music occasioned by the
musician's independence of the fundamental rhythm.5

Which, if true, could help explain the fear and loathing, along with the
fascination, that White America has always felt for Black American culture. But I
jump ahead. What are these subtler kinds of interplay, erotic or otherwise? A.M.
Jones, in Studies in African Music, writes that in the West African musical
tradition,

The melody being additive, and the claps being divisive, when put
together they result in a combination of rhythms whose inherent
stresses are crossed. This is the very essence of African music: this is
what the African is after. He wants to enjoy the conflict of rhythms. 6

This was manifestly un-European, but was not to remain un-American for
long. If we think of music as being made up of units of time (the bar, with a
duration of, for example, four beats), we can understand West African rhythmic
sense as grouping the beats irregularly, while the underlying rhythm obtained
from the Europeans' musical forms would be regular, and quite simple. Here
again we have the built-in conflict of rhythms. As John Work explains in
American Negro Songs and Spirituals, in African-American music

the rhythms may be divided roughly into two classes—rhythm

based on the swinging of the head and body and rhythms based on
the patting of hands and feet.7

Cantwell explains these two types of movement as

i
Country music is capitalized, while blues is not, solely to distinguish this specific music from the
countryside in general.

13
 a reciprocal or back-and-forth motion and a continuous rolling,
flowing, or driving—that is to say, "rock" and "roll," whose
interdependency reflects the conjunction of pulse and beat in the
fundamental rhythm and is the heart of swing.8

While a European musician will commonly play four beats in a measure

while another player plays two, the concept of combining three and two
confounded the western mind. Jones says of the Africans,

We have to grasp the fact that if from childhood you are brought
up to regard beating 3 against 2 as being just as normal as beating
in synchrony, then you develop a two-dimensional attitude to
rhythm which we in the West do not share...To beat 3 against 2 is to
them no different from beating on the first beat of each bar.9
See video: Old African Polyrhythms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrEqNTyMF_A

If you doubt the fundamental difference described here, consider the

rhythmic complexity of Balkan music, and even more, Indian, and you will have
the idea. Or consider the Afro-Brazilian tune set in 12-1/2 beats to the measure, or
the African drummers who put an accent every 15 beats for some undoubtedly
good reason.10

The African-Americans' rhythmic alterations to European-derived forms

resulted partly from the banning of the African drum by the English, and later by
the slave states of the U.S. i The intricacies of drumming were displaced into
clapping, stamping, and vocals, and later into the way Blacks handled European
instruments.

Another characteristic of West African music not shared by Europeans was

an affinity for a variety of percussive textures; rasping and scraping sounds, for
example, are considered musical in this tradition. In the diaspora, this led to the
invention of countless percussion instruments, often modeled on African
originals. These are to be heard in Brazil, home of more percussion than most of
the rest of the world put together; in Caribbean-born salsa and other Afro-Latin
genres; and in the vocal as well as instrumental styles of so many varieties of
i
The drum was perceived to transmit information in a “foreign language” – some African spoken
languages, like Chinese, achieve part of their meaning through tonal variations. Drumming also
gathered slaves in larger numbers than the masters would like. (Conway 1995, 72, 322)

14
music from the U.S. This elevation of "non-refined" sounds to musical acceptance
was and continues to be anathema to many who cultivate a more indoor
sensibility. Some people think washboards are for washing. And some folks just
can't warm up to the banjo, often described as essentially a drum with strings.

We should take into account here something usually not accounted for: the
early closeness of European and African working people in America. Many
Whites, and some Blacks, were brought across the ocean as indentured servants.
They were able to earn their freedom, until the construction of the legal edifice of
slavery, which came later. So in the first period, up till the late seventeenth
century, there was a much more fluid and collegial relationship between folks
from different continents. As one French scholar put it, "From 1620 to 1660 or so
people of different shades worked shoulder to shoulder, lived and occasionally
revolted in concert."11

And undoubtedly sang in concert as well—work songs, at a minimum. Bear

in mind that Europeans and Africans did not first meet in America. There was
already cultural contact, sometimes directly, sometimes via Arab cultures, and
much had been shared before crossing the Atlantic. Another writer informs us
that in early Jamestown,

Negro and white servants seemed to be remarkably unconcerned

about their visible differences. They toiled together in the fields,
fraternized during leisure hours, and, in and out of wedlock,
collaborated in siring numerous progeny.12

All this singing and siring was set to cease as the development of the North
American colonies began to look like a profitable enterprise requiring a longer-
term indenturing—to wit, slavery. Beginning in the 1660s, legal codes separated
White and Black into those who could look forward to freedom and those who
could not. This had partly to do with the relative inability of Blacks to run away
and hide among the populace, and more to do with the growing trade in
enslaved Africans. By 1700, Blacks had lost the right to read, to marry freely, to
better their position. Racial harmony among the lower classes abated; indentured
servants whitened.

3 THE PLANTATION

15
 The ring shout is at once the founding religious rite and the fount of
music-dance of the Africans in the Americas. It is a counterclockwise dance,
communicating to gods and ancestors. It is a piece of Africa transported by
Africans to their quarters of enslavement across the Atlantic. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson observed it in a civil war army camp:

That strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting, which

they know only as “shout”…singing at the top of their voices…
accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and slapping of
the hands, like castanets.13

See video: Ring shout re-enactment by Geechee/Gullah women

https://youtu.be/QR_WtpHemUU

He called it “Half bacchanalian, half devout.” Indeed. Bacchus was, after

all, a god. In some countries dance is a critical part of worship; in fact, in some
places dance is mainly a form of worship.14

__________________________________
THE BUNNY HOP

This dance is a variation on the conga line, brought from Cuba

courtesy of US colonialism. It was (re)created in Balboa High School, San
Francisco, in 1952. Even in the dreaded suburban fifties--especially in the
fifties—it was necessary to create a thinly disguised African dance that
White kids could entertain themselves with. I did it, and grew up a shade
of Black without knowing it.
__________________________________

Marshall Stearns witnessed a shout remnant in South Carolina in the 1950s:

The dancers form a circle in the center of the floor, one in back of
another. Then they begin to shuffle in a counter-clockwise direction
around and around, arms out and shoulders hunched. A fantastic
rhythm is built up by the rest of the group standing back to the
walls, who clap their hands and stomp on the floor….Suddenly
sisters and brothers scream and spin, possessed by religious
hysteria....15

16
 The clapping and stomping, of course, developed as replacement for the
outlawed drum.

Later the shout is brought into more or less “proper” churches,

where worshippers sit in rows of benches or chairs. When they leap up, they go
into the aisles. This leaping about under the influence of spirits becomes the new
form of the shout: the ring is confined to the aisle, and the choir grows in
importance.

We see the grandchild of the original in the Black church, especially the
Holiness churches. And this is what the shout is about: possession of congregants
by spirits.
See video: Spiritual Roots of Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8N2L8E7ti

Sterling Stuckey, commenting on Higginson, expanded on the

(mis)underestimation that would become a permanent feature of American life:

Since he did not grasp the substance of their religious belief…As

principled and faithful a friend of blacks as he could comment,
‘They seem the world’s perpetual children, docile, gay, and
lovable…’ Little did he realize that their tales of greatest depth—he
had heard only those in a humorous vein—contained attacks on
oppression sharper than anything managed by the keenest and
most sympathetic intellectuals in the North.16

So it wasn’t only religion that hid under the mantle of amusement or was
misperceived as such: the overall social cohesion of the African community was
the function of these rituals. Cohesion was also fostered through such activities
as the Parade of Governors in New England. Commencing around 1750 and
continuing for 100 years, the revelry cloaked religion, as did the shout, but also
cloaked actual governance. Whites promoted these activities as a means of
control, but in the bargain they facilitated cultural transmission as well as the
recognition of leaders who ended up with more influence than the facilitators
had bargained for. They dismissed African languages as gibberish and African
spirituality as entertainment; the wisdom of hiding actual beliefs and practices
from the boss was learned early and well by the Africans.

See video: African Parade

17
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ4fP-hlmnE

When African royalty are mistaken for jesters, nothing is what it seems. In
short, what was noticed of African culture by Whites was a small part of what
was going on, right under their noses. And the denial continues: take the case of
Pinkster, a Dutch celebration (from the Dutch word for Pentecost). It went
from a religious holiday to a celebration of spring, but over time came to be
considered an African American holiday, widely celebrated in New York and
New Jersey, peaking around 1790-1810:

Nine tenths of the blacks in the city, and of the whole country
within thirty or forty miles, indeed were collected in thousands in
those fields, beating banjos, singing African songs…[there was] a
marked difference between this festival and one of European
origin.17

And yet, when I encountered a remembrance of it in Teaneck, New Jersey in

the early 2000s, the local government sponsors made no mention of the African
American aspect, and took no interest in a critique of it. The erasure of a
supposedly free and equal people from history in many instances small and large
constitutes a continuing insult and disempowering distortion of history.

Meanwhile, back in the 19th century: White ministers charged with

Christianizing the heathens certainly noticed the shout, and crusaded against it.
So over time it gets outlawed here and there, but persists: it continues in
Philadelphia into the 1870s, long after slavery was permitted there; in Tennessee
into the 1880s. It is observed by John and Alan Lomax in mid-20 th century Texas,
Louisiana, Georgia, the Bahamas; they see a similar ceremony in Haiti. And why
should it not persist? As Stuckey points out, attempts to suppress the shout
amounted to “asking them give up the products of ancestral genius as well as the
means by which spiritual autonomy was preserved.” 18 In fact, a minister—
himself African American—attempting to quash the singing of spirituals in a
Baltimore church in 1850 found himself confronted by “a congregation led by
two women who, rising from a front row and approaching the pulpit with clubs,
attacked him and an assistant pastor.”19

18
 Most enslaved people
brought to the Americas came
from Dahomey (Benin),
Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Congo,
Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon—essentially
the arc of territory all along the
center of West Africa. So when
we talk of the roots of culture
among the enslaved, we are
looking for its antecedents and
essentials in this part of West
Africa.i We must also bear in
mind the presence of Muslim
Africans, mostly from Senegal
and Gambia, in the west
central arc.ii The rice farmers of
the Carolinas and Georgia in
particular were brought from
Senegambia, where they had
plied that trade. And linguistic
influence from Mali, slightly inland from there, has been found in the Gullah
language spoken in the Carolina-Georgia Sea Islands.

So these are the people who create the culture that fans out into and threads
through the centuries of American culture. European-derived folks have often
considered Africans, or Blacks, or “primitives,” simplistically, as being somehow
mere physical beings, exotically sensual, not cerebral. But the banning of dance
from religion that is so common among Euro-Americans might help us to
understand that the Euro-Afro divide is not a mind-body divide, but rather a
divide over whether the body can participate in the activities of the soul; that is,
the two cultures differed over what spirituality encompasses. The western
segregation of sacred and profane, casting out earthly concerns from religiosity,
would catch up with the Black church, separating the blues from spirituals and
Saturday night from Sunday morning. But African spirituality, in its origins and

i
There is also evidence of significant trafficking of enslaved central Africans. See Holloway, 18-38.
ii
The Arabic word saut (pron. shout) means to walk or run around the Kaaba (the holy building
in Mecca). Remember, there were lots of Muslims from Africa enslaved in the Americas. We
draw conclusions, however, at our peril.

19
its practices for many generations in America, included what we would think of
as secular under the umbrella of the sacred. Even when Africans in America
adopted Christianity, they brought to it other ways of being, most obviously the
physicality of their worship, which continues to express itself in movement and
song, and shout.

So finally, what is the effect of all this? Broadly, we can contemplate a

continued struggle between worldviews and spiritual approaches; focusing
directly on music, we can consider the perpetuation of Africanisms in the various
subsequent forms of African American—and thus American— music, as did
Marshall Stearns:

The continued existence of the ring-shout is of critical importance

to jazz, because it means that an assortment of West African
musical characteristics are preserved, more or less intact, in the
United States—from rhythms and blue tonality, through the
falsetto break and the call-and-response pattern, to the songs of
allusion and even the motions of African dance.20

In other words, African American culture came in on a ring and a shout,

survived, and conquered.

Under the regime of slavery there was a major autumnal gathering on many
plantations that served at least three purposes. The master needed the harvested
corn husked. He had the sense to take advantage not only of the people under

20
his own shackles but also of others from the neighborhood. So the shucking
became not just another task; it was a party that featured husking speed contests,
feasting, and song and dance. The enslaved were able to communicate among
themselves, and the masters were able to enjoy African-American music. What
sort of music was it? It was a remarkable enough display that

white observers discussed it a great deal, seeing in it something

savage and therefore frightening, but enormously attractive at the
same time.21

—a description remarkably similar to White society’s later response to jazz

and blues and subsequent genres. What they heard was a blend of order with
cacophony, singing that entered and disappeared, competition in volume and
improvisation, calling and responding, led by the “captain,” who

seated himself on top of the pile—a large lightwood torch burning

in front of him, and while he shucked, improvised words and
music to a wild “recitative,” the chorus of which was caught up by
the army of shuckers around.22

Captive workers played fiddles and banjoes, triangles and fifes. They also
clapped, snapped, and patted on their bodies—a practice that came to be known
as “patting juba,” and was one of many that substituted for the banned African
drum.i A slave-owner wrote in 1851 that a fiddler he “owned” was “always

i
The British prohibited the Africans from drumming in Jamaica in 1680, in South Carolina after the Stono
Rebellion of 1739, and generally in the American colonies from the 1740s. See Epstein, 1977, 59.

21
accompanied with Ihurod on the triangle and Sam to ‘pat.” 23 And in a
remarkable pun,

the phrase “patter de pat, patter de pat” was used to warn fellow
slaves of the presence of patrols in the neighborhood.24

These patrols, or “paterollers” as the enslaved called them, were hunting

escaped humans. But the shortening of the word to “pat” seems to have linked
the practice of body percussion with a warning of danger, curiously similar to
the communication of the famed banned drum. It could well have become one of
many hidden meanings, its roots buried in the music.

And the clapping was no simple matter of getting it on the right beat; there
were distinctly different pitches produced by different hand positionings and
cuppings. The drum, again. Elaborate slap and clap became hambone, a cousin to
juba used in playground games.

See video: girls’ games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqjgaH4NX20&

Perhaps the oddest percussion of all is also the most revealing of African
rhythmic sense: the “beating of straws” on a fiddle. The setting of a second
rhythm against the primary one, the meter or “beat,” produces syncopation. At
the corn frolics, the fiddler had a second person armed with two stout lengths of
straw, which are drummed against the fiddle strings between the bow and the
fingering hand. One fiddle, two rhythms. W.C. Handy described another version:

A boy would stand behind the fiddler with a pair of knitting

needles in his hands. From this position the youngster would reach
around the father’s left shoulder and beat on the strings in the
manner of a snare drummer.25

22
 What a curious thing to do.
But then, the fiddle probably
had more uses than we know
—certainly more than the
White observers of the day
knew. It appears to have
been one of several
repositories for the power of
the banned drum. It
continued, arguably, the
functions of summoning
gods and spirits, transmitting
their messages, and returning
them whence they came.26 If
this seems like a big portfolio
for a little fiddle, consider the
stringed instruments of India
and the respect they
command in spiritual music;
then reconsider the drum,
and music and dance in
general, in the West African cultures that gave pride of place to music and dance
in their communal spiritual activities. (We could probably find something similar
in Europe if we looked back a ways to pre-monotheistic cultures.) These enslaved
Africans had African fiddles in their background before encountering the
European one. And their truly old-time fiddling in the old country had, as noted
above, not been irreligious, not mere entertainment.

American missionaries at times tried to stamp out fiddling among the

enslaved. What they thought profane, Africans thought sacred. Yet a single
plantation in Georgia, holding 500 enslaved persons in the 1840s, had 25 fiddlers
among them. And how many dance callers? Phil Jamison, a professor of
Appalachian Studies and Music, professes:

All the earliest references to dance callers were Black musicians.

And that’s something that you do not find in the European
tradition, but developed in this country with these Black fiddlers. 27

23
 As for the dances, first there were jigs, then the more intricate cotillions. i
Though the names were taken from the Europeans, the actual dances were some
combination of Africa via West Indies, Scottish and Irish, and imitations of
dances prevalent in English-derived planter culture. Some dances required a
“caller-out,” who we now know from square dancing as the caller. Those
rhyming calls are probably descended from the improvised rhymes of the corn-
husking contests and fieldwork yells. In this connection we might mention the
term breakdown, commonly used to describe the holiday-time plantation dances.
They may have been named after the harvesting or “breaking down” of the corn,
or after the fact that celebrations usually ended with virtuosic solo displays
witnessed by the slapping, clapping, patting group. Regardless, it seems that the
Euro-American breakdown, a derivative of the European reel, derives its name
from the plantation goings-on.28

The dancers preferred a dance floor to the bare earth, so they could hear their
steps—further evidence of the importance of percussion. One dance that
persisted right up to the twentieth century was the cakewalk, also known as the
walkabout or strut. Enslaved people developed it as an imitation of their masters'
fancy manners. Master awarded a cake to the best dancers. ii Masters seem to

i
Jig was an Irish term and an Irish dance; as applied to African Americans in the 18th century it
meant some combination of borrowed, altered, and relatively unrelated Black dances.
ii
Berlin, 104. Hence the expression "takes the cake."

24
have missed the mockery of their own style, taking it as a flattering imitation.
White minstrels corked up their faces to imitate Blacks imitating Whites—and
knew not whom they imitated. Later generations of dancers cakewalked to
ragtime, in the final run-up to the explosion of jazz.

See video: Cakewalk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efh6sDMrkL4

When not mocking Master, the subjugated workers exhibited a different style
of dancing than any practiced by Europeans. The fluidity that we observe in
most all African-derived movement is partly a result of the center of gravity: the
hips. Movement starts here and radiates out in all directions, moving like a wave
and freeing up the torso to undulate in a most un-European manner. Watch
people dancing to different kinds of music and you’ll see. Watch the Irish and the
Balkan and Texan line dancers, watch the Morris and Contra and Country
dancers. Then watch the Congolese and Brazilian and funk dancers. If you’ve a
mind and body to, dance to all these musics yourself. Report the results to the
class. While we’re waiting, let’s look at three versions of the fabled “Hokey
Pokey,” an old British folk dance: a “Western” version, a Caribbean/minstrel
version, and a hip-hop kids version from 2005.

See videos: Hokey Pokey

western
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6d6Avbpjf8&
Jamaican
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hQt0LWedrI
hip-hop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzuGB9h26Go&

25
 Another thing you could try is dancing an imitation of an animal. That’s the
source of plantation creations like the Pigeon Wing, Buzzard Lope, and Turkey
Trot. The latter had a long life after slavery, becoming a popular ragtime dance.
Around the same time, the Fox Trot was credited variously to W.C. Handy and
others. There were also the Bunny Hug, the Monkey Glide and the Chicken
Scratch. Africans during and after plantation slavery often responded to dance
calls with animal imitations, quite unlike later and/or Whiter dancers. 29

The subject of African dancing in America can be studied from different

angles. Marshall and Jean Stearns observed, somewhat in reverse:

…the Ibibio of Nigeria performing a shimmy to end all shimmies,

the Sherbro of Sierra Leone executing an unreasonably fine
facsimile of the Snake Hips, and a group of Hausa girls near Kano
moving in a fashion closely resembling the Lindy, or Jitterbug… 30

They further note that the director of the Philadelphia Dance Academy
“found [among the Africans] close parallels to American dances such as the
Shimmy, Charleston, Pecking, Trucking, Hucklebuck, and Snake Hips, among
others.”31

And in America, Zita Allen contends,

The slaves' low-to-the-ground, bent-knee stance and fluid,

articulate pelvic movements, combined with remarkable isolations,
syncopations, and improvisations, would leave their stamp on
everything from the "Turkey Trot" and "Fox Trot" of the early 1900s
to the "Charleston" and "Black Bottom" of the 1920s, the "Lindy
Hop" of the 1930s, the "Jitterbug" or "Swing" that followed in the
1940s, and break dancing, hip-hop, and today's free style.32

See video: Lindy Hop – the Breakout

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LIuJ7JiE8I

According to Marshall and Jean Stearns, there are six important aspects of the
African source style, which was

1) danced on naked earth with bare feet, often flat-footed, favoring

gliding, dragging or shuffling steps; 2) frequently performed from a
crouch, knees flexed and body bent at the waist like a hunter

26
 crouched for the kill, 3) imitates animals in realistic detail, 4) places
great importance upon improvisation, allowing freedom of
individual expression, 5) centrifugal, exploding outward from the
hips, and 6) performed to a propulsive rhythm, which gives it a
'swinging' quality.33

More generally, Robert Farris Thompson describes African dance as

characterized by

…dominance of a percussive performance style; a propensity of

multiple meter, overlapping call and response; inner pulse or
keeping a beat indelibly in mind as a rhythmic common
denominator in a welter of different meters; suspended
accentuation patterning or offbeat phrasing of melodic and
choreographic accents; and songs and dances of social allusion…34

And while there were new influences in the “new world,” the old ones re-
asserted themselves every time more captives arrived from Africa. If they came
via the Caribbean they brought other variants of expressivity, conditioned by the
different regimes: African culture was more pronounced, less modified, in the
sugar zones, where humans were more frequently imported directly from Africa,
and masters were sometimes more tolerant of African expression.

By studying the evolution of music and dance in the US since the Civil War,
and especially since the Spanish-American one, these descriptions tell us that we
have all been dancing a derivative of African style all the while, and all the while
not knowing it. In a word, not really knowing who we are. Nor, as it often
happens, do we know what we are appropriating, without acknowledgment, for
our own use.

And then there’s the matter of the music that accompanies the job at hand.
Let’s start with corn shucking. The song leader, in this case called the general,
takes the workers through their paces:

Gen: Slip shuck corn little while

Cho: Little while, little while.
Gen: Slip shuck corn little while
Cho: Little while I say.35

27
 It wasn’t only work songs that provided this framework for participation,
though. An early spiritual shows this:

Dere’s no rain to wet you,

O’ yes, I want to go home,
Dere’s no sun to burn you,
O’ yes, I want to go home
Dere’s no whips a-crackin’
O’ yes, I want to go home

Here we hear a link in the chain from West African call and response to its
permutations in the blues, jazz, and on down to today. We might compare the
corn-songs to the waulking songs, a Scottish tradition. These are sung by a group
engaged in pre-shrinking or tightening the weave on a new blanket. At a
“milling frolic” I attended in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, we took turns
improvising a wordless vocal chorus: individual improvisation, though no call
and response. Such points of similarity between these two cultures will
constitute a recurring point of interest in our story—as will the fact that the Scots
engaged in an often more physical and extroverted approach to their work and
their music than the English. It helps to explain the tendency of convergence
between the Celts and the African Americans, a convergence that would rope in
the English later on, when they learned to swing.

See video: Ray Charles – Call and Response

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2ETu-Wi2ug

Another link to the Celts and English and many other nationalities flashes
into view when we examine such corn shucking lyrics as

Old marster shot a wild goose…

Ju-ran-zie, hio ho.
It wuz seben years fallin’.
Ju-ran-zie, hio ho.36

What does it sound like? A sea chantey, says Roger Abrahams, who goes on
to note that most of the corn songs also turned up in similar form as sea
chanteys. We’ll come back to that. But to return to the call and response aspect,
Abrahams emphasizes a difference from the European style of leader-chorus
interaction:

28
 …the leader not only gives out the song, but as the rest come in with
the chorus he sings over, under, and through their response. 37

In other words, there is a flexibility, a give and take, an interplay more

complex than the simple leader-follower format implies. One hears this in
certain churches to this day.

One also hears not-so-hidden meanings employed in the work party

songs of old:

Grind de meal, gimme de husk;

Bake de bread, gimme de crus’;
Fry de meat, gimme de skin;
And dat’s de way to bring ‘em in.38

All this, theoretically, right in front of the master. Maybe he wasn’t

listening, or understanding, or maybe the tone was light enough to be
indulged; the kidnapped laborers found a way to voice their discontent in
song, and go unpunished. Keep in mind that the captain is not just the
best or loudest singer, though he will be that, but also good with words—
in other words, a griot.i It was, and is, common for Whites to
underestimate the doings of African arts in America—in this case, to miss
the fact that they were seizing the occasion of group work to comment
ironically on their condition and generally to continue their conversation
about survival strategies.

The griot, an important and respected person, was perceived from the
outside as a clown—a (lack of) perception that allowed the Trojan horse
of community commentary to slip through the gates. Consider this report
of a corn frolic:

From the dances a transition was made to a mock military

parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia trainings, in which
the words of command and the evolutions were extremely
ludicrous.”39

i
The griot in west Africa is an oral historian, court satirist, praise singer, musician; the tradition dates back
into the mists of centuries.

29
 Back to music: a lively and sometimes ill-mannered debate has thrived over
the derivation of African American music. In the early 20 th century, Henry
Krehbiel made the case for African roots, and Guy B. Johnson countered in 1930
with the claim that most African American musical elements were traceable to
Euro-American practices. This debate was heavy with racism and simplification,
but in the end it helped to point to the syncretism that results when two cultures
with common practices meet. The Scottish practice of “lining out,” in which a
preacher or song-leader sings a line and the congregation repeats it, was similar
enough to African call and response to have prompted enchained worshippers to
adopt the hymns of Isaac Watts and make them their own for centuries.

It’s a little hard to tell at this distance precisely what the folk music of the 19 th
century was like, but as to what it derived from, we can be sure it was a
gradually shifting mix of African heritage and influences from the New World.
Jeannette Robinson Murphy wrote in 1899 that “the greater part of their music,
their methods, their scale, their type of thought, their dancing, their patting of
feet, their clapping of hands, their grimaces and pantomime” 40 came directly
from Africa. She cites African American authorities of her day—clergy and laity
—as backing her contention. More recent research among the Gullah or Geechee
people of the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands confirms the African roots
of many African American practices, including musical ones.

And even then, in 1899, Murphy described with some amusement the White
folks’ attempts to render the Black tunes:

What is there to show him that he must make his voice exceedingly
nasal and undulating; that around every prominent note he must
place a variety of small notes, called ‘trimmings,’ and he must sing
tones not found in our scale…41

She proudly recounts a compliment received as she sings with a Black family
she visits: “You does shore significant ‘em good; and for a white lady you is got a
good deal of de Holy Spirit in you, honey.” All along, it seems, African
Americans have had something Whites wanted, beyond their labor.

The music of the African laborers exhibited a vigor born of its use: survival.
It was a form of community-building. It allowed individual expression in a
society where Blacks were enslaved en masse; it expressed suffering and longing
in a way that made it easy for other suffering and longing people to understand

30
—other people who were, if not enslaved, at least painfully exploited. For this
reason it traveled well, and far.

Through more than just music, the imprisoned workforce had a pervasive,
daily influence on plantation aristocrats, and especially on their children, in a
society in which

…the infant son of the planter was commonly suckled by a black

mammy, in which gray old black men were his most loved
storytellers...in which his usual, often practically his only,
companions until he was past the age of puberty were black boys
(and girls) of the plantation...nearly the whole body of whites,
young and old, had constantly before their eyes the example, had
constantly before their ears the accent, of the Negro...42

4 MINSTRELSY: WHITES ACTING BLACK?

The key ingredient in the jelling of American popular music in the

nineteenth century was the minstrel show. Traveling troupes of White musicians
brought a smorgasbord of cultural influences to small towns and plantations
from the early 1800s into the next century. Borrowing, stealing, humiliating, and
remixing, they created the first secular music that was truly American.

Many of the early minstrels were Irish or Scots-Irish. Many thousands of Iris
people had been displaced by English conquest, and Scots had been cleared from
their highlands to be replaced by sheep. Later, thousands of Irish fled the famine
of the 1840s; in great numbers they came to America. The Irish were an

31
economically and culturally marginal group, i and the populace at large found
their songs and accents amusing, as they would come to find Black culture, as
purveyed by the Irish. The Irish held a special underclass status in America, in
keeping with their colonized status back at home. Many convicts and prisoners
of war had been sent from Ireland to Jamaica (as well as to Australia and
elsewhere) after 1664 as indentured servants. One of their roles there was to
guard against Black rebellions. Intercourse ensued; among the Black musicians
with Irish ancestry are Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley.

Meanwhile, some of the best singers of Irish dialect songs in the 1870s were
said to be Black stevedores in Ohio. 43 The interplay was endless: an old Irish folk
tune—or was it a frontier fiddle tune? or both?—became "Zip Coon," a song that
fostered an enduring stereotype of a pretentious Black dandy; the same song
with its lyrics removed became "Turkey in the Straw." 44 In Chicago in 1870 an
Irish/coon caricature duo was a big hit.45

American minstrels brought new instruments

to the British Isles: tambourine, bones, banjo.
Meanwhile English performers also had an influence
on minstrelsy: British troupes toured the U.S.,
blackface and all, from about 1822. Many of the
British minstrels were Cockneys—lower class Brits
entertaining by imitating lowest class Americans.

One Cincinnati dayii in 1828, a minstrel named

Thomas "Daddy" Rice happened upon an old Black
groom named—well, we don't know his name, of
course—but as he went about his work he was singing and dancing a little
number:

Turn about and wheel about and do just so,

i
No Irish needed apply to many occupations, which drove them into disreputable pursuits such
as show business and police work.
ii
or Louisville; historians don’t know for sure.

32
 And every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow i

Rice pursued the artiste, copped the riff,

blacked his face, and out popped a hit.
The old fellow who caught his
performer's eye was not only Black but
also physically afflicted, or at least
possessed by rheumatism, and thus his
movements were not only exotic but
peculiar—today we would call the
imitation "victim humor."
In any case, the new bit
was a smash, and it
changed show business,
not unlike an early-day
Twist.ii

Other minstrels took

notice. Performers from
the South visited
plantations—if they didn’t live on them themselves - and were
swept away by the artistry of those in bondage. The largest part of
the resulting material was an imitation of the plantation
entertainments, including the song and dance styles. A
contemporary observer recalled a plantation festival in Virginia as
being full of "laughter and song, antics and buffoonery which
would make a modern minstrel show appear tame..." 46 Having Pat Booned or
Vanilla Iced it down a bit, the promoters gave their shows names such as
"Plantation Revels" and "Plantation Frolics." The shows customarily ended with a
cakewalk, just as actual plantation revels did.

See video: Minstrel Show 1913

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5hwoGr5ots

i
From a lyric in a (borrowed) minstrel tune, possibly referring to a dance in imitation of a bird,
possibly used in plantation corn shucking frolics, Jim Crow would go on to become synonymous
with segregation laws.
ii
Ten years later Rice would add a skit based on a song done by a New Orleans street vendor
called Mr. Corn Meal, after a song he did about the Indian corn he sold. (Conway 1995, 92, 327)

33
 As the nation was a diverse stew of peoples, if not a melting pot, so with the
music. John Rublowsky describes minstrel music as "an Anglo-American
modification of an Afro-American modification of African, English, Scotch, Irish,
German, French and Spanish originals."47

In this connection, Old Dan Tucker can help guide us back through the mists
of time and shed some light on the mysteries of cultural origins. Most of us think
of Dan in connection with an amusing square dance tune, but let's hit the roots
trail. The song was scribbled by Dan Emmett of the Virginia Minstrels around
1830, and was blown up into a skit with Dan playing Dan, White playing Black.
The humor was the usual minstrel mix; today's bleached version retains the
humor while covering the tracks of its tears. Take a look at the sheet music of the
day to see where folks got their entertainment. Emmett's other tunes included
"I'm Gwine Ober De Mountains" and "The Fine Old Colored Gentleman."

34
 The arts of this period were
characterized by gross caricatures
of ethnic groups—something that
has been, more or less,
diminishing with time. All kinds
of groups came in for
stereotyping, most of all the lowest
of the low. Minstrelsy often
portrayed Blacks as lazy, cowardly
and stupid; yet at other times their
characters were witty and
talented. The "lower" Black
characters, Tambo and Bones—
named for their musical
instruments—were the customary
winners in the tricky and
sophisticated punning contests,
beating the supposedly superior
"interlocutor" (MC) and the
audience as well.48 Their rattling
instruments told the audience it was time to laugh, and constituted perhaps the
first laugh track, or at least cue card.49

And there were instances of outright reversal of

racial stereotypes, including one story in which Cain
and Abel were Black, with Cain turning white in fear of
God after murdering his brother. Another story has
Adam and Eve turning white in fear of God after their
own transgression.50

See video: Minstrel Show from Harmony Lane, 1935

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy49ns75Jbo

The standard critique of minstrelsy is that it was pure racism on the stage.
But William F. Stowe and David Grimsted critiqued the critique by exposing the
multiple functions of the form: the White performers were making fun of Blacks,
but at the same time identifying with them, or at least with their idea of them.
"White men put on black masks and became another self, one which was loose of
limb, innocent of obligation to anything outside itself...and thus a creature totally
devoid of tension and deep anxiety."51

35
 As simplistic and caricatured as that is, it is not antagonistic. Many
performers were acclaimed for accurate, even "profound" impressions of Black
styles. The original
minstrels, who hailed
from the south, learned
their musicianship from
Blacks; they would go on
to teach their northern
colleagues, who had less
direct contact with the
source. A White banjoist
from Virginia named
Ferguson, for example,
was described around
1840 as “nigger all over
except in color.”52 A
wannabe? Or just another
White dude appreciating
Black culture?
Contemporary
descriptions of the
minstrel shows indicate
that White audiences
were able to identify with
the Black images on the
stage, which included
"Wit and buffoonery, music sentimental and comic, dancing stately and
grotesque, pretension and simplicity, pathos and farce." 53 For White audiences
there was always a tension between, on the one hand, the desire to dominate
Blacks by reducing them to caricatures; and on the other, the desire to become
one with them, to identify with them, through appreciation of their artistic
expression. Appreciation vs. appropriation—such racial schizophrenia continues to
this day.

The rerouting of emotional issues through caricatured characters by use of

the "mask" opened the possibility of social criticism, which dealt with class as
well as race questions. Stowe and Grimsted quote one exchange in which the
interlocutor maintains that American society equalizes rich and poor, to which
Tambo replies, "Sho, de rich gets ice in summer, and de poor gets it in winter." 54

36
The authors go on to point out that although it's true that the stereotyped
characters were buffoons, it's also true that court jesters of old were buffoons:
that was precisely the cover that allowed them to make sharp social commentary.

See video: Al Jolson , Mammy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIaj7FNHnjQ

Many enduring elements of American show business have their roots in

minstrelsy: soft-shoe dancing, vaudeville humor, political caricature, and of
course, music. George Christy, of Christy's Minstrels, was the first to bring
Stephen Foster's tunes to a wide audience. He had observed Black musicians up
close at Congo Square in New Orleans, where the captured Africans were
allowed to maintain African culture with drum and dance.55 Minstrel Lew
Dockstader got Al Jolson started in blackface, and Broadway producer George
M. Cohan had his beginnings as a minstrel company manager. 56 Minstrel-style
humor can be viewed in the Marx Brothers' movies, and in much of stand-up
comedy.

The minstrels copied songs that were originally sung by a kidnapped

workforce to survive the backbreaking labor that built the South. 57 Here we have
a clear case of talking the talk without walking the walk: the White audience

37
wants the style without the content, the gain without the pain. They receive, or
seize, as Greg Tate pointed out, everything but the burden. iThey are able to
enjoy the earthy, grounded, fluid music and movement that has sprung from
physical labor, without thinking about how their own lives have been softened
by the labors of others. It is not unlike tourists in a tropical clime, admiring the
bronze bodies of the natives who cannot afford the luxury tourist hotels. No
pain, but vicarious gain.

The blackface rendition was the dominant form of musical entertainment

right up into the 20th century. Minstrel shows were often advertised,
straightforwardly enough, as "imitations," and were described by an actress of
the day as "faint, feeble, impotent—in a word, pale Northern reproductions of
that ineffable black conception."58 Such treatments form part of what Cecilia
Conway would call the “mental terrorism” of inter-cultural relations.59

___________________________________
STEPHEN FOSTER

In the late slavery period we encounter the first quintessential

American songwriter, Stephen Foster. Born near Pittsburgh in 1826,
he frequented a Black church from age seven, escorted by one of his
family's two illegally enslaved staff (slavery being already
outlawed in that section of the country). The "bound girl," Olivia
"Lieve" Pise, attended a church of "shouting colored people," and
Stephen was permanently impressed by the music. He is said to
have preserved melodies he heard there in his "Hard Times Come
Again No More" and "Oh, Boys, Carry Me 'Long."60

i
Or as Charles Keil put it, “They want the music, but they don’t want the people.” (City and Society, June
2002)

38
 There was a large Black community in Pittsburgh and an
underground railroad station, and Foster came in contact with
freedmen, escaped bondswomen, and their families, along with his
family's “own.” He became a star performer in a childhood theatre
company with his friends, singing "Zip Coon," "Long-tailed Blue,"
and "Jim Crow."61,i While still a child, Foster saw "Daddy" Rice
perform. Later he submitted songs to him, and they became
friends.62

As a young man, Foster lived in Cincinnati, where he heard

Black stevedores singing as they loaded boats on the Mississippi.
He was supposed to be working a day job at his brother's
warehouse, but biographer John Tasker Howard tells us

[H]is heart was not in his work. He was more interested in

the Negro roustabouts who sang and danced on the nearby river
wharves.63

He went on to a smashing career in songwriting, his works

being featured by major minstrel companies. His hits included "Oh!
Susanna," "The Old Folks at Home (Swannee River)," "My Old
Kentucky Home," "Old Black Joe," and "Camptown Races."

SUBSTITUTION: Compare "Camptown" with the

Spiritual "Roll, Jordan Roll." Was one substituted for the
other?

Foster originally published his "Ethiopian" or "Plantation"

tunes under a pseudonym, thinking they would detract from his
reputation as a ballad-writer of such successes as "Jeanie With the
Light Brown Hair." Eventually he realized what a hit he was
making with the less reputable style, and reclaimed his
authorship.64

Foster engaged in some considerable struggle over the

content and use of his work. He gradually eliminated demeaning
dialect and offensive words from his songs, and changed their
i
All three songs have roots in Irish or Scottish folksongs, filtered through enslaved singers and minstrel
showmen.
Minstrels, 1959

39
generic title from "Ethiopian Melodies" to "Plantation Melodies."
He penned realistic lyrics showing the harshness of the subjugated
life, eschewed insulting caricatures on his sheet music covers, and
tried to elevate the tone of the genre so that it might be more
generally accepted. All of this was rather unusual in the 1840s
minstrel world. He sold one song to Daddy Rice—"Long-Ago
Day"—that was never heard because, according to Foster, a Rice
colleague said it was a bit anti-slavery and would be rejected in the
South.65 His efforts at social-musical uplift are little known because
of his family's ties to the slave-ocracy and a brother who destroyed
much evidence of Stephen's deviance in the course of executing the
estate.66

Because of the subject matter as well as the style of his work,

Foster's career is a matchless example of the centrality not only of
Black musical influence, but of the race question in general to life in
the United States. Brilliant songwriter he was, no question, but
there always remains the matter of Blacknowledgements; J.K.
Kennard in Knickerbocker Magazine (1845) noted of singing
bonds(wo)men:

Let one of them, in the swamps of Carolina, compose a

new song, and it no sooner reaches the ear of a white
amateur, than it is written down, amended (that is, almost
spoilt), printed, and then put upon a course of rapid
dissemination, to cease only with the utmost bounds of
Anglo-Saxondom, perhaps with the world. Meanwhile,
the poor author digs away with his hoe, utterly ignorant
of his greatness.67

These comments were, it is said, satire. Kennard apparently was

less than jazzed by the works of untutored swamp songsters.
Despite this disdain, the point intrigues. Alain Locke would later
compare Foster to Joel Chandler Harris and his relationship
(through Uncle Remus) to Black storytelling:

Both watered the original down just enough to

give it the touch of universality, and yet not enough to
destroy entirely its unique folk flavor…the sentimental

40
 side of the plantation legend wormed its way into the
heart of America for better or worse, mostly worse.68

And as Rod Stewart would point out a bit later, "There are a lot
of colored guys who can sing me off the stage. But half the battle is
selling it, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing." 69
Stewart's words ring true, as do Kennard's, despite being a poorly-
informed satire against those who championed the Black origins of
minstrel style.i

_______________________________________
JUBA
In the minstrel tradition, the
real thing was never enough
—or maybe it was a bit too
much—so when Blacks
themselves entered the field,
even they had to Black up, lest
they be taken too seriously as,
let us say, people. A notable
example was Rhode Island's
William Henry Lane, who
danced under the name of
Juba.ii He outdid all the other
dancers, Black and White
alike, and was hired by P.T. Barnum around 1841. Charles Dickens
described Juba's dancing thus:

Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut, snapping his

fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the
backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels
like nothing but the man's fingers on the tambourine...[He
dances] with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs,
two wire legs, two spring legs, all sorts of legs and no

i
Ostendorf (1979, 584) says "the author half-believes what he parodies"; Lott (1991, 236) speaks of
him lampooning "Young Americans' quest for a national art" through Black music as portrayed in
minstrelsy.
ii
“Patting Juba” was already a practice at least from the 1820s. Epstein & Sands in Burnim and Maultsby,
37.

41
 legs...he finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter and
calling for something to drink...70,i

Only one problem:

"[H]e was a genuine negro; and there was not an audience

in America that would not have resented, in a very
energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the
dancing of a real negro..."71

Barnum blacked him up, topped him off with a wig, and
presented him as an excellent white imitation of a Black dancer.
This particular form of debasement didn't last long; he was soon
receiving top billing on his own, in theaters where only whites had
trod the boards before Juba. Advertisements for his shows
promised he would imitate the principal dancers of the day—those
who had imitated him—and then offer "an imitation of himself."
The single person most credited with the development of tap
dance, Juba took some inspiration from white Appalachian
clogging– itself influenced by African American dancing—
and Scottish dances known for a kind of syncopation called the
"Scottish snap."72 He also got a lot of steps from Jim Lowe, a Black
saloon dancer who remained on the margins of show biz. 73

White minstrel dancer John Diamond challenged “any other

white person” to dance competitions, circumventing a pointless
meeting with his master.74
_______________________________________

Minstrelsy disturbed not only those who were the targets of its insults but
also those who saw Black culture gaining in popularity through these
entertainments. James K. Kennard wrote in 1845 of the "Jim Crows, the Zip
Coons, and the Dandy Jims, who have electrified the world," 75 fearing that Black
style would swamp European culture. For Kennard and others, the great fear
was the "blackening of America."76 As Kennard agonized, minstrel man Joel
Sweeney would nightly “steal off to some Negro hut to hear the darkeys sing
and see them dance.” He had learned banjo as a child from the imprisoned

i
Robert Farris Thompson compares this to similar steps seen in Argentina in the 1800s, among people of
similar origin in the Kongo kingdom (Thompson, 86.)

42
workers on his family plantation in Virginia. He was credited as the man to
“distill the native musical genius of the American Negro into…an art form.” 77

The work of the minstrels spread African-American music, in a caricatured form,

to Whites throughout the country. The minstrel shows, caricature and insult
though they were, paved the way for later successes by Blacks themselves. They
were the nation's major form of entertainment for many decades. Eventually
there would be minstrels without blackface, and even mixed-race groups: In 1848
the Ethiopian Serenaders, a group of three White and three Black minstrels,
dropped their blackface, and 1893 saw a tour by The Forty Whites and Thirty
Blacks. African American troupes came to the fore in the 1860s, putting more
emphasis on music and amusements than on insults and denigration, though
they still expended artistic energy imitating the imitations of themselves. The
Georgia Minstrels formed in 1865, followed in 1882 by Callender’s Consolidated
Spectacular Colored Minstrels. James Bland, a New Yorker of Black, White, and
indigenous heritage, wrote “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” and “Carry Me Back to
Old Virginny.” Trouper Sam Lucas joined forces with non-minstrel singers to
produce musicals like Out of Bondage and The Underground Railroad.

Much of our entertainment today is a more genteel version of minstrelsy:

Whites acting, singing and dancing Black, but without the blackface. i Whites

i
One notable but little-noted exception was Bonnie Bramlett, who, before her brief stardom in the
"White soul" duo of Delaney and Bonnie in the late sixties, performed as an Ikette in Ike Turner's

43
continue to use and enjoy Black styles like so much rubber, spice, petroleum or
any other resource. And the appropriation continues to soften up the White
populace for the eventual arrival of the original article. It's not justice, it's just
cultural trickle down. Or up. It's a
combination of racial insult with racial
envy, a "peculiarly American structure
of racial feeling"78 that was first
expressed artistically in minstrelsy. The
envy was summed up eloquently in an
African-American version of "Jim Crow"
from 1833:

I'm so glad dat I'm a niggar,

And don't you wish you was too
For den you'd gain popularity,
By jumping Jim Crow.

Now my brudder niggars

I do not think it right,
Dat you should laugh at dem
Who happen to be white.

Kase it dar misfortune,

And dey'd spend ebery dollar,
If dey only could be
Gentlemen ob colour.79

5 SLEEPY TIME DOWN SOUTH

Minstrel shows were the first form of public entertainment in the nation's
history in which White folks procured their culture from Blacks, via imitators.
But this show biz milestone came in the wake of a long private practice of
something similar that was played out at or near home by White southerners.
There are reports from the eighteenth century of Whites dancing in the style of
the Africans, such as this one from The Virginia Gazette in 1753, reporting on a

backup trio - in blackface. (Kiersh, 172.)

44
Richmond dance featuring two enslaved musicians playing for the rich and
powerful revelers:

To the music of Gilliat's fiddle and Brigg's flute, all sorts of capers were
cut...sometimes a Congo was danced and then the music grew fast and
furious when a jig climaxed the evening.80

This could be our first report of what Alan Lomax later called "the hot Negro
square-dance fiddle." 81 A private tutor's journal entry in 1774 tells of two young
White men attending an African-American party:

This Evening the Negroes collected themselves...& began to play

the Fiddle, & dance...Ben & Harry were of the company—Harry was
dancing with his Coat off—I dispersed them however
immediately.82

And consider this travel report from Virginia, published in Dublin in 1776:

Towards the close of an evening, when the company are pretty well
tired with country-dances, it is usual to dance jigs; a practice
originally borrowed, I am informed, from the Negroes. 83

See video: Carolina Chocolate Drops: Snowden's Jig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nliiRDmBbEQ&t=106s

This over-simplification obscures the constant interplay between Black and

White dance styles. Two examples of the complexity: when Black musicians
played for White plantation dances their music probably oscillated towards
something the planter families were comfortable with, influencing their playing
style—not to mention the choice of instruments—while subtly infusing among
the Whites an appreciation for Black musical styles. And the fact that planters’
children danced with the workforce after their work hours meant that these kids
imbibed the Africans’ styles and sentiments early on. This long and intricate and
ongoing process should remind us of H.L. Mencken’s dictum: For every
problem, there’s an answer that’s simple, plausible, and wrong.

Thomas Jefferson had, as we know, some intercourse with Black society. He

even wrote a description of the banjo and its playing style. And his brother
Randolph was described by Isaac, a Jefferson family captive worker, as "a mighty
simple man: used to come out among Black people, play the fiddle and dance

45
half the night."84 Whites danced to Black banjo music in Virginia and North
Carolina from the late 1700s, a peak period of the slave trade. Imagine, the
Africanization of White America didn’t have to wait for Elvis. Consider this
report of a White folks’ ball in Virginia, 1755:

Betwixt the Country dances they have what I call everlasting jigs. A
couple gets up and begins to dance a jig (to some Negro tune)
others comes and cuts them out, and these dances always last as
long as the Fiddler can play…[it] looks more like a Bacchanalian
dance than one in a polite assembly.”85

We don’t know the age of the dancers, but it certainly sounds like latter-day
generational culture wars—jazz, Elvis, rap—“they call that dancing?!” On the
other hand, Whites had been entertained by Blacks’ dancing from the beginning,
or even before: captives on the slave ships of the Middle Passage were forced, at
the point of a cat-o’-nine-tails, to dance on deck. The purpose of “dancing the
slaves” was to keep them in good shape for their impending sale.

Then there was the imitation factor. By 1862, notes Abrahams, "playing black
was one of the conventional ways in which Whites might amuse each other on
social occasions of many sorts."86
And well they might: there was a
"Negro dance, in character" on
stage as early as 1767.87

Most people think of "old-

timey" music, string bands, and
other roots of modern Country
music as White traditions. But as
we’ve seen, southern Blacks
played a string or two
themselves. Grand Ole Opry

harmonica player DeFord Bailey called it "black hillbilly music."88 They played
the fiddle in a more rhythmic style than Whites did, usually together with a
banjo, through it took generations for that combo to form, possibly because of
tuning problems.i Black string style is moaning, rhythmic, abrasive, vigorous and
i
Another variation was two banjoes together: two players are seated facing each other in a
doorway, and the dancers in each room can hear one of the instruments louder than the other.
(Conway 1995, 17) If this type of staging were executed in a dogtrot cabin – two one-room log

46
energetic.89 It’s also marked by syncopation. Alan Jabbour delineated a difference
in the bowing style of Whites in the Appalachians compared to those in the deep
South: the uplanders are partial to “groupings of notes in a complex fabric of
threes and twos, stylized anticipations of the beat, and other devices closely
resembling the syncopations characteristic of twentieth-century American
popular music.”90 He credited this style to the African American fiddlers present
in the area.i

See video: The Earl White Stringband plays "Hickory" on The Floyd Radio Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKmhb2w40Ck&t=2s

In the late nineteenth century, realizing they might not realize an

extravagant income from fiddling, some Black fiddlers turned their hands to
building railroads. Their contribution to the progress of the railroads took them
into the Appalachian Mountains, heartland of the Scots/Irish-based “hillbilly”
music, where they worked and sang together with the locals. Around the turn of
the century this industrial progress changed the course of folk music history,
ushering in an era of increased Black and White song sharing.

One reason people don't know about Black string bands is that recording
companies separated the Black and White music traditions for marketing
purposes and then recorded and promoted according to their own conceptions of
the market. They recorded White string bands and Black blues, period. 91 Brownie
McGhee, for one, recalled being refused permission to record hillbilly songs. 92
This narrowed and stereotyped the concept of African American music, all the
while fostering a false impression that White hillbilly music grew up by itself
without Black influence. Add this to the list of recording industry sins, under
"omission." ii

See video: Dom Flemons: Can You Blame The Colored Man?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah_x2hcqvg4
cabins joined by a covered passageway – it would amount to a band playing outdoors for indoor
dancers….!
Oregon, 1850s
i
Similarly, twentieth century fiddlers in Mississippi would slide into their notes in a style probably inspired
by Delta slide guitarists – a style that seeped down the decades through subsequent sub-genres. Think Billie
Holiday. (Wells, 144)
ii
Everybody knows the nostalgic Confederate anthem “Dixie Land.” Some still wish they were in Dixie, or
that Dixie still was what it once was. But not so many know that the song was given to minstrel Dan
Emmett by a traveling troupe of Black entertainers, the Snowden family of Maryland. From the 1830s into
the 1860s, Ellen and Tom Snowden and their sons and daughters taught White musicians to fiddle and sing
the songs of the day. (Conway 2003, 155)

47
 Another reason people are unaware of this historical interchange is that most
Blacks long ago quit playing the fiddle and the banjo. These instruments
reminded them of slavery days and minstrel stereotypes, and they were
consciously putting all that behind them in order to move on up to higher
ground. Others just quit playing because they couldn't get recorded. And in
many cases, they simply moved on musically as Whites adopted the instruments,
in an early example of a basic American cultural progression: Blacks innovate to
strengthen or re-define a culture of their own, Whites discover and imitate it, and
Blacks move on to the next innovation.i Banjo historian Cecilia Conway identifies
the essence of White-Black culture interaction as apprenticeship.

ABOUT THAT DRUM WITH STRINGS

Minstrels turned the Black songs that came with the banjo into the first
popular music of the nation.93 But note that the two parts of the South where
Blacks played banjoes were also the places where the instrument was carried
forward into new musical forms. In the Appalachians it became a core
component of mountain music and later bluegrass; in New Orleans its four-
string “tenor” version was essential in New Orleans jazz.94

The banjo was a significant

addition to White folk music.
Before the banjo, Whites had
fiddles, which were played in
unison with the vocals but
didn't provide rhythm the way
the banjo did (guitars came
later, in the second half of the
nineteenth century95). Old
songs were adapted to the new
instrument (which was new only to that region—it had been observed in similar
form in West Africa in 1621, in the Caribbean in 1678, and in Maryland by 1744, 96
and had roots not only in West Africa but in the Middle East). In those times and

i
Blacks quit playing the banjo in droves before commercial recording got underway, coloring– or
un-coloring – our perception of banjo origins. But listen to Dink Roberts (see Black Banjo Songsters
of North Carolina and Virginia, discography) and you’ll hear why some folks think the old banjo
playing, not the blues, is the clearest link to African music in the United States.

48
 places it was a gourd affair
with gut strings. In the
United States it was played
only by Blacks and was
concentrated in Virginia and
nearby areas—it did not
make it to the Deep South,
except New Orleans, before
1835. This may be in part
because of different African
origins of captive workers in
different regions of the South.
And it helps explain why Joel
Chandler Harris said he
never saw a banjo played on a plantation down south.

See video: Banjo, children dancing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBZFP9K1lvs

To understand the dignity of the banjo—take a breath—we must recall its

forbears, the halams of Mali and related instruments—and the fact that they were
the lutes used by griots—the oral historians of Africa. Many Wolof people, from
the Senegal area, came to America, among them halam players. In Jamaica in 1744
and again in 1793 we hear of the Jamaican variant, the superbly named
merrywang. (There is today an International Merrywang Society, banjo players
all. Or both, anyway.) Descriptions of the style of playing employed seem to
match the downstroking style of US banjo players. And, retracing the route, an
American visiting Mali in the late twentieth century picked up an ngouni, relative
of the halam, and began frailing in banjo style. “Where did you learn to play the
ngouni?” the Malian musicians exclaimed. Recall the tendency among White folk
artists to preserve and protect old styles; in this case those were Black styles—
African, in fact. We may ask ourselves: is this my beautiful music?

See video: Banjo and singers, 1930s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eoL9P6L7qA

To call today’s banjo the descendent of the original gourd device may seem a
stretch, but the changes from one to the other are arguably within the family. The
gut, hemp or horsehair strings remained past the civil war, but the gourd was
replaced by round cheese boxes (1850s) and then wood more generally. Minstrel

49
(and southerner) Joel Sweeney may have invented the wooden rim, or may have
been one of several who did. The sound chamber was covered by any animal
unfortunate enough to meet the banjo’s maker. In fact, an instrument made with
a cat skin resonator and using cat-gut strings should have been called a catbox.
Cats, ever since, thank God for plastic and wire.

This brings us to the matter of the fifth string. Some say Sweeney may have
added that too, but others say the string he added wasn’t the now-famous short,
high-pitched drone string plucked with the thumb, but rather a bass string.
Logically, a high-pitched drone string would be present because of its particular
use, and Sweeney didn’t invent that. In the African halam, there are only two
melody strings, and up to three strings tuned higher and used as fixed-pitch
drones. Playing with a high drone string, says Conway, was “the only method of
banjo playing documented before the end of the nineteenth century.” Yet there is
no concrete evidence of a short, high drone in the American banjo before the
Celtic innovators, aka Sweeney.

Later the banjo style morphed in new directions, as a rhythm instrument,

mainly strummed. We hear it in the jug bands, and in early jazz, where the tenor
banjo, a new mutation, was essential in the classic Dixieland period.

By the time of the civil war, the banjo had already been in White hands for a
generation, notably those of Joel Sweeney’s brother Sam, who entertained his
fellow Confederate troops with “Negro melodies”—Black culture giving solace
to a pro-slavery army!97

Whites probably began to strum the banjo around the 1830s when minstrel
shows began. The big debate about Appalachian mountain banjo players is about
whether they got their styles and chops from White minstrels or from Black
players. The point is not as pointed as it might seem, since the minstrels played
pretty much the same style as Black players—frailing, which is to say
downstroking, which is to say clawhammer style. Circuses and medicine shows
as well as minstrels traveled this region. And when you talk about mountains
you also must consider rivers. In the 1850s there were minstrels steamboating
down the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi, bringing banjos and
brawls to the small towns on their way.

50
 But riverboats came and went in a day. i And mountain players never
reproduced the minstrel group—fiddle, banjo, and bones—nor its theatrical
structures. Moreover, by the time Whites were playing banjo in the hills, in the
1840s, Blacks had been playing for a century right next door in the Piedmont, the
area of rich cultural interaction in Virginia and North Carolina. Some Whites
traveled between the regions, and some Blacks, both free and enchained, did live
in the mountain area proper. Some had been brought as early as the 1770s by
settlers fleeing British oppression. We have reports of Black banjo players in
Knoxville, Tennessee in 1798, and drawings of others in Asheville, North
Carolina after the civil war. And mountains have trails, trade routes,
passageways, and crossroads where people meet. After the Civil War, Blacks
came into the mountains to build railroads, and banjoes came with them.

Conway makes the case for the banjo as the link between slavery era music
and the blues, the work song and the blues, and the work song and the
entertainment song.98 Quite a résumé for a drum with strings. But then again, it’s
the link between the drum and strings, too. The drum, after all, was banned in
these United States, leaving the banjo to carry on with the song. The banjo
precedes the blues, as it precedes ragtime—both of them indelibly stamped with
banjoisms. And too, the banjo is a link to Africa. Africans played some variety of
it, in fact, literally en route to becoming Americans: on slave ships.

In 1798 Black musicians played the banjo for a White dance in Knoxville, and
a hundred years later, reports Conway, a White Appalachian man “played the
Banjo Clog for a colored man to dance and he danced with his back to him and
his foot hit the floor every time he hit a string. He never seen such a dancer in his
life.”99 Frailer and hoofer together: it had become their beautiful music.

WHAT’S THE MATTER, WHAT’S THE MANNER?

From their Black counterparts the White mountain musicians learned

railroad songs like "John Henry" and "Casey Jones." ii They learned new
techniques on the fiddle, like left-hand slides and syncopations.

i
About boats: another kind of craft could have provided more time for music learning:
the gunboat. The National Archive has photos of Blacks and Whites together on Civil War ships.
You can see both Black and White sailors holding banjoes in these pictures. (Regarding how
much singing there is on a boat, see chapter on sea chanties.)

Written by Black railroad man Wallace Saunders, based on earlier African-American songs, says
ii

Norman Cohen (Norman Cohen 1969, 241).

51
 SUBSTITUTION: Compare White American fiddlers with
Scottish and Irish fiddlers from the old country to get a feel for the
Black influence. (This is a useful exercise whenever you're looking
for the hidden strands in hybrid music.) American fiddle music is
hotter than its European roots, and more fluid. This can be ascribed
partly to the wild frontier lifestyle, partly to Black influence.

Complicated fingerpicking guitar styles picked up by Whites from Black

musicians were commonly referred to as "nigger pickin'," 100 later more politely as
"chicken pickin'." They are played to this day by Country musicians—who may
know where they came from—for Country fans, who almost unanimously don't. i

Let's zoom in here on three important aspects of music in which African

styles were influential: improvisation, syncopation, and call and response.

Improvisation: White folk musicians tended to conserve a song more or less in

the form and style of an early version—not necessarily the one they brought
from over the sea, but a local update. They tended to play it repeatedly the same
way, valuing the inheritance rather than any changes that might grow out of
their new situation or changing conditions. For an example, note the note-for-
note renditions of the older fiddle tunes that old-time fans are fond of, sounding
remarkably similar to their British-Celtic sources.

See video: Fiddlers w/ FDR—Soldier's Joy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF7_2qQQrdY

Bill Malone cites the defensiveness of White southerners against attacks on

slavery as a reason they "committed their region to a course of arrested
development,"101 which tended to freeze culture at a point that other parts of the
country left behind. More rapid urbanization and industrialization in the North
may have been more important factors, as we can see by comparing with other
regions passed over by these developments, e.g. Canada's Atlantic provinces and
their neighbors in northern New England.

Improvisation, on the other hand, made a tune always new. It was the
combination of past tradition with the current moment—the creation of a live
i
Hear recordings of several Black old-time songsters and instrumentalists at
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/12/20-favorite-tunes-from-old-time-Black-musicians/

52
statement by the performer identifying dynamically with their culture—that
gave African-American musicians a thrill. There are deep differences among
cultures that make it take a long time for a transplanted person to feel at home.
Ernest Borneman comments that in spoken language,

[T]he African tradition aims at circumlocution rather than at exact

definition. The direct statement is considered crude and
unimaginative; the veiling of all contents in ever-changing
paraphrases is considered the criterion of intelligence and
personality.102

Syncopation: a lively rhythmic musical way of life that

loosens up the hips and sometimes even makes you laugh out
loud. You can syncopate anything. Eubie Blake once syncopated
a classical piece on the piano, then turned to a White friend and
said "That's your ragtime." In 1919 James Europe’s big band
favored the Manhattan Opera House with a syncopated version
of Peer Gynt, “with respectful apologies to Mr. Grieg.” In the
1940s, Lennie Tristano's trio would jazz up Bach simply by
moving the accents around. The melodies endured the
conversion and even took on new life. That's exactly what
happened to European folk music in the American South as
European-derived tunes encountered African rhythmic
practices.

Call and response: In a typical example of the West African tradition, a leader
sings a line and is answered by a male chorus and separately by a female chorus.
In solo music, this was expressed through the use of the guitar to answer the
vocal, and it crossed over into White folk traditions, as Malone describes:

Primarily through the influence of the Negro, the guitar came to be

more than a simple accompanying instrument; it came to be a
device for punctuating the moods and sentiments expressed...in
effect, serving as a second voice."103

It also flourished in gospel singing and is heard in Black churches today,

whether between parts of a choir or between the minister and the congregation.
For a good example of music performed with and without call and response, see

53
the film Cajun Country, in which we see the revelers participating as responders
in the Black Cajun parties, but not so at the White gatherings.

Call and response is one of the main earmarks of West African music, and
also occurs in certain European-based traditions. It is characteristic of community,
and in particular communal manual labor—sea chanteys, for instance. In Europe,
community long ago diversified and stratified, dissipating the call and response
traditions and sending them to sea. In America, both community and communal
work persisted among Africans for long enough to perpetuate the old style in
forms of music like spirituals and jazz, and on into the various "White" forms,
like Country and rock and roll, which were and are in reality combinations of
African and European elements.

There are other call and response traditions throughout the world; for
example, Indian classical music features improvised trading of riffs back and
forth between drum and sitar, sitar and voice, etc. The important thing about the
American scene is that the West African tradition opened the door for Europeans
to re-enter that sector of the musical world, re-invigorating their improvisational
capacity. Call and response often takes the form of trading phrases back and
forth between instruments, very common today in Country music and rock but
unknown in pre-Africanized southern White music.

SHARE AND SHARE, BUT NOT ALIKE

Anglo-Celtic folk and West African music had some elements in common:
certain African-American musical mannerisms like the slight flattening of some
notes (blue notes), vibrato, and pentatonic (five-note) scales already existed in the
Anglo-Celtic tradition, and were reinforced and accentuated among Whites by
their interaction with Blacks, who emphasized those stylistic devices to an even
greater degree.104 This process is called syncretism—a blending that requires
points in common to build on.
See video: String band, early 1930s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eYVfB9O2sU

In other words, the things the two traditions had in common were
magnified. After all, Celtic and West African musics are not as different as, say,
German and Chinese. In fact, many of the British songs preserved in the South
dated back several centuries to a pre-diatonic Europe, when scales were "modal,"
commonly pentatonic, as opposed to the major and minor scales we are familiar

54
with today.105 This was partly due to the practice of singing without instruments
or with simple accompaniment, which tends to reinforce simpler scales.

There were also, naturally, important White influences on the music of

Blacks. During slavery, Blacks heard traveling musicians who brought various
styles of music to places that wouldn't have heard them otherwise. This is the
land-locked version of the musical smorgasbord available in so many port cities.
And in the upland border states, free Blacks heard and absorbed the backwoods
variants of the Anglo-Celtic music. It was here that Blacks heard the White
spirituals that would exert a strong influence on their own sacred song
development (see below under Old Time Religion).

Having been stripped of

much of their musical heritage,
Africans in America naturally
made use of the available
materials, mainly White folk
music. That's why it's so hard to
dope out who originated any
one song—it may be a Black
composition in a White form
with Black stylistic changes,
later popularized by a White
singer—or it may not be. Long
before wax cylinder recording,
Black and White folk forms had
blended and hybridized,
permanently. As D.K. Wilgus
wrote, "Matter tends to be European, and manner African...The resulting hybrid is
a folk music which sounds African in the Negro tradition and European in the
White tradition."106 Or as Portia Maultsby called it, “unique ways of doing things
and making things happen.”107 Denis-Constant Martin expressed it this way:

According to who was on the dance floor, black musicians,

slave or free, selected rhythms and melodies which were eventually
merged. Each racial and social community had music it considered
its own, but with the passing of time the groups tended to become
more interested in emerging new mixtures. 108

55
 Blacks adapted Anglo-Celtic music they heard in the hills, so that by the time
they influenced the White string bands, they were already handing back
something they had borrowed and altered to their taste. The effects can still be
heard today: syncopation provides a jumpiness, dare we say a swing to the
musics we call Country and bluegrass that wasn't there before the music was
colorized. Compare almost any modern Country rendition to the same song or
one from the same genre from the old country—Scottish, Irish, English ballads—
and you'll hear that difference. You can also hear it in some of the older
recordings of mountain music that were less blended with Black influences. But
nothing is pure; listen for differences in the degree of cross-influence.

Blacks and Whites shared a body of song known as "common stock,"

sometimes referred to as "Afro-Celtic tradition."109 At this late date it's often hard
to know where a song started; there came to be various versions, White, Black, or
indifferent, of "Staggerlee," "Mama Don't Allow," "Salty Dog," "Corrina," "Make
Me a Pallet on the Floor," "Buffalo Gals," "Old Joe Clark," "Get Along Home,
Cindy," "Arkansas Traveler," and "Give Me That Old Time Religion."

It was in the regions of greatest racial mixing that songs tended to cross back
and forth over the color line—around Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina,
Virginia, and West Virginia—the birthplace of Country music. Blacks and Whites
became neighbors and borrowed each other's music, returning it the better for
wear.

Big Bill Broonzy told of gatherings called "two-way" picnics where the Blacks
and Whites swapped songs.110 Dances, too: The folks around the Smoky
Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee already had a tradition of solo
"flatfoot" dancing that adapted well to the Black tradition of "buck dancing." The
Black dancers were more polyrhythmic and looser, with energy flowing from the
midsection in a way that was outside of most White dancers' protocol. Blacks
adapted White dances like the Irish jigs to their own style and gave them back. i
The influences can still be seen today in old-time dance contests in the region (see
the film Appalachian Journey). Clogging, an Appalachian development that
combined numerous old-world folk dances, still uses buck dance steps, notably
an alternation of heel and toe to make a “patter” sound. “Buck and wing” was a
minstrel appellation for buck dancing, and that term is still used in clogging. 111

i
In 2007, young Caroline Duggan came from Ireland to teach grade school in the Bronx and ended up
forming an Irish step dance troupe comprising enthusiastic African American and Latino kids. They
inserted their starkly contrasting hip-hop and salsa styles at intervals to project their own culture. The
troupe’s mix of cultures seems unprecedented, but isn’t.

56
 See videos: Fiddles and Clogging
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUu9G6rr5AM
Irish step dancers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mITokl6ATTU

In set dances, reels and quadrilles, where the couples must execute the steps
as a group, the caller intercedes between musician and dancer to coordinate and
direct. We think of this caller as the icon of Euro-American square dance. But the
calling is perhaps a bit less square than it looks: in its rhymed form it is very
likely an African American contribution, dating to plantation corn frolics.
Consider this, from the recollection of one former chained worker:

See video: Square dance caller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tj3LHrPvw4

All eight balance, and all eight swing

All left allemond, and right hand grand
Meet your partner and promenade, eight
Then march till you come straight
First lady out to couple on the right,
Swing Mr. Adam and swing Miss Eve,
Swing old Adam before you leave

John Szwed and Morton Marks make the case that these calls are more
elaborate, humorous and subtle than European dance directions, and trace them
to the

Afro-American dance instruction tradition which extends from

“Ballin’ the Jack” to “The Twist” and beyond…at least partly
rooted in the older tradition in which African master drummers
signal and direct dancers.

Finally, consider this elaborate and witty call:

Great big fat man down in the corner

Dance to de gal wid de blue dress on her;

57
 You little bit er feller widout eny vest
Dance to de gal in de caliker dress.
Git up, Jake, an’ turn your partner,
Shake dem feet as you kno’ you ‘orter
___________________________________
FRANK JOHNSON

One notable Black dance caller was also a notable fiddler and led
his own group, the Frank Johnson Band, for decades starting
around 1830. Working throughout the South, they played at
picnics, state fairs, and college commencement balls (e.g.,
at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, an entirely White and male
campus). Johnson played "square dances all the time — and, O,
my, how Old Frank Johnson could call the figures: 'Balance All.'
'Swing Your Partner,' 'Ladies' Change,' 'Back Again, Doocee-do,'
'Swing Corners All,' etc., etc."112 The New Bern Times proclaimed
in 1866, "Frank Johnson has grown into an institution. He has
brought the science of brass band music to such a high state of
perfection that few dare to compete with him, and as to the violin,
it’s no use talking." 113
___________________________________

The Black vocal styles, like the calling and the dancing, were more flowing
and improvisatory too. The White hillbilly singers sang in a tight-throated style,
achieving beauty through ornamentation. Bluegrass maintains much of this old
style. Why? In the old backwoods days, Puritanism held sway and gripped the
country folk with a certain attitude about looseness of expression. They were
agin it; not only that, it made them nervous. They may have been free in a non-
slavery sort of way, but they were not so liberated emotionally or sensually, if I
may be allowed such an opinion. Blacks, to the contrary, were more enslaved
socially and economically but were less burdened by guilt over hip movement;
let us simply say that their African spiritual and cultural roots were somewhat at
variance with Calvinism.

West African cultures traditionally use music and dance in a functional way,
in connection with other doings in their lives. This integration of art and life has
been largely lost in cultures that have developed class stratifications, separation
of city dwellers from country folks and mental labor from manual, and the like.
Only vestiges of such integration can be found in Western European cultures.
Work songs, for example, are mainly found where there is group manual work,

58
and coming of age songs are associated with various religions. But a society that
integrates religion, art, nature, work, and community will produce a markedly
more function-oriented art than a society that has developed different classes
with different educations and social/economic roles—art will move in those
societies toward the narrower realm of performance and spectation.

See video: Work songs, African and African American

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfHLMcomzA

Africans in America were forcibly cut off from African culture, so they
became Americans, i.e., African-Americans. They retained some essentials of
their music, and culture generally, but much was lost. They used the songs and
forms they found, imbuing them with their own styles and attitudes and
rhythms, which in turn added something their White neighbors and even their
masters needed. Blacks did such a bang-up job of adapting the music that
surrounded them that Whites adapted it right back. Some of the adaptations
were rhythmic, some were form (call and response); some were minor tuneups
and some were overhauls. Thus was born the litter of delightful variations that
comprise American music.i

No wonder, then, that Whites have gravitated toward Black culture. It is an

integrative tradition; it expresses group experience and history and represents
both the individual’s struggle for self-expression and the group’s struggle for
survival, both undertaken against oppressive odds. This community
communication is thus severely and embarrassingly reduced when it is taken by
others for mere entertainment. This music is more than that. It offers an antidote,
an anti-don't. It provides a way out to a more relaxed, more earthy style, less
akin to Puritanism than to the Celtic pantheistic roots so assiduously stamped
out by Christianity in the old country. When we partake of this cultural product,
we re-contact lost roots of our own as well as those of others. It is potentially an
integrative recreation in that it is both a way back and a way forward. Abrahams
put it this way:
i
And not only American: Adaptations of Black folk and spiritual styles to European symphonic
music were made by Dvorák, (New World Symphony), Ravel, who listened for hours on end to Earl
Hines (blues movement of Violin and Piano Sonata), and Debussy (Golliwog's Cakewalk. Dvorák, a
Czech composer who directed the National Conservatory of Music in New York in the 1890s, was
particularly keen on African-American folk music. He was persuaded by the work of Chicagoan
Henry Schoenefeld and by music he heard at the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 that it
could be the future of American music. He tutored, and was tutored by, J. Rosamond Johnson,
who wrote Broadway musicals for White actors, along with the music for “Lift Every Voice and
Sing” (The “Negro National Anthem”).

59
 [O]ne of the realities of American life is that certain features of
African American performance style will remain strange and
alluring to those outside the culture...Simply fighting through to
understandings of the primordial exuberance and the historical
continuities of African American culture unlocks a message of
cultural vitality in the face of adversity that should provide food for
the soul for some time.114

Songwriter Gus Kahn described the double-edged sword more brutally:

The South is the romantic home of our Negro; he made it a symbol

of longing that we, half in profiteering cold blood, but half in
surrender to the poetry of the black, carried over into our American
song.115

Unfortunately, much of the interplay between the cultures was later

obscured through the use of the work of highly respected folklorists like
England’s Cecil Sharp and Harvard’s Francis James Child. Sharp came to
Appalachia in 1916 in search of a trove of Old English ballads, and simply didn't
record anything he hadn't come searching for. 116, i When it came time to tell the
story of folk music, a narrow view of the Appalachians as a pure European
cultural incubator prevailed. This view persisted despite the birth in this region
of Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Clara Smith, Maceo Pinkard, Howard Armstrong,
Leslie Riddle, Brownie McGhee, Josh White, Odetta, and Arnold Shultz, many of
whom we’ll meet up with further along in the story.

Sharp and his American guide, Olive Dame Campbell, did notice a
difference in performance between the Appalachian White singers and those of
the British Isles:

They have one vocal peculiarity, however, which I have never

noticed amongst English folk-singers, namely, the habit of dwelling
arbitrarily upon certain notes of the melody, generally the weakest
accents. This practice, which is almost universal, by disguising the
rhythm and breaking up the monotonous regularity of the phrases
produces an effect of improvisation and freedom from rule which is
very pleasing.117
i
Maud Karpeles, who did advance work for Sharp in his Appalachian travels, was reputedly told that “Mr
Sharp doesn’t want to hear n----- music.” Peggy Seeger, First Time Ever, Faber & Faber, 2017, 148.

60
 What they didn’t notice was how prevalent that habit was in African
American music. When folklorists note differences between populations in
diaspora, they need to look around for the source of the difference. It could be an
innovation based on new circumstances, but it could also be an influence from
often invisible neighbors.

A generation before, the Spanish-American War had been accompanied by

"a renewed emphasis on the mission of America's "Anglo-Saxon" people,”118 to
put it politely. Given the changes then being wrought by urbanization,
industrialization, migration, and war, some folklorists were concerned that
"White" folk culture was being polluted by other influences. Their efforts to
guard its purity included folkloric studies that concealed the true mixed origins
of our musical roots for generations to come. Here lies an early lesson in the
power of the media to distort by omission: a false picture painted by wishful
Whites, bequeathing to a diverse, pluralist nation a dangerously distorted
perception of itself. Dangerous? Ralph Ellison put it this way:

[T]o think unclearly about that segment of reality in which I find

my existence is to do myself violence. To allow others to go
unchallenged when they distort that reality is to participate not
only in that distortion but to accept...a violence inflicted... 119

The work of the British folklorists was centered in the old Celtic areas of the
Appalachians, but similar operations occurred beyond that realm. Cowboy
music—later "Country and Western"—was in fact a creation of White, Black and
Mexican hands, but is perceived as an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Through these
operations we came to appear as something other than what we are. Let’s have
another look.

61
 6 COWBOYS: THE WEST WAS WHITE?

Buffalo Soldiersi—Black troops sent to help win the West—are well known
nowadays, but what about Buffalo Cowboys? We think of Western music, which
blended with the country styles of the eastern South to give birth to “Country &
Western,” as a guaranteed-sure-fire-pure White genre, the soundtrack of bedrock
Euro-six-gun-swashbuckling heartland America, no other influences need apply.

But hold your horses.

From 1870 to 1890, 12 million

cattle were driven north from
Texas, in herds of thousands.
They drove all the way to
Montana in search of good grass
(for cows), and to Kansas and
Nebraska for railroads that went
straight to Chicago and other
beef-buying centers further east.

See video: Home on the Range 30s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRwDQNU7QUc

But who were the cowhands?ii A cowboy memoir written in 1885 by Charlie
Siringo noted a number of Black cowboys and farmers and ranchers along the
cattle trail. What number? The literature is all over the chart. Statistics are given
i
Probably named thus by Native Americans, though scholars differ on the reasons.
The Federation of Black Cowboys asserts that “"Cowhands" was what Whites were called; "cowboys"
ii

was the term for Blacks, who developed their own distinctive styles and competed in rodeos until racist
rules drove them underground.” (Orlando Weekly, 9/14/2006,
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/pieces-of-humanity/Content?oid=2274020)

62
with alleged authority: In some places 50% of cowboys were Black, said Jesse
Chisholm, founder of the Chisholm Trail. According to Bailey C. Hanes, "about
one cowboy in every six or seven was Mexican; a similar proportion was
black."120 Hal Cannon allowed that “No one is sure how many African-
Americans worked as cowboys in the trail drives, but estimates run as high as 1
in 4.” Other researchers have found that "The typical trail crew of eight usually
included two black cowboys."121 William Loren Katz concluded that between
1868 and 1895, 35,000 cowhands were on the trail, one-third Black and Mexican.
Quintard Taylor says there were 9,000 African American cowboys in the West, of
a total of 61,000. But he reckoned only 4% of Texas herders were African
American in 1880, 2.6% in 1890. (That could be because of the decline and fall of
the trail overall, with the expansion of railroads to the south and of farms in the
Great Plains grazing areas.)

See video: “The Old Chisholm Train,” sung by Moses “Clear Rock” Platt, 1933
https://youtu.be/-GtM1FRwnqE

A key moment in this story comes early: enslaved Africans were already
cowhands in Texas before the great trail drives. Think about that: enslaved
cowboys in Texas before “cowboys” were invented. But consider their history.
Not all enslaved Africans were shackled to crops that were new to them.
Africans from various countries had expertise in particular crops and industries:
Ghana and Gambia, for example, were known for cattle herding. The slaveocracy
in the Southwest, and even as far east as the Carolinas, made use of their skills.

Others came west in the wake of slavery:

Irwin Silber wrote that "Many an
emancipated Negro decided to try his luck
in the west," offering a stanza from a
Kentucky ballad, "Goin' From The Cotton
Fields":

Away out there in Kansas

So many miles away,
The colored folks are flocking
'Case they are getting better
pay.122

American cowhands were a diverse

community of Wild Western workers, later

63
to be bleached on the shores of Hollywood. Although some crews were
segregated, some were not. Think of the US army in Vietnam, or restaurant
workers today, as examples of frontiers in race relations. Multi-cultural America
found an early home on the range. And African Americans worked in other jobs
in the ranches, camps, and trails—cooks especially, and don’t forget the barbers.

See video: “Western Cowboy,” sung by Leadbelly, 1934.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhUXcBEhh_I
Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) was not only a great source for cowboy songs (among many other
types) but in fact had worked at herding cattle himself, and for his 16th birthday was given a
horse and saddle. 

Let’s not forget that most of this cow-handling took place in a land recently
grabbed from Mexico, which means it was still populated by bona-fide
Mexicans.i A song called “Pinto,” sung in English, begins “I am a vaquero by
trade.” According to Alan Lomax, Mexicans taught Black and White alike the use
of La Reata, the lariat, and chaps as well. 123 After all, they had been there a while,
as the Spanish ruled that region before the U.S. got to it.

And why shouldn’t the same workers who developed cotton-pickin’ songs
and railroad track-linin’ songs develop some cow tunes as well? Cowboys/hands
sang on the trail, adding verses as they went. “The trail boss would never pick on
(employ) a fellow that couldn’t sing and whistle.” 124 Workers coming from
another camp were expected to contribute their songs, and their own verses to
already-common songs.

On the trail, sharp yells were

employed to stir the cattle, lullabies
to soothe them and prevent
stampedes. Ranches held
marathons and groomed champion
singers to compete with other
ranches.

Edward Abbot rode the trail at the

height of its glory, and wrote of
Black cowhands singing to the
cows and each other. Charley Willis was a de-shackled laborer who rode the
i
Of course it had also been grabbed from native folks, but they were not so commonly
employed in the industry, though they were there, here and there.

64
Wyoming trail during the 1870s. As his great-grandson Franklin tells it,

He had a knack for singing. He had a gift, if you will. His voice was real
soothing to the cattle, and this is why they wanted him to participate in
these big cattle drives, because he would sing to them and just make them
relax.125

Hollywood wasn’t the first to bleach the

cowboys: the commercial cowboy industry,
in the form of the Wild West shows of the
early 20th century, featured almost entirely
White performers, reflecting the Jim Crow
era well.126 In the same period, the early
1900s, John Lomax—Mr. Folksong himself
—was gathering cattle trail songs in for his
book Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier
Ballads. He traced the genre’s inspiration
primarily to Anglo ballads that had taken
root further east. But Don Edwards (1939 -2022), a White Texan traditional
cowboy singer, disagreed:

You take a song like, 'I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome
cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a long long way from my
home.' Is that a blues form? It's the earliest blues form there is — three
lines and a tag line….If you go down to deep south Texas where this
music was really born, on that coastal bend down there, you had white
cowboys, black cowboys and Mexican vaqueros — who were very
musical people. And so the white guys learned a lot of that stuff, and
that's why a lot of that stuff sounded like the blues. i

Ballad scholar Roger Renwick seconded the notion, observing that many of
the songs in question do not tell a straight story as in the old Anglo ballads, but
are “elliptical”:

Indeed, some scholars have called this a distinct African-American genre

i
If we don’t think today of western music as sounding like the blues, consider that Jimmie
Rodgers, the country yodeler, was considered quite bluesy in his day. And too, the pruning of the
country and western canon tends to favor the lighter shades. We’ll discuss this at greater length
in “New South, New Country.”

65
 of the blues ballad, because it synthesizes the more emotional blues
approach. And we suddenly see some influence like that on some of the
cowboy songs.

Lomax did attribute

some songs, including
“Goodbye Old Paint,” to
African American singers.
This particular credit was
seconded by Jess Morris,
who traced the song
through his father F.J.
Morris to Charley Willis, a
formerly enchained worker
hired by Morris in 1865.

The Anglo error was later rectified by Lomax’ son Alan, some of whose 1933-
46 recordings for the Library of Congress are available on the CD Deep River of
Song: Black Texicans (Rounder, 1999). Listen to that disc to put flesh and sound on
this narrative.

Patrick Joseph O’Connor, in “Cowboy Blues: Early Black Music In The West,”
opined that

…the black cowboys brought to the range their stirring ability to entertain
and relate in song. Albert Friedman felt that "musically...Negro folk songs
are the most interesting we have.127 This particular black facility had been
noted since slave days, and serves to underscore the importance of
African-American participation in cowboy songs.128

Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) was not only a great source for cowboy songs
(among many other types) but in fact had worked at herding cattle himself, and
for his 16th birthday was given a horse and saddle.

Black cowboys were an integral part of the East Texas experience, and their
music was part of the shaping of cowboy music, both in structure--traditional
three chord ballads--and content--personalized stories and poignant impressions
of life. Let’s look at a few songs that might flesh out the story. For starters, John
Lomax collected "Home On The Range" and "Git Along Little Dogies" from a
Black retired trail cook in 1908.129 He tells the story in Adventures of a Ballad

66
Hunter. The cylinder recording he made did not survive, but the sheet music
transcription did, and it became the favorite song of Franklin Roosevelt and
Admiral Richard Byrd.

Jack Thorpe, an early archivist of cowboy songs, came upon "Dodgin' Joe" in
1889. It was sung around the campfire of a Black trail crew. In general, Thorpe
found most “cowboy” songs to be imports and variants of songs cribbed from
other industries and locations: loggers, farmers, railroad workers, and Black
styles dating back to field hollers.

“Whose Old Cow?” presents a debate over the dubious branding of some
disputed cows. A Black cowpoke named Addison Jones rides in and argues, in
dialect:

White folks smartern’ Add, and maybe I’se wrong

But here’s six months wages dat I’ll give
If anyone’ll tell me when I reads dis mark
To who dis longhorned cow belong! 130

An African American undertaker in Austin who had been a cattle camp cook
sang an Australian song, “Jack Donahoe,”131, the refrain of which summed up the
aversion to slavery, sharecropping, and second-class status generally:

We’ll wander over mountains we’ll wander over plains

For we scorn to live in slavery, bound down in iron chains

67
 In his study of supposedly White-rooted cowboy songs, O’Connor looked at
“composing techniques and stylistic phrasings” traceable to African American
communities. Similar styles can be noted in Black versions of songs picked up
from White colleagues. Then again, some songs rooted in the mists of time have
thoroughly unknown origins. Listen to Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick’s 1969
record Square Dance With Souli for another take on Black and White styles.

In East Texas, slavery died last—recall the delayed announcement of

emancipation that later gave rise to the “Juneteenth” celebrations—and Black
musicians there dipped deep into the Anglo songbag. Sometimes they hewed
closer to White styles, depending on their audiences; other times not so much.

To close out this section, let’s consider Augusta State University's Mike
Searles’ take on the consequences of misrepresenting history:

Many people see the West as the birthplace of America," he says. "If they only
see it as the birthplace of White America, it means basically that all other people
are interlopers — they're not part of the core of what makes an American. But if
they understand that African-Americans were cowboys, even Native Americans
were cowboys, Mexicans were cowboys, it really opens the door for us to think
about America as a multiethnic, multiracial place. Not just in the last decade or
century, but from the very beginning.132

i
See discography.

68
69
 7 SEA CHANTEYS

Chanteys, Chanties, Shanties: although it's generally been pronounced with

a sh, the spelling was never standardized, and neither was the music. Sung on
sailing ships the world over in the 1800s, chanteys are often thought of as Anglo-
American, but in fact no greater variety of influences can be found anywhere.
Ships do call at ports, after all.

On the English and

American ships there was a
prevalence of converted work
songs from Ireland, Scotland,
England and America. Sailors
found a song in every port, and
picked up lots of Black folks’
songs and styles, especially in the
American South and the
Caribbean. Black stevedores
worked many of the ports, and
Black sailors enlisted on the same
ships. (Often these ships were not
so integrated as that might imply:
"chequerboard crews," which
consisted of separate White and Black watches, were common.) One authority
tells us, with quaint prejudice,

The southern negroes are not gifted to sing a chorus in union and
consequently they employed their harmonious faculties on the
chantey, with the result that the whites soon began to imitate them,
picking up heavier choruses until the chanties reached their zenith
in the 1870s.133
See video: Neely on chanties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ebLVvlgVQs

A more laudatory view is taken by Stan Hugill, whose extensive 1961 study
Shanties From the Seven Seas mentions songs of Black origin and Black stylistic
influence hundreds of times. Hugill, a sailor and "shantyman" himself, is rare
among writers on this subject in crediting large numbers of songs to African-

70
Americans, including "Blow the Man Down," 134 "Roll the Cotton Down," and
"Shenandoah."135
See videos:
Adieu, Fare-You-Well, Anguilla.
https://youtu.be/M6T3ohA7Wfs
Leighton Robinson and friends:  Goodbye, Fare Thee Well, U.S. 1939
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b27utilTuE

After all, African-Americans didn't only pick cotton—they loaded it on ships.

They brought their cotton-pickin' songs down to the port, where they became
cotton-packin' songs. Many songs from the plantation made their way around
the world before they burst back onto the American scene and transformed
American music. We noted earlier a relationship between corn shucking songs
and the high seas. Consider:

Seven years a-boiling

Ho-ma-hala-way
Seven years a-baking
Ho-ma-hala-way

The blowed the horn for dinner

Ho-ma-hala-way
The people could not eat her
Ho-ma-hala-way136

See videos:
Pay Me My Money Down – Georgia Sea Island Singers
https://youtu.be/H-xNQmbe0ug
Pay Me the Money Down—Assassin's Creed Rogue Shanties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sz3gQlrDM&t=25s

Roger Abrahams notes a similarity here to the common haul away refrain of
many chanteys, explaining that work songs are highly adaptable and can travel
from plantation to convict labor camp to the seven seas. And not only do the
songs travel, but their uses as well: these songs are not just a way to while away
idle hours but also a way to continue the conversation about important matters.
They often carry coded messages, with the wild goose in both examples
representing something more important—a captive laborer resisting her/his
status, perhaps. Thus a living tradition rolls on through the call and response

71
between shucker and sailor, captive and convict, downtrodden workers all. We
will see this tradition reiterated in the blues, and everything that follows.

Other types of work songs went to sea too, especially railroad-building

songs. Yet another song source was the minstrel show, which muddied the
waters with stereotyped White imitations picked up in port by White sailors.

Many of the songs brought to the waves by Blacks were reworked English
folksongs. Many others were Irish or of some other European origin, with the
result that American, British and Irish sailors ended up singing European songs
in African-American fashion.

See video: We All Going Ashore – Florence Brooks and Eugenie Carter, Anguilla, 1962
https://youtu.be/f_tnuhqXvEg

Blacks from the West Indies or the U.S. South worked the high seas in great
numbers, as did the Irish, and these two groups together accounted for a large
percentage of the songs of the sea. I use the word "together" advisedly, for the
cooperative work led to cooperative songmaking, chequerboard watches
notwithstanding. These two groups were also responsible for much of the
railroad track laid through America beginning in the 1880s. Hugill cites many
songs as being "probably a Negro-Irish mixture," indicating that sometimes "the
tune came from Ireland to Mobile, where the Negroes took it in hand and then at
a later date it returned to sea with a few more alterations."137

And aside from the songs themselves, Blacks introduced a style of singing so
exceptional that most of the White sailors never got it, and wouldn't even
attempt certain songs unless a Black singer was on board to lead the tune. In
Hugill's account,

One of the reasons why Negro shantymen were so good at their job
was because of their ability to handle these wild falsetto "yodels"
(hardly the correct term though!) much better than white men.
Sailors called these yells "hitches" and they were performed either
by a break or several breaks in the voice on a certain note, or else by
emitting a high yelp at the end of a solo line.138

He goes on to tell of a West Indian sailor known as "Harding, the Barbadian

Barbarian," who "would give vent to many wild 'hitches,' absolutely impossible
for a White man to copy, although White sailors did execute a poor shadow of

72
these Negro yelps."139 The other significant difference in style was that Blacks
normally, after the first couple of verses, improvised lyrics from their storehouse
of stock characters, situations, and expressions. Whites tended to recount a
song's tale intact, reproducing the tradition as noted earlier.

8 OLD TIME RELIGION

The spiritual, the musical development credited with begetting so many

American popular musical forms, was jump-started in the White communities of
the South around 1800 when British evangelists brought their spirited, pull-out-
the-stops style to America. Their revival meetings featured lively group singing,
many melodies being imported from secular British traditions like folk tunes and
tavern singing.

The high-energy worship appealed to those unsatisfied with the sedate

Puritan style; it certainly appealed to African Americans, whose own traditions
had never divorced music from group participation or spirit from body. Unlikely
as it may seem from our vantage point over the present Sunday morning racial
chasm, from about the 1820s Blacks attended the same revivals, i though the
proceedings were not necessarily integrated, a key musical interchange took
place here.

In much the same way that Blacks in South Africa adapted European hymns
and sang them in their own style as freedom songs, Blacks in the US South
infused the White spirituals with their own musical and social sensibilities. For
example, the group repetition of an unchanging line as the song leader
progresses through a text was a West African retention, first noted in the "ring
shouts" from slavery times. As described by a visitor to the Sea Islands off South
Carolina in 1864:

The children form a ring, and move around in a kind of shuffling

dance, singing all the time. Four or five stand apart, and sing very
energetically, clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and rocking
their bodies to and fro. These are the musicians, to whose
performance the shouters keep perfect time.140

i
The sentiment for racial separation and control in the deep South was not entirely shared by
poor Whites in the hills further north, away from the plantations.

73
 They kept perfect time for a good reason: the lyrics being shouted were dance
instructions, called by callers.141 Could this have been the birth of square dance
callers? Some say so. We will
hear these calls again from
Black banjo artists who
played for dancers just
before the advent of string
bands.

The debate over who

influenced whom often
focuses on these shared
camp meetings. There’s no
doubt of the European
source of many of the songs.
Many musical characteristics
were shared between the
White and Black, the Anglo-
Celtic and African, notably
pentatonic scales and a slight
flatting of thirds and
sevenths. But attention
should also be paid to the
differences in performance,
which are accentuated once camp ends and Blacks and Whites decamp down
their different roads through history.

See video: Ralph Stanley—Gloryland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Erxf7D8PqY

Blacks borrowed selectively, taking songs that meshed well with their sense
of musical style, and transformed them in order to make them their own. African
American style featured syncopation, poly-rhythmic hand clapping, and
dancing. All these practices were and are rare in White congregations. 142 The
African American style, as Bruno Nettl summarized it, featured “hot rhythm,
much variation, preference for part-singing, antiphony, and response.” 143 The
entire process was described by D.K. Wilgus as a sort of semi-hybridizing:

The Negro has preserved, borrowed, and re-created, as has the

white. The two races share a tradition which they tend to treat

74
 distinctively.144

Soon Blacks had their own camp meetings. Here were born such tunes as
"Nobody Knows," "O Susanna," "Go Down Moses," "Joshua Fit the Battle of
Jericho," and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

Outside of camp meetings, how were spirituals written, or developed, or

made up? One informant explained:

I'll tell you, it's dis way. My master call me up and order me a short
peck of corn and a hundred lash. My friends see it, and is sorry for
me. When dey come to de praise-meeting dat night dey sing about
it. Some's very good singers and know how; and dey work it in—
work it in, you know, till they get it right; and dat's de way.145

Some of these "very good singers" could have been the Mahalia Jacksons,
Aretha Franklins or Al Greens of their day.

See video: Rockin' spiritual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62IO6NjDziM

And of course the songs served double duty, as did Christianity in general
for African-Americans. Songs about heaven were also songs about escape from
slavery. Dual meanings abounded, as they did in the blues, where sexual
innuendo was more easily deciphered than some of the references to White and
Black social interactions. Due to the dual life Blacks lead in White-dominated
society, the practice of dual meaning in art and religion has come to pervade
even the larger society, as we saw with minstrelsy. This veil over hidden
meanings is occasionally lifted:

Got one mind for white folks to see,

'Nother for what I know is me;
He don't know, he don't know my mind,
When he see me laughing
Just laughing to keep from crying. 146

And in fact, one could say the intertwined Black, White and other roots of
modern American art forms reveal at least dual messages when they are
unraveled for their hidden content.

75
 The spirituals would in time be smoothed out and made more regular, as
would the blues, but in their original state they were something quite apart both
from the White version and from what was to come. Zora Neale Hurston, a
leading Black writer on folklore who was active in the 1920s Harlem
Renaissance, described the difference with a parable:

A white man built a house. So he got it built and he told the man:
"Plaster it good so that nobody can see the beams and uprights." So
he did. Then he had it papered with beautiful paper, and painted
the outside. And a Negro built him a house. So when he got the
beams and all in, he carved beautiful grotesques over all the sills
and stanchions, and beams and rafters. So both went to live in their
houses and were happy.147

See video: Gospel, 1930s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWkEgw3qI4

The prevalence of pentatonic scales in both the Scottish and West African
traditions helped facilitate interchange. Studies collected by George Pullen
Jackson in the 1930s show numerous cases of the revivalists' "shape note" songs”i
moving from White tradition to Black, and Jackson notes that many of the tunes
that did make this move shared scales with traditional West African music.

See videos: Sacred Harp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrTEAYSeYO0
Shape Note
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA4870GVAJA

In the interest of fundraising, Black college groups presented Jubilee singing,

initiated by Nashville's Fisk University in the 1870s. Spirituals from the slavery
era were brought forth in a more polished form by troupes of formerly enslaved
Black students who toured the country; for the first time, large numbers of
Whites heard serious presentations of Black spiritual music.

This singing movement was furthered by the matriculation at Fisk of

hundreds of schoolteachers, all rigorously trained in the singing and teaching of
the Jubilee style—a style, once again, that incorporated Afro and Euro elements.

i
So named for their depiction in sheet music employing a distinctive shape for each note, to
facilitate reading by unschooled singers.
Fisk Jubilee Singers

76
This time, there was more of a European manner constructed on mixed Euro-
African matter. It was a style of great dignity, criticized as lacking in passion by
those who preferred more rustic, untutored styles. The choirs were, after all,
trained by George White, a White man, to sing in a controlled, precise manner.
But they were a big hit throughout the country and in Europe, and shaped Black
religious singing for decades.148 Mark Twain, who relaxed at home by singing
Negro spirituals, hosted the Fisk singers in 1897 and commented on their music:

It is utterly beautiful, to me…and I wish it were a foreign product

so that [America] would worship it and lavish money on it and go
properly crazy over it.149

Ralph Stanley—Old Village Churchyard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7irIeczfos

Modern gospel music has its roots in White religious movements in the
South around the 1870s. It would not really take hold in the Black community for
a generation, and when it did, the character of performance was again altered,
from restraint to passion. Words like hoarse, coarse, raspy, gravelly, and shrill
give us a clue.150 Black gospel quartets in the 1920s placed more emphasis on lead

77
voices instead of an exclusively ensemble presentation. This opened the way for
nonsense syllables as background for the lead singer—a direct antecedent of doo-
wop. The new arrangements also featured blue notes, syncopation, and faster
versions—gospel has always absorbed new Black popular styles, and vice versa.
In the forties, guitars were added, and the later addition of more instruments led
to still further diversification of vocal arrangements. 151

Later, White gospel quartets would pick up pieces of the styles of their Black
counterparts and of barbershop groups, adding syncopation and antiphony
where before there had been only strictly in-time renditions. They would adapt
Black gospel numbers like Thomas Dorsey's "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and
Charles Tindley's "We'll Understand It Better By and By." But they never picked
up the growling, repeating, bending, and generally wringing the guts out of a
word.
See video: Amazing Grace—Allstars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POKxHCeaQJU

Indirectly, though, White artists and fans did pick up big doses of Black
gospel’s feeling, as it coursed through secular music. Without gospel, there
would be no rhythm and blues, nor its various children. Without the quartets,
choirs, and continuing morphing of gospel styles back and forth with Black
popular music, no Mick Jagger. Perhaps we can thank the Pentecostal church

78
(along with various musicians around Memphis) for the music of one of its
members, young Mr. Presley. We can thank Ray Charles for secularizing gospel,
though not everyone was thankful at the time. Then again, Mahalia Jackson was
a Bessie Smith fan. Thank the Lord for that, too.

9 Time For Rags

  After the Civil War, Black and White cultures were thrown into new
relationships. For a time there was a predominance of White, often Irish, song
styles. Some hits of the era were "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" (1866),
"Silver Threads Among the Gold" (1872), "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen"
(1875), "Grandfather's Clock" (1875), and "Clementine." Popular songs were sold
in sheet music to be sung in parlors with pianos, and on the stage. 

See video: Over The Rainbow (in ragtime), played by Kristen Mosca
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXm-kWKd3Do

But something else was afoot. Out of the ashes of slavery came Black
musicians filling the streets of the South, and out of the ashes of minstrelsy arose
the Black musicians who developed ragtime. As Donald Clarke put it, "The
history of modern popular music may be seen as the repeated rescuing of a
moribund scene by the music of African-Americans." 152

Ragtime was an African-American version of European march music,

combined with Black dance rhythms, played on the banjo, then the piano, and
later by brass bands. Rhythmically, it descended from a minstrel march known
as the patrol, which had become syncopated by the 1880s, 153 and from the
cakewalk, its immediate predecessor as a commercial craze. The first ragtime
piano piece was subtitled a "Banjo Imitation," indicating its probable origins
among African-American minstrels.154 Among the pianists who wrote ragtime
were Scott Joplin—inspired by his mother’s banjo picking—and Tom Turpin,
James Scott, and Eubie Blake, along with Joseph Lamb, a White musician and
friend of Joplin’s. Other White rag writers included May Aufderheide and Irene
Giblin.155

79
 The distinctive rhythms may also have
descended from the African-American body
percussion tradition known as "patting juba," a
slapping, tapping, and hand-clapping
described thus in 1899:

The division of one of the beats into two

short notes [in ragtime] is perhaps
traceable to the hand-clapping; every
American is familiar with the way the
darkey pats his hands with two quick
slaps alternating with the time-beating
of the foot...The so-called "snap" may be
traced to the quick slap of the heel and
toe of the foot in sharp succession.156

All this slapping, clapping, and tapping had served as substitute for the
banned drums, and had long since infiltrated into Euro-American cultural life.
Mark Twain, in the 1870s, entertained his party guests with his versions of
African American dances, and wrote in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn of
White boatsmen who patted juba.157, i

Ragtime achieved colossal popularity among Whites, partly because it was

similar to music they already knew, yet with a twist of syncopation that snapped
them awake. The bass remained true to the march, but the melody was
syncopated: notes were sounded across main beats and bar lines, followed by
notes starting on weak beats, so the melody floated around the rhythm.

Rag derived from both European ballroom dance

traditions, like the polka and schottische, and Afro-
American dances like the cakewalk and buck dancing.
Especially the cakewalk, because both the walk and the
rag were clearly Black impressions of White styles. Clear
to Blacks, anyway. Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a very
influential composer and pianist, wrote pieces associated
with the cakewalk. He hailed from New Orleans and, like

i
This practice has been traced to the zuba dance of the African Kongo kingdom. (Thompson, 65, 309 n.42)

80
Christy, was an observer of the Congo Square scene. The dancing there was
described in 1886 as being in "ragged" time.158

Eventually ragtime would feed into tap dancing, which combined northern
English clogging, Irish step-dancing, West African stomping and African-
American buck and wing. Rag was also an influence on stride piano, pioneered
in New York by James P. Johnson, Eubie Blake, Willie “The Lion” Smith and Fats
Waller; it is heard in southeastern blues guitar and even in Barbershop.
See video: Cartier Williams, tap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyuDvzLpNzw

Besides syncopation, ragtime used techniques such as the break—a sudden

stop in the rhythm, filled by a melodic line—that would become standard in jazz.
Ragtime style persisted in country string bands and jug bands of a later period,
and it permeates later solo guitar styles like that of Chet Atkins; it can be heard
in bluegrass music to this day. Indeed, the infusion of a syncopated version of
marching band music into backwoods White folks’ string music is a pretty good
indication of how entangled our roots are.

Ragtime was a breakthrough

because it allowed Blacks to
perform without the intermediary
of Blackface. "Coon songs,"
stereotyping the life and music of
southern Blacks, had become a
staple of Tin Pan Alley. These
vestiges of minstrelsy traded in
insulting stereotypes set to slight
syncopation. For the moment,
coon songs continued to be
pervasive, taking on rag's
increased syncopation to become
even more popular. One of the
most notorious was "All Coons
Look Alike to Me," composed and
sung by a Black performer, Ernest
Hogan. He may have cribbed the
lyrics, substituting “coons” for
“pimps:”

81
 All coons look alike to me
I’ve got another beau, you see

But the title became a central American cliché, and Hogan lived to regret it. 159
He also never got paid—that is, for the ragtime reworking of the song by Max
Hoffman .160

That song aside, ragtime was a big step beyond coon songs and caricature. It
was a step toward jazz.161 It was also a breakthrough for certain White
songwriters, who were able to turn the tunes into money by cleaning up the
lyrics, simplifying the rhythms a bit, and presto: "There'll Be A Hot Time in the
Old Town Tonight"—thought of ever since as a Fun White Song. 162 Likewise "Ta-
ra-ra Boom-de-ay!" (1891). Both tunes were first heard at Babe Connor's, a Black
brothel in St. Louis.163 And of course, show biz having been invented, it was
necessary to crown a White artist as the “Creator of Ragtime;” the false honor
went to Ben Harney for his 1895 tune “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon, but
You’ve Done Broke Down.” It didn’t stick.

White authority, how-ever,

was not enthusiastic: the
American Federation of
Musicians at its 1901
convention condemned it
and urged musicians not to
play it—a truly crusading
union. And people caught
doing the various
disreputable ragtime
dances occasionally lost
their jobs or found
164
themselves in court!

Ragtime became the

dominant form in the first
era of widespread
distribution of popular
music. Early recordings by
John Philip Sousa's band
(1900-1910) featured
ragtime pieces. And Tin

82
Pan Alley, the fabled street of popular songwriting, got an important injection of
material from ragtime.i As William Schafer writes in The Art of Ragtime,

Ragtime also solidified the economic positions of many major

publishers. In effect, it created Tin Pan Alley as a going business
proposition...Significantly, most histories of popular music have
slighted the direct influence of ragtime and original Black
composition in the rise of the commercial business...[This] has
helped gild and gloss over the crassness and veniality [sic] of the
commercial music industry...This is symptomatic of the dominant
white culture's urge to shape its social myths in its own image. 165

And to maximize its mass market potential, the Whites who appropriated the
style and the songs also removed or watered down the dialect, hiding the Black
roots and making it easier for Whites to adopt the songs as their own national
popular music. The White scribes who scribbled and sold the songs also took
composer's credits.166 After all, they found the folk elements and wrote them
down! Soon the source of the music was all but forgotten.

10 HOLLERS, JOOKS, AND LEVEES: THE BLUES

Meanwhile, something not entirely else had been percolating: the blues, a
uniquely American music concocted by African-Americans, melding African-
and European-American folk musics. It arose in the South around the turn of the
century, around the same time as ragtime, jazz, gospel, and barbershop
harmony, all of which can be seen as part of a period of struggle for dignity and
expression in the face of Jim Crow, the official project for thwarting the dream of
the end of White domination.167

See video: Memphis Minnie, Me And My Chauffeur Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiRoNuw5x4M

In the southern countryside, especially in the area around the Mississippi

Delta and Memphis, White sharecroppers would come from miles around to
Black parties to marvel at the syncopated sounds. The hills around the delta
preserved in isolation some old West African musical forms, and you can hear
them peeking through in those blues renditions from before recording
technology, and the standardization of the form that came with it.

i
Not to slight the waltz, which came in a bit earlier, e.g. “After the Ball is Over,” 1892.

83
 Blues music was characterized by the "blue note," a slight flatting of the 3rd,
7th, and sometimes 5th notes. Or sometimes not a single note, but a slurring or
wavering that demonstrates an effort to square a circle. Musicologists argue:
these flatted notes are either an attempt to fit a larger West African scale
(including "microtones") into the cracks in the Europeans' diatonic scale, or an
effort to square their traditional five-note scale with the new seven-based
universe. And not only is the blue note African American, it’s southern: it didn't
show up in the early music of Blacks in the northeast. Blacks there were further
from West Africa culturally and were trying to put more distance between
themselves and the old South, which they didn't miss much, "Dixie"
notwithstanding.

The blues also feature a vocal style usually described as "sung speech." This
music, and jazz as well, reflect the melodic quality of some West African
languages, in which different pitch and intonation lend different meanings to the
same words, as occurs in Chinese. Call and response, typical of so much African
music, is embedded partly through the three-line form, in which the first line is
repeated once, then followed by a third line that answers or completes the
thought, and rhymes. Meanwhile: falsetto breaks (reminiscent of African
tradition), syncopation, improvisation, some variant of blues scale, verses
floating around the tradition from one song to another, and other aspects worthy
of the many books on the subject.

Blues are commonly understood to hew to a three-chord pattern, but

sometimes there are only two or even one (check out John Lee Hooker), and on
the other extreme there are sometimes passing chords, more common with jazz
bands playing blues numbers, and later on generally across blues genres. The
blues form is not so different from that of the western European ballads African
Americans heard in the South, except that the vocal lines are shorter, leaving
room for the instrument or band to talk back.

See video: Work songs, Mississippi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHbmgOqqpKU

The blues may have taken its name from a 16th century British expression,
"blue devils," meaning melancholy.168 Or not, depending on your source. In any
case, it evolved from slavery-era field hollers—work songs that persisted later in
penitentiary chain gangs,i and from similar patterns used in church services. It
i
Check out Roots of the Blues (discography).

84
was carried on by levee workers hauling dirt uphill to hold back the Mississippi
River. It evolved from the wrenching social life of Blacks: they were at the bottom
of the labor ladder and as such were often forced to travel in search of work. This
didn't do much for their family life, as any blues singer will tell you, in a song. 169

See video: William Hart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjs5Knn_43E

And don’t let’s forget that blues evolved in tandem with religious singing.
Same singers—or sometimes different people from the same families. Gospel
absorbed blues and vice versa. Much as some people would like to keep
Saturday night separate from Sunday morning—keep the world out of the
church—people are people.

The Dockery Plantation

near Tutwiler, Mississippi
was the place where folks
would come to hear the
earliest blues musicians we
know of today. Charley
Patton came to Dockery's in
1897; many bluesmen
learned from and played
with him. He in turn learned
from Henry Sloan, an older
resident at Dockery who has
been credited by some as
“inventing” the blues. He
was never recorded. From
the surrounding Delta came Son House, Bukka (Booker) White, Skip James,
Robert Johnson, and Johnny Shines. Later additions to the circle including
Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards, and Pops Staples.

The blues developed early in east Texas too, and found there a more open
field for the interplay of different musics. Texas gave us Blind Lemon Jefferson,
Lightnin' Hopkins, and Mance Lipscomb. Blacks, Cajuns, Mexicans, Anglos,
Germans and others mixed waltzes, polkas, ragtime, blues, and jazz, and have
continued to breed diverse musical variants. White Texans may have first heard
the blues when Black musicians played at White country dances in the
nineteenth century.170

85
 See video: Sam Chatmon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5hzXWpNKxM

The Southeast incubated its own variant of the blues, with artists like Blind
Blake and Blind Boy Fuller, and later Reverend Gary Davis, Sonny Terry, and
Brownie McGee, incorporating some ragtime as well as Appalachian musical
characteristics.171

The blues developed both in the countryside—generally sung solo by a man

with a guitar--and in traveling vaudeville troupes in which women sang a
similar style but with backup by piano or a bands. Ma Rainey sang blues in a
minstrel show in 1902 and was the first to record "See See Rider," already an old
tune. She encouraged Bessie Smith, who became the first blues star. Other
luminaries were Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, and Sippie Wallace; they mixed
the blues in with a variety of showbiz styles.

But before there were stars, there were "jook joints"—the places where
southern Blacks gathered to dance, drink and listen to the early blues. There
were jooksi in the country towns and the bigger cities, and they were the next
step over the levee in the Black community's musical development. So my
teenage informant wasn't far off after all: rock and roll did come through a juke
box, which was named after a house where the blues blew through.

See video: Sugar Chile Robinson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUaaGWltW2c

Boogie-woogie was a blues variant played on piano that came out of Kansas
City and the Texas honky-tonks in the thirties. Its near relative from southern
lumber camps was called barrelhouse—the bar next to the piano being held up
by whiskey barrels.ii Some say players developed a hyperactive left hand style
(Beat me Daddy, Eight to the Bar) so their right could reach for the bottle. The
style included some rough ragtime feel—rougher than the more formal, polite
boogie that would soon become popular mainly among White folks. It rode to

i
Jook is probably an African-derived word, possibly by way of Gullah (the people and language
of the islands off Georgia and South Carolina). The Gullah, or Geechee, who preserved aspects of
African linguistics, used juke or joog to mean disorderly or wicked, and Webster's cites similar
words with the same meanings from the Wolof and Bambara languages in Africa.
ii
My own first enthusiasm for playing music came from a teacher who suckered me into piano
lessons by playing a bit of boogie. But by then, at ten, I had already been listening to top 40
records that were, unbeknownst to me, by Black artists – notably Lloyd Price’s hoppin’ version of
Stagger Lee. And jazz, as we’ll see.

86
Chicago and hit it big in the forties. Chief exponents were Jimmy Yancey, Meade
Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, and Albert Ammons. Boogie-woogie was widely
played at “rent parties,” as was skiffle, or jug band music. Jug band, more a type
of instrumentation than a type of music, can be found widely on old records
because the records were cheap to make, the musicians often being paid a jug—
of gin.172

In Memphis, a classically trained Black musician named W.C. Handy

synthesized and regularized what he first heard in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903.
His formalized version of the blues was the one that society at large came to
know. In fact, when Bessie Smith recorded his "St. Louis Blues," in her only film
appearance, Handy was hired as a consultant. The result was a startling bar
scene incorporating the influence of the spiritual style, with barflies as choir. 173

See video: jug band 30s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHZhTPexH4U

Memphis, the town where Elvis erupted, has an interesting history: the town
was wiped out by yellow fever in 1878 and entirely restocked with poor folks
from around the South. Blacks and Whites together made a new town and,
eventually, a new music. By day they worked and prayed; by night they strutted
and played. Beale Street was the night: it was jazz, swing, and the blues. The
blues came in from the cotton fields and took over the streets and gambling
houses, mixing with jazz and country music and evolving towards rhythm and
blues and rock and roll.

See video: Bessie Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMXd5_Y0IlQ

In Memphis, a classically trained Black musician named W.C. Han-

dy synthesized and regularized what he first heard in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in
1903. His formalized version of the blues was the one that society at large came
to know. In fact, when Bessie Smith recorded his "St. Louis Blues," in her only
film appearance, Handy was hired as a consultant. The result was a startling bar
scene incorporating the influence of the spiritual style, with barflies as choir.

W.C. Handy wrote his songs down in sheet music and thus developed the
formal concept of the "blue note." He also incorporated the tango rhythm, often
said to be a “White” Argentinian contribution without African influence—a
myth that rests partly on the relative paucity of Afro-Argentinians, relative to

87
neighboring Uruguay and of course many other Latin American countries. But
Robert Farris Thompson traced the African—specifically Kongo Kingdom—
influences in great detail,  and Argentinian pianist Juan Carlos Cáceres
demonstrated them vividly.174 Variations on this rhythm are heard in Cuba,
Brazil, the Bahamas, and elsewhere in Black America.

Handy's 1909 composition "The Memphis Blues," didn't do so well, so he

sold it to a White promoter, who made a mint from it. Years later Handy was
denied permission to include it in his anthology. 175 Having enriched the
publishers, Handy went bankrupt.

The first blues recording was made in 1920: Mamie Smith sang "Crazy
Blues," and it sold like crazy. Bessie Smith began recording in 1923, using top
musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson. Recording of the
rural male blues singers lagged; the influential Texas bluesman Blind Lemon
Jefferson first recorded in 1926, Charley Patton in 1929, and Robert Johnson
("Crossroads," etc.) in 1936.

Charles Anderson, who began as a comedian in 1909, was recording as a

blues singer in 1923. His assertion that the blues was Black people's opera was
taken up widely in the press, and he became famous for his ability to hold a note
for sixty seconds, lending credence to his claim.176

The addition of the guitar to the voice melded field hollers with syncopated
rhythms. In the late nineteenth century, rural southern Blacks danced to blues—
played on a single guitar—in a sensual manner, dare we say erotically, derived
from West African tradition. You can see something similar today in the
Maypole dances of Belize and in the sambas of Brazil. Today's rock and roll
dancing echoes this sensuality and style, and is conspicuously West African in
origin.

SUBSTITUTION: Observe, either at a dance concert or on film, the

dancing that accompanies folk music from northern and western
European countries; compare this to West African, Brazilian, or
Haitian dancing. Specifically, compare solo highland dancing from
Scotland with solo rock and roll dancing. Note differences and
similarities. Try dancing highland style to your favorite style of rock
music. Do this when no one is looking.

88
 There’s a blues festival in Helena, Arkansas that features a lot of old-style
performers from the Mississippi Delta area. The town is on the map basically for
that one day each year. Main Street is closed and merchants rake it in. In summer
2000, the Black merchants called for a boycott of the festival on the grounds that
their businesses, off on the side streets, were actually losing money during the
fest.

The lead editorial writer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
objected, saying “Last time I checked, the blues were for everybody.” As a
folklorist working in the state at the time, I demurred in print, noting that blues
expressed the struggles of the people who originated them, as all cultural
expressions express—well, culture. If you want to appreciate other people’s
culture, you might stop to appreciate their struggles while you’re there.
Especially when it’s right there in your face asking to be noticed.

The next day I was approached by a local accountant, of the White

persuasion, who had read my letter; he warned me to “stop blaming me for
slavery—I wasn’t here.” Touched a nerve, I guess. Maybe your granddaddy was
there. Anyhow, touchy touchy. And why so? Could it be that one woman’s songs
of work and struggle are another man’s source of leisure? Could it be that
recognition of the unfairness of certain cultural interactions could open up
Pandora’s boxes of guilt? Angela Davis suggests the importance of social context
for true music appreciation:

Hope for the hopeless has been conjured within the religious
context…Hope for the hopeless has been conjured aesthetically by
the blues women and blues men...Like John the Conqueror [Bessie
Smith] brought song and laughter as she evoked the harshest and
cruelest experiences of Black people in America, and she brought a
promise that ‘the sun’s gonna shine in my back door some day.’ 177

Professor Davis wasn't there at the time, but Porter Grainger and Bob Ricketts
were, offering White blues fans a pamphlet called How to Play and Sing the Blues
like the Phonograph and Stage Artists, including this gem:

If one can temporarily play the role of the oppressed or the depressed,
injecting into his or her rendition a spirit of hopeful prayer, the effect will
be more natural and successful…. Without the necessary moan, croon or
slur, no blues number is properly sung.178

89
 Within a decade of the rural blues boom, the southern sound would move
north, electrify, and join with offshoots of swing bands to create the popular
music that would take the world by storm. We’ll get to that several chapters
down the road. But while we’re still in the South, let’s check in at the local Black
barbershop and see what’s shakin’.

11 Black Barbershops

The Encyclopedia Britannica describes Barbershop Quartet singing as being

distinguished by close harmony and variations of tempo, diction, and phrasing.
The arrangements "usually employ syncopated ragtime."

The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet
Singing in America (SPEBSQSA) managed for over fifty years to preserve the
American public in a state of ignorance about the origins of Barbershop singing.
In fact, the Society itself had a Whites-only membership policy until 1960. The
deception was exposed by Lynn Abbott in a 36-page article, with 183 footnotes,
in the journal American Music in 1992. Barbershop is a microcosm of the larger
American cultural/racial scandal and serves as a case study of denial and
revelation.
See video: Fairfield Four - Roll Jordan Roll (feat. Crossroads group)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTXnZr7ggV0

In the 1880s, said one vaudeville actor, "about every four dark faces you met
was a quartet."179 In the 1890s, quartet singing was one of the main diversions of
Black men in the South. Taking up where older vocal group traditions from the
plantation had left off, they featured improvisation of harmonies, notably the
"swipe" or "snake"—an upward slide by the baritone coupled with a downward
slide by the tenor. All this could be heard whenever and wherever Black men
congregated, especially in barbershops. Before the Civil War, most southern
barbers were free Blacks, and the tradition persisted through the century. Whites
came to their shops to spiff up, and spiffed up their music appreciation in the
process. James Weldon Johnson wrote in 1940,

…every barber shop had its quartet, and the men

spent their leisure time playing on the guitar—not
banjo, mind you—and “harmonizing.” I have
witnessed some of these explorations in the field of
harmony and the scenes of hilarity and back-slapping
when a new and peculiarly rich chord was

90
 discovered. There would be demands for repetitions,
and cries of “Hold it! Hold it!” until it was firmly
mastered…the “barber-shop chord” is the foundation
of the close harmony method adopted by American
musicians in making arrangements for male voices.180

W.C. Handy, self-styled Father of the

Blues, sang in a quartet in Alabama. Later the
Mills Brothers, an important pop vocal
quartet, learned their harmony from their
father at his barbershop in Ohio. Jelly Roll
Morton sang in a quartet. An eleven year-old
named Louis Armstrong started his own.
Much later, the Golden Gate Jubilee
Quartette, a religious singing group, was
formed in a barbershop in Virginia.i In 1910 a
song called "Play That Barber Shop Chord"
was sung to great acclaim by Bert Williams,
Ma Rainey and other Black performers. The
song was about Black singers and a Black style. In 1912 Irving Berlin published a
song, "When Johnson's Quartet Harmonize," with an illustration of a Black
singing group on the cover.

See video: My Evaline - Barbershop Quartet (Close Enough)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7sTO8ofoDs
(I have not found a single African American Barbershop video…..!)

In spite of all this, Barbershop's official historians promulgated a "White

origins" theory, postulating a link between a "harsh, discordant" style heard in
barbershops in Elizabethan England and the modern mellifluous tones of the
American salon. Sigmund Spaeth, a Barbershop singer and writer, wrote in his
1925 collection, Barbershop Ballads, of the many Black barbershops in Jacksonville,
Florida, that boasted their own quartets. Yet in the 1940 edition he hedged,
pushing the Elizabethan link. ii Turn of the century Barbershopper C.T. "Deac"
Martin wrote in 1932 that

i
Some barbers of note: Jelly Roll Morton's uncle and Perry Como. Also Richard Milburn of
Philadelphia, who was singing and whistling his “Listen to the Mocking-Bird” in the 1850s; it
was transcribed for him by someone who took his name off the credits.
ii
Spaeth also wrote an article in 1928 titled “Jazz Is Not Music.”

91
 America's musical debt to our colored people is
beyond calculation, since negro influence has been
felt almost from the inception of Native American
music [sic]. And as to close harmony, a rich sheen in
the blending of untrained negro voices makes trained
white harmony hard, brittle, artificial by
comparison.181

Which is to say, you ain't heard Barbershop done right if you've only heard it
done White. Or as Lynn Abbott puts it, the Black tradition was "more
spontaneous, free-spirited, and at ease with itself than in the self-conscious,
nostalgia-tinged habitat of White neobarbershop quartets."

Yet Martin too found reason to fudge; when he became the official historian
of the Society he wrote that "This barbers' music came to our shores along with
other old world customs." It was not until 1970 that he would write, with the
hindsight of age—or of community sentiment overtaking him—of his own first
introduction to Barbershop, by a Black quartet in a park at the turn of the
century.
Signature - Somebody to Love (Queen cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiGk3bSHggk

The historical sleight of hand was nearly exposed when a Black group from
New York, the Grand Central Red Caps, won a SPEBSQSA-organized regional
contest in 1941, and was barred from the national finals. Among the notables
who resigned from the organization as a result were former Governor Alfred E.
Smith and the inventor of the freeway, Robert Moses, who said "if American
ballads of Negro origin are to be ruled out of barber shop singing, most of the
best songs we have will be Blacklisted."182

The songs were not blacklisted: the harmonizers weren't about to neglect
such musical treasures just because they were neglecting their creators. Instead,
they were blackfaced; this antique performance rite continued within the Society
right up to 1979.

In 1988's version of the official story, the new Society historian allowed as to
how Black quartets did exist, and were one of many influences on Barbershop.
The "Jacksonville connection" went unmentioned.

92
 Why does it matter? For one thing, there's the diminished seventh chord. It
makes a smooth transition, somewhat sophisticated, used in classical music and
elsewhere. But it went directly from Barbershop into Scott Joplin's rags.183 And
what makes a New Orleans brass band different from the European marching
bands that went before? The jazz bands improvised collectively, the different
instruments exploring new harmonic possibilities together, as voices did in
Barbershop. The instrumental slurs in jazz are straight out of Barbershop. From
the start, jazz players specialized in imitating vocal sounds. The pervasive vocal
traditions of Black southerners had a lot to do with the evolution of jazz.
Satchmo said so, and he might know.

See video: Never gonna give you up (but it's a barbershop quartet)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRW7d7PIZ6U

It was a member of the Barbershop Society who directed me to Lynn

Abbott's article, and the Society kindly provided a copy of their response,
essentially a summary of Abbott's paper, published in the January-February 1994
issue of their periodical, The Harmonizer. They called the essay "remarkable," and
said that "barbershoppers of today owe Lynn Abbott a great debt," but had no
comment on why they had not managed to correct the record themselves.
Beyond this rather self-serving and belated acceptance, an enthusiastic apology
and embrace of Black quartet traditions would set an example for soul-searching,
truth-telling, and multicultural celebration that could be used as a model for
educational programs. We wait with bated breath.

12 JAZZ MARCHES IN

All over America there have been marching bands and other brass
aggregations nearly forever. By the 1880s, some cities had African American
ones. In the 1890s and early 1900s, the bands that played popular songs, light
classics and various dances were affected by the vogue of ragtime.
“Syncopating” bands took a big marching step away from strict European time
and toward jazz. In the 1910s Tim Brymn, Will Tyers, Will Vodery and Ford
Dabney led shouting, boisterous bands in rooftop nightclubs and theaters
around New York. In Chicago, Dave Peyton’s Symphonic Syncopators held forth
alongside the orchestras of Wilbur Sweatman and Erskine Tate. Instrumental
experimentation was rampant: clarinets replacing violins, saxophones doing
things they hadn’t done, Sweatman playing three clarinets at once.

93
 See video: Ford Dabney's Syncopated Orchestra - Doo Dah Blues – 1922
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mIkLQc473g

And then there was the Crescent City. Jazz didn’t come only from New
Orleans; it evolved, like the blues, over a period of time in lots of places. But New
Orleans was a special place for putting it all together. As a port city it played host
to travelers and settlers who brought their own cultures from all over the world. i
In the early 19th century, thousands of people, including many free people of
color, immigrated to New Orleans from all over the Caribbean. Captives brought
from those islands were carrying an African culture preserved in exile,
sometimes for generations. New Orleans was under French control for a
hundred years, during which the rest of the U.S.-to-be was under Anglo-Saxon
rule. This made a difference, if only because the French did not ban the African
drum as the English did in their colonies. West African music lived on in New
Orleans, as it did in Haiti, Santo Domingo, Brazil, and Cuba. These “Catholic
colonies” allowed for more of a syncretism of African religions with Christianity
than did the “Protestant colonies” of the British—thus the greater percussion
permission.

Under the French, and even later, the captive Africans were permitted to
gather in Place Congo (Congo Square, now contained within Louis Armstrong
Park) every Sunday, drums and all, and dances were held there in highly

i
Seaside location was also a factor in the musical ferment of New York, as it would later be in San
Francisco and Liverpool with rock and roll.

94
organized fashion up to at least 1835, 184 and again for another twenty years after
the Civil War. At these dances there were many White spectators.

See video: Congo Square, more recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCgXNpJgfVM

The Dance in Place Congo was a link in the chain of West African culture's
persistence. Later, Black bands would take up European brass band instruments
in the service of ritual (see the film Jazz Parades, Videography), leading to the
famous funeral marching bands.i Another key link was Mardi Gras, a carnival
ostensibly Catholic and French but also an opportunity for Blacks to parade, to
blow their horns, to dance. In this setting they also commemorated their
traditional alliance with Native Americans—who had sheltered AWOL Africans
—by adopting “Indian” costumes and other cultural artifacts. Not only had they
sheltered them, they had made babies together. That’s why a high percentage of
African Americans have a Native American background mixed in.

See video: Mardi Gras Indians—short

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cP_86xBTE

The "Mardi Gras Indians" made it on the scene just prior to the development
of jazz. Around the turn of the century, the marching band tradition in New
Orleans (drawn especially from Italian, French and German immigrants)
incorporated ragtime and the blues to produce what eventually became known
as jazz. European brass instruments were falling into Black hands in large
numbers, left behind in pawn shops by soldiers from Civil War and Spanish-
American War army bands. There was a strong parading tradition in France;
there was also a tradition of musical parades in West Africa, closely tied to
particular functions, that shifted easily to the new instrumentation. 185 And the
counterpoint featured in many marching band tunes interacted nicely with the
polyrhythmic and improvisatory penchants of African Americans. The New
Orleans bands marched and played for weddings, funerals, and all manner of
gatherings.

See video: Henry Red Allen + Jelly Roll Morton 1940—Panama to Rug Cutters Holiday
— Freddie & Flo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69-Fmso9ThE

i
Dennis McNally argues that the wider diffusion of captive Africans in the United States than in Brazil and
the Caribbean put them in greater contact with Euro-based cultures, and led to more syncretic forms.
(McNally, 27)

95
 The brass bands intersected with the style of the spasm bands, which used
homemade stringed instruments and drums, harmonicas and kazoos. These were
later known as skiffle or jug bands, and interacted with White string bands at
various points and places. Jug bands have been traced to Louisville, Kentucky,
an upland South river town and fertile ground for cross-cultural exchange and
diversity of styles.

Then there were the pianists who earned their livings in a district designated
for vice and therefore popular music: Storyville. According to E. Simms
Campbell,

Here, when liquor, used to fight off exhaustion, had befogged the
brain, many of the discordant and eerie chords were born. I have
talked with many a swing musician who has admitted that he has
improvised these weird minor chords in these houses...186

French Creole musicians downtown had been playing in marching and

dance bands; but in 1894, creoles were expelled from polite White society under
new segregation laws, as the distinguished Mr. Jim Crow took over from
slavery's social structures. These free Blacks of mixed ancestry had enjoyed a
significant amount of independence and even power since the French Code Noir
(Black Code) of 1724,i which endowed certain Blacks with certain rights. But they
began to lose their status with the advent of the Civil War, and lost it decisively
with the destruction of Reconstruction. They were put back in the same class
with other Blacks, and lost their previous occupations. They were forced Uptown
—a more gritty and less privileged area— and shortly found themselves playing
with street-wise swingers; jazz would stew in this Petri dish for 19 important
years before being closed down (see Up River).

Many of the
displaced creoles and
their descendants were
trained in classical
music; some of these
were among the first
jazz players, like
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll"
Morton and Sydney
For visible evidence of their achievements, take a look at the iron lace decoration on so many
i

New Orleans homes, a product of free Black craftsmanship. (Buerkle and Barker 1973, 8)

96
Bechet, whose style on the clarinet and soprano sax was described by Swiss
conductor Ernest Ansermet in 1919 as "perhaps the highway the whole world
will swing along tomorrow."187 They heard and incorporated Spanish and Afro-
Spanish music, French quadrilles, polkas, schottisches, two-steps, and marches,
quartet singing, and British influences, as well as blues and hollers. They taught
these things to the Uptown cats, who in turn taught them to get back to the street
and loosen up the beat. Jazz was busy being born.

Soundtrack: The Four Blackbirds - Swing For Sale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se0Lb3JbltQ

As I hinted earlier, I was a big jazz fan from about the age of five, only I
didn't know it was jazz. I certainly didn't know it was Black. My jazz source was,
funnily enough, TV cartoons.i But to this day, some folks like to say that jazz isn't
really of African American origin. In the early days there were indeed not only
Black bands, but White bands and even mixed bands. The first band to go to
New York and make it big was a White ensemble called the Original Dixieland
Jazz Band (previously, "jass," but kids kept blotting out the “j” on their posters).
They made the first jazz records, in 1917, and sold millions. ii Al Jolson—he of
blackface fame—claimed he got them the New York gig that resulted in their
recording career. Ironically or otherwise, one of the first two songs they recorded
was “Darktown Strutters Ball”—in the event, it was not released.

On the question of inspiration and origins, ODJB leader Nick LaRocca was
adamant:

Our music is strictly white man’s music. We patterned our earlier

efforts after military marches, which we heard in park concerts in
our youth. Many writers have attributed this rhythm that we
introduced as something coming from the African jungles, and
crediting the Negro race with it. My contention is that the Negro
has learned to play this rhythm and music from the whites. The
Negro did not play any kind of music equal to white men at any
time.188

i
In the 30s, TV cartoons sometimes featured music by a live band. At the end of the cartoon, they would
sometimes show a live shot of the band playing. I remember seeing Cab Calloway. (Who forgets that?)
ii
Freddie Keppard was offered a recording deal first, but turned it down, either because he didn’t want
people stealing his riffs, or didn’t want to audition without pay, or he asked for too much money...scholars
differ.

97
 See video:Palesteena - Original Dixieland Jazz-Band, 1920
Despite all the Jewish content, there were not to my knowledge any Jews in this
white band. They did know Al Jolson, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wh8CCbxjAY

Contrast this with the comments in 1921 of Paul Mares, leader of the New
Orleans Rhythm Kings, a Chicago band comprising eight White musicians, three
actually from New Orleans,

We had only two tempos: slow drag and the 2/4 one-step. We did
our best to copy the colored music we’d heard at home. We did the
best we could, but naturally, we couldn’t play real colored style. 189

But as White Chicago jazzman Mezz Mezzrow would write later,

The colored guys really get out in front and set the pace
when they're given half a chance. Why, look at how every white
performer that ever aped the Negro became a headliner. Look at
Sophie Tucker, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and the rest—where'd they
be without their Blackface routines and corny coonshouting and
mammy numbers? And in our own field, too, it's the musicians that
tried to grasp a little of the Negro jazz idiom who've gotten to be
famous.190

New Orleans musician Preston Jackson talked about the White players who
used to come to the 101 Club to hear King Oliver's band: "The LaRocca boys of
the Dixieland Jazz Band used to hang around and got a lot of ideas from his
gang."191 The boys went slumming at the jazz corn husking and scooped up
enough of the kernels to get to New York and Europe. As well they might: the
White musicians were put in a tight spot by the popularity of the Black bands,
with their new techniques and "new tonal combinations, never-before-heard
dissonances, novel melodic figures, and disjointed counter-points." 192 But, in a
repeat of the Barbershop coverup, H.O. Brunn wrote The Story of the Original
Dixieland Jazz Band without mentioning a single Black musician. This time the
bleach didn't wash. But as Stephen Longstreet wrote in 1956, “It isn’t hard to
prove that white men really invented jazz and made it important. It isn’t true.
But it’s easy to prove.”193 A segregated society extended its malice to its
entertainers, noted Leonard Feather:

98
 The Negro musician was Jim Crowed from the day he first became
aware of music. In the South, and often even in the North, he could
not live near the white musician, could not gain entrance to many
of the best music schools, was not admitted either as performer or
as spectator to most of the clubs and theaters where music was
played, and was barred from jobs in radio stations, in successful
hotel bands and even on recording sessions except under
segregated conditions…Men like Red Nichols and Joe Venuti, who
made hundreds of records, never hired a single Negro.194

In general we can say about jazz what is true of many other forms of
American music: it was created by Blacks from a mix of the materials available,
and each subsequent innovation, from classic to swing to bop and beyond, was
reproduced in turn by Whites. Not to say that there aren't great White jazz
players, who are sometimes an inspiration or model for subsequent Black
musicians. But credit is seldom given where credit is due. Neither is cash, which
is sometimes a matter of some interest to the musician.

In any case, the key generators of jazz were the Black and Creole musicians.
Uptown cornetist Buddy Bolden, who had seen the dancing in Place Congo as a
youth, was reported to have “improvised a hot blues” with his band at a dance in
1894.195 He developed his style from 1895 to 1905, helping to transform the staid
marching band tradition into dance music, via ragtime and his own "shouting"
style. Also via having been a barber. Unfortunately, like Henry Sloan, he was
never recorded.
Pianist Jelly Roll Morton was also a key early jazz composer and arranger.
Then came King Oliver, who had the most popular band of his time, which
eventually included Louis Armstrong. Armstrong's improvisations floated freely
over the rhythm, cut loose from the tyranny of the beat, and became a model for
all who followed. Armstrong, Morton, and Bechet were all steeped in the blues,
an essential element sometimes lost on the White players.

___________________________
HENRY FORD

Bill Malone described the automobile tycoon politely as "an

Anglo-Saxon nationalist."196 Ford, in an attack that should be in
every high school history text, called Tin Pan Alley a Jewish
conspiracy to "africanize" America's music. He reserved a special

99
venom for jazz: in a series of 92 unsigned articles in his newspaper,
the Dearborn Independent, in 1921, we find this:

Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, the slush, the sly

suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes,
are of Jewish origin...it is sold at the music store to addle-
pated young men and women who fill their leisure with
hearing or humming this syncopated senility...197

Despite the bald, bold bias here, the writer does give us an
interesting morsel in the next week's edition:

The public is blind to the source of that upon which it lives,

and it adjusts itself to the supply. Public taste is raised or
lowered as the quality of its pabulum improves or
degenerates. In a quarter of a century, given all the
avenues of publicity like theater, movie, popular song,
saloon and newspaper...you can turn out nearly the kind of
public you want. It takes just about a quarter of a century
to do a good job.198

Food for thought indeed, especially in the subsequent days of

mass media advertising-driven consumerism.

The author generously accepts ragtime as a "legitimate

development of Negro minstrelsy," but laments that in its wake

Seductive syncopation captured the public ear. The

term, "ma baby," brought in on the flood of Negro melody
has remained in uncultivated musical speech ever since...a
small group of men are deliberately and systematically
forcing jazz and movies and dances upon the country...199

See video: Henry Ford's Antisemitic Assault on Jazz

The Breakdown with Dara Starr Tucker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZtd0JXEzGY

Ford was not alone. The Ladies' Home Journal warned its readers
of "The Jazz Path of Degradation, calling it "lewd to the physiological

100
 limit," and the Musical Courier noted a women's meeting called to
"annihilate jazz."200

Ford was, as we know, a man of action, and proceeded to organize

a series of fiddle concerts around the country in the late twenties, in
hopes of putting Africa and the Jews in their places, wherever that might
be.
___________________________

Jazz was developing around the country in various local styles. In general,
the style tended to evolve towards a more polished sound, partly because at that
time the main purchasers of recordings were Whites. As Schuller says, "the music
played depended almost entirely on for whom it was played." 201 For White folks,
there were two contradictory values it offered: it reflected the complexity and
quickened tempo of life in the industrial, post-War age, and it offered access to a
fantasized “primitive” lifestyle or ethos that, wrote Kathy Ogren, “could liberate
overcivilized Whites.”202 For those who cared to think about it, then, it offered a
synthesis of a new and challenging present with an imagined past—and a bridge
between cultures severely alienated from each other. Some gravitated to mellow,
if not gutless, bleached versions that helped them take a baby step; others leaped
over the chasm and changed identities. Mezz Mezzrow said his Jewish
background helped propel him from a White community to total identification
with Black culture. Some folks from marginalized culture groups do tend to
gravitate away from assimilation and into the orbit of even more marginalized
groups—luckily for all of us.

13 JAZZ: WHAT IS IT?

Early jazz drew on marches, ragtime, French quadrilles, blues, and minstrel
and vocal group traditions. But jazz is a way of approaching any musical
material. Just as you could "rag" any tune, you could make jazz out of anything
that got in your way, including popular tunes of all description. So what is the
jazz way? Here I will expand on some key aspects of West African and African-
American music mentioned earlier.

Jazz is characterized by syncopation: rhythmic emphasis on the backbeat and

a slight anticipation of the beat, playing around the beat instead of always on it,
so that the listener is kept guessing how the player will relate to the basic
rhythm. The very basis of this playing around and guessing is, again, the

101
division of a two or four-beat measure into three parts. This jostles the music into
that swing, in which "the feeling of relaxation does not follow a feeling of tension
but is present at the same moment."203 For the dot readers among us: it turns 4/4
into 12/8, and can be felt, played and written a number of ways. Try counting a
typical 4/4 like this:

ONE two three four

and a 12/8 like so:

ONE two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve

See video: Syncopation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvya5c0pvaM

Feel it? It gives later rhythm and blues, soul, and some of rock and roll that
flavor called funk. It's that particular rhythmic universe about which Louis
Armstrong said, "If you gotta ask, you'll never know." 204 The best way to get to
know is to dance to it. But think about Marshall Stearns’ explanation of
“complicating the rhythm”:

By means of ‘rhythmic suspensions’, that is, by subdividing the

usual stresses into many unusual accents that carry over, around,
and about the basic beat...The analogy of stepping stones across a
brook is helpful here—the more stepping stones there are, the
easier it is to cross the brook in your own style.205

As mentioned before, this syncopation derives from a process of compromise

between African polyrhythm and rhythmically simpler European forms. It had
already been heard on the plantation, in minstrel shows and barbershops, in
blues and ragtime.

102
 The Caribbean location of New Orleans encouraged an infusion of diverse
European and Afro-European rhythmic influences, especially what Jelly Roll
Morton called the "Spanish tinge." "In fact," said Morton, "if you can't put tinges
of Spanish into your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call
it, for jazz."206

See video: Spanish tinge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGgpsBsd7EU

Jazz is also known for its blue notes, tones "in between" the European's
standard seven-note scale tones, as discussed earlier under Blues. These notes
appear to be an adaptive strategy, just as syncopation works to fit African
rhythm into European forms.

See video: Blue note

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWAL1VzkSR0

Jazz has become known for its sophisticated harmony—the use of elaborate
chords with more notes in them than other kinds of music tend to favor. The
chords became increasingly complex as jazz progressed through swing and
bebop. West African cultures, like the Celtic tradition, often use pentatonic (five-
note) scales; the complicated ninths and thirteenths and the innovative
progressions used don't show up in African or European folk traditions. Their
development seems to have resulted from the combining of cultures, including
the classical training of some of the early jazz pioneers, notably the "creoles of
color." In general the harmonies of jazz are more likely to be from European than
African sources.207

A fundamental feature of early jazz was collective improvisation, which must

have sounded like noise to some non-African-Americans, what with everyone
blowing at once. This is a direct continuation of West African tradition. You hear
it in the old New Orleans discs, but in the twenties it gave way to individual
solos. The use of the break, a short solo improvisation between group passages,
was expanded into the longer solos that came to dominate jazz.

Improvisation was, and remains, a key element. In 1908 Freddie Keppard took
his Original Creole Band on the first national tour of a jazz band. They were the
first to be heard coast to coast improvising on a theme: play it straight once, then
bend it six ways from Sunday in each succeeding chorus. James Europe
commented on trying to corral the energies of his Black military bands:

103
 I have to call a daily rehearsal of my band to prevent the
musicians from adding to their music more than I wish them to.
Whenever possible they embroider their parts in order to produce
new, peculiar sounds.208

Today we take this for granted, but it was then an innovation in the nation.
And not just by way of embroidery, but with the very uses of the instruments.
Europe recounted that

With the brass instruments we put in mutes and made a whirling

motion with the tongue, at the same time blowing full pressure.
With wind instruments we pinch the mouthpiece and blow hard.
This produces the peculiar sound which you all know. To us it is
not discordant…209

See video: Call and response

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5jlfUK8UD4

Jazz also integrated the African/African-American tradition of call and

response. In a possible echo of West African leader-chorus singing, the New
Orleans trumpet sometimes acted as the leader, with the clarinet and trombone
replacing the female and male voices. In later, bigger bands, entire instrument
sections conversed. Call and response existed in some western European church
music, but never to the extent of its African cousins.

Also important to jazz is the highly individualized tone of the players, as

compared with the western classical or folk traditions. Classical musicians
cultivate an individual excellence within the ensemble, while jazz emphasizes
personal inflection over perfection. There are certainly classical virtuosi known
for their own styles, but the range of style is much more important in jazz, where
individuality is the rule rather than the exception.210

There is also the inclusion of a distinctive set of tone qualities particular to

the African-American experience, especially derived from the South, described
by Wynton Marsalis as "Southern shouts and moans, those slides and growls and
cries and screams."211 The varying of tonal qualities within a single sustained
note, and the wiggling around of the melody in relation to the rhythm, now
ahead and now behind it, are also peculiar ways of playing with the tune that are
noted in Africa. Sometimes players will change the tone in the middle of a note;

104
often they glide down from the note and back up—singers too (think Billie
Holiday). As the note decays, they may allow the pitch to fall—a kind of speech-
like technique uncommon elsewhere. i Ernest Borneman compares these
particular approaches to rhythm and pitch to the African language practices
cited earlier:

The same tendency towards obliquity and ellipsis…no note is

attacked straight; the voice or instrument always approaches it
from above or below, plays around the implied pitch without ever
remaining on it for any length of time…212

Another notable Africanism is the use of roughly textured sounds like

rasping, buzzing, and sizzling achieved through alteration of instruments or
bending their playing methods. 213 Trumpeters resorted to a dizzying array of
mutes: toilet plungers, drinking glasses, cups and bottles. And of course vocalists
imitated instruments, and instrumental imitations of voices.

Jazz can be seen, as it was by Harlem Renaissance figure Alain Locke, as a

return to the essence of African-American music, which had suffered from being
parodied by the minstrels, who were just trying to make a living but managed to
distort a culture in the process. Jazz was based on the collective improvisation
that had "generations of experience back of it; it is derived from the voice tricks
and vocal habits characteristic of Negro choral singing." 214

There are other musics formatted around a series of improvised solos,

including certain Arabic and Indian traditions, and of course flamenco, with its
strong Arabic and also sub-Saharan African influences. 215 Forms of scat singing
can be found in Gaelic and Hungarian Romani tradition ("mouth music"). Even
European classical music included improv, when composers stepped up or sat
down to play their own works. And let us not overlook taxims (taqsims),
improvisatory breaks in everything from Arabic and Turkish classical music to
Greek, Macedonian, and Serbian brass bands (especially Romani).

Each of these cultures gave a different role to improvisation. Many of these

traditions interacted through migration, trade, and conquest, the study of which
would take longer than you or I can spare this week. Many musics have some of
the characteristics of jazz, but none of them has all of them. Flamenco is not jazz,
i
There may be a relation between this pitch practice and the use of varying pitch in speech in
some African languages to denote different meanings. See Gridley and Rave, 52, and Lipsitz 1994,
306.

105
blues are not corridos, and the samba is not the tango. BUT, all these pairs are
related, and without relations, we don’t exist.

14 LATIN AMERICA: US

Latin American music has continually enlarged the culture of the United
States and repeatedly tinted our various music genres, blasting in through New
Orleans, Mexico, and later New York. Part of the United States is still Mexico,
culturally, which we’ll come to shortly. New Orleans had French, Spanish and
West African elements in its Caribbean gumbo. In fact, the city was under direct
Spanish control from 1763 to 1803—compare the iron latticework on the
balconies to those in Puerto Rico.

Afro-Latin rhythms have pulsed side-by-side with other styles of popular

music, and often merged with them. They have ramped up our use of
percussion, Africanizing our nation as Ford feared. And keep in mind as we
proceed through the particulars that any music influenced by Spain was already
influenced by the Arabs who occupied and ruled that corner of Europe for
hundreds of years. Even flamenco turns out to have been influenced not only by
its prime practitioners, the Roma, and obviously by Arabs and Berbers who ruled
Spain, but also by the thousands of Africans who were captured and brought to
Spain in the later European conquering period, where they lived in slavery until
the 19th century.216 This influence is widely ignored or denied in Spain to this day.

The strongest influences, stateside, come from Cuba, a highly Africanized

Hispanic nation.217 Yoruba religion survives there, and so does the music, the
most basic rhythm of which is the clave (pronounced cláh-veh). It has many
variations; let’s look at the “son” clave, common in both son and salsa (see
below). Learn this one yourself by slapping your thigh with your left hand on
every beat, counting one to eight, then starting over. Then slap with your right
hand on the following beats: beat 1, between beats 2 and 3, beats 4, 6 and 7. Or
get a partner and split it between you. Or just clap on the italic words in “Shave
and a hair cut, two bits.” Take it slow. Then try clapping or vocalizing this rhythm
over various US musics, and see how it variously fits. You just saved the price of
a Popular Music Appreciation class. Unless you’re in one. (Don’t quit.)

106
 See video: How to play Rumba Clave & Son Clave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxDALPkziAI

This is a basic clave, an alternation of three beats and two. There are many
clave variations, showing up as the basis of salsa and lots more. The next most
common variation is the reverse clave: emphasis on beats 2, 3, 5, between 6 and 7,
and 8.

See video: Mariano Dugatkin explains the development of Habanera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu1rOUhe24w

A French version of the English country dance was brought by Spain to Cuba
in the form of the contradanza, which gave birth to the habanera.i Afro-Cubans
made it swing, and it swung into the U.S. as early as 1865. The habanera rhythm
is close to that of the cakewalk; Louis Moreau Gottschalk, widely-traveled pianist
and composer, combined cake and contra in "Ojos Criollos," written around 1850,
during the first cakewalk craze, forty years before ragtime. 218 And leave us not
forget the Spanish-American War—first prize: Cuba. Black regiments helped beat
the Spanish and brought a bit of the Cuban beat back home—just in time for the
birth of jazz.

See video :Mariano Neris & Bella Malekian—Rumba Cubana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVkJS-XLDw

But more directly influential was the son (pronounced sone), which led to the
rumba boom of the thirties and forties. When it came from the Cuban countryside
to Havana in the 1920s, it fell under the influence of a new urban music it found
there, called jazz. It then hopped the sea to repay the debt.

Next came the mambo—derived from Congolese religious groups—and the

chachachá, both from Cuba. After that came the Communism, and Cuban
rhythms, always subversive, were embargoed by the U.S.

i
Named after Havana.

107
 From the Dominican Republic came a syncopated polka, the merengue.
Puerto Rico incorporated Cuban and Haitian beats into its mix and passed them
along, along with a million and more messengers, to the U.S. Result: salsa.
Among the Puerto Ricans who came to New York were musicians who would
play with Duke Ellington, and others who played together with Cubans in Latin
bands, giving birth to a new, mixed, New York style.

See video: Cuban Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exLYpuKP790

Brazil contributed the samba, based on a ring dance (remember the ring
shout), and then the bossa nova, a creation of jazz-oriented folks, mostly White
Brazilians, influenced by “cool” West coast jazz.

From Argentina came the tango, an innovation dating to the 1880s (banned at
Yale in 1914 but popular on Broadway). i Allow me a digression here, or perhaps
just a wider angle view to enlarge our perspective on U.S. cultural history by
considering another part of the hemisphere, likewise colonized and peopled by
kidnapped Africans and their kidnappers, along with assorted more or less
innocent bystanders. Let’s talk tango. The habanera was an influence, and so
were Black Argentines, a factor as widely ignored as the African is in flamenco.

We think of Argentina as a White country – what happened? During chattel

slavery, Africans comprised 50% of the population in many Argentine provinces.
Today it’s down to a few neighborhoods in Buenos Aires: San Telmo, Merlo,
Ciudad Evita. Some Argentines who otherwise don’t want to talk about the
historical Black presence will admit that it was severely reduced by yellow fever
in 1871, foreshadowing Memphis. Africans were also sent in great numbers to
wars against Spain (early 1800s), and later Paraguay (1864-70). Mostly what
remained were the women, who intermarried, partly thanks to a massive
European immigration. Blacks, depending on someone’s subjective definition,
are now 2%. “There are no Blacks in Argentina,” say many Whites, including
President Carlos Menem, who added “Brazil has that problem.” 219 We can see
from this who has a problem, and also what it is.

See video: Tango roots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH_kgXeFYtI

i
Vernon and Irene Castle, at the request of a society grand dame, bleached the tango down to the
Innovation, a non-touching version.

108
 Buenos Aires, like New York, is a melting pot. The culture is melted from
contributions from Genoa, London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, and Mbanza Kong
and Lwangu, the two capitals of Kongo, a huge African kingdom (1390-1914,
roughly) that comprised parts of modern-day Congo, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Gabon, and Angola. Among other important achievements, they exalted
dance, as observed by Portuguese visitors/conquerors in the 16th century.
People from this kingdom were enslaved and shipped to, among other places,
Argentina and the United States.

By 1820 there were five organizations representing these central Africans in

Buenos Aires. These groupings were called candombes, i as were their
music/dance/religious gatherings. They represented the whole of their African
culture. (Later, their cousins in central Africa used the same word in their
resistance against Belgium, in the 1940s-50s.) In the Argentina-Uruguay border
area, candombe, the dance, joined with milonga and other dance developments
to form the tango. Robert Farris Thompson tells us that “Kongo speech, music,
instruments, dance, gestures, and even drum syllables were present in Buenos
Aires at the birth of the tango.” He goes on to compare the dancing of Juba,
observed by Charles Dickens at P.T. Barnum’s show, with similar moves in
Argentina around the same time, and describes similar moves in the early tango,
around 1903.ii,220

It is not any more odd to think of dance moves, rhythms, or words showing
up thousands of miles apart, and thousands of miles from their cross-Atlantic
source, than it is to note traditional English or Scottish ballads and dances
turning up in Appalachia and Australia. Given the efficacy of the Facebooks of
the day, neither should we be surprised that no less than the cakewalk filtered
south from the US early in the 20th century. It featured the leaning-forward-and-
backward moves typical of Kongo dancing and later of tango. George Reid
Andrews, in the The Afro-Argentines, 1800-1900, described the practice in
candombe of “bodies alternately thrown forward and back,” like in the
cakewalk, as being continued into the tango.221 “Today,” Thompson tells us,
“White Buenos Aires is not supposed to know about such things.”222

i
Not candomblé, a religious tradition in Brazil.
ii
Even the very name can be traced across the water. Of the many words sourced from
the Ki-Kongo tongue, tango can be traced to variations of tanga, from tangala to
tanganana, with various overlapping meanings having mostly to do with different styles
of walking. The Ki-Kongo mambu became the Cuban mambo, and the name candombe
in Ki-Kongo means “pertaining to Blacks.”

109
 The tango intermeshed with ragtime; the Charleston is derived from both the
cakewalk and the tango, and possibly the cotillion, as performed in Black dance
clubs like the “Jungle Casino” in New York.223

Mexico was heavily influenced by European music, especially French, which

was important in the 18th century. There were Germans, too, with their polkas
and waltzes. But there were also mixes of indigenous and African forms. 20,000
Africans were there by the mid-1500s, mostly in the Gulf region, and this area
belongs to the Black Caribbean in a way the rest of Mexico does not. In the 19th
century, Cuban rhythms sailed in and prevailed in cities throughout the land,
and as of the late 20th, Colombia’s African-influenced cumbia dominated the
dance floor.

See video:Dizzy on Chano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG53OjRuQu0

But the important thing about Mexico to this story in progress is Texas.
Remember, our Great Southwest used to be someone else's Great Northeast. The
cultures that met in Texas had in common the waltz, polka, and schottische—
recall the discussion of common stock—and with the help of the German
accordion, a great blending took place here. Germans engineered railroads in
Mexico—bear in mind the Black and Irish railroad builders in Appalachia. Before
that, another kind of train brought cultures together: the wagon train. As
detailed earlier, cowpokes from Mexico and the U.S. had occasion to trade songs
over the campfire, in between wars. By the time Bob Wills was swingin’, the
northern Mexican feel had long since seeped into western styles: consider also
the corrido-like sound of some of Woody Guthrie’s numbers, or Leadbelly’s
guitar runs in the same connection.224

There was another important occasion for Mexican influence on U.S. music.
Not a war this time, but a fair: the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial
Exposition, New Orleans, 1884-85. The Mexicans sent a Cavalry band, dozens
strong, that was the hit of the fair, with New Orleans publishers releasing sheet
music for their numbers that sold thousands. But duly note: prominent among
these numbers were the Mexican versions of the Cuban habanera. And next
thing you know, some of the band’s members took up residence in the Crescent
City, going on to play in early jazz bands. Among the fabled "creoles" were some
who were actually of Mexican origin, including clarinetist Lorenzo Tio and
Alcide "Yellow" Nunez.

110
 Broadway, like jazz, was in the habit of latching onto foreign influences,
though more often as exotic trivializations by New York pop songwriters; still,
the cut and paste contributed to the ongoing integration of styles. And in the
forties came the first wave of overtly Latin jazz, with Dizzy Gillespie adding
Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo to his band, Nat King Cole adding bongos, and
the rumba generally taking over. But as noted earlier, Jelly Roll Morton had
already declared that any music without a "Spanish Tinge" couldn't possibly be
jazz. He played it on piano with a rumba beat in the left hand, syncopating with
the right. When pioneering big band leader James Reese Europe recorded his
first four songs in 1913, two were Latin—a tango and a maxixe. Europe also hired
his entire clarinet section straight out of Puerto Rico.225

As for blues, W.C. Handy had been to Cuba in 1900, heard the son, and
afterwards began to experiment with various Latin beats with his orchestra. He
noted audiences' "sudden, proud and graceful reaction" to the rhythms; as a
result he slipped in a little of the rumba when formulating his version of the
blues. Listen to the midsection of "St. Louis Blues," our nation's most famous
tango: it's a habanera.

See video: Habanera interlude: Arthur Migliazza plays St. Louis Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7EiYq7tQi8

Decades later in Jelly Roll's town, Professor Longhair (Henry Roeland Byrd)
mixed several Latin American influences in his piano style, which helped ensure
the Latin presence in rhythm and blues.

See video: Jambalaya, as played by Hank Williams and Professor Longhair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5NL0F3CMgc

So we can see that Latin music is folded into many of our important African-
American-related styles. But more important is to hear it. Longhair's music is
good for that; listen to a whole album—it won't be hard work—and hear how he
divides two four-beat bars into three-three-two in the bass. (The Professor
actually started as a tap dancer, then became a drummer before moving to
piano.) Longhair also incorporated calypso, and credited some of his style to the
"Spanish beats" used by a mysterious bandmate from the forties:

111
 This other kid claimed to be Hungarian. That's why I named my
band Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Hungarians...he wasn't
white...he wasn't really Black either.226,i

Now listen to Fats Domino, Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, and Little Feat.
(Meanwhile, compare the famous Fats tune “Blueberry Hill” to the 1941 version
by Gene Autry to see what a difference a beat makes.) You can hear this rhythm
in any number of tunes that came out of New Orleans in the fifties and related
decades.ii It’s more blended and subtle in styles further afield. But listen. It's
there.

See videos: Gene Autry, Blueberry Hill. 1941

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdJSBtuS0oc
Fats Domino "Blueberry Hill" on The Ed Sullivan Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6H_sxI6jG8

Jazz and pop music funneled Latin songs into the cultural body politic.
Singers Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell, with the Jimmy Dorsey band, were
particularly Latin-inclined. They recorded "Amapola" and "Andalucia" (Spanish),
"Besame Mucho" and "Maria Elena" (Mexican), and "Green Eyes" (Cuba). Artie
Shaw did Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" and the Mexican tune "Frenesi."
Later, rock and roll writers Leiber and Stoller set "Anna" and "There Goes My
Baby," to the Brazilian baion beat.227 It wasn’t always so obvious: “What A
Difference A Day Makes,” first a hit for the Dorsey Brothers in 1934, was a
rewrite of a Mexican bolero, “Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado.”

But the most important thing going on in the 1930s in the fusion of Latin and
other U.S. musics was Spanish Harlem. Here the Puerto Ricans et al kept Xavier
Cugat honest, if from a distance. He was thrillin’ the downtown crowds with
half-baked rhythms that gradually got to cook better—hotter— as the Yankees
developed the taste for it. Meanwhile back uptown, the Puerto Rican base, the
New Yorquiños, kept their roots alive in their own dance halls. Spanish Harlem
was also situated hard by non-Spanish Harlem, and the combination of sounds
and spirit began to blend a bit, sometimes more than a bit. Latino musicians were
featured in the bands of Benny Carter, Chick Webb, Don Redman, Fletcher
Henderson, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington. iii

i
Could this Hungarian actually have been Rom? Sometimes the Roma identify by their host
nationality, just to be on the safe side.
ii
See New Orleans Originals and Louisiana Piano, Discography.

112
 The forties brought more Cubans, and more Black Cubans. Singer Machito
(Frank Grillo) and his musical director Mario Bauza hired arrangers who also
worked for Cab Calloway and Chick Webb, and Cuban music with sax appeal
and spiffy charts began to hit the charts. They also added congas. The New York
hybridization process was paralleled by a series of Latin-themed Hollywood
films that helped soften up the Yanks for the Latinization of northern music. Part
of the blending was more like blanding: many tunes of Latin origin hit bigger as
cover versions by the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Gene Autry—some of them damped
down , some with the Latin sources thoroughly bleached out.

See video: Eddie Torres and his Mambo Kings and dancers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkqz46U6QGo

The mambo surfaced in the late forties, along with Cubop—Afro-Cuban

fusion jazz spearheaded by Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, and Machito. Fusion is
perhaps a bit misleading, as there are differences between the north and south
that are not easily bridged. Restructuring of arrangements and instrumentation
often sits more easily on a traditional form than do changes in rhythm. The
rhythms of African-Americans in the U.S. have some things in common with
various Afro-Latin rhythms, and some things not. Some of what we hear here is
Afro-Pan-American common stock, dating back through early jazz and beyond,
especially in meeting grounds like New Orleans. Some of the African beat that
persisted in Latin America, especially in Cuba, had to be recaptured up north
where the drum had been banned. Max Roach went to Haiti, while Art Blakey
went to North Africa, to study.

On the flip side, the commonalities that remained helped jazz to be adopted
and adapted in Cuba, Brazil, and beyond, as it helped the habanera and other
beats to resonate up North. But some of the rhythms are different; the blues and
swing emerged in North America, not elsewhere. The results are unstable and
the fusion experiments fleeting, but the long-term changes to all the musics
involved are as subtle and pervasive as the Black and White common stock
interplays of the previous century.

15 UP RIVER: THE BLEACHED CHORUS

iii
Among the first Anglo leaders of Latin bands were New York Jews, including them Alfredo
Menez, née Mendelsohn.

113
 In 1913, New Orleans' Storyville district, where much jazz was heard and
much illegality was shared, was temporarily closed by the city after two men
were killed in a fight. Musicians began to emigrate north and east. Storyville
reopened, but economic changes and war forced continued migration. In the
1920s, many New Orleans musicians drifted to Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City,
and later New York. In their encounters with jazz musicians already resident in
those cities, the influences were mutual.

In Chicago, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong inspired a generation of White

jazz players including Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, and Jack Teagarden. Jazz
was in ferment, growing up, growing complex and sophisticated—and
somewhat more accepted. The maturing of jazz was apparently timely: it
proceeded to transform the nature of mainstream popular music, reaching into
its rhythms and forms, twisting and reordering them into a twentieth-century
music of mixed influences from which there would be no going back.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the various threads of American
music had been gradually weaving together, and in the first two decades of the
twentieth century they were finally being recognized at home and abroad as a
distinctly American art. The interplay between African-American and European
folk and classical forms defined this new music.

The African-American community, meanwhile, was in a dynamic state:

expectations of progress were energizing Black organizations, which included
the NAACP and the Garvey movement. This atmosphere also encouraged an
artistic movement, exemplified by the Harlem Renaissance and Chicago's "Fat
Years." African-American writers and artists came into their own; so did—over
the misgivings of some of the African-American intelligentsia—jazz music and
dance.

W.E.B. DuBois, for one, was not as enthusiastic about it as were Langston
Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Among African-Americans there was a
difference over cultural/social strategy; on the part of the White establishment,
the resistance to jazz was a reaction to the upsurge in Black pride. Of a bumper
crop of hysterical articles, perhaps the cleverest title was "Does Jazz Put the Sin in
Syncopation?"; but the most telling may have been "Jazz is a signboard on the
road that was traveled by Greece and Rome." The New York Times, in its usual
fine, if equivocating, style, ventured in an article “Jazz and Its Victims,” that jazz
players

114
 …seem to have made themselves the vanguard of the movement to
do away with repression in America…while {the listener] is half
conscious of the main melody, a subtle bombardment is carried on
by all the other overtones, the curlicues, the rasps, the blares, the
moans.228

A simpler view was voiced by a critic for the New York Post: "Jazz isn't
music. Not by a long shot."
See video: Vernon and Irene Castle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTgdcKrXusU

But plenty of people

thought it was music, at least music
enough to dance to. Vernon and
Irene Castle, famous for teaching the
foxtrot, had help with the dance's
development from Black bandleader
James Reese Europe, at the
instigation of W.C. Handy.229 “It was
Jim Europe who suggested the fox-
trot to us,” said Irene, “and [he]
deserves all of the credit for the
most popular dance of today.”230
Castle, along with Eileen Southern,
was saying that Europe invented the
foxtrot.231 His partnership with the
Castles introduced syncopating
orchestras and dance steps from the
Black community to the nation.
Their work together was essential in
inaugurating the jazz age,
distinguished by two widespread enthusiasms: for African American popular
music and for dancing.232

Alabama-born Jim Europe gave the first "syncopated concert" in New York
in 1904, then brought the saxophone from Europe to New York around 1910. He
also founded the most popular army band in Europe during World War I. The
band led the New York parade after the armistice—the first parade to go up Fifth
Avenue instead of down, so it could end up in Harlem, where the band's original
fan base was. This band brought Just-Before-Jazz, or Swingin’ Military, to Europe

115
and to the armed forces. I hate to say anything nice about war or conquest, but as
Europe said of his Champs-Elysées concert:

Before we had played two numbers the audience went wild. We

had conquered Paris. General Bliss and French high officers who
had heard us insisted that we should stay in Paris, and there we
stayed for eight weeks…We played to 50,000 people at least, and,
had we wished it, we might be playing yet.”233

See video: James Reese Europe in Europe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhMJZjRSy3E

Other African American army bands played the European theatre, led
mostly by New York bandleaders. Tim Brymn’s outfit was called the Seventy
Black Devils of the U.S. 350 th. Such bands set the styles for the next musical era,
and paved the way for Josephine Baker and all the African American chic in
Europe since.

Seven year-old George

Gershwin (Jacob Gershvin) sat
on a Harlem curb for hours,
listening to Jim Europe's
band.234 Some of Europe’s
bands were actually
orchestras; his Negro
Symphony Orchestra
incorporated up to ten pianos,
eight banjoes and 47
mandolins. He took control of
New York’s music scene by
organizing the African
American musicians of the city
into the Clef Club and booking
various sorts of bands all over
town, all in the service of his
vision: to transmit the essence
of African American harmony
and rhythm through dance
music.

116
 James Europe’s music perched on the cusp between ragtime and jazz. At a
wartime concert in France,

The drummers hit their stride with shoulders shaking in

syncopated time…The audience could stand it no longer, the “jazz
germ” hit them and it seemed to find the vital spot loosening all
muscles…235

European bands examined

Mr. Europe’s band instruments
with furrowed brows, certain
they had been modified to
produce the jazz germ
—“smears, slurs, rhythmic or
dynamic shifts…”236 After the
war, Europe took New York by
storm, offering what the New
York Sun called “a gorgeous
racket of syncopation and
jazzing;”237 the presentation
combined New Orleans jazz
with a big band sound. He
presented “A Concert of Negro
Music” at Carnegie Hall in 1912
with a 125-piece orchestra. Jim
Europe would have been one of
the most important bandleaders
of the twenties, had he not been
stabbed to death in 1919. Eubie
Blake later called him “the
Martin Luther King of music.”

Other Black bands in New York scoured the nation for innovation; in 1918
Will Marion Cook’s New York Syncopated Orchestra hired Sidney Bechet, a
Creole fella straight outa Downtown New Orleans, by way of Chicago. A few
years later top Black bandleader Fletcher Henderson would woo Louis
Armstrong from the Windy City, strengthening the national profile of New
Orleans trendsetters.

117
 See video: Cab Calloway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC2_FDGsAvU

With the advent of Prohibition, Harlem night spots like the Cotton Club and
the Apollo Theater drew large and enthusiastic White audiences. Popular
African-American musicians like Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, and Fats
Waller were top of the pops.i What they played, as always, was affected by their
all-White audiences. It became a smoother sound, less raw, less gutbucket:
Fletcher Henderson put a gloss on Louis Armstrong; Ethel Waters polished
Bessie Smith's style. Waters’ polish got a rave from Harlem Renaissance patron
Carl Van Vechten, who patronized:

In her singing she exercises…subtle skill. Some of her songs she

croons; she never shouts. Her methods are precisely opposed to
those of the crude coon shouter, to those of the authentic Blues
singer, and yet, not for once, does she lose the veridical negro
atmosphere. Her voice and her gestures are essentially Negro, but
they have been thought out and restrained, not prettified, but
stylized.238

See video: Ethel Waters 1951

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OErbJr22OU

These were all great musicians who made fantastic music that we all love
dearly, but do let's observe that the sweetening was necessary for the task of the
day. Likewise, the widespread use of an "octoroon"ii chorus line—what Zora
Neale Hurston called "the bleached chorus"—was clearly developed to
accommodate White tastes.

________________________________________

CHICAGO BOYS

The impetus for new artistic styles in society often comes from the
disenfranchised groups.iii This doesn't mean somebody else can't join in.

i
He could do more than pops, Waller could. He once sat down at a party and played the entire
score to the ballet Petrushko. While drunk. (Hammond, 50.)
ii
A person alleged to have one-eighth African ancestry.

iii
Look to the literature on Roman use of Greek styles (alluded to above by a jazz-age magazine
writer), the classic case of the "conquered conquering the conqueror."

118
On the contrary, anyone who is born to respectable society but somehow
doesn't fit in, doesn't find meaning in it, must search elsewhere. The
search for meaning is, after all, the central quest of life (after food,
clothing, and smart phones), and those who must struggle as a
community to survive are bound to create an art that speaks to the soul
and gives meaning to it.

So it was with Chicago jazzman Bix Beiderbecke, born in Iowa in 1903. He

took to jazz and it took him in. His cornet playing was widely acclaimed—
critic Phil Elwood credited his hot solos with the Paul Whiteman orchestra
with selling a lot of records for that otherwise rather square ensemble. Bix
played in a somewhat European style, directly on the notes, unlike the
slurring style of Louis Armstrong. In fact, his original inspiration was the
Dixieland Jazz Band of Nick LaRocca. He later soaked up Black bands on
Chicago’s South Side, but he had little or no involvement with the blues,
and on recordings he backed up singers like Bing Crosby. [xxi]

All the White Chicago jazz cats frequented Black clubs, to the bemusement
of the doormen, who would remark “You came for another music lesson,
didn’t you?”[xxii] Doormen and others were well aware of what would
happen if a Black musician went to a White club to study. But Mezzrow,
Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon et al were able to study King Oliver and
Satchmo, Jimmy Noone and Earl Hines, up close, carrying on the
American musical apprenticeship tradition.

The White Chicago players were later compared to the famed “Second
Line” of people who danced along in the march behind New Orleans jazz
bands.[xxiii] Perhaps rock and roll is rhythm and blues’ second line. The
problem with these second-liners from the Black musician’s perspective
was that, given the isolation of the South Side from any other side, it was
easy for White visitors to take back souvenirs of their travels and present
them without attribution. Blacks are not unaware of White library patrons’
borrowing habits. So Joe Oliver used to be quite cagey with information
about his tunes, even their titles, when visitors inquired [xxiv].

Still and all, Bix and the boys were a key link in the expansion of jazz
throughout the country and beyond its Black origins much as, forty years
later, white Chicago boys Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield would

119
plunge into the world of the blues and bring them to White youth. Bix
must have had the blues, to drink himself to death at 28. i

________________________________________

See video: Goldkette Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgzpVxzPhck

Art Hickman and Ferde Grofé were developing the call-and-

response section sound—strings here, horns there, reeds up yonder, etc.—in
their pre-jazz San Francisco bands around the time Jim Europe was in
Europe. Jean Goldkette, a French immigrant working in New York, hired
Beiderbecke, the Dorseys, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti for a band that played
hot, interesting arrangements. He also hired Don Redman of the Fletcher
Henderson band to rehearse his groups.239 He went on to manage the Casa
Loma Band, which was sweeter and played widely on the college circuit.

One of the most influential bands of any color was that led by Paul
Whiteman (which he was). Not just a musician, he was a businessman to
beat the band, owning or controlling 28 bands at once and making a million
1920s-style dollars a year. His activities were summed up at the time by
writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston:

Paul Whiteman is giving an imitation of a Negro orchestra

making use of white-invented instruments in a Negro way. 240

See video: Paul Whiteman Orchestra—At Sundown

Band includes two Dorseys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOD3liebUho

Whiteman's sole arranger for five years was Ferde Grofé. After this he
was also making use of Black arrangers, such as Don Redman, who also
arranged for Fletcher Henderson's band and later (like Henderson) for
Benny Goodman. Redman was a pioneer in developing the call and

i
Among Bix's friends were violinist Joe Venuti and Indiana's Hoagy Carmichael, 
who wrote the music for "Stardust," "Georgia on My Mind," and "Up A Lazy River." He
was a songwriting giant, and recorded with Beiderbecke.

120
 response sections for swing band arrangements, getting ideas from Bill
Challis, who had arranged for Jean Goldkette and picked up some concepts
from Grofé and others from Bix. Redman invented the "swing choir," with
musicians chanting a paraphrase of the lyrics under a melody solo. Tommy
Dorsey copied this to good effect.241

Other crossover arrangers included Sy Oliver of Jimmy Lunceford’s

band, working for Tommy Dorsey, and Andy Gibson writing for Charlie
Barnet and Harry James. Black bands were not known for using White
arrangers; there was little money and rare call for it. But White bands' use of
Black arrangers was standard practice in the twenties. Redman was paid
$100 each for twenty arrangements. 242 Compare that to what Whiteman, the
"King of Jazz," made from Redman's work and you'll have a gut feeling for
Karl Marx's concept of "surplus value": the worker provides the value and
the king reaps the surplus.

There were exceptions: Bill Challis also arranged for Henderson,

whose famous saxophonist and arranger Benny Carter called Challis his
idol. Other White Henderson band arrangers included Will Hudson and
trombonist Russ Morgan.243 Henderson’s was the top band in the New York
scene, and this was a time of great interplay between jazz and the traditions
of orchestras, a time of swiftly evolving arrangements. The interaction
across the color line seen here would be repeated in soul music in the
sixties.

To his credit, Whiteman was one of the earliest to promote jazz

from the bully pulpit, paying for new music by Gershwin and Black
composer William Grant Stilli and employing singer Mildred Bailey as well
as Bing Crosby (before industry figures importuned Crosby to cut out all
that jazz). He helped lay the groundwork for the big band fashion fifteen
years ahead of the swing era. He was an important popularizer and
synthesizer (acoustically) of modern popular music. Odd, then, that he
cautioned his musicians against syncopation, saying that “to-day it is no
longer a necessary thing,” and made heroic attempts to modernize, sanitize,
stylize, formalize, and de-Africanize the music. 244
________________________________________
THE BOSWELL SISTERS
i
Still is known primarily for classical composition, but he also composed jazz, wrote
arrangements for W.C. Handy, and played in the Harlem Symphony along with Fletcher
Henderson and James P. Johnson.

121
 A seismic event in vocal style, this this jazzy White sister
act emerged in New Orleans in the late twenties. They excelled at
vocal imitations of instruments—already a jazz tradition—and
revolutionized group harmony. During the thirties they were the
hit of the air waves, and recorded with the Dorsey Brothers, Les
Paul, Carmen Miranda, Guy Lombardo, Bing Crosby, and, notably,
the Mills Brothers, a Black quartet that broke new cultural and
musical ground. The Boswells' recordings included "Boogie Woogie
Bugle Boy," "That's How Rhythm Was Born," "Rock and Roll," and
plenty of Duke tunes.

See video: The Boswell Sisters—Crazy People 1932

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-O5U4uuPF8

Connee Boswell, the arranger (and one of the first women to

be respected as such in the industry), was confined by polio to a
wheelchair from the age of three. Later, after her two sisters retired,
she went on to a solo career and was one of the most influential
White singers—no less than Ella Fitzgerald said "When I started
out, all I wanted was to sing like Connee Boswell." Her syncopated
phrasing, diction, swing, and frequent changes of tempo were
exciting and unusual, especially for a White singer of that era. Her
main influence was fellow New Orleanian Louis Armstrong.245
From him, or from Barbershop singing generally, the sisters incorporated
vocal slides and similar techniques. And before encountering Satch, the
sisters used to visit a local Black theater that admitted Whites on
Fridays, where they were wowed by Mamie Smith.246 And before
that, they learned something about Black music from their African
American servants. Downbeat noted in 1944 that

the Boswell household had “colored women” in the

household who “jived,” “crooned,” and “rocked”; and
because of this, “No wonder [they] … sang the way they
did! It was only natural for them to sing blues on the pop
tunes, and spirituals on the blues.”247

At this early stage of the recording industry, non-

southerners were not familiar with southern accents or singing
styles except for a few scattered Black performers, along with the

122
caricatures purveyed by minstrelsy. The Boswells, eschewing
exaggerations and offering their natural accents combined with
jazzy vocal chops, were perceived by many as a Black act, as was
Elvis 25 years later. In fact, when they were scheduled into Paris
and no promo photos had been provided, a French artist drew
them as Black. After all, light-skinned Black singers in vaudeville
had frequently passed as White—including sister acts. And the
New Orleans music world was a rainbow of color mixes, thanks in
part to the plethora of “Creoles of Color” in the jazz scene there.

Though the White

record-buying public had just
recently been (more or less)
weaned off of minstrelsy, they
still needed to sort out their
relation to Black musicians (and
people, of course), and the
appearance of the Boswells on
the scene was an opportunity to
begin a transition in that fraught
relation. But it had to be
carefully constructed in order to
sell—thus the emphasis on their
Southernness, and Southern
Whiteness as well. Jack Kapp,
the charge d’affaires at
Brunswick Records, took charge:

In the Boswells, Kapp had found his marketing Holy Grail.

They were white singers that sang white material (i.e., Tin
Pan Alley rather than blues) but sounded black, who could
ride the crest of the popularity of black music while
simultaneously drawing in more racially conservative white
audiences. 248

We’ll encounter this again with Elvis and his own Kapp, Sam Phillips
—and, less famously, throughout the history of the industry. And
we’ll see other Whites adopting Black styles whole cloth, including
the second version of the Chicago Boys (Butterfield, Bloomfield, et
al), who took up the blues in the sixties.

123
 But this time, the mix of Southernness with the female
(Southern Bellei) aspect maneuvered White audiences forward. The
contemporary listener might ambivalate, “Yes, they sound Black, but
that’s ok, because they’re Southern.” They were presenting the South,
including its Blackness, to the North, rather than presenting
themselves as renegade Whites adopting Black culture.

And in that era, the rise of Black performers alternately enthralled and
threatened the White cultural consumer. Laurie Stras, in White Face, Black
Voice: Race, Gender, and Region In the Music of the Boswell Sisters,
speculates that the deployment of Louis Armstrong’s signature styles—
vocalized “instrumental” solos, scat, etc.—by the Boswells helped to make
Satchmo more acceptable by spreading his musical manners across the color
line and recasting them as not only Black but as Southern: inescapable
fingerprints of the evolving music of the era. As Southern Belles, they were
nearly above conservative reproach, even as they served up a stew of African
American jazz-pop. Not everyone appreciated it, though: a complaint to a San
Francisco radio station demanded:

Please, please, if you are going to keep those Boswell Sisters

tell them to change their stuff and quit that squawking and
harmonize a tune. All my friends say the same thing. They
call them the savage chanters and tune them out.” 249

But the die was cast: popular music, and the people that made it popular,
were moving forward with a new amalgam of styles taken, once again, from
the Black community. Together with their friend Bing Crosby, the Boswells
stepped into a new era—not always without resistance from audiences and
industry commissars alike, but step they did, and certainly it was a step
above minstrelsy.

16 Broadway: Operetta Meets Jazz

Vaudeville, which replaced minstrelsy while absorbing many of its

attributes, made liberal use of ragtime, jazz, and blues. ii Among the enduring
performers to come up through vaudeville were , W.C. Fields, Abbott and
i
One can, however, make the case that the Belle persona, or stereotype, inevitably carries with it the
plantation culture itself—reduced in potency, but still a vessel for (hidden) white supremacy.

124
Costello, the Three Stooges, and George Burns and Gracie Allen. The musicians
included Sophie Tucker, Jack Benny, and Al Jolson. They were the link between
the centuries, between the old coons and the new condescension. They softened
the stereotypes, gradually. They participated in the building of an industry that
would come to entertain—and in some ways control—millions. The styles and
formats of vaudeville, or variety, would persist on Broadway, in the movies, and
longest still in TV sitcoms and variety shows.

The nascent Broadway musical industry, which until the 1910s had been
dominated by European styles, began to take notice of changing popular styles,
which is to say jazz.250 Up to this time, the primary influences on Broadway
musical theater had been the French comic opera (opéra bouffe), notably
Offenbach (Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858; Tales of Hoffman, 1881); and Viennese
operetta (Johann Strauss II, Die Fledermaus, 1874; and Franz Lehár, The Merry
Widow, 1905). The British light opera wizards, Gilbert and Sullivan (H.M.S.
Pinafore, 1878; Pirates of Penzance, 1880; The Mikado, 1885), brought wit, plot and
brilliantly clever songs to the equation; their productions were the very model of
a modern major musical. Pinafore played in twelve theaters, and was produced in
some with all-Black casts.

The American composers were led by European immigrants: Dublin-born

Victor Herbert, who dominated the "charts" (Babes in Toyland, 1903); Hungarian
Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song, 1926); and Czech Rudolf Friml (The Three
Musketeers, 1928).

The immediate prehistory of Black Broadway commences with Sissieretta

Jones, an important opera singer known as “Black
Patti.”i Despite wide acclaim and having sung for three
Presidents and Queen Victoria, she was blocked from
receiving her operatic due by virtue of color. In 1896
she founded Black Patti’s Troubadours, comprising 40
jugglers, comedians, dancers, and singers who
amalgamated vaudeville, minstrelsy, musical review,
and grand opera. Their shows included A Trip to Africa

ii
Satirical songs were big in the vau de Vire, a valley in Normandy, France, in the 15th century, and
the modification vaudeville (literally, valley of town) came to describe a variety of variety
entertainments. (Clarke, 44.)
i
She later had a record label named after her that released jazz, blues, and spirituals. Her stage
name was a nod to Italian opera star Adelina Patti. Jones had previously worked with Antonin
Dvorák.

125
(1909-10), In the Jungles (1911-12), Captain Jaspar (1912-13), and Lucky Sam from
Alabam’ (1914-15).

The troupe included Bob Cole, an ambitious and talented writer who in 1898
produced A Trip to Coontown, the first New York musical put together entirely by
African Americans. It was seen as a significant break from the minstrel mode.

Subsequent Black Broadway productions included Will

Marion Cook's Clorindy or The Origin of the Cakewalk (1898)
and In Dahomey (1903), which starred Bert Williams and
George Walker. Dahomey was a hit in England first, then
returned home in triumph like Jimi Hendrix. Clorindy,
featuring Ernest Hogan, took New York by storm,
providing the first staged version of African American
syncopation.251 American culture never recovered. In 1905
Cook brought together twenty crack players of banjo,
mandolin, guitar, sax, trumpet, trombone, violin bass, and
drum in the “Memphis Students,” an aggregation that
broke the mold of both popular orchestras and Black
musical style. It enlarged on folk roots; by 1920 they had,
together with Jim Europe, converted Europe. And parts of
America.

Williams and Walker, by the way, were not above a

little back door self-promo; their 1898 hand-delivered letter
to William K. Vanderbilt—son of Cornelius, and in his day the richest man in the
country—provides us with an amusing first-hand document regarding the ability
of White power networks to appropriate Black creations:

In view of the fact that you have made a success as a cake-walker…

and having posed as an expert in that capacity, we, the
undersigned world-renowned cake-walkers, believing that the
attention of the public has been distracted from us on account of
the tremendous hit which you have made, hereby challenge you to
compete with us in a cake-walking match…”252

Recall that this dance originated as a satire on Master’s manners. (In this case,
Black musician Tom Fletcher had taught the dance to the Vanderbilts.) Though
Williams and Walker offered a purse of $50, there is no record of a reply. But
their dancing in Dahomey triggered a cake-walk craze in England and France in

126
1903, something that would repeat itself as dances and musical styles jumped the
pond in the coming century.

In 1899 the English composer Leslie Stuart premiered Florodora, with jazz-
inflected music updated from minstrelsy. It was a smash, and inspired many
composers; Stuart became the idol of Eubie Blake.253

Most Black songwriters of that era labored in obscurity and lie there in state
today. They could not procure concert halls, agents, or other necessities, and if
their songs were made into hits by White singers, it didn't help them much. Who
wrote "Sweet Georgia Brown?" No less than Maceo Pinkard. His tunes were
recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Paul Whiteman, Fletcher
Henderson, and many more. He was very famous in his own house.

With the death in quick succession in 1911 of George Walker, Bob Cole, and
Ernest Hogan, Black performers lost their high profile on Broadway, giving way
to the next wave of writers and to blackface operators like Al Jolson and Eddie
Cantor.

Back in the bright lights, composer George M. Cohan brought in more

American musical forms, including brass marching band styles that had evolved
a bit from their European origins. His songs included "Over There," "You're A
Grand Old Flag," and "Give My Regards To Broadway." He was a major figure in
the Americanization of American theater.

One of the leading writers for the

marching bands was John Philip
Sousa, who drew heavily on
ragtime, cakewalks, and other
southern Black folk music.
Barroom and parlor ballads,
characteristic of the "Gay
Nineties," also came into play—
songs like "The Sidewalks of New
York" and "Shine On, Harvest
Moon." These tunes were
influenced by English and German
music hall traditions, and also by
ragtime.

127
 Today we tend to think of this period as a shimmering musical era peopled
with gifted White composers; we are mostly unaware of the essential Black
component of the music, the cakewalks and rags on which so much of New
York's song industry based its product and profit.

See video: Ruth Etting sings an Irving Berlin embarrassment:,

Shaking The Blues Away 1927
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z50-QHzM_c

Irving Berlin was the first composer to bring jazz to the White Broadway
musicals. He wrote in a variety of styles, out-Cohaning Cohan with "There's No
Business Like Show Business" and "God Bless America," and putting Bing on top
with "White Christmas." He got involved with ragtime, from which he made a lot
of money; he later said "I never did find out what ragtime was." His first big hit,
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911), wasn't really ragtime, mostly, though Scott
Joplin did claim that Berlin took the melody from his opera Treemonisha.254”
Either way, the title sparked a craze that had been smoldering, waiting to catch
fire.

See video: Bing Crosby in blackface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy5bElQt9zQ

Before his songwriting success, he played Black, Italian, Irish, German, and
Jew as a singing waiter in a Chinatown slumming joint called “Nigger Mike’s.”
Which was in fact owned by another Russian Jew. At Mike’s he learned ragtime
piano from a Black pianist, Lukie Johnson. Berlin’s song “I Love A Piano” was
an ode to the African pentatonic scale (black keys) and employed syncopation
and mock-Black dialect. But the more success he achieved, the more he
downplayed his debt to Black culture—and his Jewishness.255

Berlin proved to be a very savvy operator in the musical market, and his
tunes were later covered in jazz versions, as were the songs of most of the major
Broadway composers, especially the jazzier ones. In other words, not only do
"jazz musicians play show tunes," but show tunes are themselves based as much
on jazz as anything else. Or were—but that story is yet to come.

Ragtime opened the door to the Jazz Age, and Berlin wrote many a jazz-
inflected tune for Broadway, some of which appeared in a series of revues called
The Ziegfeld Follies. Florenz Ziegfeld had been the music director of the Chicago

128
World's Fair in 1893, where early ragtime pianists appeared. His Follies featured
the remarkable Jewish singer Eddie Cantor, known for his Blackface numbers,
and the beloved Black singer Bert Williams (formerly a minstrel player), who
was also obliged to cork up. In fact, Williams and his partner George Walker
billed themselves as "Two Real Coons," just so's you'd know. 256 Soon everyone
knew, and violent racist reactions forced Williams' silent films off the market. 257 It
was, as noted above, a time when the race question had come to the fore. As
Martin Williams wrote in his 1977 liner notes for the LP "Ziegfeld Follies of 1919,"

[Most] of the songs in this set are written and delivered full of Afro-
American musical devices and would-be Afro-American attitudes.
That is, in a kind of musical and cultural Blackface, if you will...One
could argue, with much validity, that here was the United States
attempting to confront one of its most urgent, unsolved, even
unrecognized problems—its race problem—on the level of popular
entertainment...In any case, the enormous (and largely unconscious)
effort on the part of white Americans somehow to absorb the patently
irresistible culture of Black Americans is as evident here in 1919 as it is
today at any suburban high school dance.

Many of the jazzy musical arrangements were written for Ziegfeld by Will
Vodery, the group’s music supervisor for 22 years. Many dancers were taught by
Billy Pierce. Ford Dabney was a sometime conductor of the orchestra. These
African American talents produced, for a White audience, a White show full of
hidden Blackness—Williams hiding his own under another layer of Black. James
Weldon Johnson maintained that New York, the primary force in American
musical theater, could not have happened without Harlem. 258

See video: Gershwin plays I Got Rhythm (1931)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdeTbUDCiw

Berlin was followed by George Gershwin (Lady Be Good, 1924; Funny Face,
1927; Girl Crazy, 1931; Porgy and Bess, 1935). Gershwin wrote what might be
described as a variation on jazz, though Zora Neale Hurston called him "about as
Negro as caviar." Still, he was a dedicated fan of Black musicians; and his music
moved White Americans toward jazz. He studied Gullah dialect on a South
Carolina island for Porgy, another milestone show dealing with Black life. His
songs, including "Fascinatin' Rhythm," "I Got Rhythm," "Summertime," "Nice
Work If You Can Get It," and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," were popularized

129
by many musicians, Black and White. He also penned jazzy symphonic pieces
like Rhapsody in Blue, commissioned by Paul Whiteman.

Harold Arlen was hooked by jazz early, and had a penchant for the blues,
e.g., "Stormy Weather," "My Mama Done Told Me," "I Gotta Right to Sing the
Blues," and "Blues in the Night." He also wrote the melody for "Somewhere, Over
the Rainbow," a most un-jazz number that was later jazzed up by a number of
artists. But his most interesting distinction, to my mind, was being a staff writer
for the Cotton Club in the early thirties, as replacement for McHugh and Fields
(see below). With Ted Koehler he wrote hits for Cab and Duke, Lena Horne and
Ivie Anderson, including "Kickin' the Gong Around," "Stormy Weather," "It's
Only A Paper Moon," "Let's Fall in Love," and "Minnie the Moocher's Wedding
Day." He also wrote for a Black Broadway show, St. Louis Woman, collaborating
with Johnny Mercer. He was accepted in Black musical circles as an equal,
something that seems to happen most often in the arts and sports.

Cole Porter, the consummate sophisticate, blended jazz with operetta (Gay
Divorce,i 1932; Anything Goes, 1934, Silk Stockings, 1955). Among his most
endearing and enduring songs were "Night and Day" and "In the Still of the
Night," "Let's Do It," "Begin the Beguine," "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love,"
and "Don't Fence Me In."
__________________________________
AL JOLSON

Russian Jewish immigrant Asa Yoelson was America’s first

superstar pop singer. His fame derived largely from his Blackface act.
As George Burns said, "Jolie was a cantor's son, and everybody
thought his mother was a mammy." Well, he sang "My Mammy"
(written by Maceo Pinkard), and pretty well. He also sang songs by
Gershwin, who must have been embarrassed by the Blackface shtick,
given the respect he was trying to foster for jazz.

See video: Al Jolson–Swannee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPEtnyg6sn0

Jolson joined Lew Dockstadter’s (blackface) minstrels and played

“the Black Peter Pan” and other “darkie” roles on Broadway in the
1910s and 20s. His most famous movie, The Jazz Singer (1927),
spotlights the commonalities between Yiddish music and jazz. The
i
Changed to Gay Divorcée for the movie.

130
 plot details his struggle between (blackface) show biz and Jewish
religious loyalty.

In addition to heisting Black faces, he lifted his signature

shout, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” from Joe Britton, a Black
vaudeville actor.259
___________________________________

Throughout the twenties and thirties, jazz and operetta coexisted, within a
single show, often within one song. The work of Jerome Kern (Show Boat, 1927;
Swing Time, 1936) was a good example. Show Boat was a major milestone, the first
native-spun Broadway musical with a coherent plot, and one based on a story
about racism at that. The lyrics were by Oscar Hammerstein II. The tunes became
standards, including "Can't Help Lovin Dat Man," "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,"
and "All The Things You Are."

Hammerstein was the nephew and

namesake of a Viennese immigrant impresario.
Although he was surrounded by composers
making use of jazz, and was himself a staunch
proponent of the Black freedom movement,
Hammerstein never came to terms with
syncopation, polyrhythm, and everything that
was jazz. He never left the old country behind
in his work and always nudged his
collaborators' styles toward Vienna. He
accomplished this partly by writing the lyrics
before the music was conceived. The best and
worst example of Hammerstein’s mix of pro-
Black work in non-Black genres was the 1954
movie “Carmen Jones,’ in which the all-Black
cast sang the Hammer’s lyrics to Bizet. Well, not sang, exactly: operatic singers
were dubbed in—even Harry Belafonte lip-synched as the professionals intoned
“da” for “the” and “dis’ for “this.” To many this seemed like trying to have it
both ways; in fairness, some liked it. In retrospect, it was not the best of times for
Black culture.

Richard Rodgers would come to work with Hammerstein; Rodgers’ earlier

collaborator, Lorenz Hart, by contrast, was a lyricist decidedly jazzy in his taste:
bouncy, colloquial, brash, always bending and stretching the musical structure.

131
 Most of the jazzy Broadway composers
were Jewish. It's no accident that Jewish writers
and composers were prevalent among those
who interpreted African-American music for
White America. Jews had a long tradition of
marginalization and homelessness, the soul of
the outsider, empathy for other oppressed
peoples. Many worked in the arts. The
thousands of persecuted Jewish émigrés who
arrived around the turn of the century were
kept out of most of the respectable businesses,
so as always they went into whatever was
permitted. Traditionally this included writing
and music, followed by publishing and show
business.

Jewish composers assimilated America's culture and wrote their version of it,
much as Irish minstrels had in the previous century. In Europe many had been
salesmen; now they sold songs. In effect, they sold America its own subcultures.
This was a service by which mainstream America has been culturally enriched,
though it was not always to the financial benefit of the music's originators. From
1920, Black entertainers circulated on the circuit organized by the Theatre
Owners Booking Association (TOBA), also known as Tough On Black Artists (or
Asses). They averaged $20 a week.

The New York tunesmiths essentially monopolized access to the song-

buying public through their song-publishing organization, the American Society
of Composers, Authors and
Publishers, or ASCAP. This gave
them status in the industry, but did
little for those who were the source
of the styles. Although some of the
more successful writers, like Berlin
and Kern, were generous to
ASCAP's lesser known writers, it
didn't help the folks down on the
farm and in the poor
neighborhoods that birthed the
music. As Tony Palmer described it,

132
"Alexander's Ragtime Band was not so much White or Jewish genius as a notice
that whatever the Black musician invented, the White music industry was sure to
steal."260

In fairness to the songwriters, it was often the publishers who were the
control freaks. Writing of the publishers' practice of buying songs for ten dollars,
E. Simms Campbell adds:

These smart publishers would keep the scores of songs stowed

away in drawers...and at a propitious time they would revise here
and there—change the title and lo!—a popular hit tune was often
launched on the market in New York. It often made a song writer
who never would have reached the top, unless he had the ideas of
these Negroes to fall back on.

Simms distinguished between early New Orleans jazz composers and other
budding songwriters:

True, many a white musician shared the same fate, but he was not
continually relegated to the bottom as were these early-day Negro
pioneers.261

Fats Waller and his writing partner Andy Razaf (Andreamenentania Paul
Razafinkeriefo—he hailed from the royal family of Madagascar, a long island
with long names) hit on the idea of selling their songs to several publishers on
the same day, to get back at them for not paying royalties.262

The song publishers held sway until the radio industry, in a tiff with ASCAP
over royalties, formed its own publishing company (Broadcast Music, Inc., or
BMI) in the thirties. This gave the folks who actually created the source material
—southern Blacks and Whites, along with Latin American stylists—their first
chance to get their own creations aired.i

Industry shenanigans aside, Jewish immigrants made lasting contributions

to the popular arts. Later, in the forties, Jewish entrepreneurs living in Black
communities would start up the first independent record labels dedicated to
i
Another factor in widening the talent pool was Chicago's industrial base. When the demand for
phonograph records spread, it outstripped New York's ability to produce, and the task fell to
Chicago. The western producers set out for the South to record the hillbillies and blues artists,
making an end run around Tin Pan Alley.

133
bebop and rhythm and blues.263 Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, a Jewish
songwriting team, wrote loads of R&B hits for Black acts in the fifties. And
Jewish-American and African-American humor as well as music have a long
common history; together with the Southern and Western traditions exemplified
by Mark Twaini and Will Rogers, they largely defined American humor. The
vaunted Jewish tradition in humor took on new forms in America that were
strongly influenced by Black comic traditions.

In the twenties, the "Jazz Age,"

African-American music captured the
hearts and feet of the nation; Black
dance styles took America by storm.
In 1921 Noble Sissle, who had worked
with Jim Europe, teamed with Eubie
Blake to mount a Black musical on
Broadway, Shuffle Along, which ran
for over 500 performances. It featured
Florence Mills and also Josephine
Baker, who later became a star in
Europe. Ziegfeld hired some of the
show's cast members to teach his
White dancers the Charleston. The
popular Black dances of the era came
to be associated with flappers—in
other words, White folks—Ziegfeld's
teachers being Blacked out. And in
their effort to appeal to a
wider/Whiter audience, Sissle and
Blake subsequently stumbled on the
slope of crossover commerce. As a
reviewer said of their show "In
Bamville,"

This show seems to suffer from too much white man...There is too
much politeness, too much platitudinous refinement and not
enough of the racy and the razor-edged. 264
i
Here's another American icon who drew much of his inspiration for his books and lectures from
Blacks: he was raised on Uncle Remus, Br'er Rabbit, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

134
 Either that, or it didn’t fit in with the chap’s stereotypes.

In 1923 James P. Johnson wrote the song "Charleston" for Runnin' Wild, and
the dance took the nation by storm. Blackbirds of 1928, including "I Can't Give You
Anything But Love, Baby," was a Black show written by a White team, Dorothy
Fields and Jimmy McHugh. The show featured Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. In 1929
Louis Armstrong played "Ain't Misbehavin'" in Hot Chocolates.

See video: Jimmy Slyde, dancer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbKX3H2SVg

Under the relentless steamroller of

commerce, Black dance styles were mashed
into milder versions to be purveyed by and
for Whites, and precious few consumers of
cultural commodities ever since have thought
to question the roots of the moves. A slavery-
era step called the Essence became the
softshoe, the basis of half of modern tap
dancing, and Buck and Wing became hard
shoe, the other half. Dance styles from West
Africa, adapted in America, were acquired for
Broadway and the nation at large. i
Commerce, abetted by racism, produced a
counterfeit culture. As Ann Douglas noted,

It was part of the ethos of the day that white performers absorbed
African-American art and performance styles, sometimes consciously,
sometimes not. It was understood on Broadway: You started black or
ethnic and got whiter and more WASP as, and if, success came your

i
The Elvis of social dancing was Fred Astaire, a superb dancer who paid tribute to Bojangles and
used his act of dancing up and down stairs on film. Robinson danced the stairs in “Blackbirds of
1928” and later with Shirley Temple in “The Little Colonel,” but others had stepped up and down
before, including King Rastus Brown, a vaudevillian (and in 1895 a member of Black Patti's
Troubadours) who around 1910 accused Robinson of stealing the routine. But then, he borrowed
it from someone, too…(Stearns, 1964, 179,)
The master of smooth did an extensive study of the moves of Robinson and also of John Bubbles
(John William Sublett), of Buck and Bubbles dancing fame, but failed to mention their
contribution to his work in his memoir. (Douglas, 11)

135
 way. It was a class pattern as much as a racial or ethnic one—black to
white, ethnic to Wasp, lower class to upper.265

17 SWING AND ITS KINGS

In the thirties, the swing bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Dorseys,
Benny Goodman et al took over from what became known retroactively as
"classic jazz." The bands were bigger, and they read arrangements from sheet
music, while retaining improvised solos. The texture of the music was lush and
smooth after the frenetic stomp of New Orleans jazz, with even stress on all four
beats replacing the jumpier emphasis on the one and three. Swing bands featured
sections of brass and reeds calling and responding en masse, and playing short
repeated riffs under the solos. Gradually, singers were brought to the fore.
Above all, swing was really made by the behind-the-scenes musical arrangers,
which led to some interesting Black and White relationships.

See video: African American dancers and band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9NFgMFnGY

Swing was the style that brought Whites closer to jazz than any other form
before or since. It was the popular music of the late thirties and early forties,
which is something that merits a session with the music microscope. Some credit
this popularity to the growth of radio and the recording industry, which forced
the record companies to modify the music to make it palatable to larger
audiences. It was easy for Whites to embrace swing because it was a smoother
version of the original rough stuff. That's no different from the route any other
form of folk music has taken into the popular embrace, but it's interesting that it
took place during the Depression, which was a period of increased interracial
cooperation in some quarters.

Let’s look at some of the principals who schooled a nation.

See video: Duke Ellington, "Take the A Train"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY

Duke Ellington had one of the most remarkable careers in popular music
history. It went on forever. Playing as he often did to all-White audiences in
Harlem, it didn't hurt to have a White manager, although it might have hurt that
Irving Mills took forty percent of the Duke's fees, including composition

136
royalties. Mills did write some lyrics, though not as many as he was paid for. In
fact, Duke sideman Louis Metcalf claimed that under the band’s early contract,
any and all new compositions had to be sold to Mills for twenty-five dollars. 266
Adam Clayton Powell likened it to sharecropping. But Mills did get Ellington the
Cotton Club gig and many more, including clubs that had never had a Black
band and didn’t want one, and railroad cars to travel and sleep in so they
wouldn't have to find the one Black hotel, at most, in each town. Ellington stayed
with Mills till 1939.

See video: Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman—Stealing Apples

From the 1948 film "A Song Is Born." Lionel Hampton teaches Professor Magenbruch
(Benny Goodman) a thing or two about jazz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3gVnO9YnY

And then there was Benny Goodman, the King of Swing. That was hype, of
course, which wouldn't have mattered except that it relegated the likes of Duke
Ellington and Count Basie to lower echelons of the royal court. Goodman's main
Black musical arranger was Fletcher Henderson. He could have been called the
Grand Vizier of Swing, but no one called him that because his work for the
clarinetist wasn't well advertised: the general public enjoyed the music without
knowing who really made it. When John Hammond first approached Goodman
about teaming with Black musicians on record, he replied “John, you know I
worship these guys, but if I play with Negro musicians I’ll never get another job
on the radio.”267

____________________________________
JOHN HAMMOND

A single visionary from the recording industry

"discovered," recorded, and steered the careers of Billie Holiday,
Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray
Vaughan. John Hammond put Benny Goodman on a Bessie Smith
record, then brought Goodman together with Teddy Wilson to
create the first integrated swing band. He also matched Goodman
with Fletcher Henderson and Billie Holiday.i Hammond brought
Billie to Basie's band, which connected her to Lester Young, with
whom she made her most important music.

i
Holiday’s dad Clarence had played guitar with Fletcher Henderson, who had also arranged for
Goodman.

137
 Hammond organized the "Spirituals to Swing" concerts at
Carnegie Hall in 1938-39. They opened with West African music
and swept through American spirituals to swing and the blues.
Performers included Count Basie, Joe Turner, James Rushing,
Helen Humes, Big Bill Broonzyi and the Golden Gate Quartet.

Hammond, a Vanderbilt heir, forced the integration of

Greenwich Village's cafés in the thirties, bringing in Billie Holiday
and Count Basie and demanding integration of the audience. He
did it again at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, transforming the
whole town and the whole idea of American popular music
festivals. Not content just to integrate racially, he risked a taste
riot by bringing Chuck Berry to the jazz crowd. And when Pete
Seeger was Blacklisted, he brought him to Carnegie Hall.

By the time Hammond died in 1987, he had done as much

for race relations as anyone in music.
_________________________________

See video: Benny Goodman Orchestra, "Blue Skies" with Fletcher Henderson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImxryR1U_Kg

Henderson had the best swing band of all in 1932, before Goodman really
got going, but he couldn't get the gigs in the White halls, and as his musicians got

i
Broonzy, who followed the blues from his home in Clarksdale, Mississippi to Memphis and later
Chicago, played guitar on hundreds of recordings, from which he made, perhaps, hundreds of
dollars. He ended up in Europe, embittered over the American treatment of Black musicians and
Blacks in general.

138
better offers in Europe, they drifted off and the band dissolved. i Henderson was
thus apartheided out of his just acclaim. He proceeded to make good money
arranging for Goodman, which made Goodman even better money. Here we
recall the arranger in the background for the Ziegfeld Follies.

Some would argue that no one played better than Benny. I like Benny,
though he had a tendency to substitute pyrotechnics for more thoughtful
innovation. Go back and listen to Henderson's band and decide for your own
self.268

The Henderson/Goodman formula took familiar tunes, added a Harlem

taste, and put a White face on it. In fact, some of the arrangements were the same
ones Henderson's band had used.

Sharp businessman though he was, Goodman subordinated profit to

principle and scrupulously refused to play for segregated audiences. He also
pioneered integrated bands (see section on John Hammond), despite his early
caution. He also ended up using a lot of Black musicians on recordings,
including Charlie Christian, Cootie Williams, and Count Basie. On one session
the group was all Black except for Benny.

A number of other great White big bands formed in this period, including
those of Artie Shaw, Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Harry James, Gene Krupa,
Bob Crosby (Bing's brother), Bunny Berigan, and of course the Dorseys. Tommy
Dorsey's biggest hit was his Boogie Woogie, based on Clarence “Pine Top”
Smith's 1928 piano solo hit. Dorsey's Black arranger was Sy Oliver, from Jimmy
Lunceford's band.269

Charlie Barnet came from a rich family, and he exercised his privilege to play
outside the rules of the business. He was quite open about his love for Black
music, and hired more Black musicians than any other White bandleader. Barnet
recorded a tune called "The Wrong Idea," lampooning "sweet" bands; on the flip
i
Jazz and Black musicians in general had long been better accepted in Europe. In 1921 a German-
American woman living in Austria complained,

Vienna has been flooded with them. We are hardly able to live from hand to mouth while
these jazz band players strut around in fur coats and diamonds. I even saw one the other day
driving an automobile...It is positively disgusting the way the kids have gone crazy over
them...And worst of all I have seen women dancing with them. It makes my blood run cold.
We ought to form a society here to teach the "darkies" that they have no more rights than in
America. (quoted by Rayford W. Logan in The Negro Caravan, 1048.)

139
side was "The Right Idea," jazzed more to his taste. He only played where
integrated bands were kosher.270

As the record companies turned swing into their cash cow, they encouraged
the production of recorded hits, to be reproduced note-for-note in live
performance. Jazz became Pop, if not pap. Even the improvisations were
rehearsed: real improvisation was being drummed out of the bugle corps. The
companies, and their White customers, also influenced the music in a calmer,
sweeter, more respectable direction. As Duke Ellington wrote in 1939, "Once
again it is proven that when the artistic point of view gains commercial standing,
artistry itself bows out, leaving inspiration to die a slow death."271

Sanding and bleaching, the industry sold millions of records. Today there
are people who associate swing with Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey—a bit like
saying Irving Berlin invented ragtime. For those who love Miller and Dorsey, I
can only say that it would sound sweeter to me if I hadn't followed the money
trail. It's a clean sound with a dirty secret. As Schuller put it, "The public did not
know that its White musical idols, bandleaders or instrumentalists, had acquired
their jazz and swing conceptions from the Blacks."272

See video: Glenn Miller—In The Mood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CI-0E_jses

Miller in particular pursued a formula calculated to capture the White youth

market. Compared to the jazz coming out of Harlem, it was simple and smooth,
and was barely jazz at all. There's nothing wrong with that, aside from the unfair
advantage given to it by the industry. The unfairness continued until big bands
played more like Guy Lombardo than Duke Ellington.i Glenn Miller still played
dance music, but without the pizzazz it just wasn't jazz. As his sax player Al
Klink put it, "We were too scared to swing."273 However, as with General Motors,
what's good for RCA is good for the country.

Lombardo followed a similar path, diluting the jazz elements gradually until
my grandmother, who preferred Lawrence Welk, could recommend it to me.
Lombardo was the third biggest seller of the first half of the century, after Bing
Crosby and Paul Whiteman.274

i
Much later, the 29 year-old King of Thailand, who was a big jazz fan, came to visit the U.S. He
got Duke Ellington's autograph in Los Angeles - the high point of his visit - and then went to the
White House, where he was treated by President Eisenhower to a concert; the featured attraction
was Guy Lombardo.

140
 See video: Boo Hoo—Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6CZKVGSb1E

At this point one might make the standard case that the industry was only
giving the young dancers what they wanted. Usually such a case conceals the
work of the industry in determining for the audience what it wants, and then
giving it to them. The result in this case, as in so many, was some kind of
compromise between the previous European-derived music the kids were used
to and the Black dance music that was sweeping the country.

But let’s dig a little deeper. It is often true that most White Americans prefer
a milder blend. It's partly because many of us are brought up in greater
alienation from our bodies. As Donald Clarke puts it, "a lot of people still
clapped on one and three, and things are not much different fifty years later." 275
OK, that’s only alienation from two and four, but it leads to the harder stuff. The
Puritan heritage has an enduring influence that is seldom recognized. Compare
with Italian gesticulating, Latin American hip-friendly dancing, French cheek-
kissing, African-American women's neck-slide-point-making, etc. etc., to see who
shakes their boodie. The relatively subdued sensuality (or RSS) of so many
among us is partly a holdover from the self-denial of the "Protestant work ethic"
used to conquer the frontier. It's an inheritance from the Calvinists and Puritans.
Its effects have radiated out through churches, barn dances, and proms for three
centuries.i It's another often-unacknowledged influence.

In any case, freedom of taste is a pretty poor excuse for eviscerating someone
else's culture for your own use. But sometimes that's just the way the culture
crumbles.

The end of the swing era saw a branching of jazz players and fans into swing
diehards, New Orleans revivalists, streamlined swing ("jump blues"—see below
under Rock and Roll), and the more experimental beboppers and modern
jazzers. Fed up with White bands takin' home the bacon in the swing era, the
Young Turks resolved to make a music "they can't copy," and came up with
bebop, a music of greater rhythmic complexity but narrower commercial appeal. ii

i
Baptist-based Baylor University in Waco, Texas, founded in 1845, first permitted dancing on
campus in 1996. Still prohibited are "vulgar gyrations." (San Francisco Chronicle, 1/3/96, A4.)
ii
Seattle trumpeter Leon Vaughn tells a story from the forties about White musicians coming to
hear Black bands and writing down the improvisations they heard - "and the next night they're
playing your licks!" When asked if Blacks went to the hotels where the White bands played to

141
Whites did eventually get the hang of it, and all the forms that followed it, and
became, in many cases, respected contributors.

See video: Dizzy Gillespie—Bebop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09BB1pci8_o

Bebop was a sophisticated music that required a kind of attention beyond

that required for dancing. Solos were longer, chords more complex; drums
floated atop the rhythm rather than grounding it, the cymbal keeping time and
the bass keeping the pulse while the rest of the drums embroidered. The piano’s
left hand no longer anchored the rhythm either, instead bopping around the
beat. Dancing to such rhythmically experimental—and sometimes fast—music as
modern jazz was left to experimental modern dancers.

Bop and its evolutionary children rescued improvisation and revitalized the
function of jazz as community expression, but they had to compete with other
forms that had arisen over the first four decades of mass music dissemination.
Modern jazz secured a place in the soundscape of America and the world, but
the nation would soon groove to a new and different drummer, schooled in
swing and the hard knocks of rhythm and blues.

____________________________________
THE INTERNATIONAL SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM

See video: The International Sweethearts Of Rhythm—"Jump Children"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94fcqEkPmSk

One of the most remarkable bands ever assembled was an all-

women's outfit that toured all over the country and in Europe in the
late thirties and early forties. The Sweethearts, formed in 1937, was a
band of teenaged girls living at a school for poor and orphaned
children. Following the model of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers,
school founder Dr. Laurence Jones had been sending out groups to
sing for their supper and schooling since 1921. When he heard some
of the "girl groups" then making the rounds in show biz, he got his

pick up a lick or two he replied, "We weren't allowed in." (Remarks in panel discussion, Seattle,
July 1994.)

142
charges a music teacher and turned them into a dance band. It was
the height of swingtime, and the time was ripe.

The Sweethearts rose to become a top dance band, playing

the Apollo and entertaining the occupation forces in Europe in 1945.
The band was
International long
before its travels,
counting among its
number Willie Mae
Wong, Chinese
saxophonist; Alma
Cortez, Mexican
clarinetist; Nina de
La Cruz, Indian
saxophonist; and
Nova Lee McGee,
Hawaiian trumpeter.
The rest of the
original members were Black, with White players joining down the
line.276

The band was a splendid example of music as a

communicator across race lines. Saxophonist Roz Cron said of the
Black women in the group, "What they had was a relaxed way of
approaching the music. Their beat was different from our uptight
white rhythm."277 Living, working, and playing together, confronting
discrimination with joyful jazz, they touched their audiences with a
larger vision of American culture.

Mixed hues led to challenges for the group. The White

women, along with the mixed race members, often had to blend
themselves in with dark makeup or hide in the bus to escape the Jim
Crow authorities and their never-ending defense of American
apartheid. "We white girls were supposed to say "My mother was
Black and my father was white," recounts Roz Cron. "I swore to the
sheriff in El Paso that I was Black."278

143
 The band was virtually ignored in the White press, as well as
in a number of later books about the swing era.i Count Basie used to
hover backstage at Sweetheart shows and grin enthusiastically, but
he was in no position to overthrow the caste system.

The band criss-crossed the country in their own tour bus and
did a convivial tour with the Fletcher Henderson band, but were able
to record only three poorly-distributed singles. ii,iii Most of the White
folks who heard them were occupying Europe; in America the
Sweethearts played mainly for Black audiences. When Whites did
attend, they sat in the balcony (in an ironic twist on traditional
segregation) and watched the Blacks dance. Other Black touring acts
made progress: when mixed audiences were first allowed, a rope was
tied across the dance floor to keep them separate—a new rope trick,
this time keeping both races in their places. But once the dancing
began, it was only a matter of time before the rope came down.

i
Even the White female bands got pretty short shrift, but Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears
were quite successful. Hutton wasn't actually a musician, but more of a show biz front
woman/conductor. She had the advantage of agent Irving Mills, who was also Duke Ellington's
agent, and Black arranger Alex Hill, who worked for Mills.
There had already been many women's bands of varying longevity. The "Boston Fadettes" stayed
together from 1888 to 1920. Others included The Harlem PlayGirls, Darlings of Rhythm, Rita Rio
and Her Band, Lorraine Page and her Band, Ada Leonard All American Girl Orchestra, Thelma
White and Her Girls, Frances Carroll and Her Band, and Ivy Benson and Her Orchestra.
ii
Radio broadcasts have been collected and re-released; there is also a lively film on the band.
Both are eponymous, and they swing.
iii
James “Buster” Williams, a Black man who passed for White in Virginia, became President of a
Whites-only American Legion post and concealed the fact that the old bus he talked them into
buying had been the touring bus of the Sweethearts.

144
 18 BROADWAY, PART TWO: THE GREAT WHITE WAY
In the forties, as jazz accelerated in several directions, an interesting thing
happened to Broadway musicals. The European thread of the music, operetta,
came to the fore and virtually buried jazz. Beginning with Oklahoma in 1943,
composers relegated the African-based syncopation, swinging rhythms, blue
notes, and other elements of jazz to a very few tunes in each score. Why?

See video: Oklahoma! Title Song (Hugh Jackman)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrzQm1QSjMs

The Depression had destroyed lives and livelihoods. It destroyed Harlem—

the Renaissance petered out. It also diminished Broadway: there was no money
to mount extravagant productions. The writers fled to Hollywood, where they
wrote for much larger audiences, including rural folks and people from towns
and cities with a less diverse cultural environment. The search for a common
musical language for that size of audience led towards a more European-
American sound.

Yes, swing had been the thing for America, but not necessarily for all of
America. A lot of those folks out there away from the coasts were about to make
their presence felt, thanks to new media and big-thinking corporate
entertainment. Le Jazz, Not. By the forties, with writers and composers
commuting between Broadway and Hollywood, and with recordings and radio
replacing sheet music, popular music took a turn to the White: America was
bleaching its roots.

Richard Rodgers began working with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, and

together they hammered the jazz out of show tunes in a series of major
productions, including Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The
King and I (1950), and the gloriously/notoriously syrupy Sound of Music (1959).
The songs endure: "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," "People Will Say We're In
Love," "Some Enchanted Evening," "I Enjoy Being a Girl," and "Surrey With the
Fringe on Top."
See video: Robert Goulet, "If Ever I Would Leave You"
as Sir Lancelot, Camelot, 1960
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL52hEArSfM

The other top writing team of the era did likewise: composer Frederick
Loewe, another Viennese, along with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, wrote Brigadoon
(1947), My Fair Lady (1956), and Camelot (1960). This was the classic period of
great Broadway songwriting, done in a more European style that shuffled Black
culture into a corner to wait for more propitious times. It was the defining
moment of a mass culture, for better or whatever.

See video: My Fair Lady—Wouldn't it be Loverly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-KvtsfyAa8

There were exceptions to the trend: some of the older writers continued in a
jazz-based, dance-oriented style, including Berlin (Annie Get Your Gun, 1946) and
Porter (Kiss Me Kate, 1948; Can-Can, 1953; Silk Stockings, 1955). Eventually jazz
influence resurfaced in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) and swing-
derived works like Frank Loesser's Guys & Dolls and Jule Stein's Gypsy. Later the
backbeat would come back to Broadway in a big way, as the Rock Musical, and
eventually, Hamilton. But in regard to what is generally considered the peak
period for show tunes, my friend from page one was basically right: Broadway
and Jazz Alley didn't even intersect.

19 CROONERS AND THEIR SWEET INSPIRATIONS

With jazz out of the running for America's popular music, the forties gave
rise to new mainstream blends, some would say blands: The Andrews Sisters,
Crosby, Como, and Sinatra; Doris Day and Dinah Shore; and so many more. The
remarkable and forgotten thing about all these icons of middle America is that
they all started out singing jazz. So what happened?

See video: Hubba Hubba Hubba, Perry Como & Martha Stewart, 1945
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaZXUM9yDFg

Most of the top singers of the forties had begun by singing in big bands,
which were all swing-propelled to varying degrees. The bands folded and
singers became stars. The choice of styles and instrumentation was now
increasingly dictated by the recording industry—the arranger hired by the record
company, not the arranger hired by the swing band. Meanwhile, new
entertainment media reached new audiences, dictating new styles. Reality bites,
demographics rule: bigger means Whiter.

The surrounding social environment had its effect too. The forties and early
fifties were a period of militant social and racial denial in White America; "The
American Way" was held to be democracy and opportunity, but the lack of either

146
 one for the underclasses was given little thought. And there was music to match
the ideology.

In a short while the country would get back to Black, turning once again to
African-Americans for song and dance. This time it would be an urban update of
the blues: the nation would now get its R&R from R&B. But in the meantime, the
youth had come home from the war, had babies, and switched on the TV.
Dancing was out. Besides, it had become too expensive for big bands to tour.
And music was now dominated by recordings, not live shows, which meant
personalities, which meant singers.

The popular music industry built a roster of White singers who resonated
with White audiences, in an idiom and style that concealed their Black
influences. Pop music had long since absorbed jazz and diluted it. But at what
point does the dilution obliterate all trace of the original? That depends on how
closely you listen.

See video: Billie Holiday—Don't Explain (Live, 1958)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MWRheQtvmA

Listen to Billie Holiday. She sings behind and around the beat, full of blues
and personal and caste angst. Frank Sinatra, the "singer's singer," said that Billie
Holiday had the greatest influence on him of any singer. i (He was also influenced
by Tommy Dorsey toward a sweeter, lighter sound.) The White crooners who
came to prominence with and after Sinatra are not generally thought of as jazz
singers, yet without jazz they wouldn't have had that swing, and would mean
very little to anyone.

See video: Frank Sinatra (Live)—I`ve Got You Under My Skin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiSKXxWgA4w

Sinatra is famous for "The Voice," but also for making the song his own,
through personalized phrasing, stretching the lyrics across and against artificial,
square, four-beat divisions—in other words, jazz. He was a huge fan of Billie. In
1944, Holiday told columnist Earl Wilson that she’d offered Sinatra advice on his
singing. ‘‘I told him certain notes at the end he could bend. ... Bending those
notes — that’s all I helped Frankie with.’’ Sinatra made no secret of his debt to

i
Here's one lyric as it ran before the music industry cleaned it up for Sinatra and Peggy Lee:
Basin Street is the street
Where the dark and the light folks meet.

147
Holiday: ‘‘It is Billie Holiday ... who was, and still remains, the greatest single
musical influence on me,’’ he said in 1958.[ii]

As Peggy Lee, the jazziest of this group said, "I really have no sense of time
except swing time."

Another Holiday acolyte was Dinah Shore, who grew up with a Black
nursemaid who took her to a Black church, where she found the singing
"electrifying." Not too many Whites have ever gone to Black churches (recall,
however, Stephen Foster, and mixed southern camp meetings), but today they
don't really need to. The music has spilled out the door and flowed across town
and is in the house.

See video: Dinah Shore & Ella Fitzgerald

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skth17Ky-HA

Billie was also a strong influence on Judy Garland, who was partial to the
bluesy compositions of Harold Arlen, though she gained fame by going Over his
Rainbow, in a smoother, lusher style.

Dinah Shore was a brunette who started out singing blues, but for the
movies she bleached both her hair and her style. Shore was Jewish, as were
Barbra Streisand and Mel Tormé. Tormé —the name was an immigration
processing error—reflected,

I wanted to be a jazz-oriented singer—I don't know what a

jazz singer is, since all good popular singers are jazz-influenced. 279

Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Vic Damone were Italian,i another ethnic group
that, like the Jews, had suffered from being "not quite White." They learned to
pass.

Back to Billie: Lady Day may have led the way for many vocalists, but they
didn't have to follow her down Jim Crow Lane. ii When she sang in the South
with mixed bands, Black and White musicians had to stay at different hotels.
i
Most of them changed their names: Tony Bennett from Anthony Dominic Benedetto, Dean Martin from
Dino Crocetti, Vic Damone from Vito Rocco Farinola, Frankie Lane from Frank Paul LoVecchio. They
were thought of as American, but not also as Italian – a loss to our collective understanding of our own
culture.
ii
Columbia Records wouldn't issue Billie's lynching ballad "Strange Fruit," however; they
released her from her contract for the one tune, and it was brought out by a smaller label. (Clarke,
246.)

148
And when she sang with Count Basie, Billie herself was too mixed: in Detroit, the
theater managers told her she was "too yellow to sing with all those Black
men."280
___________________________________
THE ANDREWS SISTERS

The Andrews Sisters were smooth, yet jazzy, being direct

musical descendants of the Boswells. Their first hit, 1937's "Bei Mir
Bist Du Schoen,"i sold a million. What an odd song for a gentile trio
from Minneapolis. Actually, the lyricist who wrote the English
words, Sammy Cahn, had just heard it sung, in Yiddish, by two
Black men to a Black audience at the Apollo. 281 It was procured for
the Minnesotans by singer Maxene Andrews' husband, music
publisher Lou Levy. Fair enough.282 Levy was a "hep cat," as was
Maxene, but Lou advised the act not to record jazz—"It isn't
commercial."283

See video: Andrews Sisters—Gimme Some Skin, My Friend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIFN13-a1iA

The Sisters' next big hit was "Rum and Coca Cola," an import
from Trinidad. It was beginning to seem like the public had a taste
for the exotic. In the forties they proceeded through a series of
Boogie-Woogie hits: "Rhum-Boogie"; "Scrub Me, Mama, With a
Boogie Beat"; "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar"; and "Boogie
Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B."

The Andrews appeared in a film called Syncopation in 1942,

along with seven big bands, including Harry James, Benny
Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Gene Krupa, Joe Venuti—in other
words, all the top bands, except the Black ones. They became
famous for their extensive USO tours during World War II, playing
for White soldiers. To their regret, White entertainers did not play
for Black soldiers, though the other way around was common.

The Sisters recorded with Les Paul, master over-dubber and

multi-style guitarist, and with Danny Kaye, Carmen Miranda, Bing
Crosby—all of whom also waxed with the Boswells—and Guy
Lombardo. Their music is not thought of as jazz, and it isn't. But
listen. It's in there. The influence of Black culture on this act is

i
Actually a German version of the original Yiddish, “Bay mir bistu sheyn.”

149
 perhaps best expressed by the promotional graphic reproduced just
below the title page of this book, and by this verse from their
wartime version of "Hot Time":

They're going to start a row and show 'em how

We paint the town back in Michigan
They're going to take a hike through Hitler's Reich
And change that "Heil" to "Gimme some skin."284
___________________________________

Doc Haines, a bandleader in Valley City, North Dakota, called young Norma
Dolores Engstrom his "little blues singer." 285 She became Peggy Lee and came up
through the band of Benny Goodman, with whom she enjoyed attending many
Fats Waller shows. Louis Armstrong and Maxine Sullivan were her inspirations.
Like Jo Stafford, who came out of Tommy Dorsey's band, she took the swing
along with her to the next era. "Actually, I didn't intend to be a jazz singer, but
jazzmen say that's what I am," said Lee. Count Basie once asked, "Are you sure
you don't have a little spade in you, Peggy?" 286 A serviceman stationed overseas
was startled when he met her—from her records, he thought she was Black. 287

See video: Try a little tenderness—Bing Crosby with Orchestra. 78rpm, 1933

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcC9LLD6Y_M&t=145s

Bing Crosby also credited Satchmo as a formative influence on his style. Bing
started out a lot more syncopated than he ended up, jazzing up Paul Whiteman’s
band from 1926-30. In fact, a theater owner once demoted Crosby to a lower-
profile role in Whiteman's band for being too jazzy. So it came to pass that, like so
many others, Bing toned the jazz down till you couldn't hear it anymore. The
record industry later employed his talents to water down blues and country
tunes that were surging into popularity—for instance, Louis Jordan’s “Is You Is
or Is You Ain’t My Baby.”

See video: Try a little tenderness— Otis Redding, 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azpUTXntVag

Have a look at Bing’s 1941 flic, “Birth of the Blues,” in which he retells the
story of Dixieland Jazz being popularized—in this version, by a White band. All
the minstrelsy still prevalent in that era is on offer, including the obsequious
janitor (played by Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) who teaches young Mary
Martin to swing. In a Johnny Mercer song, the film credits the origins of the
music to three avatars: “The Waiter and The Porter and The Upstairs Maid.” This
was not code for Italians. Though the film focused on a White band, at least they

150
didn’t claim to have invented jazz, as did the “Original” Dixieland boys. In a
telling bit of dialogue and a foreshadowing of Elvis, Mary Martin reminds Bing
that a musician named “Memphis” is “the only White cornet player that can play
your blue music.”

See video: Doris Day—Que Sera Sera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc

Which brings us to Doris Day, born Doris von Kappelhoff. She too rose to
fame singing in a big band—i.e., swing—but she came to personify the
mainstream culture as it reasserted its Whiteness. Day's solo career was largely a
construct of record man Mitch Miller, who also made Tony Bennett and Johnny
Mathis household names.288 Her story reminds me of Elvis Presley's journey from
rhythm and blues rebel to denatured pap star, manipulated by a cynical manager
and industry that wrung every last dollar out of him and destroyed the music in
the process. It sets me to wondering what might have been, in so many cases, if
musicians had been able to follow that dream instead of the money.

SUBSTITUTION: Doris Day's records use a lot of big band

arrangements, sometimes even hot solos, but her singing pulls
them into the slow lane. Press play on her tracks and insert your
version of Billie Holiday's phrasing. You can do it; no one's
listening.

Speaking of money, it seems that under Mitch Miller, head of A&R and
therefore possessed of a certain influence, 95 percent of the tunes recorded by
Columbia were registered with ASCAP. Neither Miller nor ASCAP were fans of
jazz or R&B; recall that ASCAP had restricted songwriters’ access to the industry
to the Tin Pan Alley gang, and any other writers reached the airwaves mainly
through ASCAP’s new rival, BMI. No less than Frank Sinatra complained that
Miller fed him rancid tunes.289

A corporate drive for profit dictated what got recorded, distributed,

purchased, and perhaps appreciated. The nation was, unwittingly, singing along
with Mitch. And over on the rock and roll side, the development of the Top 40
format was a money move designed to maximize profits by releasing fewer
records and pumping them repeatedly—just like the advertising of any other
product. It had the ultimate effect of homogenizing tastes and quarantining
"minority" styles in their own charts, radio stations, and fan bases.

151
 And yet Black styles continued to percolate through, albeit often without
recognition as such. In the later wave of African American northward migration,
the blues got amplified and generally charged up—“They shouted and declared
instead of crying and moaning,” as one critic had it. 290 And the White crooners
made a similar move: “I’m not a crooner,” said Frankie Laine, “I’m a singer who
shouts.”291 Thus did the crooners become the belters.

With regard to the general Whitening of popular music, it is also worth

considering the cultural effect of the United States' emergence from World War II
as the dominant world power. White flight from redlined Black inner cities
fueled the growth of the suburbs, and the "Greatest Country on Earth" ideology
was bolstered by a blinkered view of America that looked mainly at its White,
suburban, comfortable sector. People drove their Chevies to the levees and
ignored those who had built either one, especially the levees. An honest look at
the class and racial caste system was clearly no longer in order; a bleached
cultural image served as a cocoon to shelter the comfortable from the afflicted.

20 NEW SOUTH, NEW COUNTRY

Many musical influences have flowed through the rural South over many
generations, like rivers that intersect, merge and diverge again. Country folks
went to town and came back with strange tales and new tunes. While in town
they might go to a jook joint, or stop for a while to listen to a street singer. Staged
theatrical and musical shows also traveled through rural areas, including
minstrels, medicine shows, and vaudeville and tent shows. These productions
featured a wide variety of genres, and were training grounds as well as stylistic
expanders for country performers. Eventually there were radio stations and
recordings: first cylinders, then big breakable discs. Electrical recording, which
replaced singing into a lo-fi horn, came in 1925—as did Nashville's WSM Grand
Ole Opry, on the heels of Chicago's WLS National Barn Dance.

See video: Clarence Ashley, The Cuckoo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s44lrqsi4w

The centuries-old cultural interplay continued. Consider again the banjo: the
most celebrated White banjo players of the early twentieth century all had
contact with Black players. Back in the first half of the nineteenth century, near
the intersection of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, lived minstrel man
Joel Sweeney, the Black Knoxville banjoists, and the families that would later
produce 20th century players Hobart Smith and Clarence Ashley. Smith recalled

152
several Black banjoists living in the area during his childhood around 1910; he
picked up some style from Black fiddler Jim Spenser. Ashley’s family had come
from Ireland to eastern Virginia and later to the mountains. Frank Proffitt, who
both made and played banjoes, was influenced by his neighbor Dave Thompson,
a Black player near Sugar Grove, NC. Thompson and Ashley both transferred an
a cappella British ballad to the banjo; they also shared tunings. Thompson’s
family hosted music sessions attended often by Frank Proffitt, as well as Doc
Watson.292 We don’t think of Blacks and Whites hangin’ in the hood in the early
twentieth century, but there it is.

See video: Ed Young and Hobart Smith, “Joe Turner,” 1959

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s44lrqsi4w

Ralph Peer launched the era of recorded folk music: he recorded blues singer
Mamie Smith in 1921 and Virginia's Fiddlin' John Carson in 1923, and lots, lots
more. All this southern wisdom was released by the Okeh company on two
separate product lines: "Race" and "Hillbilly"—these in addition to its "popular"
series. These segregated categories were designed to be marketed back to the
communities whence they allegedly had come; they had the effect of
strengthening musical apartheid, drowning out the communication that had
existed in the South for generations, and confusing the whole nation about the
roots of American culture. But then, Okeh probably wouldn't sell many Mamie
Smith records at the 1925 Ku Klux Klan-sponsored fiddler's convention.293

For an example of music that was neglected and buried by commerce, we

can look at the African-American string band led by John Lusk in south-central
Tennessee, which was among the most popular square-dance bands around in
the twenties and thirties. They played for White dances as well as Black, but
were never recorded commercially. An ear-witness to a folkloric 1946 recording
session tells us,

Suddenly, at the second part of the tune, the fiddle would leap into
an upper octave, with a wild cry...The banjo would then play a
loose and free polyphonic obligato around a rudimentary
suggestion of the melody, ranging far away melodically, omitting
strong downbeats, dancing a different step rhythmically—and this
was most radical of all for banjo—not hitting all the upbeats and
downbeats, with sudden startling gaps and hesitations...it
produced a rolling syncopation like a jazz beat...It was far and
away the most sophisticated square dance music we had ever
heard... 294

153
 See video: Murphy Gribble, John Lusk & Albert York play Pateroller'll Catch You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcCnfttIQp4

John Lusk played a fiddle he got from his grandfather, a captive worker who
was sent to New Orleans in the 1840s to learn his fiddling. Adult education
increased his value to his master and all around him, value that was handed
down to the next century.

In the early twentieth century South, White artists like Jimmie Rodgers
soaked up the blues and incorporated their version of its feel into their musical
style. A railroad brakeman, Rodgers learned the guitar, the banjo and the blues
from Black musicians in Meridian, Mississippi, where he worked even as a boy.
He later toured with a medicine show, where he learned a style in which
condescension contended with imitation-as-sincere-flattery of African-American
styles (kind of like what happened in rock and roll). He was a pivotal player in
the merging of styles, moving away from plain singing toward ornamentation,
interaction between voice and guitar, three-line blues form and bluesy
melodies.295 He didn’t sound like Led Zeppelin, but each in their time spread a
lot of White blues around to a lot of White folks.

See video: Jimmie Rodgers, 1930

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnfMmTjBcJI

The "blue yodel" for which Rodgers was famous, and which was so
influential on other country musicians, is generally seen as a combination of
Swiss yodeling and Hawaiian falsetto—both popular at the time—and the
Mississippi delta blues falsetto leap, which owed a lot to earlier field hollers. 296
African-Americans were already yodeling the blues—singers like Monroe Tabor,
the "Yodeling Bell Boy;" Beulah Henderson, "America's Only Colored Lady
Yodeler," and the celebrated Charles Anderson, a "Yodler of Note." 297 These and
many other Black blues yodelers were active from around 1905, with yodeling
becoming more and more prominent in their styles after 1910.

Another influence on Rodgers was Emmett Miller, a country and jazz singer
who worked for decades in Blackface minstrelsy. Miller came from Macon,
Georgia, and set his falsetto-break style to wax in 1924. i He recorded as part of
the Okeh Medicine Show, and went on to work with a studio band called the
Georgia Crackers that were anything but: they intermittently included jazzmen
Gene Krupa, Eddie Lang, Jack Teagarden, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Hank

i
Riley Puckett yodeled on record the same year. (Daniel 1990, 103)

154
Williams copied his version of "Lovesick Blues" from Rex Griffin, who copied his
from Miller.298

To my mind, Miller is the missing link, binding together city jazz and
country twang. Listening to Miller makes you feel like there is one American
culture, albeit woven of diverse strands. His tunes were religiously duplicated by
Bob Wills and others, making a mark on western swing, which had only a few
years left in the incubator. To the extent that Miller recorded two distinct kinds
of music, it was largely due to the needs or demands of recording companies. He
was widely accepted by both Black and White audiences. In fact, according to
Merle Haggard, he was married to a Black woman and was buried in the Black
section of a Macon, Georgia cemetery, with no marker until Haggard paid for
one.

See Video: Emmett Miller, Take Your Tomorrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDkEaEL7d7Q

When Jimmie Rodgers’ blue yodel records were released in 1928, the Black
influence was unmistakable: a popular music critic of the time reviewed Rodgers'
second blue yodel record under the headline "White man singing Black songs." 299
He was soon referring to Rodgers as a "White man gone Black," 300 and
recommended that White listeners seek out African-American recordings as well
because "Listening to race records is nearly the only way for White people to
share the Negroes' pleasures without bothering the Negroes." 301

Rodgers did some recording with small jazz groups, even with Louis
Armstrong and his wife Lillian in 1930 (Blue Yodel No. 9)—check out their
enthusiastic interaction, which reveals their mutual admiration. And Howlin'
Wolf said later that Rodgers gave him his nickname when they met in the
twenties.i His blue yodel was taken up by other Country singers including Gene
Autry, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, Jimmie Davis, the Carter Family and the
brothers Monroe, and persisted until the forties. 302

SUBSTITUTION: Listen to a traditional-style Country tune by

Roy Acuff or Buck Owens; dub in a trumpet or sax for the guitar or
pedal steel. Or just listen to Emmett Miller with his Cracker-Jazz
band.

i
Wolf may have been trying to imitate Rodgers’ yodel and thus blundered into his trademark.
(Lipsitz 1994, 313)

155
 Jimmie Rodgers was a key influence on Gene Autry and Roy Rogers
(Leonard Slye), who were taken up by Hollywood. Through the alchemy of film
and TV, hillbillies were turned into cowboys, mystifying the masses for fun and
profit. Coal miners and mountain villagers sprouted chaps and cowboy hats. But
the music persevered, and many decades later, New Orleans R&B hero Aaron
Neville would credit his yodeling style to, among others, Gene Autry and Roy
Rogers.303

The influence of the blues on White country singers in the twenties was as
pervasive as the influence of jazz on popular music. Take the Allen Brothers, Lee
and Austin, two White blues boys from rural Tennessee, whose second record,
"Chattanooga Blues" backed with "Laughin' and Cryin' Blues" (1927), was
mistakenly issued by Columbia on its (Black) Race Record series—the New York
office couldn't tell one southern accent from another and the recording engineers
in Atlanta hadn't bothered to alert them to racial details. It is one of many such
anecdotes, like that of Peggy Lee and her army fan, and Elvis, yet to come.

See video: Allen Brothers, Chattanooga Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6XCekGOKj8

The Allens went on to release 34 more records, mostly in the genre then
known as white blues.304 White blues artists proliferated throughout the twenties
and thirties: Dick Justice recorded "Cocaine" and "Brown Skin Blues;" Grand Ole
Opry star Kirk McGee fiddled on "Salt Lake City Blues" and "Salty Dog Blues;"
his brother Sam played "Railroad Blues" with all the "pulls, bent notes, choked
chords, and even a high falsetto vocal done in unison with the guitar, in the
manner of delta bluesmen."305 Sam and Kirk learned their style from Black
railroad workers out front of their father's store near Nashville, and would later
say they had kept to the same style the Black workers had taught them sixty
years before. 306

Which means what? Perhaps that what we think is White is maybe all that
and more. The “White blues” are a good example of syncretism, the coalescence
of a new style based on pre-existing affinities. Like the common pentatonic
leanings of Celts and West Africans, the blues attitude straddled the gulf between
southern Blacks and Whites. Poor rural Whites had plenty to groan about and
had long sung all kinds of sad old Anglo songs. Of course, the blues aren't all
sad: they have at their core a way of dealing with adversity through humor and
invention. That too had a universal appeal. The overall effect was to permanently
infuse transplanted European folks with African-American sensibility, leaving

156
behind the old-time British ballads. Gone was the a cappella solo, replaced by a
new American music.

Although there are numerous instances in American music history of

confusion over the race of a performer heard on radio, there is also a limit to the
absorption of the blues and its related genres by White performers. William
Lightfoot described White blues as “a deep appreciation of the blues, attempts at
replicating the form that use certain key elements, the omission of equally
important elements, and an amorphous notion about the fundamental nature of
blues music.”307

The White blues was a Southern phenomenon, and with increased migration
of Southerners to the North, White and Black communities separated and their
musics drifted apart. Rock and roll would bring them together and there would
be continuous evolutions of Country, blues, rock and soul styles in relation to
each other. But the separation of Country—so much a product of mutual Black
and White influence—from blues was a landmark negative development in race
relations.

In the wake of the Hawaiian craze, the metal-bodied, self-amplifying

National Guitar became popular with blues players who had already fretted with
knives to create a slide effect; in the twenties Country musicians took up the
National's competitor, the Dobro, which later led to the electrified pedal steel
guitar. i Clell Summey was among the early players of the Dobro, recording
"Steel Guitar Blues" and others with Roy Acuff's first band.

See video: Uncle Dave Macon, "Take Me Back To My Old Carolina Home"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gicjw5n92qQ

Another Tennessean influenced by the blues was Uncle Dave Macon. His
1924 record "Hill Billie Blues" was an adaptation of W.C. Handy's version of
"Hesitation Blues." He had been schooled on a wide variety of songs from mines,
roads and rivers, created by Black and White alike, all of which he brought into
the Grand Ole Opry.308, ii

See video: Frank Hutchison, Cannonball Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En680dggMjU

i
Developed by the Dopyera Brothers. Dobro means "good" in Slavic languages; their motto was
"Dobro means good in any language." (Clarke, 153)
ii
A detailed exposition on Macon’s repertoire resides at http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/udm.htm

157
 And up the road in West Virginia an Irish-American miner named Frank
Hutchison picked up the blues from Black miners and railroad workers,
beginning with Henry Vaughan, who taught the eight-year old Frank to play
slide guitar with a knife in 1905. After further tutoring from Bill Hunt, an old
Black hill-dweller who knew the old "common stock" tunes, Hutchison went on
to record "Worried Blues," "Stackalee," "John Henry" and many others. He
complained to friends that Okeh Records—where he recorded in a series with
Emmett Miller and others—tried to move him away from the blues.309

See video: Tom Darby and Jimmy Tarlton, “Little Ola,”

their take on Aloha Oe. ~1930
https://youtu.be/fvjdy0EmK7I

South Carolina's Jimmy Tarlton and Tom Darby were a popular White duo;
Tarlton reportedly learned slide guitar at the age of ten from a Black musician. 310
Just as likely, he hung with Hawaiian musicians in L.A. during his travels.

See video: Roscoe Holcomb, Pretty Polly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45zDYqVoJYc

Roscoe Holcomb (1911-1981), a Kentucky musician, is among many who

credited Blind Lemon Jefferson with bringing the blues to the hills in the
twenties, when he sang for Black railroad workers. Writer John Cohen concurs,
saying Holcomb's singing style comes from Jefferson. Hobart Smith heard him
too. Many White musicians picked up finger-picking from Jefferson in Dallas in
the late twenties.311 Another Black player often cited is Blind Blake, who recorded
blues and rags together with White musicians in Kentucky in the twenties.

The influential Virginia musician Dock Boggs (1898-1971), also a miner, used
to visit nearby Black communities and follow blues and string band musicians
around. He repeatedly inveigled guitarist “Go Lightning” to play “John Henry”
for him. "I had seen two colored men who picked the banjo with one finger and
thumb, or with two fingers," he wrote. "I said to myself, never telling anyone,
that was the way I was going to learn." 312 The band he heard featured guitar,
mandolin, fiddle, and banjo. Boggs combined the fingerpicking he picked up
there with the old frailing or clawhammer style.

See video: Dock Boggs: Country Blues, 1966

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a54YpZIdFS0

He also learned from records, a big advantage of the 1920s over some
competing decades. He absorbed both religious and secular genres this way.

158
Boggs developed a moaning, "mountain blues" singing style and a banjo
approach that was widely copied and deeply embedded in the bluegrass lexicon.
In one performance, Boggs introduced "Down South Blues" as "one of the songs
that I heard a colored girl sing." The colored girl was Sara Martin, who recorded
it in 1923.313

In Georgia we find Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, a classic/comic group
who parodied their own mountain home ways, minstrel-style. Tanner was a hit
doing imitations of "Decatur Street types"—Black folks, one would guess—at a
fiddlers' convention.314 In addition to Tanner, the key players were fiddler
Clayton McMichen and guitarist Riley Puckett. They performed a mix of Tin Pan
tunes, traditional hill tunes, and blues, with lots of crossover and crossback: trad
tunes were rewritten by songsmiths, blues crept into Anglo-based tunes and vice
versa. Their record company did its best to restrict them to hillbilly tunes, since
their whole existence was based on the separation of the White market from the
“race” market.315
See video: Frailing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiI_nRV0toQ

Puckett was a blind guitarist who played bluesy bass runs with flatted
sevenths and twisted syncopations.316 He was partial to African-American tunes:
"Puckett's Blues" was really W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," and he performed
"Cow Cow" Davenport's "Mama Don't Allow No Low Down Hanging Around,"
versions of which have enlivened country repertoires both Black and White
down the years. He played a slide version of "John Henry" that he called
"Darkey's Wail," saying he learned it from a Black guitarist. 317

See video: Clayton McMichen & the Georgia Wildcats—Wild Cat Rag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAolo09uJiI

McMichen was the jazziest fiddler in those particular mountains, said to

have been joyously jazzed when he first heard recordings from across the holler
and down the pike a ways. Like his father, he was musically forward and
outward-looking, listening widely and incorporating whatever he liked. It was
his idea to play popular tunes on stringed instruments, rather than horns—
something that would really catch on further down the line in Texas. He
recorded with Jimmie Rodgers and also organized his own bands, including the
Melody Men and the Georgia Wildcats, who later turned their hands to New
Orleans-style jazz and played over Louisville radio until 1955.318

Even solid old-time Roy Acuff had his McMichen in Red Jones, a band
member who favored popular tunes and jazzy styles. 319 Because of these musical

159
differences, however, McMichen left Tanner and Jones moved on from the Acuff
sound.

Vernon Dalhart mixed "plantation" tunes and old Black-face shtick with
railroad songs and pop tunes.320 Charlie Poole, with his North Carolina
Ramblers, played an old three-finger banjo style that has been traced to minstrels
—imitation plantation.321 The Ramblers played everything from "Hesitatin' Blues"
to "White House Blues," with Tin Pan Alley and coon songs as well.

All this talk of White folks playin’ the blues, picking up the styles, loving the
attitude, etc., begs the question of why—at least to us moderns—it mostly
doesn’t sound the same when Whites do it. That’s a question of culture that you
have to gradually wrap your mind around. Whenever people adopt their
neighbors’ music, there’s some adapting going on too—sometimes more apt than
others. Abbe Niles went so far as to say that with Black blues singers “it is the
gaiety that is feigned, while in the White, it is the grief.” 322 Maybe so—it certainly
fits in with the “everything but the burden” thesis. Simply put, if one is not part
of a given community, one is not likely to become so simply by copying a style. It
might in fact be offensive to try, as it seems to indicate an effort to appear as
something one is not, and has little chance of becoming. Later on, people who
tried this act would be called wannabees, or posers. The alternative, that of
absorbing new styles and combining them with one’s own background
influences, is equally common and arguably more fruitful.
___________________________________
RIDDLES OF THE CARTER FAMILY

A.P. Carter came from an all-White part of Virginia; Black

guitarist Leslie Riddle(s)i came from a part of North Carolina
where the races fraternized extensively.

i
Often spelled “Riddles,” as folks from that region often add an s here and there.

160
 A.P. would drive from Virginia to Tennessee to pick up his
musician friend. Together they scoured the Appalachians,
collecting songs from Black and White alike, Carter writing down
the words and Riddle memorizing the tunes. i Carter's easy
friendship with Riddle and non-discrimination in his traveling
habits was credited by his daughter Gladys to his being "partial to
poor people."

Leslie Riddle's music spanned the

gamut of styles common to musicians in
the Piedmont: ragtime, blues, ballads,
religious tunes, pop tunes. He played at
White and Black dances, mostly Black,
throughout the twenties. Many of his
tunes were transmitted to the Carters.

Riddle had lost half a leg on the job

at a cement plant and received nothing in
return, which conjures up the specter of
numerous maimed and blind Black
musicians who were disabled due to lack of health care or any
societal caring for their sort. This drove many to music. 323 The
Carters bought him a wooden replacement. Riddle later lost the
two middle fingers of his picking hand in a mysterious gun
incident, and had to retrain himself on guitar.

Riddle taught Maybelle Carter the melody guitar style

associated with the blues, which complemented her more
traditional White folk-
based style. Prior to this,
White folk guitarists rarely
played melody, confining
themselves to strumming.
The playing of melody on
the bass and middle
strings and rhythm fills on
the high ones was a banjo
style, used also by Dock

One of Carter's song sources was Riddles' friend Brownie McGee, the Black guitarist who played
i

with harmonica player Sonny Terry.

161
Boggs, who got it from Black players. Contrarily, playing melody
on the high strings while picking out alternating bass patterns
with the thumb was a ragtime approach she learned directly from
Riddle.324

See video: The Carter Family, Wildwood Flower.

Maybelle on guitar, in front
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewnfWoSQz3o

Maybelle's rhythm, influenced by old-time banjo style,

included, after the bass or melody note played on

the down beat, a sharp downward brush stroke
played with the back of the fingernail of the index
or first finger, on the upbeat. Consequently, most
Carter Family songs moved against a steady
upbeat or "backbeat."325

The economic relationship between the partners was

murky if not shady. Riddle seems never to have been
directly paid for his part, and in those pre-commercial
days it didn't particularly occur to him to ask. But
thinking back, he accused the Carters of duplicity:

He [A.P.] was learning, but I didn't know it.

They was learning. They'd have me play a song
you know, and they'd listen to it. And then when I
wasn't around they'd practice on it, then when
everybody'd turn their head, they'd go and make a
record...They had more sense than I did, cause
along then I didn't have enough sense to get me
nothing out of it...I didn't get nary a penny out of
it.326

He also didn't get much respect from history; Riddle himself

recorded only once. The important points, to my mind, are the
enduring ignorance among Carter and Country fans of Riddle’s
role or even his existence, and the overarching ignorance about
the Black sources of Country music, including the Carters'. This in
spite of repeated Blacknowledgements by such as Carter and
Rodgers and many more.

162
 Riddle was, in fact, entirely forgotten until Maybelle told
Mike Seeger about him in 1963. He had not owned a guitar for 18
years, but he now recorded and performed at festivals. He died of
cigarettes in 1980, after final visits from the surviving Carters.
___________________________________

The major figure in Country music's next era

was King Hiram "Hank" Williams of Alabama. The
Baptist church provided his first musical enthusiasm,
and he found his music teacher while shining shoes
and selling peanuts at age twelve: an old Black street
singer-guitarist named Rufus Payne, aka Tee-Tot, in
Greenville, Alabama. Hank frequented the Black part
of town, soaking up the blues. Fifteen years later in
Montgomery he would recruit Black men to take him
to the local Black singers, and his audience included
a significant segment of American Americans.327

See video: Hank Williams, Hey Good Lookin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjCoKslQOEs

SUBSTITUTION: Bill Malone suggests we give a listen to

John Dudley, a Black prisoner in the Mississippi Penitentiary
(Parchman), to hear a yodeling style similar to Hank's.328

See video: John Dudley, Cool Drink Of Water

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCZyTIsU0bo

Hank played the honky-tonks,i a southern and southwestern bar scene that
produced western swing and all manner of polycultural southern music. His live
honky-tonk music had more blues and swing in it than what he recorded or
played at the Opry.329,ii His career was at a peak in 1953 when he died, 29 years
old, of alcohol and pills taken for the pain from a congenital spinal defect that
wasn't treated at birth because his family was dirt poor. At his funeral, African-
Americans filled the balcony, and a Black gospel quartet sang.330
___________________________________
THE HAWAIIAN CONNECTION

i
Named after the turn of the century Black bars in New Orleans called tonks.
As you proceed through this list of White musicians naming their Black inspirations, recall that
ii

in 1828 Daddy Rice met a Black man dancing for his own entertainment, and that man's style
became the main attraction in Rice's and later minstrels' acts.

163
 In 1916 more Hawaiian records were sold in the U.S. than
of any other kind of music. Jimmie Rodgers at one point played
ukulele in a Hawaiian band. Rodgers’ back-up guitarist, Cliff
Carlisle, played a steel-bodied guitar flat on his lap in a bluesy
style that can be heard today from the bluegrass Dobro.331 Military
and missionary music, along with sailors' tunes from Portugal, i
had been imported into Hawaii, and the islanders developed their
own styles based on the influx of influences. Their penchant for
slide guitar was then incorporated into Country music with the
development of the Dobro, and later the pedal steel guitar. (Black
southerners had already played homemade slide instruments,
even slide banjo.332 In fact, they used to slide a bottle on a wire
strung on the side of a barn. ii This "diddly-bow" was an African
retention.)333

See video: Rare 1943 Sol Hoopii Video—Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb0A2RLE32U

Joseph Kekuku fretted the guitar with a comb, and first

recorded the style in 1909; steel guitar star Sol Hoopii worked in
Los Angeles through the twenties and thirties, playing a mix of
Country, jazz and Hawaiian traditional music and evolving
several tunings; his favorite one became the standard for pedal
steel guitars in Nashville. In the forties many Country players—
including Jimmy Helms, who played with Hank Williams—lifted
their solos note for note from Hoopii's records.334
___________________________________

We now arrive at the question of guitar picking style, and an important

innovator whose name is well known among scholars and selected guitar geeks,
but not elsewhere.

___________________________________
ARNOLD SHULTZ

In the Green River region of western Kentucky, centered

around Muhlenberg and Ohio counties, veterans of the
revolutionary war were given free land; they brought with them
“free” labor, a few enslaved folks per family. Matthias Shultz was
i
There is even a Hawaiian-Brazilian connection, by way of the Portuguese. Imagine a samba
rhythm and some percussion laying over the top of a mellow Hawaiian slide guitar tune.
ii
Watch Lonnie Pitchford play the side of a house on “Johnny Stole an Apple” in the film Deep Blues.

164
one of the veterans, and his captives received his name. A
hundred years later, a child was born to the last "Shultz" to live in
slavery; he would make his mark on, if not in, music.

Arnold Shultz grew up playing music with his family,

mostly for square dances. He began playing guitar in 1900, at age
14, and developed a thumb-style approach described by Robert
Cantwell as syncopated melody, a steady, damped bass heavily
accented, walking bass runs, melodic ornaments, a swinging or
bouncing tempo, and, in contrast to other Country styles,
sophisticated chording up the neck of the guitar, with all the
strings stopped.335

After the Civil War, formerly enslaved laborers had

become farmers and stevedores, and later, miners. In isolated
roadless mountain areas, Blacks and Whites got along, relatively,
and made music together. Arnold Shultz walked the railroad
tracks of this area from around 1918 to 1931, jamming with Black
and White string band players. They played hillbilly music for
sure, but also blues and rags and gospel and just American music
generally. Shultz also played on riverboats, and picked up a lot of
styles traveling to the cities outside the immediate region; the
Green River connects to the Mississippi via the Ohio, carrying
outside influences including musical ones. Shultz brought them
and taught them.336

165
 Racial interaction took many forms. One of Shultz' playing
partners was Clarence Wilson, a respected clawhammer banjo
player. They had a group with a fiddler named Pendleton
Vandiver—Bill Monroe's uncle. Wilson's daughter Flossie
remembered a picnic thrown by the Black community for the
Whites, at which Shultz played. It seems that Arnold broke down
many racial barriers in Kentucky through the strength of his
musicianship—but not all of them. Flossie says he always waited
to eat till the Whites were finished.337

One of the folks impressed by Arnold was Ike Everly,

father of the Brothers. Ike’s father paid Arnold to teach Ike's sister
a guitar piece, and Ike was fascinated by Arnold's ragtime style.
Another student was Tex Atchison, who heard Shultz in a swing
band in which he was the sole Black member. Atchison later
replaced him in that outfit, before moving on to the Prairie
Ramblers. He defined one of Shultz's innovations:

He was the first...to play the lead and his own rhythm at
the same time.338

The bandleader, Forrest "Boots" Faught, concurred:

166
 Yessir! Arnold was the only man I ever saw do it back in
them days [1918]...And people were amazed: "Looky there
—that man's leadin' that music on that guitar and playin'
his own accompaniment!'"339

Shultz also broke the gang out of their back-country three-

chord prison, teaching them about passing chords:

Arnold Shultz says, "Throw that A in there!" And we'd

start puttin that A in, and he'd say, "See how much better it
sounded?"340

In 1920 a White guitar picker named Kennedy Jones was so

impressed with Shultz' thumb-picked style that he bought a box
of thumb picks and gave them away to every guitar picker he
met. This remarkable new technology spread the style through
the Green River valley in a New York minute. But most directly,
Shultz taught Jones, who taught 14 year-old Mose Rager on a
porch in 1925.341 Rager played with Ike Everly in the thirties. He
glued together the styles of Kennedy Jones, Arnold Shultz and
others, and taught it all to Merle Travis; Chet Atkins heard Travis
on the radio at age 16, and it made his day. This is a piece of the
story that helps explain why modern Country music is possessed
of a distinctively jazzy, bluesy demeanor.

Arnold Shultz died at 45 in 1931, maybe poisoned, maybe

not. Like Buddy Bolden, he was never recorded. The brilliant
Merle Travis took his legacy to the outside world in 1936.
See video: Merle Travis - Midnight Special (solo guitar, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rhOZKH7mo
___________________________________

Guitar stuff: Travis picking, as it is generally known, has a strong ragtime

component, and features an alternating thumb-picked bass on the first and third
beat. In between these beats come lighter beats, played by the thumb across the
chord, tempering the traditional stiffness with a danceable bounce. All this on the
bass, which is made more percussive by damping it with the heel of the hand,
lightening the chokehold on the off-beats for greater bounce. Meanwhile, a
melody is fingered on the high strings. As noted above, the player finds complex
chords all over the neck, and applies the style to any type of music that gets in
the way. As Eubie Blake said, "That's your ragtime."

167
 Travis picking came to be the dominant guitar style in Country music. It
came from the coal-mines of Kentucky, via coal-loads of players influenced by
our man Arnold, and was perfected by Rager and Travis. But it had deeper roots:
the thumb is imitating the bass notes in stride or ragtime piano, while the
melody is fingered in a duplication of the piano's right hand.

SUBSTITUTION: Listen to Travis or Atkins, followed by Jelly

Roll Morton on piano or stride players like James P. Johnson or Fats
Waller.

I played my primitive version of this style for years without even knowing it
—I simply absorbed the feeling and found my own way of making the rhythms.
It expressed my own multicultural (Country, jazz, blues, rock) heritage. I was a
Shultz-Travis baby picker without even trying—and for the same reason: when
you play alone, you have to play all the parts for the whole band. A middle class
White boy from Seattle has roots in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, and I'm
grateful to Kennedy Jones for buying that box of thumb-picks.

Fancy picker Chet Atkins, the Country Gentleman himself, said he was
raised on "a stack of records, half white and half black." The traveling musicians
of earlier times had been replaced by radio and records as the methods of
cultural interpenetration. Atkins' demigods included Belgian “Gypsy jazz”
guitarist Django Reinhardt, who was also favored by Chet's backup artists,
Homer and Jethro.342

SUBSTITUTION: In 1946 Atkins recorded "Guitar Blues,"

with a fancy arrangement including clarinet. He did the
substitution for us.
See video: Doc Watson-Deep River Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAbrnjdtYw

Another superb Country and folk picker, Arthel “Doc” Watson from Deep
Gap, North Carolina, played with tremendous swing, and professed a great love
for the blues. He played swing, rockabilly, and honky-tonk guitar before
becoming a folk idol. Referring to Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt, he
said that "Somehow, I never could get the soul in my guitar picking that they
do."343

Then there was the curious case of Jimmie Davis, who wrote and sang "You
Are My Sunshine," which helped him become Governor of Louisiana in the

168
forties and again in the sixties. He was White, need we note. But he recorded
with Blacks, including the all-Black Louisville Jug Band, and in his campaigns he
was often charged with race-mixing.i Davis' notable recordings in 1932 included
"Red Nightgown Blues" and "Yo Yo Mama."

The interaction between Black and White music in the South had been going
on for many generations before recording technology appeared, and the
individual modern-day stories recounted here have their counterparts, more
sparsely documented, in earlier times. The style of White players hasn't been
“pure European” for over two hundred years. And the developments among
Black musicians of the last century have long since spread to White musicians;
the blues and rags that Country musicians play are the best examples.

With the big migrations to the northern and western cities, Blacks moved on
to urban music, nursing little of the nostalgia for a simpler rural life that many
Whites tended to indulge in. Rock and roll was, indirectly, a result of White folk
music's failure to move with the times: Country music, although it evolved and
interacted with other musics, came to idealize the old country ways, both in
word and in sound. But for next-gen White youth, country and pop were
superseded by a grittier, more urban, more Afro-American music. Rock and roll
was a result of Black urbanization; its White variants were able to evolve in
tandem with Black urban music, intersecting and cross-pollinating frequently
over the years and through all the crises of modern urban race relations.

Over time, stylistic cross-influences continue to proliferate, through recorded

media and live interaction of players from various traditions, and Country music
continues to be pulled over towards the Black lane. There are a multitude of
crossover tunes that start in one chart and rebound into another. 344 On "New
Country" stations, a more Country-rock sort of beat is heard. Nashville session
players are forever spilling over if not jumping ship into jazz. Alt-Country folks
aren't too fond of the slick Nashville style, and combine their roots in swing,
blues, soul and gospel. The beat goes on.

On the flip side is a

stylistic adventure
pursued by Black artists
blending Country and
Hip-Hop, like Lil Nas X

i
Back in 1924, former Governor Taylor of Tennessee had recorded a "negro spiritual" with his
quartet. (Archie Green 1965, 217)

169
(Old Town Road) and Blanco Brown (The Git Up), running parallel to the
emergence of a generation of Black Country artists like Mickey Guyton, Kane
Brown, Jimmie Allen, Brittney Spencer, and Willie Jones—all upending the
mirage of Country as an exclusively White zone, then or now.

See video: Willie Jones - American Dream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8xqcuK-aD0

Black musicians certainly do, as noted, take on White influences. Most of the
forms they use are of European origin. As Barry O'Connell described the
interaction, "influences moved both ways, crossing, doubling on each other,
reinforcing, and
playing back."345
That said, from its
roots to the
present, Black folk
musical style tends
to transform the
European-based
forms, to pull other
styles toward it
because it is
rhythmically (a)
more sophisticated
and (b) less stiff,
more fluid.i These are two things a musician leans toward eventually, and a lot of
civilians do too. Listen to several versions of the fiddle classic "Orange Blossom
Special" and note the rhythmic tricks the soloists (and also the rhythm section)
resort to when they tire of playing it straight. They make it Mean a Thing!

21 WESTERN SWINGERS

Out in Texas and Oklahoma in the early thirties, Country music fans were
beginning to swing to a new sound being pioneered by Bob Wills and his Texas
Playboys and Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies (Brown played with Wills
from 1929-32). Western Swing was an offshoot of the old country string band
tradition, Black and White, integrated with New Orleans/Dixieland jazz, swing,
and elements of Norteño, Cajun,ii Mariachi, and blues.

i
Listen, for several examples, to Rhythm, Country and Blues (see Discography).
Blues is a core element in the music played by White Cajuns. This is often overlooked by Cajun
ii

fans.

170
 See video: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oADX_lt2F9o

If Texas seems like kind of a White and Mexican place, don’t let’s forget
Texans Scott Joplin, Charlie Christian, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Victoria Spivey
and Huddie Ledbetter. White jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden grew up near the
same time and place as Wills, and credited his own rhythm and style to Black
gospel tent revivals across from his home. (Fletcher Henderson would ask Jack,
“Tell me, are you colored?”) Sleepy Johnson, guitarist with the Playboys, said the
White musicians in Forth Worth studied all the "race" records that came out.
Wills’ band made friends with a furniture store owner to listen to the records
they sold—pop, blues, Dixieland, “race music.”

As a child in the Texas Panhandle, Bob Wills picked cotton; in the cotton
camps he met Black families. Some of the pickers played trumpet at night, and
Bob was fascinated. He danced jigs with the Black kids and heard the adults sing
blues in the fields. Later, when the Wills family had their own farm, they hired
Black workers.

Bob’s dad played fiddle, and Bob picked it up. In 1929 he entered a traveling
medicine show fiddle contest and won out over the troupe’s fiddler, then blacked
up his face to join the show. He told jokes and cut a jig. (You can watch his
grownup stepping on YouTube.) In this dying corner of minstrelsy he was like
the other bookend to Joel Sweeney: born and bred in the cotton fields of the
southwest, he grew up singing and dancing with Blacks, unlike the northern
minstrels who had learned their chops from Sweeney and other White
southerners. Bob was kind of like Elvis that way. Or like Jimmie Rodgers—"he
was more colored, really.” (Wills recorded Rodgers’ songs, but only the blues
and jazz tunes.) And he idolized Bessie Smith, riding 50 miles on horseback to
catch her show.

Wills’ first record featured a Bessie Smith song, along with a breakdown i—a
multicultural recording gambit Elvis would repeat 25 years later in his own
debut recordings. But Wills was dedicated to the dance hall, and dancers needed

i
Breakdowns are defined by the Library of Congress fiddle tunes folks as “instrumental tunes in
duple meter (2/4 or 4/4) at a quick dance speed. This general term in the American South is
roughly equivalent to the term ‘reel’ elsewhere in the English-speaking world. But it does not
imply a particular type of dance; a "breakdown" tune may be used for square dances, longways
dances, or other group dances, as well as for solo fancy dancing.”
https://www.loc.gov/collections/henry-reed-fiddle-tunes/about-this-collection/related-resources/

171
their bands to swing. He studied jazz records, adopting not only the swing but
also the exchange of solos typical of jazz. This was new to Western music: he was
transforming it into Black-influenced music for White dancers. Bandmate Ray
DeGeer, who went on to play with many jazz greats, said “he was the first man I
ever heard who made breakdowns swing…it swung on the Dixieland side. It had
a very New Orleans Dixie beat.” Short-stroke breakdown fiddling was for square
dancing, but the long, smooth bow strokes were for swinging.

Wills’ early bands essentially played jazz on country folk instruments. It was
sometimes called “hot dance” or “hot string dance” music—hot being a nickname
for dance music, and for jazz. Out of 200 songs recorded in his peak period,
three-fourths were jazz tunes or close to it—rags, stomps, Dixieland, swing.
According to Wills, the music was called western swing not to distinguish it
from other western bands, but to mark it off from other swing bands. Among his
35 blues and jazz recordings were “Drunkard Blues,” a re-write of ‘St. James
Infirmary,” “Jelly Roll Blues,” by Morton, and “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” by
Black songwriter Shelton Brooks; also “Basin Street Blues,” “Wang Wang Blues,”
and “Trouble In Mind,” a 1920s “race record” tune.

Wills himself was not a soloist, didn’t improvise choruses--only played the
melody—and some in his audience preferred the melody to the improvisations
anyway. But his sense of rhythm—ah, that came from his sense of blues and jazz.
And as for his melody, “He did not hit the notes right on the nose,” said
clarinetist Woodie Wood, “he sort of oozed into it.” 346 He was capturing the
sound of the human voice, like a jazz musician. “I slurred my fiddle…to play the
blues,” he said.
See video: Curly Ray Cline, bluesy fiddle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2YMRAPHTBI

In performance, even on record, Wills also felt free to let fly with a cry every
so often, an “ah haa” he picked from his dad and granddad. Some people came
to his shows just to hear ah haa, it was that cool. He bantered with the musicians,
joking, taunting, cracking wise, hollering—the sort of thing he’d heard Black
musicians do in his childhood. His own impoverished childhood gave him the
blues, and having shared it with Black sharecroppers gave him a means to
express it.

The string bands out west diverged from the ones back east. What the heck is
the difference between Country and Western anyhow? Well for one thing, there’s
a kind of shuffle rhythm, which you can detect by listening to the staccato style
of the rhythm guitar. (That shuffle also set the “western” swing bands like Count

172
Basie’s in Kansas City apart from the backeasters. Hear it as triplets, 1-2-3, with
the accent on the one and three.) Country and Eastern guitar players didn’t do
that. East of the Mississippi, music was played more for sit-down shows. On the
frontier, dancing was more important. In the early 1900s, west Texas and
Oklahoma were still frontier-like places.

See video: Shuffle explained by Sharne Andrews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjWFcdncha0

Let's pause for a minute and talk about the fiddle once agin. There had been
a number of early jazz fiddlers, but they went by the boards because they
couldn't cut through the volume of the horns. Jazz bands and dance groups were
leaving violins behind around the time Wills brought them to the fore. He
brought the Southwest into the jazz age—despite prejudice from elitists who
called the fiddle backward, an instrument for hicks, and from racists, who called
the music “nigger fiddling.”

The guitar had volume issues too, but right about this time Reddy Kilowat
showed up with an amp. Strings are the things in Country music, so here we
have Country instruments playing jazzy runs on an instrument no longer
associated with jazz. But you can fix that:

SUBSTITUTION: Listen to a fiddle or guitar solo on a western

swing tune and imagine it as a trumpet, sax, or clarinet. Listen to
classic jazz (New Orleans-style) and replace the horn with a guitar
or fiddle. Now you're in the middle of all American music of the
period, obliterating categories. In fact you can skip this exercise—
just get a Wills record with a horn section on it. And replace the
vocalist with….your choice.

Now about those Playboys: second fiddler Jesse Ashlock idolized jazz
violinist Joe Venuti. He said of Wills’ band, “We tried to do the same thing on
strings they did on horns.” Vocalist Tommy Duncan was hired in part because of
his ability to do Emmett Miller. Pianist Alton Strickland, who had never played
Western music, was a disciple of Earl “Fatha” Hines. Guitarist Eldon Shamblin
came from swing and went West, helping—along with Charlie Christian and
Eddie Lang—to transform the guitar from a mere rhythm instrument into a lead
one.

See video: Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang - Wild Cat (1930) "King Of Jazz"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6IGuZb_y0

173
 Also note that western swing developed in the wake of the Hawaiian music
tsunami, which left its imprint via the pedal steel guitar. This instrument later
became important in Nashville and helped to meld east and west into the new
Country, for better and worse. The Texas Playboys use of the steel guitar was
important in making the instrument popular down the decades, and it’s
interesting to speculate how much the jazz-oriented Wills band affected the
steel’s subsequent style. Leon McAuliffe often would slide his bar up the steel in
imitation of a trombone, especially after the Playboys lost their trombonist. This
stuff was so influential that in the forties the music journals started referring to
both Texas and Nashville product as “country and western”—in case you
wondered where that came from. And you can hear the influence already in the
forties—listen, for starters, to Hank Williams’ fiddlers. And Wills fiddler Johnny
Gimble went on to a career as a Nashville sideman.

This was also the first band in Country music to use drums, which opened
up a new rhythmic connection between Black and White music. In 1935 Bob
recruited drummer Smokey Dacus, who commented “I didn’t have to change
from the Dixieland jazz style I’d been playing.” His rhythm was the 2/4 of
Dixieland, brush stroking on the down beat, and accenting with the stick on the
back beat (two and four). They called it the “suitcase rhythm” because, in an
effort to strengthen the backbeat, he hit his drum case with the wide end of the
stick. Outrageous? It worked.

And against the advice of jazz and western players and producers alike, Bob
added horns. The folks he hired had played with the likes of Joe Venuti, Red
Nichols, and Jack Teagarden; after the war he hired players from the old Jimmy
Dorsey and Glenn Miller bands. He added enough so they could drive dancers
like a regular swing band did. Better maybe, because in Texas—and Tulsa—you
swing with strings. And further west, on the coast, they liked their western to
swing, too. It was kinda like what Bill Monroe was doing at just about the same
time: giving an old music a kick in the rhythm. In fact, Monroe was a Wills fan,
and his fiddler, Kenny Baker, allowed that bluegrass was just jazz played on
strings.

The 1950s brought rockabilly,i with a rhythm and a swing closer to the
Western one than anything else. In fact, Bill Haley’s band was originally “The
Four Aces of Western Swing.” And Fats Domino, leading R&B voice in New
Orleans, said he modeled his rhythm section after Wills’. The Western Swing

i
“Rockabilly is White lyric with Black rhythm, speeded up with a little bluegrass.” – Carl
Perkins

174
sound, along with the Texas honky-tonk style played by smaller bands, was
eclipsed in the fifties, but it remains a pervasive influence in Country music
generally, giving it more of a blues-jazz tinge than in the old days. This tinge can
be heard by listening closely to guitar and especially pedal steel solos, then
comparing them to solos from earlier times.

In the formal sense, Wills was a relatively uneducated musician. But he

knew the feel he wanted; it was based on his childhood, his musical influences,
and his need to create music that people of a certain place and time would dance
to. The feel took over from the hidebound structures and rules that others kept
trying to impose. In his efforts to fit form to function, he drew on his closeness to
the Black music that helped its people to survive. The challenge Wills met was
that people wanted to dance to the latest thing; Wills provided it, and made
Texas a swing state.

22 BLUEGRAZZ

Back east and north a bit, Bill Monroe, a Kentuckian of Scottish descent,
formed the Blue Grass Boys in 1938. As his music evolved, it stirred some blues
and some considerable acceleration into the string band music of the Kentucky
hills. The new style incorporated dissonance and syncopation—and, in the case
of the fiddle, slurs—imported from blues and swing.

Another

innovation was the three-finger banjo roll introduced by Earl Scruggs. By playing
notes in groups of three, Scruggs set his rhythm against the prevailing count of
four beats to the bar (recall the discussion of this in the Early Fusion section). This

175
roll was developed earlier by Black Kentucky guitarist Sylvester Weaver, and can
be heard on a 1924 Okeh release of "Smoketown Strut." i This roll not only sets up
a spinning, gyrating rhythmic tension, it throws the other players into the game,
giving them the opportunity to play back and forth between the two pulses, or in
between. The entire spectrum of rhythmic accents is opened up, freeing the
music from a repetitive thudding on a simple pulse.

See video: Earl Scruggs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Fq1dGb5Rk

Monroe's early use of fast riffs to fill in empty spaces accentuated the call-
and-response aspect of the music. Elaborating on this manic tendency, the Blue
Grass Boys evolved a third important difference from old-time string bands: the
emphasis on improvised solos. This led the music toward jazz, since the more
extensive soloing expanded the musical vocabulary in all available directions,
and jazz/blues is the nearest neighbor to visit. Alan Lomax wrote in 1959,

The mandolin plays bursts reminiscent of jazz trumpet choruses; a heavily

bowed fiddle supplies trombone-like hoedown solos...347

In its improvisation and also its bluesy quality, the mandolin style diverges
from its Appalachian influences. As for the fiddle, Chubby Wise had in fact been
playing western swing on it before joining Monroe.

Bluegrass, in other words, "completely assimilated hillbilly music into itself,

as a jazz band can assimilate popular or even classical pieces into jazz." 348 The
question was posed, said Robert Cantwell,

How, indeed, to do with strings what jazzmen did readily with

drums, horns, and a piano...The answer was to touch Afro-
American music, Black music, at an earlier point in its evolution...at
a point when it, too, was a rural, even a frontier music...to touch it,
in fact, just where old-time music, through the minstrel show, had
touched it: on the plantation, where, among plantation slaves, the
"old southern sound had been born.”349

SUBSTITUTION: Trumpet for mandolin. Trombone for fiddle.

Robert Johnson for Bill Monroe. Pick up some rap lyrics and try
them with bluegrass. Read them with a high lonesome tone.

i
Kienzel, Guitar Player, 39. Related styles include that of Murphy Gribbles with the Black string
band of John Lusk, and the White player Homer Davenport, who recorded in 1925. (Wolfe 1989)

176
 So let's get down to brass influences, or at least stringed ones. Monroe hailed
from Ohio County, in the Green River valley, near Indiana; he got his start
playing backup at square dances for no less than Arnold Shultz who, recall,
played with Bill’s uncle:

The first time I think I ever seen Arnold Schultz...this square dance
was at Rosine, Kentucky...People loved Arnold so well all through
Kentucky there...There's things in my music, you know, that comes
from Arnold Schultz—runs that I use in a lot of my music.350

Bill was only twelve when he first encountered Arnold, in 1924.

See video: Bill Monroe on Arnold Shultz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQZpK1lEFk

Another important source for Monroe was Clayton McMichen, the jazzy
country fiddler. He recorded in the twenties—that first decade of hillbilly and
blues recording that perched on the cusp between the old folk styles and the new
media-induced sophistication and commercialization. A lot of players did time
with his Georgia Wildcats, including Merle Travis.

Monroe was also inclined toward the music of Jimmie Rodgers, a seminal
White bluesy guy, and professed an affinity for Black music in general, which he
picked up from a number of musicians locally. In spite of all this, his singing
style really comes from church singing schools that extend the method of the old
shape-note days.351 The harmony vocals are likewise extracted from White
church traditions, but with a marked bluesy inflection.

Among Monroe's early tunes were "Mule Skinner Blues," "Dog House Blues,"
and "Tennessee Blues." Between Wills and Monroe, the blues was hammered
deep into the soil of modern Country.

Blue Grass Boys guitarist Lester Flatt played in a style that emphasized the
offbeat—a style that Cantwell traces to “a nineteenth century black guitar riff
developed at about the time that the guitar took over from the banjo in Black folk
culture.”352 It reproduces the same rhythm as clawhammer banjo style, which
dates from the late minstrel era.

Minstrels as well as railroad workers brought the banjo into the

Appalachians; they also brought the ragtime rhythms that evolved during the

177
minstrel period. There are many string band and bluegrass tunes called "rags,"
and the offbeat has come to the fore in bluegrass much more than in the older
hillbilly sound.

Granted, there remains a steady bass thump on the one and three beats,
driving the music relentlessly forward and underpinning it with a decidedly
unsyncopated foundation. Without that, it wouldn't be bluegrass. But it's fair to
say that bluegrass is to old-time music as jazz is to ragtime: smoother, less
square, more swinging.353 Recall that all this innovation took place in the wake of
the Swing era and its White Texas counterpart, Western Swing. We must also
note, however, the addition of string bass in bluegrass, which facilitates a
smoother, swingier feel than the old-time bass-less string groups; this change can
be compared to the shift from Dixieland to swing, usually described as including
a shift from 2/4 time to 4/4. More events per measure, smoother sound. 354

Speaking of minstrels, in the early forties Monroe organized a series of tent

shows around his band. They included blackface comedians from the Opry and a
clawhammer banjo player. He also hired, early on, a player of spoons, jug and
bones who performed in blackface. He soon thought better of it and replaced him
with a string bass.355

See video: Alison Krauss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw6NwfOvILU

The bluegrass tradition built on its Monroe-Scruggs beginnings to become an

attractive alternative for its mostly White audience: ostensibly White folk music
with more swing and virtuosity than its old-time predecessors. Although
Monroe contemporaries Ralph and Carter Stanley hewed more to the old
mountain style, Monroe alums Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs added a dobro
player with a blues touch, Uncle Josh Graves. Cantwell called it the joining of the
form of jazz to the content of hillbilly music.356 Manner and matter. And from the
1970s on, the New Grass music of Tony Rice, Sam Bush, and others, and various
progressive offshoots of bluegrass and Country from players like David
Grisman, Mark O’Connor, and Bela Fleck, have leapt even further into the ring of
jazz improvisation, unnerving the purists as they energize the adventurous.

23 RHYTHM AND...ROCK

In the wake of the Black migration to northern cities during and after World
Wars I and II, the blues morphed into rhythm and blues, an urban evolution

178
stirring the blues together with elements of gospel, jazz, country and western,
and big band jazz. The name came about because Jerry Wexler, a reporter for
Billboard Magazine, was tired of segregationist marketing terms like "race
music"i and "sepia series."357

The demise of the big bands in the forties produced, alongside bebop, a
pared down, charged up modernization of swing called jump blues (Big Joe
Turner, Louis Jordan, Johnny Otis, Count Basie's smaller bands, etc.), which
intersected with revved up Chicago-style urban blues (Muddy Waters, Howlin'
Wolf, Guitar Slim, Big Mama Thornton, T-Bone Walker, et al), giving birth to
rhythm and blues and presaging rock and roll.

Of course I would never want to inject politics into a discussion of culture…

but, if there were any two events that caused rock and roll, they were both World
Wars. The glut of war industry jobs in Chicago—along with the collapse of the
European cotton market in World War I—was largely responsible for the exodus
of five million African-Americans out of the South. The largest number went
from Mississippi to the south side of Chicago, where they created the new blues
that would become the Big Beat.

And not to inject technology into a discussion

of taste, but let us return briefly to the persistent
question of the juke box. This little wonder
surfaced in the thirties; within seven years there
were 100,000 in operation. It became the best
source of folk music, White and Black—much
more reliable and democratic in those days than
the radio. In the early days, when juke boxes were
musically segregated according to neighborhood,
one might search out tunes from across the tracks
at the border: Decca Records’ founders had a shop
at the edge of the African American community in
Chicago, and White folks plunked down many a
nickel there.ii

i
"Race records" had originally referred to the pre-1920 positive use of the term "Negro race" in
discussions of Blacks' rising status.
ii
The famous Rock-Ola box, by the way, was not named after Rock. It was named after the
company’s founder, David Rockola.

179
 And what were those records made of? My grandfather used to sell shellac, a
wood finish made from bug secretions in Asia, for a living. At the time, it was
also a crucial
ingredient in
musical discs. With
World War II came a
shellac shortage,
and the record
companies scaled
back on their
Country and blues
discs. This created a
big vacuum for the
record-buying pub-
lic, and 400 inde-
pendent companies
eventually sprang
up to fill it: Savoy
in ’42, Apollo in ’43, King in ’44, Specialty in ’46, Atlantic and Chess in ’47, and
on and on. This boom of independent production and distribution helped boost
the new urban musics to success—after the war. By then, grandpa was out of
business.

While we’re talking tech, let’s pause for a quick look at radio and related
boxes. Radio had been the national instantaneous medium until the late forties,
when television eclipsed it, as far as the big money and exposure went. One
result was an explosion
of local radio stations,
with local programs and
local advertisers, thanks
to lowered prices.
Because African
Americans were earning
more than before, there
was a mar-ket for Black
advertisers on Black
programs. The most
famous example was
King Biscuit Time, a 15-

180
minute live blues show from Helena, Ar-kansas featuring Sonny Boy
Williamson, which started in 1941.

Another result was that Whites started to hear Black music. This process got
a push from the 1941 national boycott of radio by composers, organized into
ASCAP as mentioned earlier. Their feud over royalties resulted in the formation
of a new group, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), which collected the “folk” folks, the
semi- and non-professionals, from outside the Tin Pan beltway. This gave a big
push to White and Black folk-type and popular musicians, and it was the first
time recorded Black music had really been aired on the waves. Black music
stations were critical not only for the formation of Black urban culture, but also
for its spread to White youth—20% of Atlanta’s WERD listeners, in the early
days at least, were White.358 And over in Memphis, one E. Presley listened to
WDIA, the first station in the nation with an all-African American music format.

See video: Louis Jordan, Caldonia (1946)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5TZcgzirMI

All this tech change led to changes in the charts. Louis Jordan, who had
played with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and Ma Rainey and sung with Chick
Webb's big band, topped the charts in 1946 with "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie," and
stayed on top of both Black and White charts for ten years. He incorporated
White country music influences and produced a combination that, like Chuck
Berry’s, was appealing to White as well as Black youth. His music was cousin to
rockabilly and also became known as one of the several birth-points of rock and
roll. Milt Gabler, who produced both the Louis Jordan and Bill Haley versions of
"Rock Around the Clock," named Jordan as his choice for father of rock and
roll.359 But Jordan was bitter about his offspring:

I’ve had white musicians hang around me twenty-four hours if I

would let ‘em, hang around until they learned something from me.
And then I couldn’t go to hear them play!360

Sam Phillips declared the first Rock and Roll record to be 1951’s “Rocket
‘88,” sung by Jackie Brentson in 18 year-old Ike Turner’s band, the Delta Cats
(and recorded in Phillips’ studio). Bill Haley’s cover of that tune led to his
contract with Decca, where he bounded into position as the “inventor” of rock
and roll.

See videos:

181
 Ike Turner, Rocket 88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_DCz1_QRoI
Bill Haley, Rocket 88 (1951)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lPU6xwc8Cs

Of course, the differences between established and newer music genres are
partly a matter of perception, both at the time and in hindsight, resulting partly
from the mode of packaging for sale. Thus rock ‘n’ roll is not any more entirely
new than jump blues as a stripped down big-band variant was. Speaking of
which, let’s digress briefly back to 1937, when Ella Fitzgerald sang a song about
swing, but using some now-startling lingo:

It came to town, a new kind of rhythm

Spread around, sort of set you sizzlin’
Now I’m all through with symphony
Oh, rock it for me….
It’s true that once upon a time, the opera was the thing
But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme,
So won’t you satisfy my soul with that rock and roll!361

And so, back to R&R: once again, an innovation from Black musicians
became the mainstream of American youth music. 362 In New Orleans, Professor
Longhair mixed mambo, rumba, and calypso as only a port city pianist could do,
and the effects slithered through rhythm and blues and its later variations. From
Macon, Georgia came Little Richard, whose combination of boogie woogie with
jump blues makes him another contender for the title of first rock and roller. So
too Joe Turner, who had been playing similar music in Kansas City since the
thirties. Likewise Wynonie Harris, who cut "Good Rockin' Tonight" in 1948. He
had played in Lucky Millinder's band, which segued from the big band era to
jump blues and then R&B. They featured Dizzy Gillespie, and later Ruth Brown.
In 1938 they recorded as the backup for a rare female electric guitarist, Sister
Rosetta Tharpe,i who came from and remained in the gospel world, though she
was oft-expelled for her profaning of it with, let’s face it, rock and roll. She
influenced Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee
Lewis.

See video: Little Richard,"Long Tall Sally,"from "Don't Knock The Rock" 1956
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxNSvFMkag

SUBSTITUTION: Listen to small groups from the swing era,

then to jump blues. Not so much difference. Especially the blues-
i
Inducted, belatedly, into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. She should have been first.

182
 heavy Kansas City sound from Basie et al—it links the old southern
rural blues to the fifties big beat.

The developing scene in Los Angeles was especially diverse. In 1948, the
bilingual “Pachuco Boogie” featuring Chicano street slang, scat, and blues sold
two million records. And in 1956, bandleader/producer Johnny Otis recorded L'il
Julian Herrera, who turned out to be Ron Gregory on the lam from his probation
officer, or as George Lipsitz summed it up: "The first L.A. Chicano rock and roll
star turned out to be a Hungarian Jew, produced and promoted by a Greek who
thought of himself as Black!" 363 Wholly multicultural, Batman.i Then came Ritchie
Valens (Valenzuela), who put La Bamba on the charts with the help of gospel,
R&B and jazz backing musicians. I never knew that the flip side, “Donna,” my
favorite record when I was eight, was about a girl whose dad told her to stop
going out with “that Mexican.”364

But L.A. night spots hosting R&B shows that drew mixed audiences were
shut down by the city, and various government and private forces combined to
thwart the live venues, radio stations and small record companies. The music
industry controlled the distribution of the music, and had the power to decide
what to disseminate, guarding the nation from the reckless anarchy of cultural
diversity.

And the new sound? Some called

it jungle music, as they had called jazz
before. Some White kids loved it;
some White parents didn't. By the
early fifties some non-African
Americans were starting to play the
new sound. But when White
musicians played R&B it was called,
and sold as, rock and roll. Compared
to what Louis Jordan and Joe Turner
played, it ranged from a bit lighter to a
lot lighter. Black artists were not
particularly marketable in the suburbs
—correction: record companies didn't
want to market them. The assumption
was that you couldn't, therefore you
didn't. But radio broke this down: in
the fifties I listened to Fats Domino

i
“Black by persuasion,” Otis called himself, much as L’il Julian was Chicano by affiliation.

183
and Lloyd Price on the same station that played Pat Boone and the Purple
People-Eater. They really had no choice but to play at least some Black records, if
they wanted to keep their audience from transferring its attention to Black radio.

Middle class White kids of the suburbs were a breed apart from southern or
even urban Whites, who had at least some contact with Black folks and industrial
working class life. We were the first generation to be cut off so completely from
our history, our roots, and the histories and roots of our less privileged fellows.
We had no clue. We didn’t know that our very neighborhoods were created by
discriminatory lending practices and linked to downtown jobs by new
subsidized freeways built through (and destroying) Black neighborhoods. This
was White society’s response to the influx of Blacks to the northern cities.

So even today, when we see photos of poor lowland folk in the South fleeing
hurricanes, some of us feel it must be in some foreign country. We were so
isolated from these cultures that when we received their music, in any of its
many mutated forms, there was no way for us to feel the meanings it had
collected over the generations. No wonder we treated it as a rootless commodity
and assumed that whatever White band was playing it that week was the one
that invented it. When I listen today to the music of my teen years, I marvel at
how little I knew about what I was hearing and—as a musician—replicating. 365

And no wonder we grabbed on for dear life. It was as if our parents had
taken us away from the playground and put us far away in a place where there
was no playground, and not even a bus to get on to go back to the candy store.
That is in fact what happened. And when we got to a certain age and started
looking to define ourselves as different from our parents through own youthful
culture, small wonder we grasped for what had been taken away. We wanted it,
although often we simply knew not what we heard—or at least, where it came
from.

Meanwhile, in the uneasily multi-racial working class schools, the racial

divide was maintained by counterinsurgency-minded apparatchiks. In a Muncie,
Indiana school rec room the jukebox blared White cover versions of Black artists’
tunes, while White kids danced and Black students cooled their heels. The
Coasters, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry were banned by the principal, on
principle: “too suggestive.”366

How much has changed in the decades and generations since? Lots, but…
what remains of that ignorance? What do we not know now, and what did I not
know then? Well, take rock and roll. There are two competing definitions of the

184
original rock and roll: one, that it was rhythm and blues under another name;
two, that it was a new merger of Country with rhythm and blues. Jimmy Meyers,
co-writer of "Rock Around the Clock," took the latter position, claiming that
"rhythm and blues is playing a 4/4 beat and rock and roll is an "ump chuck" beat,
[emphasizing the] 2nd and 4th beat." 367 Meyers said this backbeat emphasis came
from Country music. Lionel Hampton disagreed:

I was brought up in the Holiness Church, the Sanctified Church,

[where] they always used that 2-4 beat. I brought it into jazz that way,
and it left my jazz and went into rock and roll. And that's the miracle
of the beat today...It came from the black roots."368

Music professor Eddie Meadows concurred:

The 2-4 beat is an African concept...All rock musicians basically got

the two-four beat from blues.

See video: Muddy Waters, Got My Mojo Workin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hEYwk0bypY

Milt Gabler, having produced recordings of the same songs in Black and
White versions, felt the main difference was in vocal quality. That would be, for
example, the difference between Mick Jagger and Muddy Waters or, for a more
extreme example, between Little Richard's and Pat Boone's versions of "Long Tall
Sally." Said Pat Boone, "It was rhythm and blues I was singing."369 Sort of. Muddy
praised White guitar players and added, “but they cannot vocal like the black
man.”370 Why is that? Imagine taking a liking to Congolese music, and
journeying to the Congo to join up with the native singers. “If you didn’t grow
up in that culture,” wrote Robert Palmer, “your singing is going to sound like
what it is: an imitation.”371 And not just an imitation of someone’s singing style.
“Blues vocal style,” as Larry Sandberg and Dick Weissman point out, “is
inextricably derived from black speech, phrasing, and stress and intonation
patterns.”372 When you try to duplicate someone’s life experience—their culture
—it’s worse than theft, it’s impersonation. Carbon copying can only lead to
blackfacing. Also, it doesn’t work.i

See video: Roy Buchanan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CaD50d6Xm8

i
What does work? As folks would later say: Do You.

185
 Another difference was instrumentation: The big bands had downsized to a
few horns, then to a single sax. Early rock records have that sax, but many of the
rockabilly tunes use the guitar instead.

SUBSTITUTION: Listen to one of each, guitar and sax,

substituting the two instruments for each other in your innermost
ear. Listen to an early rock and roll song with acoustic bass; the
same song becomes "rock" with electric bass.

Further support for the "another name" argument is found in Billboard

Magazine, which in 1956 referred to rock and roll as "a popularized form of
r&b."373 This, after renaming “Race music” to “R&B” (1949-58), after switching to
Race music (1945-49) from “Harlem Hit Parade” (1942-45). And Merle Travis
called fifties rock and roll "not much more than the black man's twelve-bar blues
sung at a highly spirited pace, actually a cousin to boogie-woogie and the
spiritual."374 Stephen Calt calls the very idea of rock and roll part of a shell game,
one euphemism piled on top of another: race music becomes R&B becomes R&R,
all for reasons of marketing, colored by race.375

But rock, like jazz, is more a way of playing music than it is a form. This gets
more true all the time; it's attitude, not chord structure; manner, not matter, that
makes the difference. Ditto Country. Just as Eubie Blake showed that anything
could be ragged, likewise anything can be rocked, or countrified, or blues'd, or
bluegrassed, etc. etc. Large numbers of early rock songs were recycled Broadway
and Tin Pan Alley tunes, from “I Only Have Eyes For You” and ”Zing! Went the
Strings of My Heart” to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and “My Blue Heaven,” or
old folk and blues tunes like “Rock Island Line” and “Stagger Lee.” 376

This leads to a third view of rock, combining the first two and more: musical
genres are always evolving, sometimes slowly, sometimes radio-fast or like
internet lightning. There weren’t only two musics merging, but all kinds of
influences. Vocal groups that sprang from old barbershop traditions as well as
the Black church, White church, boogie woogie piano, honky-tonk, rockabilly—a
generally stepped up, harder driving mutation of Country traditions. All these
were evolving through crossover, cross-pollination, technology-driven amping
up, and the general ramping up of life in the city. The urbanization and
industrialization of life made everything, including music, faster and louder. 377

186
 Pop music radio DJ Alan
Freed had played both Black
and White records on his
Cleveland radio show as early
as 1951,378 and organized
package concerts across the
color line. He refused to play
cover versions, preferring to
pull the covers back. His
"Rock and Roll Dance Party"
was pulled off CBS TV when a
camera caught Black singing
star Frankie Lymon dancing
with a White girl.

It was Freed who named

rock and roll (this time): he
was playing R&B for White
teenagers, but couldn't call it
by its name, so he just pulled a
common phrase out of the
blues lyric storehouse.i We
might say more accurately
that he’s the one who made
the name stick, kind of like
Columbus made “discovery” stick. The rock and roll handle was common at the
time, and had been for a while; Langston Hughes cited a 1920s blues: "Rock me
all night long, Daddy, with a steady roll," 379 and the Boswell Sisters recorded a
song called "Rock and Roll" in 1934.380 The phrase goes back much further,
though, as documented by Stan Hugill, writing about Black influence on sea
chanteys of the 1800s:

The phrase "rock 'n' roll"...was a very common cry among shantymen—a
shout of encouragement when hauling or heaving—and of course it
emanated, just as the name for "rock 'n' roll" dancing did, from the
American Negro.381

i
Freed credited the idea to his mentor, record store owner Leo Mintz.

187
 So Freed didn't so much name the music as simply choose an obvious bit of
slang that already had many uses under its belt. When the music came under
attack, Freed defended it:

To me, this campaign against Rock and Roll smells of

discrimination of the worst kind against the great and
accomplished Negro songwriters, musicians, and singers who are
responsible for this outstanding contribution to American music.382

Another important development leading to rock and roll was doo-wop, that
often-trivialized object of nostalgia that reigned on top 40 radio in the fifties. It
drew its name from syllables commonly used by the vocal groups on the street. i
Coming out of Black vocal improvising traditions (remember Barbershop?) and
forties groups like the Ink Spots, the nonsense-syllable choristers blanketed the
air waves starting in 1948: the Orioles, the Dominoes, the Coasters. Doo-wop,
like Motown after it, was just smooth enough to cross the color line; Alan Freed
unleashed it on his White audience. The formula had been found: gospel-derived
harmonizing with just enough passion strained out to bring it in under the radar
of White radio deejays, if not Indiana school principals. So I grew up on Black
gospel, Trojan-horsed through top 40 radio? Who knew!

The various streams leading to rock and roll coexisted and coalesced, as had
ragtime and blues before, as would rock and reggae after, to name only two
examples. Mergers and mutations are always happening. They’re happening as
you read this. One 1952 concert put together by Alan Freed in Cleveland featured
doo-woppers the Orioles and the Dominoes, R&B from Charles Brown, and jump
bands led by Tiny Grimes and Jimmy Forrest. 383 Everything was there, save
rockabilly, which was just about ready to come out of the oven.

From Jimmie Rodgers to Chet Atkins to Western Swing to Bill Monroe,

Country music has never been any more pure White than blues was pure Black.
Less so, in fact. In form, they're both fairly European-derived. But in feel, the
blues is an African, micro-tonal moan, and Country music, White as it’s alleged
to be, has never been able to shake the swing, the syncopation it got from Black
musicians. You can take Country out of the country, but you can't take the swing
out of it. It's long too late.

In the late forties, with Western swinging, jump blues jumping and country
blues going Rhythm &, a series of Country "boogie" tunes came out, including
"Freight Train Boogie," "Oakie Boogie," and "Guitar Boogie." Hank Williams'

i
These groups were also very popular among Italian-American kids.

188
honky-tonk music, so despised at the Opry, thrived on the back-beat circuit. His
important innovations included the mid-note changes in tone discussed in the
jazz section and a mix of Country with Dixieland and Cajun that revved up
Country for the new era. His fiddlers were closer to Western than Country. It
was hopped up, and it was hybrid—something we often forget, as we have too
often been raised on simple Black and White views. And then…

Then came rockabilly: Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl
Perkins, even Chuck Berry (bringing a sort of guitaristic boogie-woogie), and
finally Elvis Presley.i It was southern, working class, White, and Black. The slow
tunes were more Country, the fast ones more R&B. They were close cousins
anyway, as Ray Charles pointed out: "They'd make them steel guitars cry and
whine, and it really attracted me." 384 Lots of Black artists were influenced by
White country music, including Lowell Fulson, who learned from one of Jimmie
Rodgers’ back-up boys. And Brother Ray himself, having grown up on Country
music along with gospel, issued two records of Country tunes.

Whether Whites were attracted or frightened by Black music, somewhere

between Elvis and Pat Boone they found a way to come to terms with the new
sound. Sam Phillips, Alabama-born and raised, was looking for these terms. He
founded Sun Records in Memphis to make recording technology available
locally to the many Black and White musicians in the area. (Non-southerners
might want to check a map to see how close Memphis is to the blues-drenched
delta of Northern Mississippi.) He recorded B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and James
Cotton, along with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Ike Turner, and
Roy Orbison. With an eye on the evolution of Black city music, he mused
immortally, "If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the
Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars." ii In a more philosophical mood he
elaborated:

I hate imitations. But having grown up in close proximity to the

black man, I thoroughly believed that a white man, a Southern
white man, could approximate the same sound and feeling. There
was still a lot of hatred between the races in the South, but music
was the one area where black and white were closer than people
realized. The young whites loved the black music they got to hear.
i
Donald Clarke says "Bill Haley did for rock'n'roll what the Original Dixieland Jazz Band did for
jazz in 1917, establishing it in the public mind as a noisy party music..."
ii
According to his secretary, Marion Keisker, cited in Clarke, 384, and in these exact words
elsewhere. However, also cited in many variations, e.g. “I always said if I could find a white
person that could sing with the feel, the essence, and the naturalness that a black person could
convey, that I could make a billion dollars…Elvis Presley fit that mold.”

189
 So I felt that if only I could find a white artist who could put the
same feel, the same touch and spontaneity into his songs, who
could find this total abandon of the black artists in himself, then I
would have the opportunity, the means by which to give others the
sound I had heard.385

The dollar chase is well understood to be the prime motivator for the industry
in purveying White imitators of Black culture. But for Sam, there was a possibly
more controversial motivating factor: the dearth of innovation at that time in
what were understood to be White music genres: “It seemed to me that Negroes
were the only ones that had any freshness left in their music.” 386 Greil Marcus felt
that the problem with “White country music” was that

…it so perfectly expressed the acceptance and fatalism of its

audience of poor and striving whites, blending in with their way of
life and endlessly reinforcing it, that the music brought all it had to
say to the surface, told no secrets, and had no use for novelty. It
was conservative in an almost tragic sense, because it carried no
hope of change…it was a way of holding on to the values that were
jeopardized by a changing postwar America. 387

Sam found Elvis.i Here was a poor Mississippi-born White kid who grew up
on gospel music in the Assemblies of God Church in Tupelo, Mississippi, and
then while living in a housing project near Beale Street in Memphis. ii He also
encountered blues players in Tupelo, and again in Memphis, and listened to
Country music on the radio.

See video: Elvis and quartet: gospel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94k6ycD4IsE

Elvis’ music was exactly what Phillips was after:

It wasn't a matter of taking a piece of material and bleaching it white and

removing all nutrition the way Pat Boone did.388

Elvis studied the style of Calvin Newborn, a guitarist on Beale Street, who
later said of him:

i
More precisely, Elvis found Sam, and secretary Marion Keisker badgered Sam to pay attention.
This church was one of many denominations of the Pentecostal movement, which was known
ii

for mixed Black and White congregations, something unheard of in other churches in the early
twentieth century. The music of the church reflected this mix. See for example the Gaither Hour
TV gospel music show.

190
 His success actually broke the ice for civil rights...the fact that he sent the
black idiom all over the world with his music.389

In fact, people listening to Elvis' first record thought he was Black (remember
Peggy Lee and the Allen Brothers), so a Memphis disc jockey gave out the name
of his high school, a sure-fire racial clarification. This "Not to Worry" harkens
back to an earlier minstrelsy, when audiences watched blackfaced White
imitators rather than Blacks playing some version of themselves. Publishers
arranged for minstrel sheet music covers to show the performers both in and out
of costume, so consumers would know they were getting the genuine
imitation.390

_____________________________________
MEMPHIS

The musical meeting ground on the Mississippi: Into the

late forties there was a Thursday night show on Beale Street
featuring Black artists—for White audiences, like the Friday show
Connee Boswell went to in New Orleans and the Cotton Club in
New York City. Whites also came to Beale for the all-Black Jubilee
parade. Meanwhile, Blacks couldn't go to the zoo or the fair. They
eventually got a Black day at the fair, to match White night on
Beale. The “Black and White Department Store” was integrated: it
had both Black and White lunch counters.391
______________________________________

But as it happens, Elvis had first been played on a program geared to Black
listeners, and his encore performance of Arthur Crudup's 1946 hit "That's All
Right, Mama"—note for note, just for fun during a recording session break—set
the phones and cash registers ringing—among Blacks, not Whites. 392 Sam Phillips
released five singles by Elvis before selling him to RCA, and each one had an
R&B song on one side and Country-billy one on the other.

Of course, Elvis' ancestors were not enslaved, didn't suffer lynchings, and
probably didn't work and sing on penitentiary chain gangs. But he came from an
impoverished southern family and did live in a tenement in the Black ghetto of
Memphis for a time. In fact, like Jerry Lee Lewis, he grew up in the Pentecostal
Church; he enjoyed the Black "Spirit of Memphis Quartet" as well as Roy Acuff,
Hank Williams, and Texas Swing, and practiced guitar to WDIA, Memphis, the

191
nation's first Black radio station, which began airing R&B in 1948. 393 As Sam
Phillips pointed out, it is the southern White who is most likely to be able to
relate to the Black odyssey.i Jerry Lee Lewis heard Black gospel in Louisiana,
picking up more of the music than the message. Mississippian Conway Twitty
grew up on blues and the Grand Ole Opry. Key rockabilly guitar player Carl
Perkins grew up on a plantation:

The coloured people would sing, and I'd join in, just a little kid, and
that was coloured rhythm and blues, got named rock'n'roll, got
named that in 1956, but the same music was there years before, and
it was my music.394

His first guitar influence was an African American farmer named John
Westbrook, who taught him “a lot of string pushing and choking” that he later
poured into his renditions of country tunes.395

Finally, an Alabama DJ named Sam and a Mississippi truck driver named

Elvis, both raised around Blacks, joined the formula to the face, the voice, and the
hips—the hips that brought on the screams and were banned from TV screens. In
the days of black and white TV, some hips were just too loose. But we might note
here, in the “Things are Not What They Seem” category, that Elvis’ hip moves,
like his lip grooves, were often lifted whole cloth from elsewhere. The famous
vocal quirks on his early records can be found in the demo records by African
American writer/singer Otis Blackwell, whence came “Don’t Be Cruel,” “All
Shook Up,” and other hits.ii Elvis’ second single, a cover of Wynonie Harris’
“Good Rockin’ Tonight,” opens a window on the Elvis style. Nick Tosches
reports:

The pelvic jab-and-parry, the petulant curlings of his lip, the

evangelical wavings of his arms and hands—these were not the
spontaneities of Elvis, but a style deftly learned from watching
Wynonie Harris perform in Memphis in the early 1950s.iii

See video: Elvis, Baby I Don't Care—artfully lifted moves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBWX94bc8Js

i
Or, alternatively, the least likely.
ii
Tosches 1996, 55. Blackwell also wrote “Great Balls of Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis.
iii
Tosches 1999, 45. “Good Rockin’” was written by Roy Brown and first recorded by him, in 1947.
Elvis once tried to sneak onto the stage at a Brown gig (op. cit., 77). Brown was crushed by the
industry for demanding his royalties – an unseemly thing to do in those days.

192
 In fact, said Harris’ producer, “When you saw Elvis, you were seeing a mild
version of Wynonie.”396 Another mild thing about Elvis was his backup singers,
the Jordanaires; actually a White gospel quartet, they backed up loads of pop and
country acts. Later, in Vegas, when it had become the norm, Elvis used Black
backup singers as well as the White gospel singers The Stamps, seen in this
video.

See video: Elvis, I Got a Woman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drygOHE51fI

The record producers played no small part in the filtering of wild and mild,
as critic Robert Palmer points out in his film Bluesland. They decided who got to
record and, to some extent, what they would sound like. So the Chess brothers'
experience in producing Black musicians like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf
was brought into play and helped define the sound of Chuck Berry and Bo
Diddley. And Sam Phillips had been recording Delta blues artists since 1950—a
wealth of experience that in turn influenced the Elvis sound.397

See video: Elvis on Ed Sullivan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIIEbFr_hI

Rock and roll boomed its way into the northern suburbs, where the guitar
pickers played their axes without ever having chopped with one. They lacked a
background in work songs; rock persists as an expression of youth angst, but
makes a mockery of its blues origins, since most Whites don't know much about
Black history.

Just as bandleader Paul Whiteman had put a White face on jazz for White
audiences, so too rock and roll was transformed into the relatively White pill that
suburbia could swallow. The White artists and their handlers didn't just adopt
the style, they "adopted" the songs, watering them down enough to be palatable
(saleable) but retaining just enough of the risqué to tantalize. This practice was
facilitated by a late 1940s court decision that musical arrangements could not be
copyrighted, opening the way to the lifting of entire styles of singing,
instrumentation, and riffs, enabling the production of virtual carbon copy
records.

As with Jump Jim Crow, so with rock and roll. i With a White singer, White
sales were assured (though in this case the White Sale is not advertised as such).
The very first R&B song to make the top 10 in the pop charts, 1954's "Sh-Boom"
by the Chords, was immediately covered by the Crew Cuts and went to Number
i
And jazz, barbershop, western swing...

193
One. Patti Page buried Ruth Brown's "Oh What A Dream," Bobby Darin dittoed
Louis Armstrong ("Mack the Knife"); Ricky Nelson counterfeited Fats Domino
("I'm Walkin"); Georgia Gibbs transformed Etta James' "Roll With Me Henry" to
"Dance With Me Henry" and eclipsed LaVern Baker's "Tweedle-dee." For the
latter, the record company brought in all the musicians on the original version;
the original engineer declined the honor. The inimitable Pat Boone denatured
Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally."

See video: R&B covers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyFiy4M8yc

Elvis copied Big Mama Thornton’s version of

Leiber and Stoller’s ("Hound Dog"). He likewise
borrowed from Little Richard ("Tutti Frutti"), Roy
Brown and Wynonie Harris ("Good Rockin'
Tonight"), Kokomo Arnold ("Milkcow Blues
Boogie"), Lloyd Price ("Lawdy Miss Clawdy"), Joe
Turner ("Shake, Rattle, and Roll") Arthur Gunter
("Baby Let's Play House"), Smiley Lewis ("One
Night"), Little Junior Parker (“Mystery Train”),
and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup ("That's All Right,
Mama," "So Glad You're Mine," "My Baby Left
Me"). For his contribution to history, Crudup was
paid a grand total of zero. Mama Thornton
received $500 for her efforts on "Hound Dog." 398
Songwriter Otis Blackwell sold "Don't Be Cruel" for $25.399.

___________________________________
WHITE WRITERS, BLACK SINGERS

"Hound Dog" was performed by a Black singer, then lifted

by Elvis. The song's authors were two Jewish guys, Jerry Leiber
and Mike Stoller, who wrote hits by the dozen for Black groups
like the Coasters, and even one for Peggy Lee ("Is That All There
Is?").iThey also wrote for the "girl groups," like New Orleans'
Dixie Cups ("Chapel of Love"), and the Shangri-las, two sets of

194
 sisters from Queens ("Leader of the Pack"). After Elvis hit it big
with their Hound Dog, they wrote many more tunes for him.
Leiber and Stoller were the rock and roll reincarnation of Harold
Arlen, who wrote for the Cotton Club. In fact Stoller studied
piano with James P. Johnson in Harlem, and later played with the
Blas Vasquez band in L.A., doing Chicano versions of Black and
White forms of popular music.i

Another outstanding pair of White musicians working hip-

deep in Black styles were the Righteous Brothers, who personified
“blue-eyed soul.” They recorded Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's
"You've Lost that Loving Feelin" (1964) and blasted up the Black
charts.
See video: Righteous Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwKRrZsxZ4

Barry Mann’s lyric, "Only in America, land of opportunity,

do they save the seat in the back of the bus just for me,” was
rewritten, at the behest of Atlantic Records, to "only in America
can anybody become President." The Drifters recorded it, but
R&B DJs wouldn't play it. It was a hit for Jay and the Americans.
Go figure. James Brown wasn't there yet, so you had to be White
to be proud.400

Producer Phil Spector created the sound of most of the girl

groups. He wrote "Spanish Harlem" with Leiber.

Gerry Goffin and Carole King liked the dance their 17 year-
old babysitter Eva Boyd did to their piano playing. They authored
"The Loco-Motion," which became a hit for the girl who became
Little Eva. They also composed "Will You Still Love Me
Tomorrow" for the Shirelles—the first girl group. After them, the
Black girl groups were created by the business, especially by
Spector.
___________________________________

Bill Haley's promotion people had a special hand in obscuring rock and roll's
origins. Haley covered Louis Jordan ("Rock Around the Clock"), Little Richard
("Rip It Up"), and Big Joe Turner ("Shake, Rattle and Roll"); he also made a movie
called "Rock Around the Clock," in which Haley and his Comets are portrayed as
i
Stoller: “By the fall of 1950, when both Mike And I were in City College, we had black
girlfriends and were into a black lifestyle.” (Lipsitz 1990, 140) A daring lifestyle indeed.

195
the originators of a new type of music. Hollywood's distribution power tilted the
playing field; R&B slid out of sight as R&R was given a world-wide leg up. 401

This leg-up cover-up was the main dynamic of the fifties R&B/R&R scene,
but there were other angles as well. For one, there were Black artists covering
records by Whites: in 1949 Bull Moose Jackson copied “Why Don’t You Haul Off
and Love Me” from Country singer Wayne Raney; Wynonie Harris got his 1951
“Bloodshot Eyes” from western swing singer Hank Penny; The Orioles “Crying
in the Chapel” was lifted from Darrell Glenn’s version. 402 For two, there were
White pop artists covering White Country tunes, often leaving the Country
singer as deep in the dust as they left the Black artists. Elvis covered Carl
Perkins’ "Blue Suede Shoes," a case of big rockabilly swamping small same. For
three, sometimes the release of a new version elevated the original in the charts,
giving the originator a boost or even a career, as with Pat Boone's cover of Fats
Domino's "Ain't That A Shame." And then there was all of the above, and more:
"Crying in the Chapel," first recorded by White singer Darrell Glenn in 1953, was
a hit for the Orioles the same year, and was covered by Eddie Arnold, Ella
Fitzgerald, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elvis Presley, and about 50 others. 403

All of this must be acknowledged and understood in order to grasp the

whole messy enchilada. Complexities abound throughout this story—remember
minstrelsy—but the overriding issue is who gets to ride up front and who gets
ridden over. White cover artists rode to fame, recording companies got rich, and
Black innovators ate their dust. When R&B singer Charles Brown tried to get his
record royalties, he was told to chill out or they would just get someone who
sounded like him.404 Decades later, record exec Dan Charnas would sum it up:

To me, what makes something appropriative is what gives White

supremacy its fangs. The gatekeepers of the radio stations and
record companies who have less investment in Black people and
culture are more likely to elevate an Iggy Azalea over an Azealia
Banks.405

Part of the problem with being an innovator is that you’re ahead of your
time. That can mean you don’t get to reap the rewards of your contribution,
because it’s too early for most folks to appreciate you. Some of those resistant
folks might be the gatekeepers in the industry, who can’t figure out how to
market something that combines strands of adjacent cultures, but which a few
years later will be all the rage. For some innovators, the result will be a lack of
recognition. For others, there could be recognition in their community but not

196
beyond it—no White audience, for instance. So when we think of Elvis or the
Beatles as the beginning of something new, we might want to pause and rethink
them as the culmination of a process, the ones lucky enough to arrive when the
industry people had already been educated enough to know how to market
them.

In the sixties, covering of R&B tunes was continued apace by the British
bands: The Animals did Ray Charles; the Stones did Marvin Gaye and Chuck
Berry, Muddy Watersi and Robert Johnson, and studied Ike and Tina Turner and
Little Richard. These groups, however, were open about their influences. Mick
Jagger wondered "what's the point in listening to us doing "I'm a King Bee" when
you can listen to Slim Harpo doing it."406 Of course the point was that the Stones
got hyped. Eric Clapton never denied the source of his music, but meanwhile, as
Chapple and Garofalo point out, "the bluesmen whose licks he copied are
starving to death."407

See video: Rolling Stones, Satisfaction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-OlU0rcKr4

The Beatles, who had begun as a skiffle band (see section on Lonnie
Donegan, below), listened to Chuck Berry and tried to write like him. They
covered Little Richard, the Shirelles and the Isley Brothers, and toured with Little
Richard before their big break. John Lennon explained,

The only White I ever listened to was Elvis Presley on his early
music records and he was doing Black music. I don't blame him for
wanting to be part of that music. I wanted to be that. I copied all
those people (Black singers) and the other Beatles did, and so did
others (Whites) until we developed a style of our own. Black music
started this whole change of style, of attitude...rock and roll is
Black. I appreciate it, and I'll never stop acknowledging it.408

Little Richard didn’t blame Elvis either—at least, not out loud: “He was an
integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He
opened the door for black music.”409

Mitch Miller was not so sanguine about the British invasion, though, saying
“I’m sick and tired of British-accented youths ripping off Black American artists
and, because they're White, being accepted by the American audience." 410

i
Both the Rolling Stones and Rolling Stone Magazine were named after Muddy's 1954 song of
that name.

197
 These sentiments of woke White entertainers appeared in a popular Black
magazine, where unfortunately they escaped notice by White fans. But at least a
few earlier White R&B fans knew the score. Ken Goodman laid it out:

We learned from the black people. They taught us how to dance.

They taught us what rhythm was. They let their hair down when
they danced. They touched. They'd bump their butts together.
They'd do things that we'd never seen before. 411

In other words,

Boy, you ain't lived unless you been black on Saturday night.412

Similar thoughts were expressed by an African American observer of the

music scene:

It is quite amazing to me to hear the joyful rhythms, which I found time to

enjoy as a youth here in Atlanta years ago, coming back across the
Atlantic with an English accent, or to see the Senator Javits and the
Senators Kennedy lost in the dances which we created. 413

That from Martin Luther King. He also noted that

School integration is much easier now that they [pupils] share a common
music, a common language, and enjoy the same dances. 414

Confirming the worst fears of Henry Ford, King lauded the spread of Black
music and dance as "a cultural conquest that surpasses even [that of] Alexander
the Great and culture of classical Greece."415

Elvis opened the door, and in flew the influences: Bob Dylan named Little
Richard, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Leadbelly as foundations; Paul
McCartney mentioned Fred Astaire and Little Richard and said "I'd much rather
have an American colored group doing one of our songs than us. Cause they'd
do it better."416 (Think of “She Loves You,” one of their first records, with the
falsetto “ooo” refrain. McCartney dedicated practice time to copying that Little
Richard riff.) Mick Jagger said of the Stones, "We started out simply to be a good
R&B band." Well, a good R&B band that sells. From Jolson to Bolton, Black music
seemed to sell better to White folks when White folks made it: it don't mean a
thing if it ain't got that Sting. Much as I like him.

198
 SUBSTITUTION: Listen to White singers when they use
back-up singers, soul style (i.e., gospel). i Close your eyes, forget
who you're listening to, and replace the lead singer, in your mind's
ear, with the Black vocalist of your choice. Presto: same music, but
credit redistributed.

See videos:
Michael Bolton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq56REpRKak
Phil Driscoll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiF-i3CYhVM
_______________________________________
LONNIE DONEGAN

The immediate predecessor to rock and roll in British

popular music was skiffle, sometimes called jug band music. It
was a survival and update of plantation corn-husking music, via
minstrel shows and ragtime417— improvised music on improvised
instruments like jugs, washboards and spoons.

Skiffle started in the American South: enslaved Africans

had played the washboard, a replacement for the African
jawbone, and other "found instruments" that imitated what they
had lost. The style was widespread in the 1920s and was
transported to Chicago, where it was played at parties held to
raise enough money to pay the rent. Skiffle was blues, jazz,
Country tunes, anything anybody knew or sort of knew, all
thrown in together. The musicians often weren't even musicians.

The man who brought skiffle to Britain was Lonnie

Donegan. "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On the
Bedpost Overnight" was his American hit; he had thirty big ones
in Britain. He was a one-man compendium of underclasses: an
Irishman from Glasgow, Scotland's gritty working-class city, who
moved to the East End of London—Cockney turf—and made
African-American rent party music. Born Anthony, later Tony, he
re-named himself for bluesman Lonnie Johnson.418
____________________________________

i
OK I confess, I’ve done it too.

199
 Once the roots had been bleached, the marketing could begin. Elvis was
packaged by Hank Saperstein, the same guy who sold us Lassie and the Lone
Ranger.i When Elvis was drafted in 1958 and other top artists died in a plane
crash,ii TV dance show host Dick Clark turned to Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon,
Bobby Rydell, and Fabian, temporarily derailing the rock and roll rebellion into
cute White teen idols with the guts—and Black cultural aspirations—taken out.

Dick Clark had a dress code on his show, a strictly enforced clean culture: no
scruff allowed, no rebellion. Clark and his crew later admitted that most of the
dance steps popularized on Bandstand originated with Black youngsters, but
were performed on his program by White ones.419

Clark took a liking to “The Twist,” recorded in 1958 by an R&B group called
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. He recruited squeaky-clean, smiling,
teenaged Black singer Ernest Evans, who was renamed—by Clark’s wife—
Chubby Checker (a "twist" on Ernest's idol, Fats Domino) to clone the song and
dance. Checker covered it with precision and is still a household name. Here we
have a White industry mogul choosing a user-friendly singer, bleaching within
the race. Hank Ballard at last report (1994) was still not too happy about it.iii

Clark saw a teenaged Black couple on his show doing a new dance, and the
rest was history. The Twist caused parents to recoil in horror; sex and race,
though politely packaged, were still a potent brew.

Meanwhile, Black R&B artists had trouble getting recorded and distributed
nationally. Black musicians have often been forced overseas to achieve
recognition, but in this case overseas came to them. The first national company to
record rhythm and blues artists, Atlantic Records, was founded in 1947 by
Ahmet Ertegun, the son of the Turkish ambassador to the United States. Ertegun,
a long-time jazz fan, jump-started the careers of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin,
Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and dozens more.

Ertegun was supremely dedicated to the music and the musicians. He told a
Columbia Records rep he was paying his artists three percent in royalties:

i
This ultimate icon of the West may have been inspired by 19th-century African American marshal Bass
Reeves, who worked “lone” and used disguises, detective skills, and horsemanship to capture over 3,000
criminals. https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/sport/lone-ranger-african-american-reeves/
ii
Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. February 3, 1959.
iii
Not to hit the nail again when it’s already in, but one of the guys who chose Checker for Clark was
Bernard Lowe, who had led the band for Paul Whiteman’s Teen Club TV show.

200
 And he said "You're paying those people royalties? You must be
out of your mind." Of course he didn't call them "people." He called
them something else.420

Atlantic had an African-American arranger named Jesse Stone, who started

out playing with the Blues Serenaders in the 1920s. He arranged for Jimmy
Lunceford and Earl Hines, then became musical director for the International
Sweethearts of Rhythm in their peak period. At Atlantic he arranged "Tweedle
Dee" for LaVerne Baker, "Sh-boom" for the Chords (soon covered by the Crew
Cuts), and "Chains of Love" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll" for Joe Turner. He wrote
"Money Honey," the Drifters first hit, and later worked with Elvis and Ray
Charles. You could say, as they did of Irving Berlin, that he was American music.

Barbershop researcher Lynn Abbott says that "musical trends and

phenomena tend to integrate far more readily than the people who create
them."421 In early rock and roll, even the audiences were integrated. This is partly
because the apartheid demographics of the record industry were not quite
functioning. The young people coming up in R&B and Country music
environments found a new music that defied those categories by blending them,
and the races flocked together until the industry got it together to pull them
apart again with more efficient demographic marketing. Radio, after it recovered
from Alan Freed, played an important role in this re-segregation.

In the South, the core of musicians playing the new music was also in some
cases integrated. As R&B incorporated gospel and was re-christened "Soul
Music," Stax Records in Memphis and the FAME studio in Muscle Shoals,
Alabama, 150 miles away, produced Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam and
Dave, and many more. In an ironic twist, teen buyers were mostly unaware of
the White studio musicians and writers on these records—they were in the
background for a change.i At Stax they included bassist Duck Dunn, guitarist
Steve Cropper, Jim Dickinson, and Spooner Oldham, along with Duane Allman,
who put licks on discs by Aretha and Wilson Pickett before he formed his own
White Southern Blues Country Rock band.

Who were these guys? They were southern Whites who grew up hearing,
then playing, music that was Black, White, and shades in between. Cropper’s
high school band was even called the Royal Spades, since they were after all a
White band covering Black hit tunes. Why did all this happen? Jim Dickinson
gave some credit to Memphis radio DJ Dewey Phillips:

Even the back office was multiculti: Stax President Jim Stewart was White, Vice President Al Bell
i

was Black.

201
 Dewey would jump from blues, to gospel music, to country, to rock
'n roll - it all tied together in his weird mind and he could sell it to
the audience as if it were all the same thing. So people in Memphis
think it is!422

When the White soul bro’s wrote and played with Black singers, it was soul
music with Country in it, not Country with soul. When they played with rock
bands like the Allman Brothers, it was some other shade. When Dunn and
Cropper joined with Black keyboardist Booker T. Jones and drummer Al Jackson,
they became Booker T. and the MGs,the Memphis Group that was the house
band for Stax and all its soul output. Cropper co-wrote “In the Midnight Hour”
and “634-5789”i for Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” and Otis
Redding’s “Mr. Pitiful” and “Dock of the Bay.”

Whites and Blacks often play the same sub-genres of music, but the feel of
the rhythms, the nuances, and certainly the vocals are just different enough so
that most folks don't notice that it's more the same than different. I went to a
Stones concert in 1995 with a 19 year-old who couldn't hear the blues in their
music. He was growing up slightly unawares.

From Georgia came James Brown and Little Richard, along with Otis
Redding. These three are emblematic of the constant Black-White interchange in
the South. You can hear a lot more Country in Otis than in James Brown. In a
duet with Carla Thomas, Carla hurls an insult: "Otis, you're country!" To which
he responds, "That's good!" Little Richard, like Chuck Berry, mixed Country
influences with R&B. Nobody of either race is closer in style to Little Richard
than Jerry Lee Lewis—a great example of Southern commonalities.

Ray Charles was a key player in the infusion of gospel into rhythm and
blues. He had a simple device, and not an entirely new one, for this infusion:
writing secular lyrics to sacred songs. "This Little Light of Mine" became "This
Little Girl of Mine;" "My Jesus Is All the World To Me ("I've Got A Savior") was
born again as "I Got A Woman;" 423 "Talkin' 'Bout You" replaced Talkin' 'Bout
Jesus" and "Lonely Avenue" started as "How Jesus Died."424

Another bearer of the gospel to the pop charts was Sam Cooke, reared in a
Baptist family and pirated away from his gospel singing group by record

i
As distinct from “Beechwood 4-5789,” a 1962 hit for the Marvelettes. Remarkably, nobody sued for the
five common digits.

202
executives; he smooth-as-silked his way up the White charts. And then there was
Aretha, a Cooke acolyte who took it in another direction.

Berry Gordy was the flip side of Sam Phillips: he found Black singers who
could sound just White enough to sell to Whites. More accurately, he made them,
and together they made smooth dance pop—no Muddy, no Howlin'. It was a
brilliant and finely crafted exercise, built on an understanding and finessing of
race and gender in early 1960s America. Early album covers even omitted photos
of the singers, so you could think they were White if you wanted to. At Gordy's
Motown Records, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, and Stevie Wonder joined the
Vandellas, Four Tops, Marvelettes, Isley Brothers, Jackson Five, Temptations,
Miracles and Supremes to change the face of pop music. They reigned supreme
in the days just before the British invasion.

The Beatles,i Rolling Stones, Who, Animals, Yardbirds, and later groups
were all playing variants of rhythm and blues, but young White Americans who
had never been permitted to hear the originals just thought it was some new kind
of British music.ii No roots, no routes. By the time we were eventually introduced
to the source, it was a decade late and several million dollars short. Case in point:
the old blues tune "C.C. Rider," which Elvis used to open his shows with. Go to
your parents’ CD collection, or your grandparents' LP collection, and pull out
The Animals; now go to the library or the internet and get Big Bill Broonzy doing
the same tune. Play the Animals first, then Broonzy. You just saved your college
tuition.425

See video: The Animals, House of the Rising Sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLE9NMb5hCo

College tuition was out of reach to the children of the originators. The British
invasion had two ironically paired and historically repeating results: it knocked
Black musicians out of the top rungs of the business, and it made a variant of the
Black community’s music into the sound of America and the world.

A stellar participant in the second wave of the invasion was Jimi Hendrix,
originally a bluesman from America who burst upon the world as an English
rocker—Black to Brit and Back Again, only this time all in one musician. He was

i
I remember my first Beatle records—they were on Vee-Jay. I didn't know it was a Black-owned
label; they had Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker. But they had no success with the fab lads and
so lost interest. They did, however, release their first US album, but didn't have the capital to
promote it. They also released, in the fifties, "This Could Be the Last Time" by the Staples Singers
—later adapted by the Stones.
ii
See Roots of Rock and Blues Originals in the discography.

203
yet another African-American who had to go to Europe for recognition; he found
yet another musical middle ground that appealed to the White bucks—and their
dollars.

As Whites drifted further from the sources of their new pop music, they
transformed it into styles that got further from rhythm and blues. Heavy metal, a
voice of alienated youth beginning in the seventies and eighties, was louder and
harsher than fifties and sixties rock; it abandoned the rhythmic subtleties that
derive from African rhythmic practices, retaining mainly the backbeat, and
hitting it hard. This was rock with the roll extracted, a new variant that offered a
means of self-expression unique to a community, but didn't communicate so well
across the color line. But punk and new wave musicians and fans, reveling in a
hard, fast, stripped down style, would soon discover a surprising affinity to the
latest Black street music to shake up the scene: hip-hop.

Meanwhile, other purveyors of what would become “classic rock” were

evolving their styles through new tools in the studio, new drugs, and new
changes in the sales patterns of the industry. The Steve Miller Blues Band became
the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful Dead birthed the era of jam bands, and the
Beatles ceased performing and began incorporating styles from many eras,
including the future, in their experimental but still commercial recordings. The
new experiments, often incorporating old elements, were mostly not something
to dance to. These were album cuts by performers who were becoming artistes.
Some would say they wanted to do something that was really their own, rather
than purvey poor imitations of Black artistry, as several of them have been
quoted here as saying they had done. Others might emphasize their advancing
age (no longer 22), college-heavy audience, or the cash cushion of the top-
grossing acts.

In any case, a significant effect of this turn was a turning away from current
Black popular styles. Elijah Wald argued that the Beatles et al “led their audience
off the dance floor, separating rock from its rhythmic and cultural roots, and…
split American popular music in two.” 426 In the decades since, we have seen
both separation and interplay, segregated tastes and increasing knowledge and
honesty about the key role of Black culture in creating the culture, the fabric, of
America.

And then what happened? Disco, a boon to the dance club industry, bubbled
up in the 70s through Black and gay communities and exploded with the Bee
Gees Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. You can hear its pulses in varieties of
electronic dance music (EDM). It was essentially a simplification of funk, minus

204
some syncopation and plus some polyester. The bass drum plays on all four
beats; the hi-hat cymbal adds stresses in between. There is still stress on the
backbeats (two and four) from the other drums.
See video: Kool & The Gang, Get Down On It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qchPLaiKocI

Disco was a link in the chain of musics bubbling up from the fertile swamps
of popular innovation and dispersing through the paved neighborhoods. The Bee
Gees in fact journeyed from their British/Aussie pop rock style to disco soul via
producer Arif Mardin, who worked with Aretha and other rhythm and blues
acts. Mardin squeezed the soul to the surface, breathing new life into the band
and the style.

How many White singing stars have borrowed heavily from African
American style? I mean besides Janis Joplin, Lyle Lovett, Rod Stewart, Van
Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Winwood,i Joe Cocker, the Righteous Brothers,
George Michael, Sting, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Robin Thicke, Iggy Azalea, Pink,
and the Justins Timberlake and Bieber? And they get the kudos, at “The Whites-
Trying-To-Sing-Like-They’re-Black music wards, otherwise known as the
Grammys.”427

How about Black singers who perform in Whiter styles? Nat King Cole and
Sammy Davis, Jr. broke through the Black ceiling mainly because their style was
so smooth as to be inoffensive to the racially-minded. Nat had been wilder, but
he toned it down before making it big. Motown, of course, was consciously
constructed just so. Josh White blanched the blues to reach a lighter-toned
audience. And Roberta Flack. But what’s the essential difference here? It’s the
direction the culture is headed, and has always been headed.

In addition to the cycle of Black musicians and fans getting fed up with
artistic and financial "borrowing," there's another reason that African American
music keeps changing, and pulling everything else along with it. African
Americans are engaged in a protracted struggle, a long, uncertain ascent from
the bottom of society. The story of America is in large part the story of the
transformation of its oppressed groups, and their march toward real equality,
and the resistance along the way.

i
"I fancied myself black and I fancied myself poor." - Winwood to Albert Goldman, reported in
1968 speech, "Musical Miscegenation." No wonder Goldman called New York's Fillmore
Auditorium "The Apollo Downtown."

205
 But there's a big difference between the fifties and the now, and that's
reflected in the music. The music will keep changing as underclasses climb out
from under. Whites may get nostalgic for older music, "simpler times": Swing or
dulcimers or Motown or Old School Rap. But it could also be they don’t want to
deal with real African Americans, and their music. They prefer the safety and
certainty of the old days, good or otherwise. African Americans, though, while
retaining the pride and pleasure of past innovations, tend to move on and
express something new, something now. Sometimes there’s a commercial motive
for that; other times it’s just the expression of evolving identity, and that identity
retains a sense of separateness. Now as before, as it was expressed on the
language front,

blacks invented new terminology so they could communicate

without whites understanding them. Therefore, as Africanisms
entered the speech of whites they left black speech.428

John Edward Philips speaks here of specific words or expressions. And so it

goes, musically too. The specifics may be left behind, but not the manner, nor the
process of innovation, nor even the relationship to the dominant culture.

24 RAPPING UP
According to both Chuck D and Ice T, White youngsters as early as 1995
were buying between fifty and seventy percent of the rap music being sold. 429 In
2007, Republican mastermind Karl Rove appeared at the White House
Correspondents Dinner as MC Rove, doing an inept minstrel hip-hop dance
routine as comedians mocked/lauded his criminal prowess. In 2013, Miley Cyrus
and Robin Thicke offered their version of twerking at an awards ceremony.

What's that all about!?

See video: Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PobrSpMwKk4&t=2s

From the streets and house parties of New York in the late seventies
emerged a community of athletic breakdancers, bold graffiti artists, innovative
record-scratchers and rhyming verbal improvisers. The rap artists broke through
the resistance of the music industry and surfaced a new style from the
underground, drawing on Jamaican "toasting" DJ's, African-American verbal
traditions, funk, rock, reggae and James Brown.

206
 One of the first rapping DJ's was Kool Herc (Clive Campbell), who came to
the Bronx from Jamaica, where party DJs shouted out their neighbors’ names
with catchy rhymes over the records. Herc named the breakdancers b-boys (and
later b-girls). He and his Bronx crowd also began to abbreviate names—Easy-E,
Ice-T—and all kinds of words, whether they were giving props (proper respect)
or diss(respect)ing. All of this was poured into the mix that poured out of the
Bronx.

Once again a new Black music was feared and condemned by the
mainstream. Rap was castigated for its violence and misogyny, which it certainly
has had, in bulk. Of course many feared it because it's Black and often angry, and
many simply can't countenance the supremacy of rhythm over melody. Some say
rap regenerated poetry. It brought back rhyme with a vengeance, stuffing
rhymes internally anywhere they would fit, and then some, and soon, spoken
rhyme sections were inserted in otherwise non-rap songs by all manner of rock
artists. It has kicked language alive, flooding the mainstream with vernacular.
Allen Ginsberg was enthusiastic about rap's prospects:

This movement is a great thing: the human voice returns, words

return, nimble speech returns, nimble wit and rhyming return...It
serves to cultivate an interest in the art by cultivating a great
audience—an audience of amateur practitioners.430

Some scoff and many denigrate, but if rap were set to music that old-timers
are more familiar with, it might draw appreciation from the nay-sayers; Leonard
Bernstein once demonstrated this principle in reverse by singing lines from
Macbeth as a blues.

SUBSTITUTION: Choose some rap lyrics and sing to your

favorite jazz, blues, bluegrass (rapgrass) or any other instrumental
record. In your head, rap them to your favorite Willie Nelson or
Gilbert and Sullivan song. Go ‘head, no one's listening.

Diverse strains continue to evolve, with various politics; female rappers

liberate the form from its male dominators. As rap mutates, it carries on debates
on many social questions—debates other genres might should aspire to.
Certainly rap is in your face—although there is all manner of Rap Lite. Rap The
Whole Office Can Enjoy (Rapzak) can't be far off.**

207
 Following the tremendous growth in the White audience for rap came an
increase in the number of White rappers. The scope of opinion on what has been
happening with, to, and by rap is as wide and wild as it was on any previous
Black crossover music, from minstrelsy on. Let's look, briefly, at some of the
cultural moments that have been crucial in the diffusion of this latest subcultural
music in society, and remain so with hip-hop: the roots, the crossover artists and
audience, the “mainstream” artists, and the industry, including media. We'll
follow this with an examination of some of the logics behind White rap fandom.

THE ROOTS

Inspired by Kool Herc's import of toastingi from Jamaica to the South Bronx,
Afrika Bambattaa, Grandmaster Flash, and others in New York put together
sound systems and the skills to match. Rapping evolved from a few toasts to
extended boasts. But the multi-cultural aspects of rap's roots are worth a moment
here. First of all, the music was part of a larger artistic scene that included graffiti
artists and breakdancing, which prominently featured Puerto Rican youth.
Second, there were a few key White figures in the industry—not at the point of
origin, but not far behind.

First of these, or nearly first, was Rick Rubin. The White Jewish punk rocker
from Long Island co-founded Def Jam Records in 1984 (with Russell Simmons),
which he ran for a time out of his NYU dorm room. He promoted Public Enemy
as well as the Beastie Boys, a White punk band turned rappers. In one of the first
crossover acts, he added distorted guitars on Run-DMC records. Was he the John
Hammond of rap? Sort of.

See video: Queen Latifah - Ladies First (feat. Monie Love)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qimg_q7LbQ

A few women rose to important positions: Sylvia Robinson, a singer turned

producer in Englewood, New Jersey, put together the Sugar Hill Gang, who had
the first commercial hit rap record with "Rapper's Delight." Then came Monica
Lynch, president of Tommy Boy Music, a rap label producing Queen Latifah, De
La Soul, and Naughty By Nature, among others. Lynch came up in the seventies
and failed to click with rock. Hip-hop was more receptive, as an industry, to
women working in it—a paradox, given the initial and persistent male
domination on the artist side. Maybe the alternative/outlaw nature of the genre
and its record companies was more conducive to the inclusion of women than
the corporate labels; in any case, she was accepted not only as a woman, but, as

i
Rapping/rhyming over records.

208
she noted later, "I didn't really get any beef about the fact that I was white,
either."431 Lynch was responsible for some of the progress of women in the field,
shying away from signing "bitch baiters" to the label. And she gets respect:
Shock-G of Digital Underground called her "more a homegirl than an exec." 432

Without puffing up the role of Whites in the nascent business, we can say
that there certainly was White interest in the form's development early on. Recall
here the White backup musicians at Stax/Volt in Memphis in the sixties and the
involvement of Leiber and Stoller as songwriters for the Coasters. Abbott’s music
integration principle, again.

Outside interest always raises the question of diffusion vs. defusion: Is the
music spreading out and taking over, or is it being watered down and outright
pilfered? Most often the answer is both. But the relationships in the processes are
tricky, and judgment of the results varies widely. Alongside the triumph of rap
and its dilution/cooptation lies the general transformation of pop music by the
sensibilities of hip-hop. Such metamorphoses are often subtle and not always
acknowledged. Like the nineties teenager who couldn't hear the blues in the
Stones, we have now a newly hybridized, hip-hopped mainstream pop music in
which some White folks already can't hear the hip-hopping.

CROSSOVER ARTISTS

The key early link was between rap and metal. Run-DMC recorded "Walk
This Way" with Aerosmith in 1986; later Anthrax covered Public Enemy's "Bring
the Noize," with PE's Chuck D guesting on the mike. The first of these deals was
put together by Rick Rubin, but in the case of the second, Anthrax guitarist Scott
Ian had been hanging around the PE record office years before. He loved what
PE was doing—pioneering the metal style in rap, among other things. Chuck was
reluctant at first to collaborate, but eventually he waxed it, and waxed
enthusiastic.433

See video: Run-DMC, Walk This Way feat. Aerosmith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_UYYPb-Gk

Run-DMC went on the road with the Beasties, and PE with White rock/punk
bands like Sisters of Mercy and Gang of Four. Other collaborations included
Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon of the Sex Pistols in 1984, The Fat Boys and
the Beach Boys in 1987, Sonic Youth and Chuck D in 1990, and R.E.M. and KRS-
One in 1991. Ice-T formed a metal band, Body Count, responsible for the much-
heralded song "Cop Killer" of 1992. Nashville's racially mixed rock/rap band The

209
Hard Corps boasted production by Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay; 24-Spyz released
a metal-rap record; and Vallejo, California rapper B-Legit cut a record with Daryl
Hall.

An important crossover mechanism has been the adaptation by Black pop

acts of rap to their own styles. Sometimes this takes the form of a rap interlude
by a guest artist, as with Grandmaster Melle Mel's contribution to Chaka Khan's
"I Feel For You" (1984). Another intermediary role has been played by Chicano
acts, including Kid Frost ("Hispanic Causing Panic"); Cubans like Melloman Ace
and Skatemaster Tate; other Latino groups including Cypress Hill, the Beatnuts,
and Fat Joe; and Samoans like the Boo Yaa Tribe, who grew up in southeast LA.
There was also the production outfit Soul Assassins, which worked with the
Italian Grandmixer Muggs, Chicano B-Real, and Cuban Sen Dogg. They went to
number one on the pop charts in 1993 with Black Sunday. But wait, it gets better:
Soul Assassins also produced FunkDoobiest, a Puerto Rican-Sioux-Mexican
mix.434 All this helped turn hip-hop into a voice for "women, Chicano, Asian,
Irish, gay, and all the variants covered by Black Jamaican, Dominican, etc." 435

An Italian rapper called rap "rediscovering the tribal rhythms of our

ancestors."436 There's German rap, and Russian, and Mexican. Afrika Bambaataa
established a racially mixed hip-hop organization in Paris in the mid-eighties. 437
The Dutch group Urban Dance Squad put out Life 'N Perspectives Of A Genuine
Crossover. In Brazil, laid-back samba rap competed with harder stuff from Sao
Paolo, served up by groups with names like Sons of the Ghetto. In Cuba, rap is
rampant. Also in Israel, and Palestine too. Given the worldwide diffusion of
previous trends in African-American culture, we cannot be surprised by the
planetary spread of rap and associated styles.
_____________________________________
THE DOZENS, WITH STRINGS

A parallel from south of the border (with Brazil):

Throughout the 19th century and down to today, Afro-Argentines
have matched musical wits in the ritual duel of guitarist-singers,
payada, a competition with roots in Iberia as well as central Africa.

Think of it as the dozens with a dozen strings. Or—

obviously—a rap battle. The great payador Gabino Ezeida
famously defeated his challenger in a two-day battle in 1894 with
this final stanza, translated as:

I see no equality

210
 in this here rink
I improvise, simply and quickly,
you have to sit down and think.438

“Living in verses,” said Thompson,” “Ezeida would not be

matched in this hemisphere until 1940s calypso and 1990s rap.”
The tradition continues.439
______________________________________
HIP-HOP IN MOROCCO

One couldn't concoct a better lab experiment than the case of the White rap
fans at the high school in Morocco, Indiana. Hardly a Black face to be found in
town, yet these teens, out of sheer boredom, find hip-hop style and climb
aboard.440 Offended by their outfits of flannel shirts, headbands, and baggy
shorts, fellow students yell "wiggers!" (White niggers) and attack, as school
officials stand by. There's an undertow [sic] of White girls gone Black here, as in
Black man gonna get your sister, that might help explain the vehemence of the
response. Sure enough, two young African-American fellas from Lafayette—
nearby in geography only—cruise on up and help the kids get their clothes,
music, and haircuts right. It all reminds me of Buddy Holly's encounter, real or
merely cinematic, with a recording engineer who dissed him for playing "that
nigger music." When Holly’s mother asked him if he got along with the Black
bands on tour, he responded “Oh we’re Negroes too. We get to feeling like that’s
what we are.”441 Holly lived in the era of Norman Mailer's "White Negroes,"
hipsters who saw Black culture as the only way out of the White bread ghetto. In
some places, and some places in the mind, that era continues. Or perhaps
everywhere.
______________________________________

THE WHITE ARTISTS

As hip-hop diffused through the mainstream, it became naturalized: it

makes "common sense" for anyone to rap, just as it has long made sense for
anyone to rock, from Bill Clinton to Lee Atwater to Bart Simpson. And then there
were the Lawrences: "just your ordinary middle-aged Jewish couple 'n the hood,"
on the downside of an insurance-brokerage tax evasion debacle, waxing tracks
on the Upper East Side and shooting video of themselves giving away turkeys to
the homeless in Harlem. Lauren Lawrence, rap name Infidel, carried a $5,000
Hermès purse and rapped about her "Terrorist Lover."442

211
 In 1985, producer Maurice Starr taught New Kids on the Block to sing and
dance “Black.” In 1992, New Kids member Donnie Wahlberg's brother Marky
Mark did the act with Black folks added to the set. Vanilla Ice was the great
White hope for a New York minute. His promo material was full of exciting
personal stuff, like stabbings for instance, that later turned out to be fanciful. His
handlers got him a posse of Black dancers, and he even drove through Harlem
once.443 He did in fact grow up on reggae and soul. Was he Elvis? Or just Pat
Boone?i And who was Debbie Harry of Blondie when she released "Rapture," the
first alleged rap record to top the pop charts?444 All this conjures up "Alexander's
Ragtime Band," the Irving Berlin song that provoked the ragtime explosion of
1911: the song was ragtime in name only.
See video: Beastie Boys, Sure Shot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhqyZeUlE8U

The Beastie Boys sold four million copies of Licensed to Ill in 1986. Street
scholars differ on their merits; Run-DMC they weren't. On the other hand,
Vanilla Ice they weren't either. They were picked up by Capitol in 1988. Then
there were the Young Black Teenagers, produced by top African-American rap
producer Hank Shocklee (Public Enemy, Ice Cube). They were White, but down,
at least with what they called "the hip-hop mentality"—and they didn't claim to
be the originators.445 Their song: "Proud to Be Black."ii Too bad they didn’t tour
with The Average White Band. And Third Bass felt African American enough to
join in the dissing of Hammer for not being street enough. 446 House of Pain, an
Irish group, had a Latvian DJ. Their album: Fine Malt Lyrics. And the Irish-
Canadian rapper Snow, who grew up street-fighting and parroting the accents in
a Jamaican neighborhood in Toronto, got airplay in Jamaica. Heavily influenced
by dancehall reggae, he performed with Jamaican DJs.447

See video: Jawga Boyz - Chillin In The Backwoods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD9G9tG7WXQ

In the new millennium came Country Rap. Not the mellow Tennessee
variant of the African American group Arrested Development, but White southern
male artists performing “hick-hop”iii at dirt road festivals attended by proud self-
styled rednecks. Despite the prevalence of confederate flags, there are a few
Black performers and attendees. The racial politics of the participants are all over
the map, and often lean toward the inchoate and self-contradictory. My take-

i
Ice in fact paid no royalties to his Black producer, Mario Johnson, who wrote the music for his
hit, until after the courts forced him to. (Rose, 12)
ii
Their producer said of them, "It's rock 'n' roll all over again." Except that, today, everyone
knows rap is Black. ("The Kids Are All White," Mother Jones, Sept-Oct 1991.)
iii
One rapper who rejects the hick-hop tag is Struggle Jennings, grandson of Waylon.

212
away is that once again, Whites are adopting the prevalent music of their era and
ignoring its roots.448 Prove me wrong.

THE INDUSTRY

Certainly a driving force behind crossover, if not the most important, was
the medium of diffusion: can you spell MTV? Originally so resistant to Blacks
that Herbie Hancock kept his face out of his video to ensure airplay, they did an
about-face with Michael Jackson.449 Not initially—"Billie Jean" wasn't big enough.
It took "Beat It" to beat the system, or to join it.

But a whole generation of stars was made by video, and many of them played
the demographics of the medium to a T, creating borderline identities calculated
for crossover. George Michael, Boy George, Prince, and Michael Jackson—
maybe, as MJ said, it doesn't matter what you are. But all of them were heavily
influenced by hip-hop—if not at the start, then of necessity somewhere along the
line.

In any case, MTV's rap show broke out of its late night ghetto and became
the site to see, the place to be to find out what was going on at the cutting edge.
MTV was also responsible for the dissemination of rap-rock collaborations that
couldn't be contained in any genre-specific hour. And they may have been partly
responsible for the inclusion of Ice Cube, Arrested Development, and A Tribe
Called Quest in Lollapalooza.

Rapper/dancer Hammer was even morphed into a Saturday morning

cartoon. This was a watershed: after all, if it's ok for the toddlers, it must be ok
for everyone. Hammer might have seemed harmless, and critics might say his
rap had been bled dry, but culture moves like a caterpillar: the back jams up
against the front, poises in mid-air, and the front is forced forward.

Radio continued to drag its feet. When "modern rock" stations played rap,
they favored White artists, often playing rock tunes with rap mixed in. 450 Of
course there's been resistance to rap on Black radio as well, and for some of the
same reasons: "This music very rudely pulls them [the audience] back on the
street corner, and they don't want to go."451

Underclasses habitually create new artistic forms that vent their spleen
(openly or otherwise), define their identity, and unite them in that identity
against their dominators. A moment occurs in the cycle of rebellious creativity
when the existing social-cultural-economic system recoups its losses from the

213
rebellion, a process of recuperation. It operates through the conversion of
subversive sentiments and their signs and signals into commodities. Certainly this
has happened with rap.

But is there something different here? There's an unprecedented amount of

artistic and financial control being retained by the artists and their posses.
Equally important, the White kids are not—with some exceptions—going for the
watered down version, the White copy. i They're going with the original. This can
be interpreted in several ways, many of them compatible and overlapping.

WHITE KIDS ON RAP: WHY?

The first explanation for this fandom is that rap speaks to White youth.
Lawrence Grossberg opined that the difference between White middle class
youth from the sixties and the nineties was that in the sixties they wanted to be
Black, and a generation later they felt that they were.452 He chalks this up to
economic and social changes that caused youth in general to be targeted as an
enemy, as African-Americans have always been. His contention has been
confirmed by teens of my acquaintance. Sandy, a sixteen year-old White female
who attended a racially mixed high school in the 90s, explained,

There's a common thread between kids of all races of this generation.

There's a lot of anger, a lot of fear, and a lot of need for aggressive
actions to the rest of the world, to say "Hello, I am here, and I need
some help, and you guys are really screwin' up where I have to live
when I grow up.453

But the pull of hip-hop could also be chalked up to the cyclical American
routine of Black innovation/White imitation. Rap is the biggest musical sea-
change since rock and roll, and once again, White youth crossed the tracks.

This is the auspicious side. In 1992 Newsweek interviewed a group of Black

and White teenagers, with encouraging results. Said John, an African-American
teenager, about White fans, "When positive rappers talk about police
brutality...or how they go for an interview and they automatically see you're
Black so you're not going to get this job—when White people hear about this...it
helps bring people to unite more." Dan, a White student, added, "I'll be singing,

i
Michael Bernard-Donals asserts a pivotal role for certain off-beat intellectuals who "canonize the
margins." Mailer and Kerouac, he argues, helped transform the African-American bebop scene
into a university course topic. New material washes up at the margins, to be colonized by
culturally displaced Whites, and later canonized again.

214
and there'll be a Hispanic kid, Black kid, we'll all be singing the same song."
Jessica chimed in that when the White kids are listening to "N.W.A. or whatever,
they'll have a Black friend with them, bopping their head along with them and
just chilling with them."454

All these comments reflect positive contact, music boosting people over
racial barriers. In the case of White youth who sincerely want to befriend their
Black peers, rap became an opening, or an extra boost.

There’s always a yearning among some non-Black youth to get a purchase

on some part of the Black experience, a desire for "listening in on black culture"
in Tricia Rose's words.455 The records may or may not be authentic stories—they
may be constructed to appear so by "studio gangsters" 456—but White youth
imagine they're contacting the Black experience, with the help of the industry.
White performers can never fill the same need. And of course not everyone's
happy about this, or ever has been. As Greg Tate framed it,

African Americans are the cotton-picking base on which Western

capitalism stands. We built this country twice over, first economically,
then culturally, and remain an exploited and second-class citizenry.
Tell me how much a white American loves our music and all I can
think [is] look what they done to my song, ma.457

Granting all that, it's also the case that rap captures the despair and cynicism
of the age—faces them down, in fact—which is a dirty job somebody's gotta do.
That has an attraction for youth facing a morbid future.

Even though there's a strong tendency to go for the harder stuff, there's a
parallel propensity to be pulled into rap through the "nicer" artists like Fresh
Prince and Salt 'n' Pepa and the Beasties. .458 There's lots of anger in rap, but there
are other emotions. Some artists are intellectual and politically analytical, some
are bouncy and lighthearted, some appeal more through sex than through
violence. Some of them might pull the pre-teen and post-twenty-five sets, middle
class listeners, and various subsets of women as well. Many listeners start with
acts like De La Soul or Arrested Development and move on to embrace the
tougher stuff, as was the case with White listeners with many previous forms of
Black popular music.

Meanwhile, what is the particular appeal of women rappers to non-Black

audiences? Hazel Carby asked "why black women...are needed as cultural and
political icons by the White middle class at this particular moment?" She was

215
speaking of Zora Neale Hurston, but I think of Beyonce (or Oprah) when she
ventures that

the black female subject is frequently the means by which many

middle-class white students and faculty cleanse their souls and rid
themselves of the guilt of living in a society that is still rigidly
segregated.459

And more generally,

Black cultural texts have become fictional substitutes for the lack of
any sustained social or political relationships with Black people... 460

This brings us to the minstrelsy interpretation: some say that the purveyance
of gangsta rap in particular is aimed at White youth who want confirmation of
their worst stereotypes of Blacks. It's also arguable that even if it's not so
designed, it has the same effect. 461 David Samuels laid out the minstrelsy theory
at length in the authoritative hip-hop journal The New Republic in 1991. To his
ears, "The Message," the seminal political rap record, was a calculated ploy to
reach Dylan-bred Whites; "Fight the Power" a mere college hit; and "Fuck the
Police" a "constant presence at certain college parties, white and black." Samuels
calls White fascination with rap "cultural tourism" and quotes Henry Louis Gates
comparing it to "buying Navajo blankets at a reservation road-stop."

My informant Sandy worried about this too:

I know a lot of white kids who I, in my mind, think, "Oh, they listen
to rap, therefore they must be open-minded," and yet they have all
these stereotypes about black people all living in ghettoes and
walking around with guns in their pants. And I think stereotypes are
easier. If you're worried that all the black people out there are gonna
shoot you, that's a really good reason to stay away from them, and
you'll never have to get to know anybody different from you.

This undoubtedly happens, yet it also happens that Black cultural

production is routinely conducted in the fabled dual consciousness mode: artists
know that Whites are hot for their “soul,” but they're aiming at a Black audience
as well. If it's possible to fashion the product for the home audience without
losing the mainstream bucks, they'll do it. It's a thin line to walk, even thinner
than the one walked by folk artists who go pop, Country artists who go
Nashville, etc.

216
 Some in the industry may be aiming at White ears purely for the cash,
making no particular attempt to exacerbate the Zip Coon presentation. "We're
marketing Black culture to White people," said MTV jock André Brown in 1992.
Why do they buy? KRS-One reasoned that "Right now everybody needs the 'pure
black' to help them feel relaxed."462 That's an interesting choice of words; to me,
“relaxed” implies at home. Do some Whites feel naturally more at home with
Black music, or is it a mediating force that temporarily and partially resolves
racial tension in society? It certainly is an easy way to connect, as the critic said of
listening to “race records” in 1928, "without bothering the Negroes."

Then there's the pull of the beat, to the exclusion of the words and whatever
worldviews go with them. I once stood a few feet from the "two-tone" reggae
band UB40 as they explained the background of their song about Gary Tyler, a
Black prisoner in Louisiana who proclaimed his innocence of a murder rap. They
explained, they sang, the kids around me sang along, but they sang from
memory, seemingly ignoring the intro, the point, and the prisoner. 463 That was
my subjective impression. It’s amazing what pop music can do. And not do. As
Greg Tate said, sharing everything except the burden.

Rap replaced hard rock, punk, metal, and grunge as the aural expression of
rebellion. All these forms are verboten at the office—"rock without the edge" is as
edgy as it gets there. A radio station in Philadelphia built an entire ad campaign
for itself around its "no-rap workday."464

Perhaps some people are down with the beat, and maybe the poetics, and
ignore deeper levels of meaning. One can argue that even so, it's a positive thing
for Whites to gravitate to Black music. But then, of course, the less conscious the
kids are of the context, the more they'll con the text and grow up to perpetuate
racism in their own ways, perhaps more subtly than their parents'. One White
teen rap fan reports on a friend of his who is "sickeningly prejudiced," yet listens
to rap. He enjoys the guns and violence.465

BACK TO THE TRACKS

You can’t really issue a cover version of a rap, though you can steal a style.
Of course in a lot of rap the music is almost all covered—sampled, that is. But as
for the words, when you step up to the mike, you better have something to say
and your own way to say it. It would be hard to copy the voices that echo

217
 African griots, black preachers, Apollo DJs, Birdland MCs,
Muhammed Ali, black streetcorner males' signifying, oratory of the
Nation of Islam, and get-down ghetto slang.466

Still, some will always try, copying everything but the burden.

Finally, there might be another, more particularly American-historical

element: Michael Dyson noted that gangsta rap "draws its metaphoric capital in
part from the mix of myth and murder that gave the Western frontier a
dangerous appeal a century ago."467 Is the inner city the final frontier? Or are the
relations among our multiple sub-cultures now the frontiers where hybrids are
constantly created, moving us more and more in the direction of a common
culture? Cultures never move in only one direction, as we’ve seen from the
contradictory uses White folks have made of hip-hop. Looking on the dark side,
there’s a continuation of manipulation and of privileged young folks grabbing
culture from others. On the brighter side, as Gregory Stephens suggests, “we
ought to be proud that black grooves are writing the basslines to a new
multicultural song.”

25 LAST CHORUS

To be white in America is to be very black. If you don’t know how black you
are, you don’t know how American you are.
-Robert Farris Thompson468

Here's a hint: We are not who we think we are.

-Michael Bane, White Boy Singin' the Blues

The United States, a nation built by seized labor on seized land, laid down
railroad tracks and put Blacks on the wrong side of them. The Blacks who helped
lay the tracks also laid down musical tracks; White folks found themselves on the
wrong side of these. Since Whites dared not cross the tracks, they begged,
borrowed or stole the music, and the tracks crossed over the tracks. Call it
syncretism or love and theft, it's American music.469

From this abbreviated tale of cultural hybridity, plunder, apprenticeship,

and contention and confusion, this much should be clear: our music is an
amalgam of influences, a stew in which one seldom tastes the original
ingredients separately. This is so, even more than in most countries, where in
general fewer influences have mingled, much more slowly and much further in

218
the past, though the explosion in migration these days is changing all that.
Stateside, even while the European-American population remains socially and
economically dominant, so does the Black cultural influence, even in the Whitest
hour, as Gunther Schuller points out:

The American popular song is inextricably and

profoundly linked with jazz, the one serving—along
with the blues—as the basic melodic/harmonic
material on which the other could build.470

So how come my highly educated informants at the beginning of this study

didn't know that? Let's face it: Americans—especially those of the White middle
classes who have precious little tie to their own roots—wouldn’t have much of a
way to know the sources of the national culture(s), thanks in large part to media
and schools that, at best, take no interest.

Ponder for a moment the influence of African-American culture on food,

clothing, and handshakes, and of course slang, and you get the sense that our
self-conceptions, our very identities, are shrouded in myth. Today, a century and
a half after the official end of slavery, millions of "non-Black" people sing, dance,
talk, dress, and even clap their hands in a way they would not without the Black
contribution to our culture. We see it all the time in the movies. And cartoons:
was that sly trickster Bugs Bunny actually Br’er Rabbit? Comedy, especially
standup, is worth another book, and there are several. 471 In literature, there is
evidence of African American influence on Twain, Melville, Eliot, Pound and
more.472 And yet, observes Michael North, “preemptive mimicry of blacks is a
traditional American device allowing whites to rebel against English culture and
simultaneously use it to solidify their domination at home.” 473 So mimicry is not
always what it seems.

219
 Carl Jung noticed, in 1909, a "subtle difference" between White Americans
and Europeans, encompassing language, modes of movement, and ways of
thinking, which he ascribed to African-American influence. 474 In an essay called
"What America Would Be Like Without Blacks," Ralph Ellison asserted that
"most American whites are culturally part Negro American without even
realizing it."475 Black English started as an African version of the language of the
masters, but went on to influence non-Africans. So too the music.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. tells the story of his 99 percent Black high school reunion
being crashed by a group of White refugees from their own reunion, which they
said was boring, and his reaction to that. He talked of Whites who "raid the
storehouse of black cultural treasures." One of his readers wrote to ask "Am I
supposed to feel guilty because I'm white and use black slang?”—to which he
responded that his complaint was that "after raiding the storehouse, many whites
still consider blacks "outsiders to the American mainstream." 476 I'm reminded of a
particularly embarrassing moment backstage at a community theater rehearsal
for a play about Huck Finn, in which I played his friend Joe. It was 1966; the
cast was White. One young actor was entertaining himself screaming in the style
of James Brown. “What are you doing?” he was asked. "I just love the way the
niggers scream!"

220
 In On the Road, Jack Kerouac mused that he wished he was Black. Chicago
jazzman Mezz Mezzrow married a Black woman and moved to Harlem, cutting
his ties to White society. A friend of Jimmie Rodgers said "He was more colored,
really." Janis Joplin lived her life as Bessie Smith redux. Bob Smith listened to
Black DJs in New York in the late forties and became Wolfman Jack, later
opining:

It's a wonderful thing the Afro-American people gave to us. That

music—I mean just imagine, we'd be living like those English folks
or those French folks, man. It'd be a horrible existence. 477

Of course the English and the French now have That Music too. As a teenager
I tuned in to the Wolfman and never thought of him as one race or another—just
a wild and crazy guy spinning great records. My own private Memphis.

So what happens when White people copy Black culture? Is it what Cecil
Brown says?:

When you want to take somebody else’s identity, you say “Oh, I
love you!” The next step is, “Now I steal it!”478

Or as parsed by Wesley Morris,

And yet doesn’t that attraction make sense? This is the music of a
people who have survived, who not only won't stop but also can’t be
stopped. Music by a people whose major innovations—jazz, funk, hip-
hop—have been about progress, about the future, about getting as far
away from nostalgia as time will allow…479

The Young Black Teenagers—kids of the Caucasian persuasion—grew up in

Black neighborhoods. Their music drew more of an Eminem level of respect,
rather than Vanilla Ice. They were outsiders, rejected by or rejecting their
"mainstream culture," and they turned to Blacks for identity. In the film The
Commitments, a Dublin band manager explains to his musicians why they are
playing soul music: "Because the Irish are the blacks of Europe." The voice of the
downpressed touches the alienated, be they beats, hippies, or millennials. The
question is whether those being touched have respect for those beat-upon as
much as for their beat.i How could this be encouraged? John Philips suggests:

i
Or as a Jules Feiffer cartoon had it: "I like their music, their dancing, and their slang - but do I
have to like them?"

221
 Pride in their African heritage is something that white children
should be taught along with blacks. It could help improve not only
black self-images but also white images of blacks, black images of
whites, and perhaps some whites’ images of themselves.480

“Black culture,” noted Ben Sidran, “has always been a ‘counter-culture.’” 481
Norman Mailer explored this question in his 1957 essay, "The White Negro:"

So it is no accident that the source of Hip is the Negro for he has

been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy
for two centuries...And in this wedding of the white and the black
it was the Negro who brought the cultural dowry.482

Mailer goes on to cite a few words included in the dowry: man, go, put down,
make, beat, cool, swing, with it, crazy, dig, flip, creep, hip, square. And that was
only 1957.

We rely on Black culture for our cultural catharsis, 483 without even knowing
it. Ralph Ellison talked about what White society hides from itself, and how that
affects both democracy and creativity:

[S]ince 1876 the race issue has been like a stave driven into
the American system of values, a stave so deeply imbedded in the
American ethos as to render America a nation of ethical
schizophrenics. Believing truly in democracy on one side of their
minds, they act on the other in violation of its most sacred
principles...This unwillingness to resolve the conflict in keeping
with his democratic ideals has compelled the white American,
figuratively, to force the Negro down into the deeper level of his
consciousness...Indeed, it seems that the Negro has become
identified with those unpleasant aspects of conscience and
consciousness which it is part of the American's character to avoid.
Thus when the literary artist attempts to tap the charged springs
issuing from his inner world, up float his misshapen and bloated
images of the Negro...and he turns away, discarding an ambiguous
substance which the artists of other cultures would confront boldly
and humanize into the stuff of a tragic art.484

And further,

222
 One of the most insidious crimes occurring in this
democracy is that of designating another, politically weaker, less
socially acceptable, people as the receptacle for one's own self-
disgust...reducing the humanity of others...With us Negroes it
started with the appropriation of our freedom and our labor; then it
was our music, our speech, our dance and the comic distortion of
our image...

In other words, by an act of "moral evasion," the White artist-writer-

American is cheapened, has lessened his/her ability to understand society and
humanity and him/herself. Consider here the operation men have traditionally
performed on women: in her book on the anti-feminism of the 1980s, Backlash,
Susan Faludi wrote that

Once a society projects its fears onto a female form, it can try to
cordon off these fears by controlling women, pushing them to
conform to comfortably nostalgic norms and shrinking them in the
cultural imagination to a manageable size.i

This could be the process for corralling any psychic threat. The patronizing
portrayal of Blacks in minstrel shows echoed through subsequent film and
television productions, becoming less blatant only after the 1950s, and a similar
portrayal held true for women and other marginalized populations. Control has
continued to be exercised through the images projected on a screen; the cultural
imagination enlarges only when the patronized groups break out of their cordon
in real life.

And yet, at the same time, Whites reach out across the cultural divide,
looking for sustenance, for catharsis, in the culture of their suppressed neighbors.
They seek a gateway to creative, liberating possibilities. And logically, those who
reject for any reason the tastes and mores of our society, or who are rejected by
society —can you spell LGBTQIA?—can turn for expressiveness to those who
cannot blend in.485 The speech, song, and style that these communities concoct are
ways of experiencing society, and oneself, differently.

If we perceive a society, a civilization even, as an organism composed of

interdependent parts, we can see how systemic dysfunction arises from injustice.
The displacement of the fruits of labor (wealth) from one class of people to
another within the system requires a regime to maintain the system of injustice,

i
There are also economic reasons to force women and Blacks to conform to nostalgic norms and
to shrink them in the cultural imagination.

223
common to most civilizations. There will be, foremost, a dehumanization of
those victimized in order to justify the theft and suppression. Second, there will
be ignorance of these processes among the privileged. Finally, there will be
myths about the goodness of the society, propounding a narrative of progress for
the de-privileged to balance the myth of their inferiority. They have then got you,
coming and going.

But part of what is denied—and yet subconsciously acknowledged—is that

the oppressed classes maintain their humanity while it withers in the privileged
classes, due to their alienation both from the classes they enslave and from
themselves. Their alienation results from living a lie and from living off of others.
The displacement of right livelihood, personal honor and dignity, and even
sexuality onto the Other is mostly, as I say, not conscious. But it is essential: it
puts the “body,” however perversely, barely back in balance. An unsustainable
balance, ultimately, but in the meantime it will keep everyone in their place,
more or less.

The culture of survival holds a powerful attraction not only in the United
States but wherever "American" culture has penetrated. The African drum, once
banned by the slave-master, has indeed conquered the conqueror. Black music
has entered the White soul. About which Jon Carroll says:

I grew up in a world of white America where black culture was

kept in the closet and under the rug. The big change in my lifetime
is that black culture has become, exuberantly, a part of the
mainstream. It has reached every area of life.486

Yet still, we are a nation that prefers to forget what we have done, and
therefore who we are. Short-term memory loss is nothing compared to historical
amnesia.

It would be helpful if musicians would educate themselves and their

audiences about the sources and contexts of the music. Many have this
knowledge, but do not spread the wealth. And what about those all-White high
school cheerleading squads busting Black dance moves to rap tracks at the
homecoming rally? There’s a fixer-upper.

Broadcasters—to the extent that there is still radio and that anyone listens to
it—should see each programming day as an opportunity to enlighten as well as
enliven. But they won't, unless there's a real lot of money in it, or unless they're
forced to—let’s say, by such a thing becoming dope, chill, or even woke. So let

224
the force be with us. After all, they're our public airwaves, right? Shouldn’t there
be a Truth in Origins law, like truth in advertising? OK, that will take a while.
Meanwhile, a simple credit uttered from the stage now and then—for a song, a
hot lick, a style—a simple Blacknowledgement would do wonders for cultural
justice, good community feeling, and race relations. “We’d like to thank Africa
for that last riff.” These are mechanical, perhaps silly suggestions. But if there
were a Black Music History Month…

And now a moment of science regarding "World Music," and the world
economy that birthed it. The question of cultural interaction has always been
bound up with that of economic interaction, which unfortunately has seldom
been played on a level field. Many countries are full of impoverished people, and
a few countries are full of fairly well-off people, and a few neighborhoods are
what we might call unduly well-off. Looking at our situation from a distance, we
can see that most of us in the U.S. are in the economic middle between rich and
poor, between corporate executives of whatever nation and the many millions
throughout the world who grow food for export but have little to eat themselves.

Bear with me now, this is about music. For just as the truly non-needy seem
to have a nasty habit of enriching themselves from the labor and resources of
those at the ladder's bottom, so the middle classes habitually appropriate their
culture, from minstrels to the blues to jazz to jitterbug to funk to fads like the
didgeridoo and Guatemalan-patterned clothing. This is hardly surprising when
you consider that, just as formal "highbrow" art often uses folk art as its source,
so the middle and upper classes use the "folks" as a source of entertainment. In
Europe, the courtly and genteel formal dances were often derived from peasant
dances; so today, our middle classes suck up the styles of the street. The
creativity of impoverished classes is coveted by those who are better off
materially but more impoverished artistically. That’s a serious charge, but a look
into the social motives for creativity, which we’ve been undertaking here,
suggests that it’s a big part of what’s going on.

We’ve been evolving to a “free market” (again, without the level field) in all
commodities, including culture. We grasp for roots to anchor ourselves—any
roots will do in a landslide. But a plant is a living thing, and if we break off a
branch and take it home to display its beauty, we will soon find it has shriveled
and died. If we appropriate the cultural contributions of others for our
sustenance, yet know not what we do, our souls will remain impoverished, and
racial harmony and cultural justice will continue to elude us.

225
 The World Music market niche appeals partly to people who, having lost
their contact to roots, land, and sense of self, seek it through the cultures of
others. “Peasant chic,” a market variant of “prestige from below,” offers the
chance for modern people, alienated from the rhythms of life basic to human
existence, to re-connect to nature, to grit and verve. As “high” art borrows from
folk creativity, urban sophisticates plow the fields of timeless folk cultures for
soul-enrichment.i Usually not in order to walk the walk, but just to cop the dance
steps. As always, the mass market bends the music to its needs, and musicians all
over the world enter recording studios and mix their beats with rock, funk, disco,
or whatever leavening will make the sale. We find ourselves consuming
commercialized and “Westernized” versions of somebody’s folk music. It would
be nice if the pre-electronic versions or something like them were preserved for
that occasion, a few years down the road, when we wake up and realize that
entire musical species and cultural languages are being lost. It's not that none of
the new mixes are worthy; it's just that the product receiving the corporate
watering tends to outgrow all others, often killing off the roots in the process.
People around the globe are in danger of losing their culture to the whims of
Amazon and Spotify, to the rapidly shifting trends of the music industry, to the
chase for the quarterly profit.

There’s more to the story than theft and ruin, of course. As we've seen,
there's lots of honest, appreciative interplay between and among cultures. Lots of
artists who create their own variation of the mix do acknowledge their sources;
but others make hay from "personas and performances that are studies in
ventriloquism and minstrelsy." 487 Culture today is a nearly unsortable laundry of
mixed influences, which is both a great thing and a problematic one. Why
problematic? Because over time, the appropriation, the grab, has never been
dealt with. African-Americans continue to provide the spark, the soul, for the
next generation of cultural innovation, then watch as it's blended, blanded and
bleached. Plantation celebrations became minstrel shows, southern Blacks
i
The borrowing from below goes back to forever. (Of course it goes both ways, and sideways
too, but it’s the From Below part that usually disappears in the written record, which becomes the
received wisdom, which warps who we think we are.) Rome is more Greek than we know—the
conquered conquering the conquerors. Educated Greeks came in as slaves and/or teachers to
Roman households. And Greece is part Egyptian (shhh). Compare this to enslaved Africans’
relationships to plantation owners’ kids. …and so on. 

226
invigorated White matter with Black manner, ragtime and rock were shorn of
their origins, and jazz was softened for mass consumption. All along, the roots
have been Sousa'd, Dorsey'd, Booned, and Elvis'd. Shouldn’t every monument to
Elvis have Otis Blackwell and Arthur Crudup standing beside him? Where are
the milk cartons searching for Arnold Shultz, Leslie Riddle, Jim Europe, and
Juba? Where are Black Patti, Rastus Brown? Who knows about Stephen Foster’s
captive housekeepers? Who knows that we wouldn’t have rock or funk or hip-
hop without corn shuckers, buckdancers, ring shouters, Black barbers, swamp
singers and halam-playing griots?i

Cultural justice is a necessary component of social justice. If we could

acknowledge the musical truth, maybe we could use it to get at the social truth,
to come to appreciate people through their cultural and material contributions to
our own lives. If music tells us who we are, and we are not who we think we are,
then we must not really be listening. As our music changes, we ourselves change,
yet we fail to look at ourselves and fail to achieve an honest sense of self. We
need a culture that transcends denial, that faces not only the better side of our
history but also the bitter side. By acknowledging that our mainstream is made
up of streams we have forgotten or denied, we can come to treasure these
streams, and accelerate our journey towards a place where we can all, as the sage
said, get along.

i
There is in fact a set of music awards given annually, since 1996, in Britain, called the Music of
Black Origin awards, or MOBOs. Recipients include Lauryn Hill, Eminem, 50 Cent, Justin
Timberlake, Tina Turner, and Amy Winehouse. Categories include jazz, hip-hop, reggae, and
R&B.

227
 DISCOGRAPHY
(For discs and videos, ask your library if they have them, and why not.)

This very short list was selected to help open the ears, to hear old music in a
new way.

Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, 5-CD set

The Cats and the Fiddle: I Miss You So; Bluebird/RCA, 1939-41 (Black string
band)
Gospel Hummingbirds, Steppin Out, Blind Pig, 1991
Wynonie Harris, Wynonie "Mr. Blues" Harris, Charly CD 244.
Emmett Miller: The Minstrel Man From Georgia; Sony Legacy Roots & Blues Series,
1996.
Dom Flemons, Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys, Smithsonian
Folkways/African American Legacy Recordings/National Museum of African
American Culture. SFW CD 40224, 2018.
Dom Pedro, Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango. AMA Productions, 2013
Lesley Riddle, Step By Step—Lesley Riddle Meets the Carter Family: Blues, Country,
and Sacred Songs, Rounder CD 0299.
Big Joe Turner, Shake, Rattle, & Roll, Tomato R2 71666, 1994.

Compilations:
The Alabama Sacred Harp Convention: White Spirituals from the
Sacred Harp; recorded by Alan Lomax, New World Records, 1977
Altamont: Black string band music from the Library of Congress; Rounder (recorded
1942-46)
Before the Blues, Vol. 1-3, Yazoo, 1996.
Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia, Smithsonian Folkways, 1998.
Blues Originals, Vol. 6, Rhino Records
Blues Masters, Vol. 14, Rhino Records, 1993.
Deep River of Song: Black Texicans - Balladeers and Songsters of the Texas Frontier.
Alan Lomax Collection, Rounder, 1999.
Louisiana Piano Rhythms, Rhino R2 71568, 1993
Negro Church Music, Atlantic Records Southern Folk Heritage Series 1351, edited
by Alan Lomax
New Orleans Originals
Rhythm, Country & Blues; MC Records, 1994 (Blues and Country superstars
paired up)
Roots of the Blues; New World Records, 1977

228
Roots of Rock; Yazoo Records
Singing Preachers and Their Congregations
The Southern Journey; CD, Prestige recorded by John and Alan Lomax, 1959 (Black
religious, Appalachian, etc.)
Square Dance With Soul, Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Folkways, 1969.
Wade in the Water; Smithsonian, audio series on gospel narrated by Bernice
Johnson Reagon, 1993
Eddie Cantor, Bert Williams, others; Ziegfeld Follies of 1919; music by Irving Berlin
and others; Smithsonian.

VIDEOGRAPHY

Birth of the Blues, Bing Crosby, 1941.

Bluesland: A Portrait in American Music, "Masters of American Music" series,
BMG Video, 1993
Dancing, Part 5: New World, New Forms; PBS/WNET, 1993.
Deep Blues, dir. Robert Mugge, writer/narrator Robert Palmer, 1991.
Duke Ellington: Reminiscing in Tempo, PBS
Gurumbe: Afro-Andalousian Memories, dir. M. Angel Rosale. Intermedia
Productions, 2016.
History of Rock and Roll, PBS
International Sweethearts of Rhythm: America's Hottest All-Girl Band, 1986.
Jazz Classics (series)
John Hammond, From Bessie Smith to Bruce Springsteen, WNET/CBS
Louie Bluie, Black string band
A Patchwork Quilt (series): Appalachian Journey, Jazz Parades, Cajun Country, and
The Land Where the Blues Began, produced by Alan Lomax, 1990.
Routes of Rhythm, series narrated by Harry Belafonte; PBS, 1991.
Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango. By Dom Pedro. Distributed by
ArtMattan Productions. www.AfricanDiasporaDVD.com. 2013.
Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Early Rural & Popular American Music,
Shanachie, 1992.

229
 PODCASTOGRAPHY
Rhiannon Giddens’ Black Roots podcast
The Record Spinner Podcast
Blue Lineage - Black American Music Timeline
Black Music Matters
For the Culture: The History of Black Music podcast.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARTICLES

Abbott, Lynn. 1992. "Play That Barber Shop Chord: A Case for the African-
American Origin of Barbershop Harmony," American Music, Fall. From his book
in progress, To Sing and Never Get Tired: The Vocal Quartet Tradition in Black New
Orleans.
Abbott, Lynn, and Seroff, Doug, "America's Blue Yodel," Musical Traditions, Late
1993.
Allen, Zita, “From Slave Ships to Center Stage,”
https://www.thirteen.org/freetodance/behind/behind_slaveships.html
Author unknown, "Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music," The Dearborn
Independent (The Ford International Weekly), Dearborn, MI, August 6, 1921.
Badger, R. Reid, "James Reese Europe and the Prehistory of Jazz," American
Music, Vol. 7 No. 1, Spring 1989, 48-67.
Baker, Houston A., Jr., "Hybridity, the rap race, and pedagogy for the 1990s,"
Black Music Research Journal, 11:2, 1991, 217-228.
Barol, Bill, "The Kings of Rap, together: Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys hit the
road," Newsweek, June 29, 1987, 71.
Berry, Jason. 1988-90. "African Cultural Memory in New Orleans Music," Black
Music Research, Vol 8, #1, 1988-90.
Bernard-Donals, Michael, "Jazz, Rock 'n' Roll, Rap and Politics," Journal of Popular
Culture, 28:2, 1994, 127-38.
Brown, Cecil, “Doing That ‘Ole Oscar Soft-Shoe,” San Francisco Examiner
Magazine, March 26, 1995.
Brown, Farnum, "The kids are all White," Mother Jones, Sept-Oct., 1991, 73-74.

230
Cable, George Washington. "The Dance in Place Congo & Creole Slave Songs," in
Katz, Bernard, The Social  Implications of Early Negro Music in the United States,
New York:Arno, 1969.
Calt, Stephen, "The Myth of Rock and Roll," 78 Quarterly,Vol I No. 6, 1991.
Carby, Hazel, "The Multicultural Wars," in Dent, Gina, and Wallace, Michele,
Black Popular Culture, Seattle:Bay Press, 1992.
Carroll, E. Jean, "The return of the White Negro," Esquire, June 1994, 100-7.
Cocks, Jay, "Rap Around: Rad-hungry kids are dressing down and acting up in a
worldwide rhythm revolution," Time, October 19, 1992, 70-71.
Cohen, John. "The Folk Music Interchange: Negro and White," in Sing Out!,
Dec.1964-Jan 1965, 42-49.
Cohen, Norman. "The Skillet Lickers: A Study of a Hillbilly String Band and Its
Repertoire," in Gentry, Linnell, ed., A History and Encyclopedia of Country,
Western, and Gospel Music, Second Edition, Nashville:Clairmont Corp, 1969.
Collins, Gail, "Rap as a second language: Three middle-aged mothers master the
possibilities," Ms., January-February 1989, 56-58.
Conway, Cecilia., “Black Banjo Songsters in Appalachia,” Black Music Research
Journal, 23:1/2, Spring/Fall 2003, 149-66.
Danaher, William F. and Blackwelder, Stephen P., "The Emergence of blues and
rap: A comparison and assessment of the context, meaning and message,"
Popular Music and Society, 17:4, 1993, 1-13.
Delaney, Paul, "Pop culture, "Gangsta Rap: and the "New Vaudeville," Media
Stud-ies Journal, 8:3, summer 1994, 97-101.
Douglas, Ann, “Siblings and Mongrels: The Tensions and Triumphs of Black-
Jewish Musical Mixing,” Common Quest, Summer 1997.
DuBois, W.E.B., "The Souls of White Folk," in DuBois, Essays
Elwood, Philip, "Splendor in the Brass," San Francisco Examiner Magazine, October
23, 1994, 10.
Europe, James R. , “A Negro Explains Jazz,” 1919. Reprint in Keeping Time:
Readings in Jazz History, ed. Robert Walser, 12-14. New York:Oxford, 1999.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, "Interrogating "Whiteness,“ Complicating"Blackness":
Remapping American Culture," American Quarterly, September 1995, 429-465.
Forte, Dan, “Roots of Rockabilly,” Guitar Player, December 1983, 67-70+
Francis, Cleve, "Country & Black Listeners: Not An Oxymoron," Billboard,
February 4, 1995, 5.
Gates, Henry Louis, "Sudden Def," New Yorker, June 19, 1995, 34-42.
Green, Archie, "Hillbilly Music: Source and Symbol," Journal of American Folklore,
July-September 1965, 204-228.
Green, Archie, "Old Dan Tucker," JEMF Quarterly, Vol XVII, No. 62, Summer
1981, 85-106.

231
Handelman, David, "Sold on Ice,", Rolling Stone, January 1, 1991, 40-44+.
Hammond, John, "An Experience in Jazz History," in Black Music in Our Culture,
Kent:Kent State U., 1970, 42-61.
Hardy, Ernest, "Devil's Helper: Tricky: Between rock and a harder place," L.A.
Weekly, October 4, 1996, 47.
Hay, Fred J., “Black Musicians in Appalachia: An Introduction to Affrilachian
Music,” Black Music Research Journal, 23:1/2, Spring/Fall 2003, 1-19.
Henderson,Alex, "Active Indies," Billboard, December 24, 1988.
Herskovitz, Mellville. 1935. "What Has Africa Given America?," New Republic,
September 4, 1935.
__________________. 1941. “Patterns of Negro Music,” Illinois Academy of Science
Transactions, 34:1, September 1941, 19-23.
Jabbour, Alan, “Fiddle Music,” American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, 1996, 253-56.
Jefferson, Margo, "Ripping Off Black Music," Harper's Magazine, Jan 1973.
Jennings, Derek, "Bring the noise!: A headbanging guide to hip-hop," Independent
Weekly (Raleigh), November 12, 1996, 13-14.
Jennings, Nicholas, "Snow business: an Irish-Canadian is all the rage in rap,"
Maclean's, May 3, 1993, 106:18, 48-9.
Johnson, Thomas F., "That Ain't Country: The Distinctiveness of Commercial
Western Music," JEMF Quarterly, Summer 1981, 75-84.
Jung, Carl G., "Your Negroid and Indian Behavior," Forum, April 1930, 193-99.
Kaplan, Michael, "Oy, Word! Rappers David and Lauren Lawrence are just your
ordinary middle-aged Jewish couple 'n the hood," New York, December 18, 1995,
46-7.
Kennard, James J. Jr., "Who Are Our National Poets?", The Knickerbocker 26,
Oct. 1845.
Kenney, William Howland III, "The Influence of Black Vaudeville on Early Jazz,"
in The Black Perspective in Music, Vol 14, No. 3, Fall 1986.
Kienzle, Rich, "The Evolution of Country Fingerpicking," Guitar Player, May 1984,
38-48.
Lawrence, Keith, "Arnold Shultz: Godfather of Bluegrass?", Bluegrass Unlimited,
November 1989, 39-43.
Lawrence, Keith, "Arnold Shultz: The Greatest (?) Guitar Picker's Life Ended
Before Promise Realized," JEMF Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 61, Spring 1981, 3-8.
Leland, John, "Rap and Race," Newsweek, June 29, 1992, 47-51.
Light, Alan, "What does a White girl, Monica Lynch, know about hip-hop
music?", Vogue, January 1992, 73-74.
Lightfoot, William E., "A Regional Style: The Legacy of Arnold Shultz," in Allen,
Barbara and Schlereth, Thomas J., eds., Sense of Place: American Regional Cultures,
Lexington:University Press of Kentucky, 1990.

232
____________, “The Three Doc(k)s: White Blues in Appalachia,” Black Music
Researach Journal 23:1/2, Spring/Fall 2003, 167-93.
Locke, Alain, The Negro and His Music” Bronze Booklet Number 2, 1936.
Washington: The Associates in Negro Folk Education.
Lomax, Alan, "Bluegrass Background: Folk Music With Overdrive,"Esquire. Oct
1959, 108.
Lornell, Kip, "Brownie's Buddy: Leslie Riddles," Living Blues, No. 12, Spring 1973,
20-23.
Lornell, Kip, "I Used To Go Along And Help: Leslie Riddles Remembers
Songhunting With A.P.," The Carter Family, Old Time Music Booklet 1, 1974.
Lott, Eric. 1991. "The Seeming Counterfeit: Racial Politics and Early Blackface
Minstrelsy," American Quarterly, Vol 43, No.2.
Martin, Denis-Constant.. "Filiation or Innovation? Some Hypotheses to
Overcome the Dilemma of Afro-American Music's Origins," Black Music Research
Journal, Spring 1991.
Marsalis, Wynton, "What Is Jazz?", interview with Tony Scherman, American
Heritage, October 1995.
Maultsby, Portia K. 1990. "Africanisms in African-American Music," in
Holloway, Joseph E. ed., Africanisms in American Culture, Indiana U.
O'Connell, Barry, "Step By Step: Lesley Riddle Meets the Carter Family,"
unpublished monograph.
Ostendorf, Berndt, "Minstrelsy and Early Jazz," Massachusetts Review, Autumn
1979
Ogren, Kathy J. 1989. "Controversial Sounds: Jazz Performance as Theme and
Language in the Harlem Renaissance," in Singh, Shiver, Brodwin, eds., The
Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations, New York, London:Garland.
O'Neal, Jim, "Kentucky Blues," Living Blues, Summer 1981.
Perry, Steve. 1988. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough: The Politics of Crossover,"
in Frith, Simon, ed., Facing the Music, New York:Pantheon.
Philips, John Edward. 1990. “The African Heritage of White America.” in
Holloway, Joseph E. ed., Africanisms in American Culture, Indiana U.
"The Real Color of Black Music: Racism in the Music Industry, Grammy Magazine,
Vol.9, No.2, April 1991.
Redd, Lawrence N. 1985. "Rock! It's Still Rhythm and Blues," The Black Perspective
in Music, Vol. 13, Number 1.
Ressner, Jeffrey, "Thrashers pay tribute to rap," Rolling Stone, August 8, 1991, 21.
Reynolds, J.R., "Labels Struggle to gain acceptance here for European hip-hop
artists," Billboard, June 25, 1994, 1+.
Root, Deane L. "The "Mythtory" of Stephen C. Foster or Why His True Story
Remains Untold," The American Music Research Center Journal, Vol 1, 1991.

233
Rosen, Craig, "Modern rock opens doors to rap tracks," Billboard, June 25, 1994,
1+.
Samuels, David, "The rap on rap," New Republic, November 11, 1991, 24-29.
Seroff, Doug. 1989, Program notes, Gospel Arts Day, Nashville, TN, June 18,
1989.
Shaw, Arnold, “The Panorama,” in “Black Music: A Geneaology of Sound,”
Billboard Magazine, June 9. 1979.
Shusterman, Richard, "Rap Remix: Pragmatism, postmodernism, and other
issues in the house," Critical Inquiry, 22:1, autumn 1995, 150-61.
Spitzer, Marian, "The Lay of the Last Minstrels," The SaturdayEvening Post, March
7, 1925.
Stephens, Gregory, “Interracial Dialogue in Rap Music: Call-and-Response In a
Multicultural Style,” New Formation, Spring 1992, 62-79.
Stephens, Robert W., "Soul: A Historical Reconstruction of Continuity and
Change in Black Popular Music," The Black Perspective in Music, Vol 12, No. 1,
Spring 1984, 21-43.
Stowe, William F., and Grimsted, David. 1975. "White-Black Humor," Journal of
Ethnic Studies, Vol.3, No.2, Summer.
Various authors, "Black Music: A Genealogy of Sound," Billboard, June 9, 1979.
Wald, Elijah, "John Jackson: Down Home Rappahannock Blues," Sing Out, 39:1.
Waterman, Richard A., "’Hot’ Rhythm in Negro Music," J. American Musicological
Society, Spring 1948, 24-37.
Wells, Paul F., “Fiddling As An Avenue of Black-White Musical Interchange,”
Black Music Research Journal, 23:1/2, Spring/Fall 2003, 135-47.
White, Shane, “It Was A Proud Day: African-American Fesivals and Parades in
the North, 1741-1834,” Journal of American History 81(I), 1994, 13-50.
Wilgus, D.K., "The Negro-White Spiritual," in Dundes, Alan, ed., Mother Wit
From the Laughing Barrel, New York:Garland, 1981.
Winans, Robert, "The Folk, the Stage, and the Five-String Banjo in the Nineteenth
Century," Journal of American Folklore 89(1976),407-37.
Wolfe, Charles, Liner notes for "Altamont: Black Stringband Music from the
Library of Congress," Rounder 0238. 1989.
Wolfe, Charles, "Rural Black String Band Music," in Black Music Research, Vol.10,
No.1, Spring 1990.

234
 BIBLIOGRAPHY—BOOKS

Abrahams, Roger D. 1992. Singing the Master: The Emergence of African

American Culture in the Plantation South, New York:Pantheon.
Andrews, George Reid. 1980. The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900.
Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Andrews, Maxene, and Gilbert, Bill. 1993. Over Here, Over There: The Andrews
Sisters and the USO Stars in World War II, New York: Zebra.
Balliett, Whitney. 1988. American Singers: Twenty-seven Portraits in Song, New
York: Oxford.
Bane, Michael. 1982. White Boy Singin' the Blues: The Black Roots of White Rock,
New York:Da Capo.
Barnouw, E. 1966. A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Vol. 1. New
York.
Belden, Henry M., and Hudson, Arthur Palmer, eds., Folk Songs From North
Carolina, Vol 3 of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore,
Durham:Duke U., 1952.
Berlin, Edward A. 1980. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History,
Boulder:U.Colorado.
Booth, Stanley. 1991. Rythm Oil, London: Jonathan Cape.
Borneman, Ernest. “The Roots of Jazz,” in Nat Hentoff and Albert J.
McCarthy. 1978. Jazz, ed. New York:DaCapo.
Brown, Sterling A., Davis, Arthur P., and Lee, Ulysses. 1941.The Negro
Caravan, New York:Dryden.
Buerkle, James, and Barker, Danny. 1973. Bourbon Street Black: The New
Orleans Black Jazzman, New York:Oxford.
Burnim, Mellonee V. and Maultsby, Portia K., eds., African American Music:
An Introduction, Second Edition. New York:Routledge, 2015
Burwell, Letitia M. 1895. A Girl’s Life in Virginia Before the War. New
York:Stokes.
Butcher, Margaret Just. 1956. The Negro in American Culture, New
York:Knopf.
Cantor, Louis. 1992. Wheelin' On Beale. New York:Pharos.
Campbell, Olive Dame, and Cecil J. Sharp. 1917. English Folks Songs From the
Southern Appalachians: Comprising 122 Songs and Ballads, and 323 Tunes. New
York:G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Cantwell, Robert. 1984. Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern
Sound, Urbana:U.Illinois.

235
Chappel, W. 1965. The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time,
New York:Dover.
Chapple, Steve, and Garofalo, Reebee, 1977. Rock 'N' Roll Is Here To Pay,
Chicago:Nelson-Hall.
Charters, Samuel, 1959. The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart.
Charters, Samuel and Kunstadt, Leonard. 1981. Jazz: A History of the New
York Scene. NewYork:Da Capo.
Clarke, Donald. 1995. The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, New York:St.
Martin's.
Cohn, Lawrence, ed. 1993. Nothing But the Blues, New York: Abbeville.
Collier, James Lincoln. 1978. The Making of Jazz, Boston:Houghton Mifflin.
Conway, Cecilia. 1995. African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A study of Folk
Traditions, Knoxville:The University of Tennessee Press.
Costello, Mark, and Wallace, David Foster. 1990. Signifying Rappers: Rap and
Race in the Urban Present, New York:Ecco.
Cross, Brian, It's Not About a Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles,
New York: Verso, 1993.
Crow, Bill. 1990. Jazz Anecdotes, New York:Oxford.
Cunard, Nancy ed. 1934. Negro: An Anthology, New York:Ungar.
Daniel, Wayne W. 1990. Pickin' on Peachtree: A History of Country Music in
Atlanta, Georgia, Urbana:U. Illinois.
Davis, Angela. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. New York:Vintage.
Dennison, Sam. 1982. Scandalize My Name: Black Imagery in American Popular
Music, New York:Garland.
Dickens, Charles. 1957. American Notes, 1842, London:Oxford U.
Dundes, Allan, ed., Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the
Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore, New York:Garland, 1981, esp.
Waterman, Richard Alan, "African Influence on the Music of the Americas,"
and Wilgus, D.K., "The Negro-White Spiritual.”
Dyson, Michael Eric, Between God and Gangsta Rap, New York:Oxford, 1996.
Ellison, Ralph. 1964. Shadow and Act, New York:Random House.
Emery, Lynne Fauley, Black Dance in the United States From 1619 to 1970, Palo
Alto:National Press, 1972, esp. Ch. 5, "Jim Crow and Juba," and Ch. 10,
"Popular Dance in the Twentieth Century," by Brenda-Dixon Stowell.
Epstein, Dena. 1977. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil
War, Urbana:U.Illinois.
Ewen, David. 1977. All The Years of American Popular Music, Englewood
Cliffs:Prentice-Hall.
Feather, Leanord. 1955. A Brief History of Jazz. New York:Horizon.

236
Fernando, S.H. Jr. 1994. The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture, and
Attitudes of Hip-Hop, New York:Anchor.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. 1993. Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-
American Voices, New York:Oxford.
Fithian, Philip Vickers. 1957. Journal & Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773-
1774; A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, Williamsburg, VA: Colonial
Williamsburg.
Flippo, Chet. 1981. Your Cheatin' Heart: A Biography of Hank Williams, New
York:Simon and Schuster.
Frith, Simon. 1981. Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock 'n' Roll,
New York:Pantheon.
Fry, Gladys-Marie. 1975. Night Riders in Black Folk History. Knoxville:U.
Tennessee.
Garofalo, Reebee, Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA, Boston:Allyn and
Bacon, 1997.
George, Nelson. 1988. The Death of Rhythm and Blues, New York:Pantheon.
Green, Douglas. 1976. Country Roots: The Origins of Country Music. New
York:Hawthorn.
Handy, D. Antoinette. 1983. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm,
Metuchen, NJ:Scarecrow.
Handy, W.C. 1941. Father of the Blues, New York:MacMillan.
____________, ed. 1972. Blues: An Anthology. New York:A. and C. Boni, 1926.
Reprint, New York:Macmillan.
Harlow, Frederick Pease. 1962. Chanteying Aboard American Ships, Barre,
Massachusetts:Barre Gazette.
Hebdige, Dick, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London:Routledge, 1979.
Hemenway. 1977. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, Urbana: U.Illinois.
Herskovitz, Melville and Frances. 1936. Suriname Folklore New
York:Columbia U. Press.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. 1984. Army Life in a Black Regiment. New
York:Norton. (Orig pub 1869.)
Hodeir, Andre. 1956. Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, New York: Grove
Holloway, Joseph e., ed. Africanisms in American Culture. 2nd ed. Bloomington,
IN:Indiana U., 2005.
Howard, John Tasker. 1953. Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour. New York:
Crowell.
Hugill, Stan. 1961. Shanties From the Seven Seas, Boston:Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Jackson, Bruce. 1967. The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century
Periodicals. Austin:University of Texas Press.

237
Jackson, George Pullen. 1933. White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, Chapel
Hill:U. North Carolina.
Jackson, John A. 1997. American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock
‘n’ Roll Empire. NY:Oxford.
Jenkins, Ron. 1994. Subversive Laughter: The Liberating Power of Comedy, New
York:The Free Press.
Johnson, James Weldon. 1926. Introduction to The Second Book of Negro
Spirituals, New York:Viking.
______________. 1930/1991. Black Manhattan. New York:DaCapo.
Johnson, James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson. 1944. The Books of
American Negro Spirituals, New York:Viking.
Jones, A.M. 1959. Studies in African Music, London:Oxford.
Jones, LeRoi. 1963. Blues People, New York:Morrow.
Keil, Charles. 1966. Urban Blues, Chicago:U. of Chicago.
Kellner, Bruce, Ed. 1979. Keep A-Inchin’ Along: Selected Writings of Carl Van
Vechten About Black Art and Letters. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Kenney, William Howland. 1993. Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History 1904-1930.
New York:Oxford.
Kiersh, Edward, 1986. Where Are You Now, Bo Diddley?, Garden City,
NJ:Doubleday.
Kochman, Thomas. 1972. Rappin' and Stylin' Out, Urbana:U. Illinois.
Lee, Peggy. 1989. Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography, New York:Donald I. Fine,
Inc.
Lees, Gene. 1994. Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White. New York:Oxford.
Leonard, Neil. 1962. Jazz and the White Americans:
The Acceptance of a New Art Form, Chicago:U. of Chicago Press.
Lerner, Alan Jay. 1986. The Musical Theatre—A Celebration, New
York:McGraw-Hill.
Lewis, David Levering. 1981. When Harlem Was in Vogue, New York:Knopf.
Lipsitz, George. 1990. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular
Culture, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota.
___________. 1994. Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s.
Urbana, Chicago:U. of Illinois.
Locke, Alain. 1969. The Negro and His Music, New York:Arno/NY Times.
Lomax, Alan. 1960. The Folk Songs of North America, Garden City, New
York:Doubleday.
___________. 1993. The Land Where The Blues Began, New York: Pantheon.
Lomax, John. Adventures of a Ballad Hunter. NewYork:MacMillan,
Lomax, John A and Alan. 1938. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.
NewYork:MacMillan.

238
Longstreet, Stephen. 1956. The Real Jazz Old and New, New York:Greenwood.
Lott, Eric. 1993. Love and Theft: Black Face Minstrelsy and the American Working
Class, New York:Oxford.
Malone, Bill C. 1968. Country Music U.S.A. Austin: U. Texas.
____________. 1979. Southern Music, American Music, Lexington:U.Press of
Kentucky.
Malone, Bill C. and McCulloh, Judith, eds. 1975. Stars of Country Music: Uncle
Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez, Urbana:U. Illinois.
Marcus, Greil. 1997. Mystery Train. New York:Penguin.
Martin, C.T. "Deac". 1932. Handbook for Adeline Addicts: A Starter for Cold
Voices and a Critical Survey of American Balladry, Cleveland:Schonberg Press.
Mates, Julian. 1985. America's Musical Stage, Greenwood.
McNally, Dennis. 2014. On Highway 61. Berkeley:Counterpoint.
Meltzer, David, ed. 1993. Reading Jazz, San Francisco:Mercury House.
Nathan, Hans. 1962. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy.
Norman:University of Oklahoma Press.
Nettl, Bruno. 1976. An Introduction to Folk Music in the United States.
Detroit:Wayne State U. Press.
Nicholson, Stuart. 1999. Reminiscing in Tempo: A Portrait of Duke Ellington.
Boston:Northern University.
North, Michael. 1994. The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth
Century Literature. New York:Oxford U.
Ogren, Kathy J. 1989. The Jazz Revolution, New York:Oxford.
Oliver, Paul, Harrison, Max, and Bolcom, William. 1986. The New Grove:
Gospel, Blues and Jazz, New York:Norton.
Otis, Johnny. 1993. Upside Your Head!: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue,
Hanover, NH:University Press of New England.
Palmer, Robert. 1995. Rock & Roll: An Unruly History. New York:Harmony.
Palmer, Tony. 1976. All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music, New
York:Grossman/Viking.
Placksin, Sally. 1982. American Women In Jazz, 1900 to the Present. New
York:Seaview.
Pratt, Ray. 1990. Rhythm and Resistance: Explorations in the Political Uses of
Popular Music. New York:Praeger.
Redd, Lawrence N. 1974. Rock is Rhythm and Blues, E. Lansing:Michigan U.
Riis, Thomas L. 1989. Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York
1890- 1915, Washington:Smithsonian Institute.
Roberts, John Storm. 1985. The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music
on the United States, Tivoli, NY: Original Music.
Rogers, J.A. 1961. Africa's Gift to America: The Afro- American

239
 in the Making and Saving of the United States, New York:HM Rogers.
Rooney, James. 1971. Bossmen: Bill Monroe/Muddy Waters, New York:Dial.
Rose, Al, 1979. Eubie Blake. New York:Schirmer.
Rose, Tricia, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America,
Hanover:Wesleyan U. Press, 1994.
Rourke, Constance. 1931. American Humor: A Study of the National Character,
New York:Harcourt.
____________. 1942. The Roots of American Culture, New York:Harcourt,
Brace.
Royce, Anya Peterson. 1977. The Anthropology of Dance. Bloomington:Indiana
University.
Russell, Tony. 1970. Blacks, Whites and Blues, New York:Stein and Day.
Rublowsky, John. 1971. Black Music in America, New York:Basic Books.
Sandberg, Larry, and Weissman, Dick. 1976. The Folk Music Sourcebook. New
York:Knopf.
Schafer, William J., and Riedel, Johannes. 1973. The Art of Ragtime, Louisiana
State U. Press.
Schlappi, Elizabeth. 1978. Roy Acuff: The Smoky Mountain Boy, Gretna,
La.:Pelican.
Schuller, Gunther. 1968. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development, New
York:Oxford.
Schuller, Gunther. 1989. The Swing Era, New York:Oxford.
Shapiro, Nat and Nat Hentoff. 1966. Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz
as told by the Men Who Made It. New York:Dover.
Shaw, Arnold. 1978. Honkers and Shouters, New York:Macmillan.
Sidran, Ben. 1971. Black Talk, New York:Holt-Rinehart.
Small, Christopher. 1987. Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and
Celebration in Afro-American Music, New York:Riverrun.
Smith, Willie. 1964. Music on My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist.
NY:Doubleday.
Southern, Eileen. 1971. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New
York:Norton.
Southern, Eileen. 1983. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 3rd edition.
New York:Norton.
Mary Newton Stanard. 1917. Colonial Virginia: Its People and Customs,
Philadelphia:Lippincott.
Stearns, Marshall W. 1956. The Story of Jazz. New York:Oxford.
Stearns, Marshall and Jean. 1964. Jazz Dance. New York:Schirmer.
Stuckey, Sterling. 1987. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of
Black America. NewYork:Oxford.

240
Tate, Greg. 1992. Flyboy In the Buttermilk. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Taylor, Quintard. 1998. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the
American West, 1528-1990. NewYork:Norton.
Thompson, Robert Farris. 2005. Tango: The Art History of Love. New
York:Pantheon.
Titon, Jeff Todd. 1977. Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis.
Urbana:University of Illinois.
Tosches, Nick. 1996. Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New
York:DaCapo.
Townsend, Charles R. 1976. San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills.
Urbana:University of Illinois.
____________. 1999. Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York:DaCapo.
Wald, Elijah. 2009. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll.NY:Oxford.
Walton, Ortiz M. 1972. Music: Black, White & Blue, New York:W. Morrow.
Warner-Lewis, Maureen. 2004. Central Africa in the Caribbean. Kingston:U of
West Indies.
Watkins, Mel. 1994. On The Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying. New
York: Touchstone.
Wilgus, D.K. 1959. AngloAmerican Folksong Scholarship Since 1898, New
Brunswick:Rutgers.
Williams, Gregory Howard. 1995. Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a
White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black. New York:Dutton.
Woll, Allen. 1989. Black Musical Theater From Coontown to Dreamgirls, Baton
Rouge:Louisiana State U

241
242
 1

2
NOTES

1 In the Beginning...
1
Conway 1995, 85.
Schuller 1989, 200.

2 Early Fusion Music

3
Herskovitz 1941, 20.
4
Schuller 1968, p 19-20.
5
Cantwell, 215.
6
A.M. Jones, 1959, vol 1, 21.
7
John Work, American Negro Songs and Spirituals, New York:Bonanza Books, 1940, quoted in Roberts, Black
Music of Two Worlds, 164.
8
Cantwell, 99.
9
Jones, 46, 102.
10
Stearns, 270.
11
Denis-Constant Martin, 28-29.
12
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, New York:Knopf 1956. Quoted in Rublowsky, 57.

3 The Plantation
13
Higginson, 41.
14
Stuckey, 11.
15
Stearns 1956, 12-13
16
Stuckey 373, n.203
17
Epstein 2003 (1977), 7-17, quoted in Maultsby ,“The African Cultural and Musical Past,” in Burnim and
Maultsby. See also White, 1994.
18
Stuckey, ibid., 93.
19
loc. cit.
20
Stearns 1956, 13.
21
Abrahams 180.
22
Burwell, 131-32.
23
Southern, 1983, 178.
24
Fry, 85.
25
Handy, W.C., 5.
26
Melville and Frances Herskovitz, 520.
27
Rhiannon Giddens Black Roots podcast, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017khq ,
Ep 1, 5/24/22 minute 13:12
28
Abrahams, 102.
29
Stuckey, 370, n.159.
30
Marshall and Jean Stearns, 13.
31
loc. cit.
32
Allen, Zita, “From Slave Ships to Center Stage,” https://www.thirteen.org/freetodance/behind/behind_slaveships.html
33
Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance, cited in Allen.
34
Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, cited in Allen.
35
Barrow, Jr., David C., A Georgia Corn-Shucking, Century Magazine, XXIV, New York 1882, in Jackson, Bruce, 168.
36
John Cabell Chenault, Old Cane Springs: A Story of the War Between the States in Madison County, Kentucky,
Louisville: The Standard Printing Co., 1937), cited in Abrahams, 115.
37
Abrahams, 119.
38
E.C. Perrow, Journal of American Folklore 28 (1913), 139, cited in Abrahams, 124.
39
William Cullen Bryant, Letters of a Traveler, New York:Putnam, 1850, cited in Abrahams, 194.
40
Jeannette Robinson Murphy, The Survival of African Music in America, Popular Science Monthly, 55, New York,
1899, in Jackson, Bruce, 331.
41
loc. cit.
42
W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South, quoted in Abrahams, 1992, 24-25.

4 Minstrelsy: Whites Acting Black

43
Reported by Lafcadio Hearn, cited in Ralph Ellison 1964.
44
Ewen, 25.
45
Clarke, 44.
46
Mary Newton Stanard 1917, 136-37.
47
Rublowsky 1971, 100.
48
Stowe and Grimsted, 84.
49
Clarke, 24.
50
ibid., 92.
51
Nathan Huggins, quoted in Stowe and Grimsted, 81.
52
Nathan 1962, 110, cited in Conway 2003, 155.
53
ibid., 82.
54
ibid., 87.
55
Clarke, 23.
56
Spitzer, The Saturday Evening Post.
57
Lomax 1960, p 494, 514.
58
Frances Ann Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839, 1863, reprinted Chicago, 1969; 96,
quoted in Lott, 1991, 230.
59
Conway 1995, 117.
60
Morrison Foster, Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, Pittsburgh, 1896. Quoted in
Howard, 83.
61
Howard, 83.
62
Howard, 125.
63
Howard, 1.
64
Ewen, 42-45.
65
Howard, 128.
66
Root, American Music Research Center Journal.
67
In Clarke, 23.
68
Locke 1936, 47-48.
69
Jefferson, Harper's Magazine, 45.
70
Dickens, 1842/1957, 91-92.
71
Thomas Low Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, London, 1864, 369; quoted in Lott 1991, 227-28.
72
Martin, ibid., 30.
73
Conway 1995, 94.
74
Conway 1995, 95.
75
James K. Kennard, Jr., 1845, 332.
76
Berndt Ostendorf, Black Literature in White America, 67, quoted in Lott, 1991, 236.
77
Conway 1995, 105, 109.
78
Lott 1991, 227.
79
Quoted in Dennison, 54.

5 Sleepy Time Down South

80
Cited in Rublowsky, 71.
81
Lomax, Esquire, 108.
82
Fithian, Philip Vickers, 1957, 61-62.
83
A Concise Historical Account of All the British Colonies in North-America..., Dublin: Printed for C. Jenkin, 1776, 213.
84
"Memoirs of a Monticello Slave," in Bear, James A., Jr., ed., Jefferson at Monticello, Charlottesville:U. Press of
Virginia, 1967, 22.
85
Nichoas Creswell, quoted in Epstein, 121.
86
Abrahams, 137.
87
New York Journal, in Clarke, 21.
88
Wolfe 1990, 32.
89
Conway 1995, 13.
90
Jabbour, 254-255.
91
Wolfe 1990, 33.
92
Titon, 55.
93
Cantwell, 91.
94
Conway 1995, 59.
95
Douglas Green, 1976, 50.
96
Cantwell, 91; Conway, 56. This section relies heavily on Conway, 175-198.
97
Conway 1995, 109.
98
Op. cit., 26.
99
Op. cit., 159, story from Andy Cahan and Alice Gerrard.
100
Lomax 1960, 276.
101
Malone 1968, 4.
102
Ernest Borneman, “The Roots of Jazz”.17. Cited in Pratt, 87.
103
Malone 1968.
104
Wilgus, 359-60.
105
Nettl, 42.
106
Wilgus 1959, 363.
107
Maultsby, in Holloway, 205.
108
Martin, op. cit., p 33-34.
109
Wald, Sing Out, 39:1, 11.
110
Clarke, 145.
111
Royce, 116.
112
(Woodson, Frank S. (14 February 1901). "Recollections of the Band that Excelled Sousa". The Gold Leaf. 20 (10).
Henderson, N.C. p. 1 – via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.)
113
Chaney, Matt (2017-12-01). "Blacks Electrified Early American Music and Dance". ChaneysBlog. Retrieved 2019-05-
15.
114
Abrahams, 152-53.
115
Locke 1936, 50.
116
Malone 1979, 31.
117
Campbell and Sharp 1917, x, quoted in Hay, 8.
118
ibid., 29.
119
Ralph Ellison, "The World and the Jug," New Leader, February 3, 1964.

6 Cowboys: The West Was White?

120
Colonel Bailey C. Hanes, Bill Pickett, Bulldogger (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977) 31
121
William Loren Katz, The Black West (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1971) 146.
122
William Loren Katz, The Black West, Harlem Moon, 2005. 147.
123
A. Lomax, Black Texicans CD notes
124
Lomax, John, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, xv.
125
Hal Cannon, Who Were the Cowboys Behind ‘Cowboy Songs’? https://www.npr.org/2010/12/05/131761541/we-
ve-all-heard-cowboy-songs-but-who-were-the-cowboys
126
Irwin Silber, Songs Of The Great American West (New York: MacMillan, 1967) 159.
127
Albert B. Friedman, ed., The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World New York: Viking
Press, 1956, xxxii.
128
Patrick Joseph O'Connor, Cowboy Blues: Early Black Music In The West. Studies In Popular Culture (University
of Louisville) April 1994.
129
Wolfe and Lornell, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) 109.
130
Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 118.
131
ibid, 209.
132
Cannon, op cit.

7 Sea Chanteys
133
Harlow 1962, 7.
134
Hugill 1961, 10.
135
ibid., 140.
136
Abrahams, 190.
137
Hugill 1961., 258.
138
ibid., 29.
139
ibid., 71.

8 Old Time Religion

140
Forten, Charlotte, "Life on the Sea Islands," 1864, in The Negro Caravan, 657.
141
Abrahams, 105.
142
Oliver, 13.
143
Wilgus 1981, 80.
144
loc. cit.
145
Brown, 413.
146
Lawrence Gellert, "Me and My Captain," reprinted in The Negro Caravan, 471.
147
Zora Neale Hurston, "Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals," in Cunard, 224.
148
Doug Seroff, "Nashville - Historic Capital of Spiritual Singing", in Nashville Gospel Arts Day program, June 19,
1988; Lynn Abbott, personal communication, September 14, 1994.
149
cited in Fishkin 1993, p. 5.
150
Stephens, Robert, 26-27.
151
Doug Seroff, Nashville Gospel Arts Day, program, June 18, 1989, 9.

9 Time for Rags

152
Clarke, 56.
153
Berlin, 107.
154
Gilbert Chase, America's Music, 438-39.
155
Clarke, 60-61.
156
Rupert Hughes, "A Eulogy of Ragtime," 158.
157
Fishkin 1993, 111.
158
Clarke, 57-58.
159
Clarke, 62, and Weldon Johnson, 1930, 114.
160
Locke 1936, 61.
161
Schafer 1973, Ch. 1.
162
Butcher, 66, and Berlin, 5, 17. This 1896 composition was cited as a ragtime song in the following decade by
Cosmopolitan, New York Age, American Musician, and Art Journal.
163
Berlin, 17.
164
Leonard, 26.
165
Schafer, 116-18.
166
James Weldon Johnson 1926, 16-17.

10 Hollers, Jooks, and Levees: The Blues

167
See David Evans, “Blues,” in Burnim and Maultsby, 119-120.
168
Lomax 1960, 576.
169
Lomax 1960, 558.
170
Alan Governor, liner notes for Blues Masters, Vol. 3, Rhino Records, 1992.
171
Titon, 29.
172
Hammond, 58.
173
That's Black Entertainment, Video Communications Inc., 1989.
174
Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango. See Videography.
175
Butcher, 71.
176
Abbott, Lynn, and Seroff, Doug, "America's Blue Yodel," Musical Traditions, Late 1993,
177
Davis, 157..
12
Ogren 1989, 93. Ogren got the writers’ names a little off, but otherwise the cite was right.
11 Black Barbershops
.
178

179
Bill McClain, in Clarke, 60.
180
Johnson, James Weldon and J. Rosamond, 1944, 36.
181
C.T. "Deac" Martin 1932, 15.
182
Hicks, Val, Heritage of Harmony, Friendship, WI: New Past Press (SPEBSQSA), 1988, 35, quoted in Abbott,
American Music, 301.
183
Clarke, 60.

12 Jazz Marches In
184
Berry, 7.
185
See the film, The Land Where the Blues Began, in the series A Patchwork Quilt.
186
E. Simms Campbell, "Early Jam," in The Negro Caravan, 984.
187
Quoted by Bob Wilber in liner notes to Sydney Bechet, Bluebird CD 6590-2-RB.
188
Ken Burns, Jazz: The Story of American Music, Sony Audio, 2000.
189
Shapiro and Hentoff, 123.
190
Mezz Mezzrow, Really the Blues, New York: Random House, 1946, 146.
191
Quoted in Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin' To Ya.
192
Rublowsky, 123.
193
Longstreet, 69.
194
Feather, 22.
195
Southern, 1971, 357.
196
Malone 1979, 38.
197
"Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music," unsigned, The Dearborn Independent, Dearborn, Michigan, August 6,
1921, 8-9.
198
"How the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing," unsigned, The Dearborn Independent, August 13, 1921, 8.
199
ibid.
200
Gates, New Yorker.
201
Schuller, 1968, 70.
31
Ogren, 1989, 151.

13 Jazz: What Is It?

202

203
Hodeir 1956, 196, 200.
204
Collier 1978, 4.
205
Stearns, 273.
206
Quoted in Rublowsky, 126.
207
Gridley and Rave, 49.
208
Southern, 1971, 365.
209
Europe, 1919, 12-14
210
Schuller 1968, 57.
211
Marsalis, 1995, 72.
212
Borneman, “Roots of Jazz,” 17.
213
Gridley and Rave, 48.
214
Locke 1969, 78.
215
See film Gurumbe: Afro-Andalousian Memories, dir. M. Angel Rosale. Intermedia Productions, 2016.

14 Latin America: Us
216
Gurumbe: Afro-Andalousian Memories, dir. M. Angel Rosale. Intermedia Productions, 2016.
217
The following discussion relies heavily on that of John Storm Roberts in The Latin Tinge, Ch 1-5.
218
Roberts, 30.
219
"¿Hay negros en Argentina?" BBC Mundo, March 16, 2007.
220
Thompson, 90.
221
Andrews, 1980, 74.
222
Thompson, 109.
223
Smith, Music on My Mind, 66.
224
Ibid., 97.
225
Badger, 67.
226
Living Blues, No. 26, Mar-Apr 1976, 19,24.
227
Clarke, 431.

15 Up River: The Bleached Chorus

228
“Jazz and Its Victims,” New York Times, October 7, 1928.
229
Badger, 52.
230
Locke 1936, 67.
231
Ibid. and Southern, 1971, 350.
232
Charters and Kunstad, 31-34.
233
Southern, 1971, 364.
234
Ewen, 228.
235
Badger, 56
236
ibid., 58
237
loc. cit.
238
cited in Kellner.
239
Clarke, 167.
240
Zora Neale Hurston, quoted in Hemenway 1977, 80-81.
241
Clarke, 169.
242
Buerkle, 106.
243
Lees, 201.
244
Ogren, 1989, 160.
245
Friedwald, Will, Jazz Singing, New York:Collier/MacMillan, 78.
246
Placksin, 23.
32
John Lucas, “Cats Hepped by Connee's Chirping,” Down Beat, 15 October 1944, 3
33
Laurie Stras, White Face, Black Voice: Race, Gender, and Region In the Music of the Boswell Sisters, Cambridge
University Press, May 16, 2007, accessed May 13, 2023 at bit.ly/strasboswells
34
David McCain, liner notes to The Boswell Sisters Collection, Volume 5, Nostalgia Arts NOCD 3023, 2001
16 Broadway: Operetta Meets Jazz
247

248
249

250
Much of the information in this section comes from an interview with musician/historian Peter Sokolow in New
York, 1993.
251
Weldon Johnson, 1930, 103.
252
ibid., 105.
253
Rose, 18.
254
http://www.edwardaberlin.com/scott_joplin__brief_biographical_sketch___33423.htm
255
Douglas, “Siblings and Mongrels,” 10-11.
256
Jenkins, 184-85.
257
Clarke, 63.
258
Weldon Johnson, 1930, 225-6.
259
Douglas, 8.
260
Palmer, 17.
261
E. Simms Campbell, "Early Jam," The Negro Caravan, 985.
262
Clarke, 235.
263
Clarke, 270.
264
Ashton Stevens, Chicago Herald and Examiner, March 31, 1924.
50
Douglas, 11.

17 Swing and Its Kings

.
265

266
Nicholson, 80.
267
Hammond, 52.
268
Schuller 1989, 9.
269
Clarke, 216.
270
Clarke, 218-20.
271
Downbeat, February 1939, 16.
272
Schuller 1989, 662.
273
Clarke, 221.
274
Clarke, 129.
275
Clarke, 224.
276
Reitz, Rosetta, liner notes to International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Rosetta Records RR 1312, 1984.
277
"International Sweethearts...", see Videography.
278
Handy, 27.

19 Crooners and Their Sweet Inspirations

279
Balliett, 150.
280
Crow, 133.
281
Ewen, 285.
282
Andrews, 20.
283
Andrews, 162.
284
Andrews, 208.
285
Lee, 61.
286
Lee, 12.
287
Lee, 140.
288
Ewen, 458.
289
Clarke, 400.
290
Shaw, 1979, BM6.
291
loc. cit.

20 New South, New Country

292
Conway 1995, 138, 145.
293
Archie Green 1965, 214.
294
Robert S. Jamieson in Wolfe, 1989.
295
Johnson, JEMF, 1981, 77.
296
Russell, 67.
297
Abbott and Seroff, op. cit.., 5-8.
298
Tosches 1996, 112.
299
Niles, Edward Abbe, "Ballads, Songs and Snatches," column in The Bookman, 1928.
300
Wolfe, "A Lighter Shade of Blue: White Country Blues," in Cohn 1993, 251.
301
Niles, op. cit., September 1928.
302
Douglas Green, 1976, 55.
303
Fry, Macon, "Aaron Neville," Wavelength, May 1985, 22.
304
Wolfe, Charles, in Cohn, op. cit., p 233-37.
305
Wolfe, op. cit.., 262.
306
Douglas Green, 1976, 50.
307
Lightfoot 2003, 187.
308
Cantwell, 79.
309
Wolfe, op. cit.., 242.
310
Clarke, 145-56.
311
Malone 1968, 22.
312
John Cohen, 1964.
313
Russell, 51.
314
Daniel 1990, 7.
315
Lipsitz 1994, 312.
316
Cantwell, 52.
317
Norman Cohen 1969, 235-36.
318
Cohen, Norm, "Early Pioneers," in Malone and McCulloh, 1975, 33.
319
Schlappi 1978, 28-30, 107.
320
Archie Green 1965, 217.
321
Winans, Robert, "The Folk, the Stage, and the Five-String Banjo in the Nineteenth Century," Journal of American
Folklore 89(1976),407-37.
322
Niles, Introduction and notes, in Handy, 1972, 17.
323
As noted by O'Connell in his monograph.
324
Lightfoot 2003, 181.
325
Cantwell, 56.
326
Interview with Mike Seeger, quoted in O'Connell, 9.
327
Flippo, 21-23, 50, 70.
328
Malone 1968, 233. Dudley is heard on The Blues Roll On, Atlantic Records, No. 1352, good luck.
329
Bane, 87.
330
Perry, 78.
331
Douglas Green, 1976, 55-57.
332
Spottswood, Richard, liner notes for The Slide Guitar: Bottles, Knives and Steel, Columbia Roots and Blues Series,
1990.
333
Titon, 45.
334
Uncredited liner notes from Sol Hoopii: The Master of the Hawaiian Guitar, Rounder, 1977,1991, and Obrecht, Jas,
"Slide Routes: The Honolulu-Hollywood Connection," Guitar Player, August 1994, 94.
335
Cantwell, 31.
336
This section is drawn from Lightfoot, "A Regional Musical Style: The Legacy of Arnold Shultz," and Lawrence,
"Arnold Shultz: Godfather of Bluegrass?"
337
Lawrence, JEMF, 7.
338
quoted in Lightfoot, 132.
339
Lightfoot, 132.
340
Lightfoot, 132.
341
Lawrence, Bluegrass Unlimited, 41.
342
Kienzle, 46.
343
Bane, 82.
344
See Francis, Billboard, for a number of examples from 1995.
345
O'Connell, 30.
346

347

22 Bluegrazz
Lomax, Esquire, 108.
348
Cantwell, 72.
349
Ibid., 89.
350
Wolfe, 32.
351
Malone 1968, 311.
352
Cantwell, 106.
353
Cantwell, 105.
354
Sandberg, 69.
355
Cantwell, 78, 86-87.
356
Ibid., 70.
23 Rhythm And...Rock
357
Clarke, 271.
358
Barnouw 1966, 289..
359
Redd, Lawrence N., "Rock! It's Still Rhythm and Blues," The Black Perspective in Music, Spring 1985, 44. The
discussion below of the definition of rock and roll is taken from this article.
360
Shaw 1978, 74.
361
Kay and Sue Werner, “Rock It For Me.”
362
Grendysa, Peter, liner notes for Blues Masters, Vol. 14, Rhino Records, 1993.
363
Lipsitz, George, introduction to Otis, xxvii.
364
Lipsitz 1990, 144-5.
365
ibid., 120.
366
Williams, 159.
367
Redd, op. cit., 44.
368
ibid., 45.
369
ibid., 46.
370
Palmer, Robert, 125.
371
ibid., 126.
372
Sandberg, 102.
373
Chappel and Garofalo, 234.
374
Cited in Douglas Green, 1976, xi.
375
Calt, 68.
376
ibid., 79-80.
377
Lipsitz 1990, 118.
378
Perry, 68.
379
Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, New York: Knopf, 1940, 254.
380
Clarke, 373.
381
Hugill 1961, 301.
382
Downbeat, April 20, 1955, 41.
383
Clarke, 373.
384
Rolling Stone, Jan 18, 1973.
385
Palmer, 171.
386
Marcus, 17.
387
ibid.
388
Stanley Booth in the film Why Elvis?
389
Calvin Newborn, op. cit.
390
Lott, 1991, Note #31, 250.
391
Cantor, 11.
392
Charters, 191.
393
Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was, 13-part radio special, Radio Smithsonian, 1996.
394
Lydon, Michael, Rock Folk: Portraits from the Rock 'n' Roll Pantheon, New York:Outerbridge and Dientsfrey, 1971,
25-26.
395
Forte, p. 68.
396
ibid.
397
Palmer, Robert, Bluesland; see videography.
398
Chapple & Garofalo, 235.
399
Clarke, 389.
400
Clarke, 438.
401
Redd, op. cit., 39.
402
Lipsitz 1994, 320.
403
Clarke, 369.
404
That Rhythm...Those Blues, PBS, 1988.
405
http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/fade-to-White-Black-music-White-artistsbig-money-504
406
Rolling Stone, Oct 2, 1968.
407
Chapple and Garofalo, 253.
408
Jet, June 14, 1982, p 56-57, quoted from a visit to Johnson Publishing Co. at an unknown date in the 1970s.
409
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley#cite_ref-251
410
Wald, 231.
411
Ken Goodman in That Rhythm...Those Blues, PBS, 1988.
412
Charles Corley, op. cit.
413
Speech to the Annual Convention of NATRA (National Association of Television and Radio Announcers),
August 11, 1967.
414
ibid.
415
ibid.
416
Palmer, 237.
417
Abrahams, 131.
418
Clarke, 449.
419
Jackson, John A., American Bandstand, 208-210.
420
Chapple and Garofalo, 236.
421
Abbott 1992, 319.
422
Jim Dickinson interview by Joss Hutton, January 2002, http://www.furious.com/perfect/jimdickinson.html
423
Ewen, 680.
424
Clarke, 469.
425
Thanks to San Francisco Examiner jazz critic Phil Elwood (1926-2006) for pointing this out.
426
Philips, 232.
Up! Ye Mighty Race!, February 1994
427
428
Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n Roll, 246.

429
Rose, 187.
430
Gates, New Yorker, 40.
431
Light, Vogue.
432
ibid.
433
Ressner, Rolling Stone.
434
Garofalo, 422.
435
Cross, 58.
436
Cocks, Time.
437
Shusterman, Critical Inquiry.
438
Beatriz Seibel, ed., El Cantar del Payador, 1998. Buenos Aires:Biblioteca de Cultura Popular, 45.
439
Thompson, 95
440
E. Jean Carroll, Esquire.
441
Lipsitz 1990, 122.
442
Kaplan, New York, 46.
443
Handelman, Rolling Stone.
444
Garofalo, 412.
445
Brown, Mother Jones.
446
Baker, 223.
447
N. Jennings, Maclean's.
448
David Peisner, “Backwoods Rhymes,” Rolling Stone, January 11, 2018, 15-17.
449
Leland, Newsweek.
450
Rosen, Billboard.
451
Henderson, Billboard, R-21.
452
Interview with author, October, 1996.
453
Interview with author, December, 1996.
454
Leland, ibid.
455
Tricia Rose, 5.
456
Dyson, 163.
457
Tate, 102.
458
Danaher, Popular Music and Society.
459
Carby, Black Popular Culture, 192.
460
loc. cit.
461
Leland, ibid.
462
Leland, ibid.
463
I didn't interview them but I'm pretty sure.
464
Baker, 222.
465
Leland, ibid.
466
Baker, 221.
467
Dyson, 185.
468
Fishkin 1993, 132.
469
Lott, 1993.
470
Schuller 1989, 5.
471
See Watkins, Mel, in bibliography.
472
Fishkin 1995, pp. 430-33.
473
North, p. 3.
474
Black Scholar, 24:1, 22.
475
Time, April 6, 1970, 55.
476
"Bitter Reunion: Racial Insensitivity Charge Brings a Storm of Criticism," Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September
22, 1994.
477
Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was, Smithsonian Radio.
478
Brown, Cecil, 38.
479
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/music-Black-culture-appropriation.html?
action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
480
Philips, 236.
481
Sidran, 129.
482
Reprinted in Mailer, Advertisements For Myself, New York:Perigee, 1959, 301-02.
483
In the words of Franz Fanon, Martiniquan-Algerian sociologist-psychologist.
484
Ellison, "Beating That Boy," New Republic, October 22, 1945.
485
Sidran, 15.
486
Jon Carroll, "There Has To Be A Way To Say It,", San Francisco Chronicle, September 6, 1995, E8.
487
Jefferson, "Ripping Off Black Music."