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| From | Gregory Sager <hochsalzburg@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | Re: RRHOF |
| Date | Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:36:48 -0800 (PST) |
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> Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:15:43 -0800
> From: Joe Field <joe@flyingcolorscomics.com>
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: Fwd: RRHOF
> Message-ID: <3678bbf20912201315kdfd3924oab465f5ea324ed0c@mail.gmail.com>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Joe Field <flycojoe@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 1:15 PM
> Subject: Re: RRHOF
> To: audities@smoe.org
>
>
> I don't purport to be a music historian, by any stretch,
> but I do think
> Elijah Wald has a somewhat myopic view of his subject
> matter. Sure, it's
> daring and controversial to call the Beatles the group that
> destroyed the
> integration of music and the Billboard R&B
> charts, but that's his thesis to
> sell some books. Doesn't make it true or totally accurate.
>
> Yes, the charts were integrated to a large degree by 1963.
> Some of that had
> to do with the backlash against Pat Boone and others that
> made black music
> into their own white hits. Some of it had to do with
> listeners wanting to go
> to the original source of the black-written white hits
> ---and a lot had to
> do with the growing civil rights movement and the
> integration of American
> society in general.
>
> Still, I do stand with my comment that the door opened
> slightly by Pat Boone
> and others who made black songs into pop hits...and then
> the Beatles totally
> demolished that door when they came on the scene, reducing
> the need for an
> R&B chart.
>
>
> Joe Field
> http://flyingcolorscomics.com
Sorry, Joe, but I couldn't disagree more. I don't see eye-to-eye with Wald on a lot of what he had to say in that book, but he was right about the fact that the Beatles did not have a black following and were not a unifying factor in terms of musical taste across racial barriers. The Beatles were mayonnaise on Wonder bread as far as their music were concerned, particularly once they became megapopular and started writing all of their own material. They weren't played on black stations, and they did not have a black fanbase in this country. As far as black America was concerned, the '60s was the decade of soul -- JB, Aretha, Stax-Volt, etc. -- and Motown. It was *not* the decade of the British Invasion for young black people in this country.
If the need for an R&B chart had been reduced in the '60s, then how do you explain the career of James Brown? The Godfather of Soul had very limited success on the mainstream charts in his heyday, and very little airplay on the major stations. He had 18 Top 20 hits on the pop charts, no more than four or five of which ever got any airplay on white stations or get airplay on white-based oldies stations to this day. Only one of them, "I Got You (I Feel Good)" reached the top five on the pop charts (it made #3 in 1964). Yet he owned the R&B charts and was to black music stations in the '60s what the Beatles were to white stations. Over the course of his career he had a staggering *eighty* Top 20 singles on the R&B charts, 17 of which made it all the way to #1. If music had been truly integrated in the '60s, as myth would have it, then James Brown would've been little more than a footnote and Aretha, Otis, the Wicked Pickett, and a lot of other soul stars
would've been much lesser figures in terms of sales and airplay.
White America and black America had different ears, and different superstars, in the '60s.
Gregory Sager
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