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| From | Gregory Sager <hochsalzburg@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | Re: JB, black stations, et al |
| Date | Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:39:48 -0800 (PST) |
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> Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:27:04 -0800 (PST)
> From: Michael Myers <mmyers1446@yahoo.com>
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: JB, black stations et al
> Message-ID: <526755.75505.qm@web65611.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>
>
> interesting discussion and generally correct but I just
> wanted to add couple thoughts regarding the discussion about
> "black stations" in the 60's... I got out of grade
> school in 1965 and lived in the nyc metro area... basically
> EVERYBODY listened to top 40 AM radio, regardless of race
> and those stations played a real mix of stuff...
As Bill said, black radio was alive and very healthy in the '60s and drew sustainable audiences in most or all of America's major cities. Here in Chicago, for example, WVON provided a strong black alternative to the Top 40 giants in the market, WLS and WCFL.
I agree JB
> wasn't on much but every 3rd song was Motown...
... and Motown was a staple of black radio as well. But the vast imbalance in airplay with regard to James Brown -- who was, as I said, the black equivalent to the Beatles in the '60s -- as well as the Impressions, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, etc., as well as the absence from black radio of the British Invasion, is where the difference lies.
look back at
> footage of American Bandstand and the like and the audience
> was integrated to a large degree...
That's one TV show, and it's hardly indicative of the racial state of American radio at the time. If there's anything to be derived from it at all, it's that *American Bandstand* provided weekly evidence that dance music has always been the most integrated of American musical idioms, from dixieland to jump blues to R&B to disco. Were the Beatles recording dance music? No.
I think the notion of
> "black radio" stations back in those days might better
> pertain to more rural areas, although I'm sure Detroit and
> some other cities might have had more black-focused radio...
Just the opposite. Black radio has always been strongest in urban areas, so much so that the industry euphemism for black radio was "urban contemporary."
> JB was huge of course ( ie his Appollo shows/records) but I
> think he reached the black audience through touring and
> other means...
Of course he toured (he was the hardest-working man in show business, after all!), but he was also a constant presence on black radio.
remember, the charts were also constructed
> from record sales data as well, not just from airplay
> counts... there weren't all that many
> black-owned radio stations back then
>
I don't know how many of them were black-*owned*, but there were a substantial number of black-*oriented* stations back then.
> also, remember that LOTS of black artists covered the
> Beatles (Wilson Pickett, Supremes, etc)... one has to ask
> why they did that if there was zero cross-influencing going
> on...
Nobody said anything about "zero cross-influencing." This is a discussion about radio and whether or not the Beatles integrated the airwaves (or further integrated them in the wake of Pat Boone). The reasons why black artists covered the Beatles are easy to explain: 1) They wrote good songs; 2) The "whiteness" of the Beatles' music left room for more soul-influenced interpretations; 3) Most black artists were not looking to be relegated to a racially-confined audience; like Berry Gordy they wanted to "cross over" and become the sound of young America, not just the sound of black America, because there's a lot of money to be made off of white kids, too. And if you're going to cross over, how better to do it than to cover a song by the number-one white act in the world?
> Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:34:51 -0500
> From: "Bill" <billm45s@verizon.net>
> To: <audities@smoe.org>
> Subject: Re: JB, black stations et al - NYC and WWRL
> Message-ID:
> <8781C67683F440799B30A5957EBC06FC@MediaPC>
>
> And James Brown was rarely (almost never) played on MCA or
> ABC. They played
> lots of Motown and some other, usually sweeter soul (think
> the Impressions
> or even the Drifters early on), and the more popular
> Stax-Atlantic artists.
> MCA also played the last remnants of some of the girl
> groups and New York
> Doo-Wop. BUT WWRL played James Brown and as I recall
> more of the
> Stax/Atlantic artists and lots more of the old New York
> R&B artists.
As I said before, James Brown is the elephant in the room that has to be negotiated by anyone who claims that the '60s was the decade in which black kids and white kids had the same tastes and were listening to the same music on the radio. Remember, James Brown had eighty Top 20 hits on the R&B charts during his career, and eighteen number-one hits on the R&B charts. I honestly don't think that most white Americans have ever fully grasped just how huge and how important James Brown was within the black community in the '60s -- or, for that matter, how seminal a figure he is in modern music in general. Heck, what other popular entertainer was ever called upon to help stop inner-city race riots? James Brown is on the short list of the most important figures in the recording era of popular music, alongside Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles.
>
> That said, I totally disagree that the Beatles were nothing
> in the black
> community. No they weren't James Brown but they were
> listened to and
> appreciated by almost all of my black friends.
Anecdotal.
> Occasionally you could even
> hear a white artist usually the most soulful of the
> blue-eyed soul singers)
> on WWRL.
That pretty much proves my point. The Beatles and most of the other British Invasion artists did not fall under the category of "blue-eyed soul singers" (an exception would be someone like Stevie Winwood of the Spencer Davis Group). The blue-eyed soul singers of the '60s who probably did get crossover airplay on black stations (the Righteous Brothers, Mitch Ryder, Alex Chilton of the Box Tops, Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati of the Rascals, etc.) were singing music that clearly fit into the playlists of black stations with regard to genre. The Beatles, the Kinks, Herman's Hermits, etc., weren't. I doubt that even the Rolling Stones or the Animals got much airplay on black radio (although I don't know that for a fact).
Gregory Sager
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