Blackface Minstrelsy Lives...and That's OK

[Alexander]

So I recently picked up "Pebble To A Pearl" by Nikka Costa (daughter of arranger Don Costa). It's quite good, and at the same time it's yet another in the recent string of white girls doing soul music. Not that Costa doesn't do a good job. She's fine. And the album is on the Stax imprint and it does its soul/R&B heritage proud. But it started me thinking...

A few years back, when Amy Winehouse first became big here in the States, there were a few who accused her of doing a contemporary version of blackface, which at the time I found a bit disturbing. I mean, if what Amy Winehouse was doing was blackface without the makeup, what does that make Van Morrison? Or Mick Jagger? Or Rod Stewart? Or Joe Cocker? Or any one of a number of white American, British and Canadian singers who deliberately affect African American mannerisms? What's the difference between Amy Winehouse and Emmett Miller?

Then, just the other day, it hit me: There IS no difference. We've wiped away the blacking, but the fact is that whites ARE continuing to mimic blacks in popular culture, just as they did nearly 200 years ago. And...I've concluded...there's nothing wrong with it. The fact is that African Americans have been at the forefront of American pop culture pretty much since America developed a popular culture. So what else do we expect? The black artists have been setting the bar for a long time now. Are we really surprised that some white artists have attempted to reach it?

Of course, some will say that there's a difference of intention. That the Blackface performers mimicked in order to mock. First of all, mimicry is mimicry, in the end. It doesn't really matter WHY it's done. Secondly, we don't really know what drove some blackface performers to do what they did. Some did it because it was a way to make a buck. Some did it because they loved the minstrel stage. And some, I'm sure, did it to emulate their models instead of mocking them (wasn't Bix who said he wanted to find "real jazz n*ggers"?).

So let's do away with the pretense. No, there is no difference between what Mick Jagger has been doing since the sixties and what Emmett Miller did in the twenties. In fact, let's recognize Miller for the absolutely brilliant performer that he was!

Check it out...

Edited December 9, 2009 by Alexander

[JSngry]

Ma & Pa Kettle Math http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfq5kju627c

Pigmeat Markham did the same bit too, as only he could. Not much Piggy omn You Tube, alas...

I'd half-wager that that bit, or a variant of it, was around in 1800's, somewhere

[John L]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

[Alexander]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

But where do you draw the line? Do you really think that every blackface performer was a racist or was inspired by nothing but contempt? Even if there was only one blackface performer who was inspired by what he regarded as a love of black music (however condescending), doesn't that effectively obscure the line? And ultimately, why should we try to make the distinction? Was minstrelsy really so bad? It was America's first mass entertainment and arguably its first major contribution to world culture (both Britain and Japan were tremendously affected by it). And the end result is the same.

[AllenLowe]

it's really more complicated than all of this - and I think John L is basically correct; the first thing I would do is a bit more research on it, both musical and literary - because it's not quite enought to just say minstrelsy, because it means a lot more than you indicate - it is the first minstrel shows (antebellum); then the black minstrel shows (late 1800s) and than the traveling medicine and tent shows; and then the early traveling black shows from the early 20th century; and yes, sometimes it is extremely bad and sometimes it is more than that - the source of American pop, I would argue; but also a persistent reminder of American racism and attempts to quash African Americans in the wake of Reconstruction (see David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness); sometimes it was meant respectfully, other times not. Sometimes it was a force for liberation, other times merely a racist anchor.

And to label all white performers in such a way is way too glib and a huge oversimplification. Not to try to obscure things, but I just spent about a year on this very question, and it is neither A nor B. I would suggest reading Eric Lott, Strasbaugh (spelling? sorry); Berndt Ostendorf; Seroff and Abbott; Lawrence Levine (probably the single best source here); Paul Oliver, Songsters and Saints; NOT Nick Tosches, who makes a lot of mistakes in his book on Emmett Miller; and I would listen to not just Emmett Miller, but Al Bernard, Arthur Collins and Lee Morse, even early Marion Harris, Gene Greene, and a few others from the first part of the 20th century. And from later on, Stovepipe, Peg Leg Howell, Julius Daniels, Pink Anderson, Gus Cannon etc. It also helps to be well versed (in a way that I am not) in African American humor and in performers like Pigmeat Markham, Moms Mabley, Dusty Fletcher, and Mantan Moreland.

Because you can and do draw lines - Elvis Presely is not the same as a garden variety minstrel performer, he has a more complicated relationship to black music. Bruce Springsteen is not the same as Peggy Lee, though both use certain African-American influenced vocal inflections; Dave Schildkraut is not the same as Benny Wallace, though both are heavily influenced by African American ideas of sound and rhythm. So there are lines everywhere, between minstrelsy and early blues (which was a genrational change in musical approach, a transition from old to new schools), between Louis Armstrong and Dizzy and Miles, James P.,Fats Waller, and Jaki Byard......also, of course, there's Billy Lee Riley, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield (who are quite different than, say, Frank Hutchison, Dick Justice, or Doc Boggs) -

culture is social and environmental and not genetic, of course, and this is American music, so everyone has the right to partake. But it's far from uniform in quality and understanding, or in the way it treats its cultural antecedents. Racism is a constant in American life, and the domestic terrorism that particularly pervaded the South from reconstruction into the 1960s and that made a target of African Americans (and even white progressives, particularly in the post-Reconstruction era) complicates this subject in ways that defy very easy summary; you need to use a lot of caution because to just ask "why should we make the distintion?" is (in a way I know is unintended) very disrepectful to the experiences and difficulties of the lives of several generations of African Americans, who have spoken very clearly both on and around this subject.

but you will find, now that we've broached it, that this is an exhausting subject.

Edited December 9, 2009 by AllenLowe

[John L]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

But where do you draw the line? Do you really think that every blackface performer was a racist or was inspired by nothing but contempt? Even if there was only one blackface performer who was inspired by what he regarded as a love of black music (however condescending), doesn't that effectively obscure the line? And ultimately, why should we try to make the distinction? Was minstrelsy really so bad? It was America's first mass entertainment and arguably its first major contribution to world culture (both Britain and Japan were tremendously affected by it). And the end result is the same.

I don't think that there is any need to draw a distinct line. Minstrelsy was a product of the time and, as you say, some people, black and white, with sincere love and respect for black American music practiced it as the accepted medium of the time. It is still the case that demeaning racial parody was at the core of minstrelsy. That is what makes it so unpleasant. On the other hand, when Mick Jagger, Van Morrison or Amy Winehouse sing in a heavily black influenced manner, they are doing it straight from the heart in a sincere manner. To the degree that some could perceive it as parody, the joke and laughter would be on them. As I wrote, I see that as a huge qualitative difference.

[Jazzmoose]

...and yes, sometimes it is extremely bad and sometimes it is more than that - the source of American pop, I would argue; but also a persistent reminder of American racism and attempts to quash African Americans in the wake of Reconstruction...

However, as it stands today, it is also a reminder that the attempts failed, thankfully.

[AllenLowe]

here's one of the best things written on the subject, by Tony Russell, in a review of a CD of old time medicine show and minstrel music:

"Throughout the 1960s and well into the 70s, one of the most popular British TV shows, equally successful on the London stage, was a song-and-dance extravaganza by performers in Edwardian boating costumes. The women wore frilly dresses and big hats, the men striped blazers, straw boaters, white trousers – and black faces. To be precise, blacked-up faces. The cast was entirely white.The Black & White Minstrel Show was the last manifestation of a genre of entertainment stretching back, through radio acts of the 1930s like the Kentucky Minstrels and Alexander & Mose, music hall figures such as GH Elliott, ‘The Chocolate-Coloured Coon’, and GH Chirgwin, ‘The White-Eyed Kaffir’, to the American minstrel troupes that filled British stages in the late 19th century, dispensing the ‘plantation melodies’ and ‘quaint humour’ of the ante-bellum black South – or at least a version that would pass as plausible with an audience who knew no more of Alabama than of Atlantis. As a form of popular entertainment, minstrelsy was too deeply embedded in the American consciousness to be silenced. In the United States, where the genre originated, a production like The Black & White Minstrel Show would, by the 1960s, have been inconceivable. Changing fashions in show business, and changing attitudes about the portrayal of race, combined to exclude the blackface minstrel show and its descendants from the Broadway stage and network TV, and few were sorry to see them go. But as a form of popular entertainment, minstrelsy was too deeply embedded in the American consciousness to be silenced, particularly in the South, where its stereotypes of shiftlessness, credulity and hedonism still had the power to fix the African-American in the amber of caricature. Off the beaten tracks of national theatre circuits, the blackface minstrel survived, and one of the places he survived longest was the medicine show. A unique compound of therapy and theatre, the travelling medicine show offered small-town Southerners the excitement of unfamiliar performers bringing them new songs, dances and comedy routines, for the price of listening to a quack doctor’s spiel about Hamlin’s Wizard Oil or Kickapoo Indian Tonic. From the late nineteenth century through much of the twentieth, the medicine show was an academy of vernacular music. Black and white musicians alike served their apprenticeship in show business on the medicine show stage: Memphis bluesmen such as Gus Cannon and Jim Jackson, the Texan T-Bone Walker, architect of modern blues guitar but in his youth a dancer in the Black Draught troupe, and hillbilly musicians from ‘blue yodeller’ Jimmie Rodgers, to Texas bandleader Bob Wills and movie cowboy Gene Autry. A fuller list of graduates of this rustic finishing school would include Harry Houdini, Buster Keaton and WC Fields.

Nothing is more likely to vanish from the historical record than a fleeting visit to Hicksville by a nostrum-peddling ‘Doc’ and his hired players. The medicine show, however, was still a significant part of Southern musical culture when the American record industry began to take an interest in that culture. Numerous medicine show stalwarts became recording artists, and in doing so preserved repertoire, much of it inherited directly from the nineteenth century minstrel folio, that sharply evokes this otherwise lost world of rural entertainment. A fascinating collection of those recordings, Good For What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937, recently appeared on the Old Hat label. Scrupulously even-handed, the 2-CD set contains 24 recordings each by African-American and white artists, from nonsense songs like ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’’ and ‘I Heard The Voice Of A Porkchop’, to the double entendres of ‘Adam & Eve In The Garden’ (‘... surely must have shook that thing’).As the detailed notes explain, some shows were composed of white performers and some of black, but not a few were mixed, with artists of both races making up in blackface: a theatrical convention that must have created curious resonances, not only among audiences, uncertain exactly what they were being shown, but possibly also within the cast, no less ambivalent about what, or whom, they were portraying.

For some white musicians, the experience of working alongside African-Americans, especially if in the guise of one of them, could offer a means of participating, up to a point, in black culture, of gaining what later writers like the Beats would envision as a spiritual hotline to negritude. Such an imaginative identification would be crucial to the process, in which many white musicians engaged, of becoming a white blues singer.

The white bluesman (it almost always was -man rather than -woman) might take that career path out of admiration for black music and a desire to approximate it. He might merely have identified a musical form he could execute and ideas he could exploit. Whatever his motives, he needed to display some understanding of the culture he was appropriating, if he was to carry any authority with audiences who were as familiar with the original as with the replica. Coming, as he probably did, from a poor white background, he already knew something about African-Americans from sheer contiguity, but performing among them in a medicine show exposed him to their instrumental and vocal techniques and, in particular, performance styles. Thus equipped, the white bluesman could go as far as he wished in emulating his model. Jimmie Rodgers, who worked in blackface on medicine shows, seemed to his contemporaries even to sit black. ‘His leg didn’t do like mine does’, said fellow white bluesman Cliff Carlisle. ‘He put one leg over the other, and it was hangin’ right down... He reminded me more of a colored person, or a negro... than anybody I ever saw.’

Loitering on the margins of the black experience, men like Rodgers, Wills and Bill Monroe were inspired to create new forms. Loitering on the margins of the black experience, men like Rodgers, Wills and Bill Monroe were inspired to create new forms – the blue yodel, western swing, bluegrass – that brought together black and white musical practices in an organic synthesis, legitimised by its creators’ empathy with African-American music. The next generation of white blues singers would not be able to share their predecessors’ experience, for by then the medicine show was in decline, but they could inherit and develop the idioms they had invented.

One who did so, with momentous consequences for popular music, was Elvis Presley, who not only fused blues and country music in rock ‘n’ roll, but delivered it with a physical presentation rooted in African-American expressive style. Presley’s ‘That’s All Right Mama’ may seem to belong to a different world from a medicine show song like ‘The Cat’s Got The Measles, The Dog’s Got The Whooping Cough’. But medicine show veterans, watching Presley as well as listening to him, would have recognised that he was simply transferring their techniques to a larger stage."

Edited December 9, 2009 by AllenLowe

[Brad]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

But where do you draw the line? Do you really think that every blackface performer was a racist or was inspired by nothing but contempt? Even if there was only one blackface performer who was inspired by what he regarded as a love of black music (however condescending), doesn't that effectively obscure the line? And ultimately, why should we try to make the distinction? Was minstrelsy really so bad? It was America's first mass entertainment and arguably its first major contribution to world culture (both Britain and Japan were tremendously affected by it). And the end result is the same.

I don't think that there is any need to draw a distinct line. Minstrelsy was a product of the time and, as you say, some people, black and white, with sincere love and respect for black American music practiced it as the accepted medium of the time. It is still the case that demeaning racial parody was at the core of minstrelsy. That is what makes it so unpleasant. On the other hand, when Mick Jagger, Van Morrison or Amy Winehouse sing in a heavily black influenced manner, they are doing it straight from the heart in a sincere manner. To the degree that some could perceive it as parody, the joke and laughter would be on them. As I wrote, I see that as a huge qualitative difference.

I'm stating the obvious and John L has said it better and more succintly than I can but the Stones were heavily influenced by the Blues and this is evident in many of their songs (e.g. Little Red Rooster, use of harmonicas), particularly the early albums in the 60s, until the early 1970s. This does not mean slavish imitation or a form of minstrelcy. This was just part of their roots and it gave them a distinctive sound. The fact that they recorded blues influenced songs probably led many a person (including myself) to see out the Blues and discover why we liked the Stones and other similar groups: there was something inside of us.

[Joe]

May have been mentioned on this board before, but, apropos this topic...

The Gosperats

http://www.gosperats.com/

Edited December 9, 2009 by Joe

[AllenLowe]

I actually find Jagger (and I do not like the Stones) to be one of the more minstrel-like white blues guys, self-consciously so (or double-consciously so, to paraphrase Du Bois). I never understood why they were so highly praised - except as songwriters, which is where their talent lies, in my opinion. Otherwise I find Watts to be uncompelling as a drummer (and his time is not that good), Jagger is just annoying after a while, and Richards, an intelligent and a compelling arranger (guitar-wise), is just not that interesting after a point. But Jagger is particularly silly, and though he tends to think that we're all in on his joke, I don't think he really understands how much of a poseur he is. Not that it matters to his audience.

for blues in this school I would list a lot of others first: Ruby Smith (the rocker, not the Bessie Smith relative); Bloomfield, Butterfield, Peter Green, the Blues Project (Steve Kalb in particular), Blind Pig, very early and very late Janis Joplin, Big Brother, The Pretty Things, etc etc

just my opinion, as the saying goes...

Edited December 9, 2009 by AllenLowe

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

But where do you draw the line? Do you really think that every blackface performer was a racist or was inspired by nothing but contempt? Even if there was only one blackface performer who was inspired by what he regarded as a love of black music (however condescending), doesn't that effectively obscure the line? And ultimately, why should we try to make the distinction? Was minstrelsy really so bad? It was America's first mass entertainment and arguably its first major contribution to world culture (both Britain and Japan were tremendously affected by it). And the end result is the same.

I don't think that there is any need to draw a distinct line. Minstrelsy was a product of the time and, as you say, some people, black and white, with sincere love and respect for black American music practiced it as the accepted medium of the time. It is still the case that demeaning racial parody was at the core of minstrelsy. That is what makes it so unpleasant. On the other hand, when Mick Jagger, Van Morrison or Amy Winehouse sing in a heavily black influenced manner, they are doing it straight from the heart in a sincere manner. To the degree that some could perceive it as parody, the joke and laughter would be on them. As I wrote, I see that as a huge qualitative difference.

I'm stating the obvious and John L has said it better and more succintly than I can but the Stones were heavily influenced by the Blues and this is evident in many of their songs (e.g. Little Red Rooster, use of harmonicas), particularly the early albums in the 60s, until the early 1970s. This does not mean slavish imitation or a form of minstrelcy. This was just part of their roots and it gave them a distinctive sound. The fact that they recorded blues influenced songs probably led many a person (including myself) to see out the Blues and discover why we liked the Stones and other similar groups: there was something inside of us.

No, sorry, it wasn't "just part of their roots".

I can't speak for Morrison or Winehouse, but Jagger and I came up at the same time - he's a few weeks older than me - and in the same place. We may have even frequented the same pubs and heard the same bands before he started sitting in at the Ealing R&B club in the period before the Stones were formed to take over the gig there. And one thing that all of us in that area knew - well, all of us who thought a bit about the music we loved, but understood very little, and I definitely include Jagger in that group; he was certainly not mindless about it - was that

it was foreign, exotic, hip.

What flowed from that was that there could be no authentic, English, version of the blues, or R&B or Soul (and there were elements of all of those kinds of music in what was going on in the Stones and the other bands around West London at the time). It was ridiculous - and could be hysterically funny, if done right - to try to sing the blues with an English accent; particularly a regional accent. But it was also impossible to sing those kinds of music in a style that related to English models of singing, even if an American accent was used (although that trick could, would and did work for English singers of other kinds of American music). So what singers had to do was a more or less slavish imitation; to borrow and put on a shirt of a different colour. "This is not me, it's me playing myself, as I'd like to be seen."

There was, of course, nothing of parody in all this (except by accident). It was innocent of racist derogatory undertones, but also lacked deep understanding of the background out of which it had come, but was nonetheless wholly admiring.

All of this is, as Allen said, NOT simple.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I actually find Jagger (and I do not like the Stones) to be one of the more minstrel-like white blues guys, self-consciously so (or double-consciously so, to paraphrase Du Bois). I never understood why they were so highly praised - except as songwriters, which is where their talent lies, in my opinion. Otherwise I find Watts to be uncompelling as a drummer (and his time is not that good), Jagger is just annoying after a while, and Richards, an intelligent and a compelling arranger (guitar-wise), is just not that interesting after a point. But Jagger is particularly silly, and though he tends to think that we're all in on his joke, I don't think he really understands how much of a poseur he is. Not that it matters to his audience.

for blues in this school I would list a lot of others first: Ruby Smith (the rocker, not the Bessie Smith relative); Bloomfield, Butterfield, Peter Green, the Blues Project (Steve Kalb in particular), Blind Pig, very early and very late Janis Joplin, Big Brother, The Pretty Things, etc etc

just my opinion, as the saying goes...

Took me a long time to write the same sort of thing.

MG

[Brad]

Of course it was all wholly admiring and imitation how could a british based person or a jewish kid like me understand what brought on the Blues or the social economic climate in which we thrived. All we knew is that we liked it and spoke to us, and that is where it all came from. Roots in the sense of musical inspiration, not the socio economic background.

As far as getting or liking the Stones, who can say why a particular sound appeals to you. To me, they and the Beatles were gods in the 60s. I stopped liking them after the early 70s, around Exile on Main Stree time but I loved and still love the early stuff, Aftermath being one of their better ones IMHO.

[Noj]

I draw the line between that which has musical integrity and that which is merely mean-spirited mocking. I also think a certain bit of what is considered "black (American)" is actually just "Southern." There's a long history of performers both black and white who are "soulful," and the difference between the sounds they express is all individual/neighborhood/regional/cultural influences and physical prowess. I don't consider particularly soulful white people to be faking it, and the music has been integrated for long enough that there isn't such hard line between black and white.

It's easy to see the entire genre of white blues rock from the Animals to the Stones to Zeppelin as poseurs, because they've ripped off blues musicians in a lot of ways, but I think they made great music which is entirely different from the blues. I don't keep them in the same playlist as Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Hambone Willie Newbern, or Willie Dixon or Albert King or John Lee Hooker. They don't go together.

[AllenLowe]

I like the original rock-based blues, and I think it does go together with the others you've mentioned - as a matter of fact, I would make the argument tha the rock-blues movement gave new life to the old-line blues, not just commercially but musically; the kick that it gave the old bands really forced them to look at their music freshly and to change some of the old formulas.

And though yes, you can say that various kinds of soul are Southern and so bi-racial in influence, when you start to look at a lot of that influence it's very one-sided. There's a fascinating book by Bruce Pierson called Black Legacy which points out how the raising of white children by slaves changed the whole way the South spoke and acted, as these kids picked up the mannerisms and vocal inflections of their surrogate parents. Likely this had a broad cultural influence, from singing to playing.

Edited December 9, 2009 by AllenLowe

[Brad]

Knowing how you feel about the Stones and other groups mimicking the Blues, what's your take on someone like Clapton?

[AllenLowe]

I have no problem with white people playing the blues, only issues with execution - I actually prefer Clapton's singing to his playing, which I find rhythmically stiff, even on the old Cream recordings which I find just don't stand up that well guitar-wise (though they wrote some great songs) - and I think Beck and Page were good Yardbirds replacements, more imaginative and exciting as guitarists.

Edited December 9, 2009 by AllenLowe

[jeffcrom]

Perhaps a little off topic, but this discussion makes me think of a Mose Allison song. Mose (who is from Tippo, Mississippi) was being interviewed by a British music journalist who caught him off guard by asking him to talk about his career "since he stole the blues." After thinking about that for awhile, he wrote a hilarious song called "Ever Since I Stole the Blues." I couldn't find the lyrics online, but it's on the album My Backyard. It's worth checking out. (The whole album is worth checking out, if only to hear Mose with a New Orleans rhythm section, including the great Johnny Vidacovich on drums.)

[medjuck]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

I agree, but it is complicated. I think there was an accepted attitude about blacks that even the most sympathetic whites let creep into their way of thinking. And we shouldn't think we're so sophisticated that we would have been wiser. Some of this was discussed in the thread about Johnny Mercer and racism. A few "probes" as Marshall McLuhan used to call them:

Isn't Hoagy Carmichael sort of doing a black dialect when he writes and sings "Lazy Bones"?

Apparently most black listeners didn't know Amos & Andy were played by white men until the film Check & Double Check was released. (And that movie is really weird-- white men in blackface intercut with documentary footage of Harlem and certainly worth seeing because of Duke Ellington's performance-- during which Barney Bigard and Juan Tizol wore dark make-up and when the band does 3 Little Words some of them step forward to sing but the soundtrack is Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys!)

Did emcees on radio shows refer to white musicians as "boys" as often as they do to black musicians?

I find Freddy Slack's version of "Further on Up the Road" (Is that the correct title?) disconcerting because it seems to be in black dialect but Amos Wilburn had no problem covering it and even including the reference to Freddy Slack that's in the lyrics.

I bet I'm the only person on this forum who ever actually performed in a minstrel show. (I wasn't in blackface-- I was Mr. Interlocutor.)

And perhaps more shocking, despite what Lieber and Stoller think I prefer Elvis Presley's version of Hound Dog to Big Momma Thorton's.

[AllenLowe]

I like Thornton's - perfect production by Johnny Otis, great Pete Lewis guitar - I find Elvis' version a little too novelty-like.

well, as that old Jewish character says in The Sunshine Boys:

"I did black when nobody else was doing black - and when I did black you could understand the words."

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I like the original rock-based blues, and I think it does go together with the others you've mentioned - as a matter of fact, I would make the argument tha the rock-blues movement gave new life to the old-line blues, not just commercially but musically; the kick that it gave the old bands really forced them to look at their music freshly and to change some of the old formulas.

I don't understand what rock-based blues is. If you mean blues-based rock, I can understand it; but then I'd be interested to know which of the old-line blues bands were forced by Korner, the Stones, Cream, Mayall, Yardbirds etc to change some of the old formulas.

MG

[John L]

I think that there is a huge difference between a white artist who is inspired by black music, and attempts to play black, or largely black, music in a sincere manner, and the comedy/parody of minstrelsy.

I agree, but it is complicated. I think there was an accepted attitude about blacks that even the most sympathetic whites let creep into their way of thinking. And we shouldn't think we're so sophisticated that we would have been wiser. Some of this was discussed in the thread about Johnny Mercer and racism. A few "probes" as Marshall McLuhan used to call them:

Isn't Hoagy Carmichael sort of doing a black dialect when he writes and sings "Lazy Bones"?

Apparently most black listeners didn't know Amos & Andy were played by white men until the film Check & Double Check was released. (And that movie is really weird-- white men in blackface intercut with documentary footage of Harlem and certainly worth seeing because of Duke Ellington's performance-- during which Barney Bigard and Juan Tizol wore dark make-up and when the band does 3 Little Words some of them step forward to sing but the soundtrack is Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys!)

Did emcees on radio shows refer to white musicians as "boys" as often as they do to black musicians?

I find Freddy Slack's version of "Further on Up the Road" (Is that the correct title?) disconcerting because it seems to be in black dialect but Amos Wilburn had no problem covering it and even including the reference to Freddy Slack that's in the lyrics.

I bet I'm the only person on this forum who ever actually performed in a minstrel show. (I wasn't in blackface-- I was Mr. Interlocutor.)

And perhaps more shocking, despite what Lieber and Stoller think I prefer Elvis Presley's version of Hound Dog to Big Momma Thorton's.

You are right. It is more complicated. I think that Noj referred to an interesting concept in his post: "faking it." On the one hand, a white artist can play black music in a very sincere manner that is straight from the heart. That usually comes from somebody who grew up with, or has been exposed to, black music for a long time. Second, a white artist can play black music sincerely and with respect, but consciously "blacken up" when he or she is doing it, i.e. deliberately try to sound black as part of a conscious act in performance. Then there is blatant minstrelsy in which "blackening up" is done for comic racial parody.

I am white, but grew up surrounded by black music. I now perform blues and R&B, although I make no conscious effort to sound black. It was fascinating for me to spend a few years playing with blues musicians in Moscow, Russia, as they often fell smack into the second category above. They love the music, but did not grow up with it, and would sometimes go to great conscious pains to try to play blues as close as possible to the "correct black manner." That may resemble minstrelsy in some sense, but it is still a very respectful attitude. Unfortunately, it often restricted their own creative energy.

A lot depends on one's background. If I were to try to play a rural Country tune in the proper manner, I would have to "whiten up."

Edited December 9, 2009 by John L

[medjuck]

I like Thornton's - perfect production by Johnny Otis, great Pete Lewis guitar - I find Elvis' version a little too novelty-like.

well, as that old Jewish character says in The Sunshine Boys:

"I did black when nobody else was doing black - and when I did black you could understand the words."

IIRC Lieber and Stoller say they produced it so that Johnny could play drums.

[Neal Pomea]

Strange but I don't know of minstrelsy influencing Cajun and Creole music. Much of the foundation was laid on recordings by a black Creole (Amede Ardoin) on accordion with heavy syncopation and a white Creole of Irish and French origin, Dennis McGee on fiddle. (Neither were descended from the Nova Scotians who made their way to Louisiana after the Grand Derangement, the Acadians, who mixed with the French people already there (Creoles) etc. to become a new ethnic group, the Cajuns.)

You can't say that the white players who picked up Ardoin and McGee tunes were mocking blacks or even imitating them. Strange dynamic. Iry LeJeune recorded quite a few tunes in the late 40s and early 50s that have become Cajun standards.

Ardoin was a forgotten entity among the blacks in Louisiana when the first generation of Zydeco players started recording in the 1950s (Clifton Chenier, BooZoo Chavis, Good Rockin' Dopsie, etc.), but his reputation was rehabilitated by the time Ardoin's nephews (sons of Bois Sec Ardoin, the great black Creole accordionist) and others started playing a new kind of Zydeco in the 1980s. Today he is counted as a source of Zydeco music, which would have surprised him a lot in the 50s and 60s.