Civil Rights Music

by Reiland Rabaka

  As rhythm & blues via rock & roll began to increasingly—even if only implicitly—reflect the integrationist impulse of the Civil Rights Movement, white youth moved from mere rock & roll listeners to undeniable rock & roll innovators and icons. Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Wanda Jackson, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Gale Storm, Ricky Nelson, Gene Vincent, the Chordettes, and the Teen Queens were among the white youth who crossed the color-line and helped to musically desegregate the American music industry in the 1950s. Elvis Presley, perhaps the most noted of the first-wave of white rock & rollers, openly exclaimed in a 1956 interview with Kays Gary in the Charlotte Observer, “colored folks been singing and playing it [i.e., rock & roll] just like I’m doing now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in the shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind until I goosed it up. I got it from them.”[23]

  What Elvis and the other white rock & roll musicians of the 1950s appropriated from black popular music ultimately provided white youth in general with an unprecedented way to express the differences between themselves and their parents, as well as the powerbrokers most of their parents worked for, and unapologetically idolized. It was as if those “mysterious” and “bizarre[ly] named” African American blues, jump blues, and rhythm & blues musicians’ distinct differences—racial, cultural, social, political, and spiritual differences—somehow or another provided an unfettered and, for all intents and purposes, perfect vehicle through which white youth could register their differences. Hence, when Elvis admitted that he “got it from them,” meaning African Americans, in so many words he was revealing that black popular music and black popular culture had provided white youth with a musical model, vernacular-inflected vocabulary, dynamic dance steps, flamboyant sense of fashion, and possibly even a new political vision. Guralnick (1999, 18), perhaps, captured the change in the air best when he wrote, “[w]hat I think was happening quite clearly was the convergence of two warring cultures.” We should be clear here, he did not have in mind African American culture versus mainstream white culture but, more tellingly, black popular culture-informed white youth culture versus conservative (most often segregationist and otherwise anti-black racist) white adult culture.

  “Just as James Dean and Marlon Brando came to represent our unarticulated hurt,” Guralnick assuredly explained, “just as it was The Catcher in the Rye and The Stranger that gave us our literary heroes—the existential ciphers that refused to speak when spoken to—rock & roll provided us with a release and a justification that we had never dreamt of” (18). Drawing directly from rhythm & blues and indirectly from the Civil Rights Movement—that is to say, since rhythm & blues sonically captured and reflected, and was the most widely recognized soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement—white rock & rollers in the 1950s found “a release and a justification that [they] had never dreamt of,” not in the much-vaunted mores of middle-class white America, but ironically in the despised popular music, vibrant dance moves, “uncouth” colloquialisms, bold “bad” attitudes, and populist politics of black America. Putting into words white youths’ attraction to what was quickly becoming rhythm & blues’ surreptitiously civil rights-saturated biracial sonic baby, rock & roll, Guralnick asserted:

  The very outrageousness of its poses, the swaggering sexuality, the violence which the radio of that day laid at its door, its forbidden and corrupting influence—that was the unfailing attractiveness of rock & roll. The hysteria of its terms, the absurdity of its appeal—Fats Domino bumping a piano offstage with his belly; Jerry Lee Lewis’ vocal gymnastics and theatrical virtuosity; Elvis’ very presence and Carl Perkins’ “Get off of my blue suede shoes”; with Chuck Berry all the while merrily warning, “Roll over Beethoven”—how could we deny it entrance into our lives? The ease with which you could offend the adult world, the sanctimoniousness of public figures and the turnabout that came with success . . . above all the clear line of demarcation between us and them made it impossible for us to turn our backs and ignore this new phenomenon. (18, 20, all emphasis in original)

  To reiterate, the white rock & rollers of the 1950s were not the first generation of white youth to embrace and explore their identity, sexuality, and burgeoning politics via black popular music and black popular culture. But, unmistakably, something wholly different happened in the 1950s. Unlike the Lost Generation of the 1920s and the swing kids of the 1930s and 1940s, and more akin to the Beat Generation of the 1950s, the white rock & rollers of the 1950s seemed to implicitly embrace and be in tune with some of the more popular principles and practices of the major African American social and political movement of their era: the Civil Rights Movement. However, in keeping with their audacious “us and them” attitude—meaning, “us” white youth and “them” white adults—even as they drew from the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement white youth, for the most part, existentially turned inward to their own “unarticulated hurt,” angst, and alienation.[24]

  Without in any way downplaying white youths’ “unarticulated hurt,” angst, and alienation in the 1950s, it is important to call into question whether they sufficiently considered African Americans’ increasingly highly-articulated and excruciating hurt, angst, alienation and horrifying experiences in light of racial oppression and segregation. By the very fact that they were ingeniously and, in some senses, therapeutically utilizing what in essence began as a form of black popular music to express their “unarticulated hurt,” angst, and alienation, it would seem that white youth were deeply indebted to African Americans. However, as white youth increasingly became the voices and faces of rock & roll, African American rock & rollers faded and, in many cases, were deceitfully forced into the background, and rock & roll was in essence re-segregated as opposed to genuinely desegregated.

  Consequently, hit song after hit song, rock history began to mirror the Eurocentric master narratives of American history, which have consistently racially colonized and plainly plagiarized the contributions of African Americans and fraudulently attributed them to white “founding fathers” in specific, and white America more generally. To crossover to the pop charts the gritty, “dirty” blues elements of rhythm & blues had to be suppressed. Blues and rhythm & blues singer-songwriters were generally considered too adult in their concerns to be acceptable for suburban white teens. As a consequence, the unambiguous sexual content of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll songs needed to be desexualized. Beginning with Bill Haley’s cover version of Big Joe Turner’s 1954 classic “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” music industry moguls began to alter not merely the words but the sound of the rhythm & blues consumed by white youth. The gospel-influenced and blue note-blurring vocals of rhythm & blues were almost completely wiped out, and often very “safe” white versions of previously very “dangerous” black songs saturated the suburbs.

  Clearly indicating that the song was altered to make it more appealing to white listeners, Bill Haley’s version of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” erased almost all of the blues and sexual mischievousness of Big Joe Turner’s original song. As a matter of fact, the resulting record, much like most of Haley’s music from that time forward, exhibited an unmistakable anodyne, almost innocent excitement by replacing references to sexuality with references to dancing. Haley’s “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” in essence provided the blueprint for placing rhythm & blues on the pop charts as rock & roll. Although it might be hard for many of my readers to conceive of it now, but when we bear in mind the sexual innuendo free-floating through classic blues (for example, see Robert Johnson’s 1937 “Travelling Riverside Blues,” where he passionately sang: “I want you to squeeze my lemon until the juice runs down my leg”) through to jump blues and ultimately rhythm & blues, it is possible to re-read Haley’s classic “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” as a tongue-in-cheek reference to sexual stamina. Even though it was not an outright copy of Big Joe Turner’s 1947 “Around the Clock Blues,” yet and still Haley’s “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” obviously
“borrowed” a great deal from Charley Patton’s 1929 “Going to Move to Alabama,” Jim Jackson’s 1927 “Kansas City Blues,” and Count Basie’s 1940 “Red Wagon.”

  Haley’s “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” can also be read as a response to the Dominoes’ more recently released “Sixty Minute Man,” which was a number one rhythm & blues hit in 1951 that briefly crossed over to the pop charts and, as a consequence, inspired a series of songs that took up sexual stamina as a topic, including Ruth Brown’s “5-10-15 Hours,” the Ravens’ “Rock Me All Night Long” and, of course, Hank Ballard & the Midnighters’ “Work with Me, Annie” and “Annie Had a Baby.” With regard to Hank Ballard & the Midnighters’ colossal “Work with Me, Annie,” the 1955 white cover/response record “Dance with Me Henry” by Georgia Gibbs, which itself was a very whitewashed version of Etta James’s “The Wallflower,” became a number two pop hit by also substituting dance for sex. It cannot be stressed strongly enough, alterations to both rhythm & blues lyrics and music in the early rock & roll era established what is now referred to as the “whitewashing” model that helped to popularize the genre.

  The “King of the Cover Version” was undoubtedly Charles Eugene “Pat” Boone (reportedly a direct descendant of American frontiersman Daniel Boone). During the first decade of rock & roll prior to the British Invasion (circa late 1963/early 1964), Boone was the only American performer who rivaled Elvis Presley’s pop chart dominance. With his gleaming Dentyne smile, carefully combed hair, quirky (and often comical) dance moves, and signature white buck shoes, Boone was considered the epitome of wholesome American values and an ideal role model for suburban white teens. At the exact moment when the rise of rock & roll was seen as a sign of the crumbling and eventual end of American culture, he thoroughly whitewashed and watered-down the music, making it appear to be safe and non-threatening, in so doing he scored a remarkable 38 Top 40 hits. Although more attention is lavished on Presley now, it is incredibly important to understand that Boone’s musical accomplishments in the late 1950s and early 1960s rank right alongside Elvis’ achievements. As a matter of fact, for all of Boone’s mainstream American wholesomeness, many contemporary rock critics have failed to fully comprehend that both Boone and Presley’s respective hit parades were primarily a consequence of their intense musical colonization and economic exploitation of rhythm & blues music and culture.[25]

  Where Presley—with his flashy suits, wild hair, swiveling hips, pulsating pelvis, and suggestive leer—was considered persona non grata in many corners of the country, in contrast Boone was openly embraced by teens and even acceptable to mainstream, middle-class parents. In essence, his music smoothed out rock & roll’s rough edges, transforming subversive and suggestive songs such a Fats Domino’s “Ain’t It a Shame” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” into tame, incredibly inoffensive family-friendly ditties for suburban white audiences accustomed to hearing the placid pop sounds of a pre-war era that was quickly being eclipsed by not merely a new, post-war black popular music (rhythm & blues), but also a new, post-war black popular movement (the Civil Rights Movement). According to Billboard, Boone was second only to Presley as the biggest charting artist of the late 1950s, and he still holds the Billboard record for spending 220 consecutive weeks on the charts with one or more songs each week. Like Elvis, Boone’s early career was sparked and defined by his covers of rhythm & blues songs for a white pop-oriented audience. His most noted rhythm & blues remakes include the Charms’s “Heart of Stone,” Ivory Joe Hunter’s “I Almost Lost My Mind,” Fats Domino’s “Ain’t It a Shame,” Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” Charles Singleton’s “Don’t Forbid Me,” the El Dorados’s “At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama),” and the Flamingos’s “I’ll Be Home.” In virtually every instance, Boone’s cover either equaled or out-performed the originals on the pop charts, which brings us right back to the black pioneers/white popularizers paradigm broached above.

  With the unprecedented success of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Georgia Gibbs, and Connie Francis, it quickly became standard practice in the American music industry to eagerly watch the rhythm & blues charts for hit records and then have a white singer cover them for the more lucrative pop market. Undoubtedly, this practice greatly reduced the crossover potential for the original rhythm & blues songs and artists, who were invariably African American. This is to say, on top of the musical colonization, white rock & roll covers of black rhythm & blues songs almost inherently involved economic exploitation. Rhythm & blues artists were most often paid a piddling flat-fee for recording their hard-won hit songs and were frequently forced to waive any rights to future royalties they were in fact entitled to as whitewashed versions of their songs raced up the pop charts and made already rich white music industry executives even richer. It should be stated sternly here, one of the central soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement, rhythm & blues, ultimately became the bedrock and goldmine of the post-war American music industry. Rhythm & blues defined and then proceeded to redefine American popular music by contributing new rhythms and new blues, as well as new words, phrases, verse structures, themes, instrumentation, and musical organization. Most of all, rhythm & blues gave rock & roll its unprecedented style, which was nothing more than a synthesis of a wide range of post-war proto-soul black styles.

  Rock & Roll: Sonic Segregation, Musical Colonization, and Economic Exploitation

  White music industry executives utilized racial segregation to their advantage in double-dealing rhythm & blues artists, and even though most modern rock critics routinely downplay and diminish the severity of white music industry executives and rock & roll artists’ role in economically exploiting rhythm & blues singer-songwriters, at this point it is important for us to see white rock & roll covers of black rhythm & blues songs from the point of view of the black artists and not merely the long line of American music industry apologists. White rock & roll covers of black rhythm & blues songs were more than merely an odd and unfortunate episode in the history of the American music industry. Much more, these covers set the tone for the musical free-for-all predicated on the colonization and exploitation of post-war black popular music seemingly endemic in the American music industry for the remainder of the twentieth century, as rock ultimately became the best-selling musical genre in America and in many parts of the world abroad.

  Once again, African American ingenuity was exploited and colonized in the interests of white America and the generation of white wealth in the face of black poverty, and once again whites—this time white music industry executives and musicians—in so many words, blamed blacks for their exploitation and colonization. For instance, in the immediate post-war period most African American musicians were forced to perform on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” which meant that they had to travel the rigidly racially segregated highways and byways in order to provide for themselves and their families. Little attention was given to details when dealing with contracts and other record company paperwork because virtually all contracts were incredibly exploitive and ranting and raving about it was seen as a waste of precious time and energy. What was most important for most rhythm & blues singer-songwriters was to get paid either before or immediately after a recording session since they had to get back on the Chitlin’ Circuit, and since many of the small, independent, and therefore financially fragile record companies they recorded for frequently folded before they could collect royalties. Consequently, the real beneficiaries of the black musical genius of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll during its first decade were the white music industry executives and the white musicians who placed hit cover versions on the pop charts.[26]

  Although there is often a lot of hair-splitting and hyperbole about it by most rock historians, it should be clearly stated that most rock & roll cover versions in most instances copied the rhythm & blues songs’ original arrangements in great detail to the extent that often the only substantial difference between the original and the cover was tha
t the cover version had a different record label and the singer was white. Brian Ward (1998) went so far to say, “white covers tended to lift entire arrangements from black records, hoping to reproduce their power and passion through acts of artistic theft against which there was little legal protection” for “second-class citizens” such as African Americans at the time (47–48). Providing even more insight, Ward went further:

  What made this situation worse was the fact that many black artists were locked into extraordinarily exploitative contracts which substantially reduced their capacity to profit from even the records they did sell. When lawyer Howell Begle investigated claims by a number of

  R&B veterans that they had routinely been deprived of proper payment by their record companies, he discovered that in the 1940s and 1950s most had contracts which paid royalties at a meager rate of between 1 and 4 per cent of the retail price of recordings sold, or else provided one-off payments of around $200 in return for performances which sometimes made millions of dollars. Such practices retarded black capital accumulation within the music industry and ultimately had a chilling effect on the extension of black ownership and economic power. (48)