Gillett highlights the consequences of the eclipse of African Americans in rock & roll music and culture by the end of its first decade of existence (again, circa 1954 to 1964). Not only did the whitening and lightening of rock & roll put into play the new, peculiarly post-war form of sonic segregation, musical colonization, and economic exploitation discussed above, it also “killed off the music but kept the name.” One cannot help but to wonder aloud how rock & roll would have evolved and what it would have sounded like today if it was not musically colonized and thoroughly whitewashed during its first decade? What if African Americans had not have been sonically segregated and basically barred from the mainstream of a music they, in fact, invented or, at the very least, pioneered? What if white music industry executives, white rock & roll musicians, and white rock & roll fans had have actually embraced the integrationist ethos and integrationist impulse of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll at its inception and throughout its first decade? If, indeed, white music industry executives, white rock & roll musicians, and white rock & roll fans had have passionately and politically embraced the integrationist ethos and integrationist impulse of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll at its inception and throughout its first decade would rock & roll be the “softer substitute,” the “[white] middle-class phenomenon” that it most often undeniably is today? Also, wouldn’t there have been greater white rock & roll musician and white rock & roll fan contribution to, and serious participation in the Civil Rights Movement, since rock & roll, in fact, began as one of the movement’s central secular soundtracks, replete with “racial connotations” and all the rest?
Gillett expertly emphasized that both rock & roll and rhythm & blues evolved in the aftermath of the whitening and lightening of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll during its first decade, writing not only about the “softer substitute” that was “palmed off” as rock & roll, but also about the new music that “went by the name ‘rhythm & blues’” but had only a “slight connection with the pre-rock & roll style of the same name.” Much like the emphasis on desegregation and integration altered African American social, political, and cultural consciousness during the Civil Rights Movement, the sonic segregation, musical colonization, and economic exploitation of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll singer-songwriters between 1954 and 1964, for the most part, ultimately led to the sonic and racial resegregation of African Americans in American popular music. Where many white rock & rollers achieved fame and fortune during rock & roll’s first decade, Gillett stressed that most of the original black rock & roll artists either had to “adapt” to the whitened and lightened sound and style of “whitewashed” rock & roll or “resign themselves to obscurity,” or, even worse, “abandon [. . .] music altogether.” There are no two ways about it, the musical colonization of rhythm & blues-cum-rock & roll eventually led to the marginalization of black rock & rollers, sonically resegregating them to the realm of rhythm & blues (essentially the sonic ghetto of the American music industry), and from about 1965 forward rock came to be identified almost exclusively with suburban white youths’ loves and lives. Hence, even an African American musician as undeniably talented as Jimi Hendrix ended up having to go to London in 1966 in order to secure a record deal and launch his career as a rock artist.[31]
There is something at once extremely disturbing and undeniably depressing when Guralnick (1999, 32), in his characteristic uncontrived prose style, stated: “In the end everything gets absorbed into the cultural mainstream, and rock & roll was no different. . . . They’ve even gone and changed the name, and what was once a kind of secret metaphor (like ‘ball’ and ‘Miss Ann’ and ‘brown-eyed handsome man’) has become instead just another explicit Anglo-Saxon epithet.” I am in complete agreement with Guralnick when he bemoans the fact that rock & roll has been essentially reduced to yet another “explicit Anglo-Saxon epithet,” robbed of its fierce soulfulness, indeed, its blackness—which is to say, its distinct African Americanness—and the allusive anti-racism and revolutionary integrationism that marked its origins. However, in my mind at least, the question continues to beg: “Does everything really and truly get ‘absorbed into the cultural mainstream’?” And, a corollary question creeps in here: “Did every (or, rather, all) aspects of rock & roll get ‘absorbed into the cultural mainstream’?”
Truth be told, for the most part African Americans, even in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, certainly have not been “absorbed [and genuinely accepted as opposed to assimilated] into the cultural mainstream,” and this painful fact stands even though each and every major form of black popular music (from the spirituals and the blues through to rap and neo-soul), to a certain extent, has found high levels of acceptance in the American music industry, if not in American popular culture more generally. In other words, “real” rock & roll actually has not been “absorbed into the cultural mainstream,” because “real” rock & roll, as Guralnick intimated above, was “a kind of secret metaphor” that clandestinely conveyed as much about black ghetto youths’ “unarticulated hurt,” angst, and alienation as it did white suburban youths’ “unarticulated hurt,” angst, and alienation. What actually has been “absorbed into the cultural mainstream” is a “softer substitute,” a vanilla version of rock & roll, an often bland and highly bleached form of black popular music that continues the longstanding white American tradition of accepting those aspects of African American life and culture that are highly colonizable and commodifiable, but unrepentantly rejecting those subversive elements of African American life and culture that do not quickly coincide with blackface minstrelesque and assimilation-obsessed anti-black racist misconceptions and misrepresentations of African Americans. In this sense, rock & roll, “real” rock & roll, Guralnick lamented, “was over before it even had a chance to slyly grin and look around,” and “[i]n its place came a new all-synthetic product” that is often as inept as it is ahistorical and apolitical (20).
Entangled in the racial and cultural politics of the 1950s, rock & roll was frequently credited with, and vehemently criticized for advocating integration and providing new economic opportunities for African Americans while simultaneously injecting African American culture and values into mainstream America. In light of the African American origins and early evolution of rock & roll, it quickly became one of the most contentious topics in popular discourse. White Southerners, in particular, associated the music with stereotypical anti-black racist ideas about African Americans as either subhuman, at best, or non-human, at worst. They projected and, consequently, heard echoes of “black emotionalism” and “black expressivism” coupled with “black exoticism” and “black eroticism.”
In the face of all of this, we should never lose sight of the fact that rock & roll was also big business—very big business—and, consequently, it was susceptible to the whims and wishes of the white youth-dominated American music market. Preoccupied with the unprecedented profits that rock & roll generated, by the late 1950s and early 1960s the mostly white male music industry moguls did everything they could to avoid controversy and commotion. As a result they exploited countless African American rhythm & blues and rock & roll musicians by encouraging white roll & rollers to copy or, rather, “cover” African American rhythm & blues and rock & roll hits. The African American male sex symbols that were catapulted to stardom during the earliest years of rock & roll had to be stopped, and suburban white youth, especially young white women, were steered away from what was understood to be the hypersexuality of Esquerita, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Larry Williams, Hank Ballard, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley, among many others. In the process what began as a black musical expression and eventually evolved into an interracial musical expression was ultimately whitewashed into an ultra-inoffensive “[white] middle-class phenomenon almost exclusively.”[32]
Seeming to permanently Clorox the complexion and soul of rock & roll in the minds’ of the American masses, from the early 1960s onward white rock & rollers would be perfunctorily privileged and promoted over black
rock & rollers as “real” and the most righteous rock & roll. Only occasionally in the post-1950s history of rock would African Americans register as “authentic” rock musicians (e.g., Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, Ike & Tina Turner, Sly & the Family Stone, Swamp Dogg, Funkadelic, Prince, Bad Brains, Sound Barrier, Fishbone, Terence Trent D’Arby, Tracy Chapman, Living Colour, 24-7 Spyz, Follow For Now, Lenny Kravitz, Seal, Ben Harper, Meshell Ndegeocello, Michael Franti, Chocolate Genius, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Cree Summer, Amel Larrieux, Van Hunt, Cody ChesnuTT, Brittany Howard, and Gary Clark, Jr.). But, truth be told, as observed in Raymond Gayle’s groundbreaking documentary Electric Purgatory: The Fate of the Black Rocker (2010), most modern white rock & roll youth have never even heard of half of the aforementioned, let alone seriously listened to their distinct brands of rock. In other words, paralleling the historical experiences of African Americans, rock & roll was racialized and colonized in the interest of whites, and suburban white youth in particular. Like so many other contributions African Americans have made to American culture, rock & roll went from being rejected, to accepted, to ultimately depoliticized and claimed as “white property” and integral to white popular culture. As Altschuler (2003) stated:
For African Americans, rock & roll was a mixed blessing. At times a force for integration and racial respect, rock & roll was also an act of theft that in supplanting rhythm & blues deprived blacks of appropriate acknowledgement, rhetorical and financial, of their contributions to American culture. Rock & roll deepened the divide between the generations, helped teenagers differentiate themselves from others, transformed popular culture in the United States, and rattled the reticent by pushing sexuality into the public arena. (34)
When rock & roll is viewed from the point of view of the unsung soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, when we explore the origins and early evolution of rock & roll utilizing the “we can implicitly sing what we cannot explicitly say” aesthetic, then, and perhaps only then, does rock & roll register as one of the central soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement. Never in the history of the American music industry have so many white musicians imitated and later emulated black singer-songwriters, and black musicians more generally. In initially appreciating and later participating in rock & roll during its first decade, throngs of white youth were, even if most often unwittingly, taking part in “a kind of secret metaphor”—once again, replete with “racial connotations” and a, however subtle, emphasis on integration—before corporate America reduced it to “just another explicit Anglo-Saxon epithet.” By embracing what was undeniably understood to be a form of black popular music at its inception, the white youth of rock & roll’s first decade, in their own adolescent and often incredibly immature way, were willing to acknowledge the beauty and brilliance of an aspect of African American culture (i.e., black popular music) in ways that many of the most “liberal” and “open-minded” white adults were unwilling to at the time.
In a sense, as rock & roll evolved into the “classic rock” of the late-1960s through to the late-1970s, generation after generation of white youth embraced and often innovatively continued to evolve a form of music that not only has its origins in black popular music, especially classic rhythm & blues, but also in the integrationist ethos and integrationist impulse of arguably the most renowned black popular movement of the twentieth century: the Civil Rights Movement. However, because rock was so severely colonized, depoliticized, and whitewashed, because it came to be viewed as the almost exclusive “property” of white male “rock gods,” rock, however covertly, continues the sonic segregation, musical colonization, and economic exploitation discussed above. Moreover, for the most part, African Americans remain marginalized in rock in much the same manner they remain marginalized, even after the Civil Rights Movement, in mainstream American culture, politics, and society. In the final analysis, then, Guralnick seems to have hit the nail on the head when he asserted above, “what was once a kind of secret metaphor . . . has become instead just another explicit Anglo-Saxon epithet.” This conclusion is obviously very sad but, placing our feelings aside, we must concede that it is also very true. However, what is also equally true is the simple fact that right alongside the obviously important work of the most famous figures of the Civil Rights Movement sits the inestimable and invaluable contributions of the unsung singing soldiers of the movement.
From gospel and freedom songs, to rhythm & blues and rock & roll, the unsung singing soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement shared their collective views and values, not merely with black America, but with white America and the wider world. Their contributions to the deconstruction and reconstruction of American democracy and American citizenship—indeed, their deconstruction and reconstruction of the “American dream”—is as meaningful and lasting as anything put forward by the famous figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, as the previous chapters have demonstrated, much of what the famous figures of the Civil Rights Movement said and did was inspired by the most often anonymous, unsung singing soldiers of the movement. This book is a very humble tribute to them, to their words and deeds, to their ideas and actions, to their songs and powerful singing, to the incredibly innovative ways in which they developed the “we can implicitly sing what we cannot explicitly say” aesthetic in the years leading up to, and certainly during the Civil Rights Movement. Above all else, while researching and writing this book I have been most inspired and most deeply moved by the ways in which the unsung singing soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, whether consciously or unconsciously, embraced the heartfelt and hallowed words of the African American national anthem, which eternally implores us to “lift every voice and sing,” and to continue to do so until earth and heaven ring with liberty and justice for all. Let us now, henceforth, and forever more: Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Facing the rising sun of our new day begun. Let us march on until victory is won. . . . Indeed, lift every voice and sing!
Notes
1. For further discussion of the emergence and early evolution of rock & roll as indicative of the external or extra-communal politics of the Civil Rights Movement, especially the integrationist ethos and integrationist impulse of the Civil Rights Movement, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see R.I. Bell (2007), Broven (2009), Cateforis (2013), Crazy Horse (2004), Delmont (2012), Helper (1996), Kamin (1975), Lauterbach (2011), Pielke (2012), A. Shaw (1969), and Vazzano (2010).
2. The noteworthy works that influenced my interpretation of the centrality of black popular music—especially blues, jump blues, and rhythm & blues—in the emergence and early evolution of rock & roll include Aron (2015), R.I. Bell (2007), Birnbaum (2013), Crazy Horse (2004), Daley (2003), DeCurtis, Henke and George-Warren (1992), Egendorf (2002), Escott (1999), Friedlander (2006), George-Warren (2009), Guralnick (1989, 1999, 2015), J.A. Jackson (1991, 2007), Lee and Lee (2001), Strausbaugh (2007), Talevski (1998), Talevski and West (2010), Tosches (1996, 1999), and Wald (2009).
3. For further discussion of classical and contemporary African music, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my analysis here, see Agawu (2003), Agordoh (2005), Askew (2002), Bebey (1999), Bender (1991), Chernoff (1979), Chikowero (2015), Ewens (1992), Jaji (2014), Kubik (2010a, 2010b), Kyagambiddwa (1955), Nketia (1974), R.M. Stone (1982, 2005, 2008), Stone and Gillis (1976), and Tenaille (2002). Several (ethno)musicological studies have explored the “African roots” of the blues and made more general connections between continental and diasporan African music, see Charters (1981, 2009), Floyd (1995), Kubik (1999), and Palmer (1982).
4. For further discussion of work songs and field hollers, as well as what has come to be called “slave songs,” and for the most noteworthy works that influenced my interpretation of African American secular songs during enslavement, see W.F. Allen (1995), Blades (1921), Charters (2015), Epstein (2003), M.M. Fisher (1998), Katz (1969), Parrish (1992), Ramey (2008), K.D. Thompson (2
014), White and White (2005), and Work (1998).
5. For further discussion of early African American music, during and after enslavement, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my analysis here, see Abbott and Seroff (2002), Burnim and Maultsby (2006, 2015), Charters (2015), Epstein (2003), Floyd (1995), Johnson and Johnson (2002), Parrish (1992), Peretti (2009), Ramey (2008), Spencer (1990, 1993, 1995), Southern (1997), and K.D. Thompson (2014).
6. For further discussion of Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction anti-black racism and its impact on post-enslavement African American music and culture, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my analysis here, see Abbott and Seroff (2002), Brundage (2011), Du Bois (1935), Lawson (2010), Lhamon (1998, 2003), E. Lott (1993), K.H. Miller (2010), Sotiropoulos (2006), K.D. Thompson (2014), Wondrich (2003), and Wormser (2003).
7. For further discussion of classic blues women, and for the most noteworthy works that influenced my interpretation here, see A.Y. Davis (1998), F. Davis (1995), Garon and Garon (1992), D.D. Harrison (1988, 2006), B. Jackson (2005), Lordi (2013), and McGinley (2014).
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