Racism in Music? No way! This is America!
The picture associated with this post is sort of related. It is a boring picture, but it is a picture associated with slavery. This is from a restored plantation estate in South Carolina, For the sake of the tourists, they removed all the Strange Fruit that hung from the trees you see here.
You should read this in two sessions. It is WAY too long for a blog post. I broke it into two sections to be read under an installment plan. Each section is stand alone. But there is a common theme: Music.
Also, you can skip reading this altogether by watching the videos linked at the end of this. Serve yourself a high-quality whiskey, put your feet up, watch the videos and reach your own conclusions.
Parts of this blog are illegal in Florida and other states. If you discuss the issues examined with school-aged children, you will be arrested in Florida and Texas and many other states. We have warned you.
Part 1
Country music, a.k.a. hillbilly music, has been in the news recently. And not in a good way. More about that later.
You probably heard hillbilly music first in the movie “Deliverance,” where really great banjo music played during a man-on-man rape scene. “Deliverance” captured the hillbilly culture of Appalachia perfectly. That film is now required viewing in Blue State college classes across this nation for anyone majoring in music or American history, indeed.
But the music, now rebranded as country music, had a long history before moving pictures. It got really rolling on July 18, 1913, when Riley “Big Bull” Connor fortuitously heard a Black man named Huddy Ledbetter sing. Big Bull Connor had the biggest plantation in central Mississippi, where he grew cotton and tobacco on hundreds of thousands of acres. To satisfy his need for labor, he paid Parchman Farm (a Mississippi prison) 5 cents a prisoner a day for them to truck the prisoners to his plantation to work. The book "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" revealed that this was a win-win situation for the white people involved.
Big Bull was no dummy. He liked the music, and he knew he could make money off it if White people performed it. So, he added a penny for any guard who brought him a Black prisoner who sang wonderful songs. After being recorded, the guards worked those prisoners to death and buried them in unmarked mass graves around Parchman Farm.
Big Bull recorded songs and took them to White choirs in segregated churches who would sing them if they were made less Black. Easy-peasy. Sing them all in the key of C with only three chords allowed per song. And so, country (a.k.a. hillbilly) music was born.
FYI: There is a statue of Big Bull Connor in the Country Music Hall of Fame and in the Mississippi State House.
Just a few weeks ago, The New York Times ran an article about a song on the top ten country charts called “Fast Car.” The song was a surprise hit. Neither the singer, Luke Combs, nor his record company thought the song was going to be a hit. A Black woman, Tracy Chapman, wrote and performed the song in 1988, and she earned very little from the song. It probably had zero sales to country fans. Now it’s a big country music hit when sung by a White man.
The NYT article pointed out this happened all the time in popular music. A Black performer sings a song and makes next to nothing from it. Then a White performer sings the same song, and it becomes a big hit.
The writer of the article likened the Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman situation to the Elvis Presley and Big Mama Thornton situation. Big Mama recorded “Hound Dog,” first. It was her biggest hit ever on the Rhythm and Blues charts. She may have sold a couple million copies. Elvis hears the song and likes it, so he records “Hound Dog.” His version buried Big Mama Thornton’s version and he sold three to four times as many copies. He got rich. Not Big Mama Thornton.
But that story is nuanced and missed the NYT writer. Big Mama Thornton did not write the song. The songwriter and singer of “Fast Car” is Tracy Chapman, while two white Jewish L.A. teenage boys named Lieber and Stoller. wrote “Hound Dog”. They wrote many hits for Black artists. But we’re talking “Hound Dog” here. They worked for a record company. And that record company paid Big Mama Thornton to sing it. While it was a hit for her, the record company actually paid Big Mama Thornton some royalties. Highly unusual in those days.
Record companies never paid royalties to black artists for most of the recorded history of popular music in the United States. They got a flat fee, often less than $30, to sing songs at a recording session. The record companies that recorded the songs then copyrighted them. The black artists had no right for any income from sheet music sales or records of their songs.
A better example of using well-known artists to illustrate the exploitation of Black artists would be Little Richard. He had lots of hits in the 1950s. He was a flamboyant Black Rhythm and Blues performer who just made a living performing rock’ n’ roll songs. His songs were covered by Pat Boone, the Whitest singer among White singers. Pat wrote books promoting virginity and made no bones about being a solid Christian. Later in life, Little Richard complained that he hardly made any money, but Pat Boone stole all his songs and made LOTS of money.
Understanding racism is essential to understanding the history of American popular music. Florida be damned.
Let’s go back to Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. Tracy is getting royalties as the songwriter. Lots of them. Also, Luke Combs is a nice guy who had no intention of ripping off Tracy. He does not hesitate to credit her with the song and how he loved to play her version when he was growing up. Still, you can’t but notice the same song is a hit for the White, but not the Black.
Another note about Elvis. Although he never seemed to credit Big Mama Thornton for inspiring his cover of the song, there is no evidence that Elvis was a racist. The famous racist quote that people have attributed to him was never spoken by him. That is fake news. He was a White establishment cultural figure, but that does not make him a racist.
Anyhoo, I may quibble about the NYT article, but it was a necessary reminder to people that racism is everywhere, including popular music. Fuck you, Florida.
Part 2
Historically, the history of country music is more right-wing and racist than popular music. It all started back in the 1880s with Coon Songs. Those were songs at minstrel shows that mocked Black people. They were popular up to the 1920s. White men wearing black face performed minstrel shows in rural areas. The tradition of Whites playing ignorant Blacks continued in the days of radio with “Amos and Andy.”
Fast forward to 1969 when Merle Haggard has a huge country music hit with “Okie from Muskogee.” In the middle of the Vietnam war and the revolution in rock music, Merle sang about small town reactionary values.
The whole thing was bullshit. The song notes that Okies don’t use drugs when Merle himself spent time in prison thanks to using drugs. Merle was from Bakersfield, CA, hardly a little like Muskogee. And the song has not aged well. All those straight citizens of Muskogee who Merle sang about not smoking marijuana (they did) die from drug overdoses at an alarming rate.
But this story has a happy ending. From that stinking foul pile of human excrement called “Okie from Muskogee,” a phoenix rose of pure brilliance. The song “Asshole from El Paso” was born from the pile of shit. And it gets better. Among the songwriters of “Asshole from El Paso,” is Merle Haggard. That’s why you gotta love Merle. From that piece of shit, he sang in 1969, he’s part of a group that writes “Asshole from El Paso,” a song that rips a new asshole in the Okie from Muskogee. Many insignificant and bad songs followed, and their hateful lyrics made Richard Nixon a fan of country music.
Fast forward to today. Jason Aldean, a dickwad country singer, releases a song called ‘Try That in a Small Town.” It has so many racist dog whistles in it that the ASPCA recommends never playing it near your dog for fear it will deafen the poor beast. The singer purposely chooses to film the song's video in front of a courthouse where a Black teenager was lynched in the 1920s, just in case the MAGAs were too stupid to pick up the dog whistles. And on his website, Jason includes instructions on how you can Photoshop the Black being lynched in the song’s video. Okay, maybe not that, but I’d bet if he could have, he would have.
This is like Okie from Muskogee but doesn't have the advantage of a genuine artist like Merle Haggard. Jason's hometown is not small. Jason plays most of his concerts in cities - like why should he waste time playing for limited money in small towns? And his fans, who are at the concerts in big cities, whoop, and holler like they just came from the set of TV show Hee-Haw. Forget that. Hee-Haw was a great show that would not have tolerated dickwads like Janson and his fans. Despite his top-selling country song, Jason complains of being cancelled, like Trump. Janson is a whiny little bitch.
One critic, I think in the NYT, opined that the song is not addressed to city slickers, although it first appears that way. Supposedly the song is telling me, who lives in a non-racist small down, that I should not come to his small town, or they will lynch me or kill me with an AR-15 assault rifle. There is no way any smart human would move to Jason’s shithole little town where every day some man accidentally shoots his balls off cleaning his guns. Jason need not worry.
If all us smart people eschew such places, what is the point of his singing the song? Because he’s really telling the yahoos of those towns that they are all great assholes. The song is addressed to the people who already live there. Hillbilly masturbation, as it were.
Speaking of small towns, two days before I wrote this, they arrested a preacher in a small town for murdering one of his teenage partitioner’s. And the same day, a Florida anti-abortionist leader, also from a small town, was arrested for child sexual assault. Many of America’s worst mass murderers, mostly White men, were from small towns. I don’t care what woke ChatGPT says.
Enough reading!
Part 3
Fix yourself a good drink, put your feet up and listen to the soundtrack of this blog.
Tracy Chapman singing Fast Car. FYI, Tracy is gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvGfVdx-gNo
Luke Combs singing Fast Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr7oYjnt3bM
Big Mama Thornton singing Hound Dog. FYI, Big Mama Thornton was gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxoGvBQtjpM
Little Richard doing Tutti Frutti in 1956 – enhanced by AI. FYI, Little Richard was gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-U2kGDHSI
Pat Boone singing Tutti Frutti in 1957. Pat made a ton of money off the song. Not Little Richard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAwBa8Pqi6Y
Little Richard doing Tutti Frutti as he was indoctrinated the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame. A very lively version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSx91WBQLpg
Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing “Didn’t It Rain.” She is considered The Mother of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Eric Clapton credits her as his inspiration for playing rock and roll guitar. Guess who made more money: Sister Tharpe or Eric Clapton? FYI, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFywQdeKSo&list=RDEMca4C9EfYPWaUC0eV3I9ndg&index=9
Lieber and Stoller were two Jewish teenagers in LA in the 1950s who wrote songs for Black artists. Back then, they wrote “Kansas City” which was performed by many Black artists, including Little Richard. The version below is not the best version of the song, but has a gaggle of White rock stars who made more money in a day than Little Richard in a year. FYI, there is a gay performer in this mix. Can you find him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltqLIElBTsg
This is a longer clip of Little Richard doing songs on European TV. Bruce Springsteen, in many of his concerts, does a medley of R&B hits. That Little Richard was a major influence for Bruce Springsteen is easily heard in this video. Compare it to Bruce’s concert medley of R&B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt9OwMLNPAc
An excellent version of Okie from Muskogee that must make you laugh when they sing that they don’t smoke marijuana.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5feWCmPYFeM
Two versions of Asshole from El Paso. Each version is by one of the writers of the song. If you YouTube shop the song, you will find many different lyrics.
https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/1259481/versions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AH_Owld5UI
The best song ever written about life in a small town. Fuck you, Jason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdCOZBLAcuQ
This song has nothing to do with exploitation, racial, homophobic, or otherwise. It is just a good inspirational song for shitty times such as after you’ve read this blog!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD4FDe_eQPs