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Thread started 01/21/15 10:29am

Graycap23

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How did Blacks and Rock get separated?

FOOLS multiply when WISE Men & Women are silent.
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Reply #1 posted 01/21/15 10:48am

Identity

Don't know, don't care.

I've been a multi-genre music listener since my teen years, thanks to my natural curiosity and love of music itself.

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Reply #2 posted 01/21/15 11:12am

MickyDolenz

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Technically, it wasn't really called "rock" until white people started making it, although "rock and roll" was black slang. When blacks were doing it was called blues and R&B and before that "race music". Alan Freed, a white DJ, termed the music "rock". Some blacks in the 1960s abandoned the blues saying it was embarrasing, low class, and country. Blues had an image of a guy in overalls chewing tobacco or snuff, a black hillbilly. B.B. King has said he tried to change this image by wearing suits and having a horn section. "Soul" became the new thing with the black audience, some of the older R&B fans considered soul watered down. It was British Invasion acts who started to shout out the blues to young white folks in the US. Pink Floyd was named after blues performers and The Rolling Stones got their name from blues song. The veteran blues acts started to get gigs in white coffeehouses and concert venues instead of the TOBA juke joints. They also made records with white acts (ig. Muddy Waters). Rolling Stone magazine came around in the late 1960s and started writing about rock acts. Some later forms of rock erased the blues influence and added more European elements like classical music. That's pretty much how rock became associated with whites.

[Edited 1/21/15 11:13am]

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #3 posted 01/21/15 11:39am

alphastreet

MickyDolenz said:

Technically, it wasn't really called "rock" until white people started making it, although "rock and roll" was black slang. When blacks were doing it was called blues and R&B and before that "race music". Alan Freed, a white DJ, termed the music "rock". Some blacks in the 1960s abandoned the blues saying it was embarrasing, low class, and country. Blues had an image of a guy in overalls chewing tobacco or snuff, a black hillbilly. B.B. King has said he tried to change this image by wearing suits and having a horn section. "Soul" became the new thing with the black audience, some of the older R&B fans considered soul watered down. It was British Invasion acts who started to shout out the blues to young white folks in the US. Pink Floyd was named after blues performers and The Rolling Stones got their name from blues song. The veteran blues acts started to get gigs in white coffeehouses and concert venues instead of the TOBA juke joints. They also made records with white acts (ig. Muddy Waters). Rolling Stone magazine came around in the late 1960s and started writing about rock acts. Some later forms of rock erased the blues influence and added more European elements like classical music. That's pretty much how rock became associated with whites.

[Edited 1/21/15 11:13am]

bastards

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Reply #4 posted 01/21/15 12:22pm

bobzilla77

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.

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Reply #5 posted 01/21/15 12:56pm

MickyDolenz

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bobzilla77 said:

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.

That's why record companies re-release different versions of Dark Side Of The Moon every few years and extravagant reissues of rock, pop, & jazz records like a 180 gram mono albums box set of Beatle albums. The main audience for these types of releases are white. You don't see this generally for R&B/soul acts, which in some cases only have a "greatest hits/best of" out. Or their albums are in print in Japan. You won't see a Beatles Anthology style release of Stevie Wonder tunes with flubbed takes and studio dialogue. lol Also popular rock acts tend to have more books written about them than R&B ones and the rock genre in general is more documented.

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #6 posted 01/21/15 1:07pm

Graycap23

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bobzilla77 said:

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.

True and I find it a bit distrubing. These acts deserve better treatment than this.

They can go overseas and get paid. Here in the US they can't make any real money.

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Reply #7 posted 01/21/15 1:52pm

SoulAlive

bobzilla77 said:

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.

Wow,I once had a discussion with a friend,and he said the exact same thing eek there may be some truth to it.In the mid-80s,blacks began embracing hip-hop and turning their back on funk bands,who were suddenly seen as 'old fashioned'.

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Reply #8 posted 01/21/15 2:15pm

RodeoSchro

My guess is that rap killed blacks' interest in rock. They went where the money was, and that was in rap.

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Reply #9 posted 01/21/15 3:01pm

MickyDolenz

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RodeoSchro said:

My guess is that rap killed blacks' interest in rock. They went where the money was, and that was in rap.

I'm not sure what that has to do with it, since R&B radio didn't play much music that could be considered rock before Rapper's Delight became a hit. Mother's Finest didn't really get any R&B airplay except for a slow jam called Love Changes. They would not play something like Joan Armatrading, Tracy Chapman, Jon Butcher Axis, or Fishbone. They didn't even play most of Tina Turner's music after Private Dancer. razz Jimi Hendrix had to go to Europe to get recognition and he was considered white music by R&B radio. R&B stations would play a so-called "blue eyed soul" act before plaing a black rock or folk type group. It was less common for a blues act to get a hit on R&B radio past the early 1960s when Motown became popular, but a blues rock act might get played on the AOR stations started in the 1970s.

.

I think that since rock is associated with blues, the blues was not something the average young black person was interested in. It was old people music. Similar to most young people who listened to Top 40 in the 1980s were not interested in Perry Como and The Andrews Sisters. When rap first came around they rhymed mostly over disco, funk, & soul, not really blues. Then there was a more Kraftwerk style electro sound in rap. When Run DMC came out with Rock Box, that was unusual at the time. Along with the Beastie Boys and maybe the Fat Boys collabs with Chubby Checker & The Beach Boys, they were pretty much the only hip hop acts using a more rock sound. That's probably why all 3 crossed over unlike the earlier rap acts.

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #10 posted 01/21/15 3:08pm

bobzilla77

I was watching the VH1 doc "Finding The Funk" last night (very good btw) and they had Arthur Baker, the producer of Planet Rock, talking about how yeah, drum machines kind of killed the "funk band" as it was known. He didn't sound happy about it. He said they were just trying to go somewhere different with it, they needed something different than a live drummer. He didn't expect to replace drummers completely. But that's how it went down.

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Reply #11 posted 01/21/15 5:59pm

UncleJam

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RodeoSchro said:

My guess is that rap killed blacks' interest in rock. They went where the money was, and that was in rap.

Rap killed 'soul' music.

Make it so, Number One...
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Reply #12 posted 01/21/15 6:46pm

brooksie

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According to Nelson George in "The Death of Rhythm and Blues" (1989), it basically was a rejection of guitar based music in general and what was considered "undanceable" in particular that accounts for it. He feels that this accounts for the rejection of Hendrix in particular.

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Reply #13 posted 01/21/15 8:14pm

TonyVanDam

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bobzilla77 said:

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.


I wonder why AND how mainstream hip-hop/rap has yet to be full-time rejected as rock & jazz? hmmm

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Reply #14 posted 01/21/15 8:44pm

SeventeenDayze

TonyVanDam said:

bobzilla77 said:

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.


I wonder why AND how mainstream hip-hop/rap has yet to be full-time rejected as rock & jazz? hmmm

Three words "prison industrial complex"...

[Edited 1/21/15 21:14pm]

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Reply #15 posted 01/21/15 8:50pm

SoulAlive

I remember an interview where Lenny Kravitz expressed his disappointment that very few black people were attending his shows.Jimi Hendrix was also disappointed that more blacks weren't into his music.

On the other hand,blacks loved Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (a guitar-heavy rock song featuring a guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen) and of course,Prince's rock songs were also popular with R&B audiences,too.The Isley Brothers had alot of 'rock' guitar in their 70s music and it was accepted.

shrug

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Reply #16 posted 01/21/15 9:15pm

SeventeenDayze

SoulAlive said:

I remember an interview where Lenny Kravitz expressed his disappointment that very few black people were attending his shows.Jimi Hendrix was also disappointed that more blacks weren't into his music.

On the other hand,blacks loved Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (a guitar-heavy rock song featuring a guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen) and of course,Prince's rock songs were also popular with R&B audiences,too.The Isley Brothers had alot of 'rock' guitar in their 70s music and it was accepted.

shrug

Yeah that does kind of make you wonder...

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Reply #17 posted 01/21/15 9:36pm

MickyDolenz

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SoulAlive said:

I remember an interview where Lenny Kravitz expressed his disappointment that very few black people were attending his shows.Jimi Hendrix was also disappointed that more blacks weren't into his music.

On the other hand,blacks loved Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (a guitar-heavy rock song featuring a guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen) and of course,Prince's rock songs were also popular with R&B audiences,too.The Isley Brothers had alot of 'rock' guitar in their 70s music and it was accepted.

shrug

That's probably because it was Michael Jackson who already got R&B radio play. The same with Dirty Diana, which isn't really dance based like Beat It. Interestingly some of the singles from Thriller were not that big on the R&B chart like Human Nature & PYT. They did not all go Top 10 R&B like on the pop chart. If Pat Benatar or Charley Pride had released Beat It instead with the same exact music, it most likely wouldn't have recieved much R&B play if at all, nor it with David Lee Roth singing.

You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #18 posted 01/22/15 3:09am

SuperSoulFight
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I think rock & roll was aimed at white youth from the very beginning. Elvis wasn't the first to make rock & roll, but he made it famous and from that moment on record companies knew where the money was!
(Was Chuck Berry ever really famous with black Americans?)
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Reply #19 posted 01/22/15 6:10am

kitbradley

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bobzilla77 said:

My impression is that black culture moves a lot more quickly than white culture when it comes to pop music. Ahmet Ertegun once said there is no audience with less nostalgia for the past than a black audience, it's all about what is happening now, today, that didn't exist yesterday. And to many of those people "rock" is something that happened a long time ago. Frankly you don't have a lot of young black folks following the modern jazz scene either.

True! I live in the Detroit area and it is impossible to find an adult black radio station willing play any Motown or Aretha songs from the 60's. If you want to hear those, you have to tune into classic Pop/Rock stations.

"It's not nice to fuck with K.B.! All you haters will see!" - Kitbradley
"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." - Socrates
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Reply #20 posted 01/22/15 10:55am

luvsexy4all

first time "rockn roll " was mentioned was by Ed Norton on the Honeymooners

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Reply #21 posted 01/22/15 11:08am

MickyDolenz

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luvsexy4all said:

first time "rockn roll " was mentioned was by Ed Norton on the Honeymooners

This was made in 1941, which is way before that show existed


You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton
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Reply #22 posted 01/22/15 11:25am

jackson35

certain black artist do not represent certain vaules and aspiration of the black community. a lot of black folks support these artist, but a lot of us don't because they just want to copy what white artist do.

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Reply #23 posted 01/22/15 12:59pm

ScarletScandal

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RodeoSchro said:

My guess is that rap killed blacks' interest in rock. They went where the money was, and that was in rap.

http://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/04/secret-meeting-that-changed-rap-music.html?m=1

hmmm

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Reply #24 posted 01/22/15 2:15pm

HuMpThAnG

cool thread

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Reply #25 posted 01/22/15 4:37pm

bobzilla77

jackson35 said:

certain black artist do not represent certain vaules and aspiration of the black community. a lot of black folks support these artist, but a lot of us don't because they just want to copy what white artist do.

Can you name some of these artists? I'm kind of curious.

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Reply #26 posted 01/22/15 7:04pm

Graycap23

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HuMpThAnG said:

cool thread

As long as it doesn't get derailed.

FOOLS multiply when WISE Men & Women are silent.
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Reply #27 posted 01/22/15 8:55pm

SeventeenDayze

Graycap23 said:

HuMpThAnG said:

cool thread

As long as it doesn't get derailed.

That tends to happen a lot in these parts...

Trolls be gone!
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Reply #28 posted 01/23/15 1:33am

SuperSoulFight
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bobzilla77 said:



jackson35 said:


certain black artist do not represent certain vaules and aspiration of the black community. a lot of black folks support these artist, but a lot of us don't because they just want to copy what white artist do.



Can you name some of these artists? I'm kind of curious.


And while you're at it, can you name some of the values they're supposed to represent as well? (Although this might derail the thread.) wink
[Edited 1/23/15 1:34am]
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Reply #29 posted 01/23/15 7:01am

Graycap23

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SuperSoulFighter said:

bobzilla77 said:

Can you name some of these artists? I'm kind of curious.

And while you're at it, can you name some of the values they're supposed to represent as well? (Although this might derail the thread.) wink [Edited 1/23/15 1:34am]

Anything related 2 Blacks and rock is all good.

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