Approved-By:  Allmusic Editor <MIKE@WVNVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Thu, 28 Jan 1993 12:44:28 EST
From:         David Malbuff <SPGDAM@UCCVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: More catagorization horror stories

Well, here we go. This is getting good.

Dave down in Birmingham says...

>    I'm gonna have to take issue with you on this one.  Have you
>every heard Willie Mae (Big Momma) Thorton?  Go ahead find her
>version of _Houndog_  then listen to Elvis.  I'm sorry, there is no
>comparison.  The white audience (the mass audience, the ones the
>record labels made music for) could not handle the raw energy of
>Black Music.  Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino played weak
>versions of the blues music that was so popular among the black
>audience.

Yeah, I've heard Willie Mae Thornton's "Hound Dog" (written by Jerry
Leiber and Mike Stoller, incidentally).  Elvis' version is better. It
kicks. His version of "That's All Right Mama" is better than Arthur
Crudup's version, too. As for "Mystery Train", I wouldn't want to choose
between Elvis' and Junior Parker's versions.

Nobody denies that rock & roll came up out of the blues and country music.
That's basic stuff. What I'm saying is that to claim R&R is NOTHING but
watered-down black music is to display one's ignorance. The 'black' part
is correct; the 'watered-down' part is bullshit. Sam Phillips and the guys
at Sun Records weren't looking for safe, acceptable pablum for docile white
audiences. "If I could find a white man who could sing black, I'd make a
billion dollars," Phillips is reputed to have said. The sound of rock & roll
was quite intentionally dangerous, mixing black rhythms with white voices
in the segregated South. And people did not respond to it in a docile,
watered-down manner either. The Pat Boone cover stuff, the safe stuff, the
whitebread stuff... that came later, after Elvis had been with RCA for awhile,
after the guys in suits had gotten a handle on the music by then and were
busy trying to manipulate the audience, long after the cat was out of the bag.

It's too easy to reduce this thing to black versus white. Two Jewish guys
from Brooklyn wrote "Hound Dog". But a black blues singer recorded it. Is
it a blues song or not? Was it not blues when they wrote it, but blues when
she sang it? Did they write a blues song then, but was the stuff they wrote
for the Coasters or Elvis somehow weak or watered-down? Was it the tunes,
or the performers? Had any white person ever played guitar like Scotty
Moore? Do his parts stand up next to Hubert Sumlin's? (Damn right they do.)
Can _anyone_ listen to "Milkcow Blues Boogie" and not hear the anger and
passion in Elvis' voice? His version leaves Bob Wills' in the dust.

It's simplistic to say that "the black blues artists played the REAL stuff
and the white rockers (and even some black ones) were ripoffs." It's also
wrong. Fats Domino was no fake, Little Richard was no fake, nor was Chuck
Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, nor the pre-Army Elvis. The Dominos and Berrys and
Richards consciously didn't play the authentic blues because they were after
something else. The blues was the root of their music, but the blues was
limited to the black community, and their ambitions were higher than that.
Same with the Lewises and Perkinses in regard to country music.

>    I find most early rock 'n' roll hard to listen to.  Especially in
>the wake of the real, hard core, gut wrenching music that was
>available at the same time.  Rock 'n' Roll was just baby pap, to
>pacify white, teenage audiences.
>

It may not be your cup of tea. That's fine. But your last sentence is
absolute bullshit, an admission of ignorance. You do not know what you are
talking about. More charitably, perhaps I'll say you're judging the music
by what came along after the fact.

I'll take my Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf with a shot of Sun-era Elvis
any day. They sound good together. Sometimes, they sound NECESSARY together.
They are playing the same music.

David
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