Posted on 03/30/2012 9:02:11 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Today the Rolling Stones are still Rock and Roll and pop culture icons, even as they battle over when (if ever) to do a 50th Anniversary Tour, a situation that may be easing now that Keith Richards apologized to Mick Jagger over remarks Richard made about his bandmate and collaborated in his best-selling 2010 autobiography. Scott Mervis posted a very astute Pop Noise blog entry regarding Bruce Springsteen's recollections of the legendary TAMI Show movie, James Brown's explosive appearance in that film and the Rolling Stones' unenviable task of following the Godfather of Soul.
It's also worth noting that nearly 50 years later, it's easy to forget how revolutionary the Stones were in, say, 1964. But here's an example that just about anyone can relate to. It was still the Mad Men era in those days, Beatle haircuts got kids thrown out of school and music that could (and is) played in churches nowadays was considered subversive and sick.
Their music, both the hardcore blues aspects, and the blues-based rock, was too authentically black-sounding for white picket fence, white bread Mainstream America. Hell, parents were only beginning to cope with the less threatening Beatles.
Enter the Stones, appearing on ABC's Ed Sullivan-like Saturday night variety show The Hollywood Palace on June 3, 1964. The show had guest hosts and this week's was Dean Martin, then in his prime and creating the legend that's honored today with Dino and imitators around the country, mostly as part of Rat Pack shows.
The Palace, taped in an LA theater, was produced by old-school showbiz types who had little truck with this whole youth movement, prefering instead to present the old farts of showbiz (Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, etc.) and the young farts who followed in their footsteps. The Stones, no less controversial in
(Excerpt) Read more at communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com ...
Wow - thanks for that! I was thinking earlier today that Gimme Shelter is probably my favorite rock tune of all time. Every time it comes on the radio...I crank that puppy up.
What a difference five years makes. Here they are at what I consider to be the height of their powers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e1_K-JDfOk
Yes, it is evident in the music of the early stones that the music is very much black music updated with electronic instruments and an ensemble. I have a large collection of early 78’s with black musicians from the thirties on, the influence is unmistakable.
Have you have ever heard of any music from the 20s to the 40s? Any jazz?
Yes, they went back to the roots. Studied all the great blues men. Back to the earliest recordings. They probably even listened to the Alan Lomax stuff, the Georgia Sea Island Singers doing the old slave songs etc.
Never heard that. I stand corrected. That was good.
We all lead individual lives, but I vote for fabricated history, What I saw in Southern California was a low level of parental objection to the Stones for being enthusiastically oversexed bad boys. (As opposed to the clean-cut Beatles with prostitutes in their hotel rooms.) I never heard anyone complain that the Stones sounded too black. They sure didn't sound too black to anyone who listened mostly to black blues and jazz musicians, as my white friends and I did.
I’ve never been a big jazz fan. My failing, I guess. But I grew up on Newark’s black radio station, which played no jazz. It was a different genre altogether. They played the stuff that was contemporary at that time, pre-do-wop, and every once in a while would throw in one of the older guys or gals, from the thirties and forties. Those were my favorite times.
At 12 noon the Gospel music show came on, and while the opening number, or theme song if you will, was great—something called “Marching on to Zion”—I could only listen to a few Gospel numbers before I had to switch. The songs were very repetitive at that time, and would have my mother shouting Turn That Off if I played the radio in the kitchen. Someone told me recently that was just bad Gospel music. It’s better now, I know.
Good article. I cringed at the writer’s PC line about Dean’s crack being “homophobic”, but overall it was a neat bit of Stones’ history. Big fan of them and of Dean-o.
If you think about what the early black music represented( black people putting to music the frustrations of being lorded over by their masters), it was brilliant strategy to use the dissonant cords and progressions that made up the blues distinctive sound and adopt it for the leftist agenda. It turns out to be ironic that the leftist agenda now is becoming so successful in lording over so many people.
My two cents on your question:
Kids didn’t care if it was white or black music, but ‘race records’ were not played on top 40 and not sold outside the black areas or big cities.
DJ Alan Freed is, correctly in my opinion, credited with discovering that race or black music would sell to white audiences, which started the crossover.
The Rolling Stones copied black tunes right at the time of the “British Invasion” or the British fad in America. This resulted in white rock and roll becoming the phenomenon rather than black R&B/blues getting the ride.
I wish I could remember the song that, to me, sums it up. There was an incredible song released by a black group, immediately covered by a brit group. The British song soared.
I don’t really think it was a black/white thing, well other than there were a lot more white teens buying records and they gravitated toward white groups. I think it’s kinda understandable that white teens would like jagger more than james brown.
But, IMHO, at the beginning, the brits stole the black music and did it more poorly than the blacks.
As for the “white bread Mainstream America” bit: in my part of America, the South, it wasn’t a black white thing, but was a generational thing. Parents, in general, hated it, kids loved it.
FWIW.
(Elvis of course is a whole ‘nuther story line.)
Yeah, we make fun of Dean Martin and his reaction to the Rolling Stones, but I’m sitting here looking at an America where crosses are removed from military tents in Afghanistan but gay pride flags fly over our bases there, where we’ve become too PC to speak freely to each other, where professional activist tramps demand that we foot the bill for their collegiate recreational sex, and a desire to be seen as racially enlightened has brought us this anti-American charlatan in the White House, and I wonder if Martin was so wrong to shudder at one sign of the change that was coming.
Gimme Shelter is my favorits Rolling Stone song also. This is the youtube version you saw, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCrbziy20aU
Everyone in the band is in top form on this one but I keep playing Lisa Fischer’s solo over a few times each time I listen to this version. There is not a better version of Gimme Shelter that I have found.
Gimme Shelter is my favorits Rolling Stone song also. This is the youtube version you saw, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCrbziy20aU
Everyone in the band is in top form on this one but I keep playing Lisa Fischer’s solo over a few times each time I listen to this version. There is not a better version of Gimme Shelter that I have found.
Yea, I understand what you are saying, but she plays it like an instrument. I love the look on Keith Richards face just after she finishes her solo.
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