Stereotypes in Black Music: The African-American Crossover Compromise
A match in the powder keg.
The Dawn of (Jungle) Man
The theme is explained by a paraphrasing of one of Dr. Martin Luther King's more well known quotes. Kurtz says, "Artists are often judged not only by the color of their skin but by the content of their caricature." He asks, why would the African American music establishment (and the artists themselves) persist in the perpetuation of these putrid images?
Is it simply pandering to the desires of caucasians to make fun of Negroes? Or is it something deeper?
Evidence is presented to show that, as demeaning as blackface minstrelsy was, it was also the "first formal public acknowledgement by whites of black culture."
Focus on the "jungle savage" was (and still is) prevalent and appeared in as unlikely a place as the Cotton Club, complete with jungle and plantation motifs. Duke Ellington's "Echoes of the Jungle" was the central piece of a popular theatrical experience.
"The Greatest Living Master of Jungle Music"
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- Book Review: Stereotypes in Black Music -- The African-American Crossover Compromise
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A reign begins and a genre is born.
Wynonie Harris's hit heralds two beginnings
Kurtz reports that by the time Billboard magazine officially began using the label, "Rhythm and Blues" to define a genre, a "raunchier, take-no-prisoners subgenre was already redefining R & B. This was back-alley bad and roadhouse rough."
Harris's hit record, "Good Rocking Tonight" was one of the first song titles in a new era of music that would be more clearly named by another blues singer's song, Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)".
The jump blues hit by Harris also made the music world acutely aware that the alto saxophone had been replaced by the tenor sax as the "alpha male of R & B instruments." Long live the tenor!