Watch these fun-loving white folks enjoy a 1956 performance by Little Richard and his band. Perhaps some in the audience thought the entertainment might, maybe, be allowed to vote in all 48 states? Probably none of them noticed that the singer was possibly gay.
Anyone more than fifteen years older than me grew up in an entirely different country.
thanks for that. I love the horn section’s tightly coordinated moves.
In 1956, I was 8 yrs old. It was absolutely a different country. By the time I was 12 and starting to become a sexual person, I totally knew Little Richard was gay. Give us OLD fun-loving white folks a break–we weren’t stupid just cause this video audience looks dorky. Oh, yeah, by 17 I helped integrate the “Show of Stars” at the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Atlanta, GA, by being one of 20 white kids to attend sold out shows of thousands. Ha! Saw Little Richard in person at one of those shows, Joe Tex, Otis Redding, so many more great, GREAT performers, oh-mi-gawd, the memories!
Man…those people? Or more accurately the people that they were supposed to be? (Looks like Central Casting to me.) They weren’t “thinking” at all. In a good sorta way. They were being freed!!! They were hearing the blues tradition for the first time, most of them. And the ghetto rhythm tradition too. They didn’t call it “rhythm and blues” fer nuthin’, y’know. Corporate America had not yet
progressedregressed to the stage in which it languishes today…unwilling to popularize music that has real field holler roots because it’s too…too dirty. Too funky. Too dangerous. Not teched and tarted up enough. Little Richard? A field hollerin’ blues master. No Little Richard, no James Brown. Bet on it. And no civil rights movement either.What’s that you say? No civil rights movement? Whatchoo mean, AG?
You say “Anyone more than fifteen years older than me grew up in an entirely different country.” You are right. I was doing early Jr. High School homework with the radio on in 1956, tuned to the Alan Freed show and others like it out of NYC. The playlist included everything from the classic jazz singer Dinah Washington right on through Little Richard and gussied-up country singers who had heard the blues like Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. Lots of doo-wop groups as well and Harry Belafonte laying out some West Indian feels, plus of course the de rigeur white bread ripoff singers like Pat Boone and Fabian. But mostly? The real shit, barely cleaned up and simplified for white consumption. Nobody was “thinking” about much of anything. They were just feeling a new groove. A deep, funky groove straight out of the blues by way of black bandleaders like Louis Jordan in the late ’40s.
The people who powered up the youth revolution of the late ’60s? They were educated in the blues by people like Little Richard. That “different country” got lost in the corporate shuffle and hustle a decade or two later, and we’ve been in increasingly worse trouble ever since.
Lemme see…Little Richard or Lady Gaga?
You choose.
AG
During the early 60s, I was going to sleep every night with WLAC next to my ear, turned low so my parents wouldn’t yell upstairs for me to turn it off. Later on, I was stationed at NAS Memphis and got to hear it firsthand down on Beale Street. Man what a treat! If my buddies and I were broke, one of us would sell a pint of blood for enough to pay for a few beers. We called it vampire liberty.
“…and we’ve been in increasingly worse trouble ever since.”
Yes and no. Yes for working class folks who’ve seen their wages fall over the past generation. No for gays and lesbians who’ve kicked open the closet door and live lives of relative safety compared to a generation ago. Working-class gays and lesbians? It’s complicated.
It’s always complicated. The eddies and swirls and tides of justice and injustice, liberation and oppression, don’t move in lockstep, let alone even in one direction at the same time.
The corporate shuffle and hustle that took control of the music business and that devastated urban life in America in the 1970s wasn’t able to stop the “deep funky groove straight out of the blues” in the South Bronx that created hip-hop.
Kids didn’t even have access to instruments as NYC went bust and Ford said, “Drop dead”, and every music program in 1,000 public schools was shut down.
But because music is as essential as air to human life, they kept making music—listening to dad’s or grandma’s record collection on a turntable, searching for and finding a groove, a beat, a rhythm, a line that spoke to them and that they in turn could speak back to…and with.
Little Richard or Lady Gaga?
I choose both…and everyone in between and beyond.
You write:
As you must, I suppose. But to me people like Little Richard are natural expressions of very fruitful outlaw (usually outlawed) cultures that bring new life to more settled, naturally less adventurous mainstream cultural systems. The whole Lady Gaga thing is just one of many artificially created cultural phenomena…Justin Beiber, the Kardashian creatures and endless others…that are resemble fast food and GMO/chemically “altered” food. All appearance, no content. No nourishment.
Or…no real sex, no new life. Just empty mutual masturbation.
“Born that way” she says?Yeah, I suppose so. Born of an already imploded white, middle-class suburban culture. Just more of the same, squared. Cubed, even.
A culture cannot survive on fast food. Gotta have some cookin’ going on!!!
AG
“Nobody was “thinking” about much of anything. They were just feeling a new groove.”
Absolutely right. In 1956 I was tuning in to WNJR, Newark, NJ., with DJ’s like George Hudson and “Cat Man” Danny Stiles. Grooving to Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, but also people like Big Mama Thornton, Big MayBelle, Jo-Anne Campbell (“the Blonde Bombshell”), Shirley and Lee, Clyde McPhatter, Chuck Edwards — and all the DooWop groups.
OK So I just have to add this http://youtu.be/4IyaG1crWxg
Ten years on the most vicious defensive tackle of all time was a cerebral very white guy from Utah playing with three of the largest, fastest (black) men ever to man a professional defensive line.
But he TRIED to do the Temptations dance thingy with his teammates.
Edit:
The Lego thing is cool but this is what I wanted to post. http://youtu.be/Sq2xyJucYJk