Shattering the Myth of Whites Stealing from Black Music -- The Beautiful Chris Isaak

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Date Posted: 21:55:50 11/25/02 Mon
Author: Zena
Subject: Shattering the Myth of Whites Stealing from Black Music

By Joe Williams
St. Lois Post-Dispatch

Record producer Sam Philips once declared, "If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars."

Then on July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley walked into Phillips' studio, improvised a rendition of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right, Mama," and uncorked a golden geyser. Some historians say that rock'n'roll was born that day.

But what was really born was a stereotype, the enduring notion that white people are so inherently square that they have to steal music from the souls of black folk.

It's time to mark that myth "Return to Sender."

Althought it is both appropriate and necessary to acknowledge the contributions that blacks have made to popular music, it's simplistic to say that Presley was merely ripping off African Americans. A quick perusal of his new greatest hits collection shows that in addition to R&B, the self-taught singer was adept at bluegrass, gospel and operatic pop. Presley's repertoire reflected the diverse influences that shaped the Southern working class. Yet his geographical proximity to the great black singers of the earl'50s made Elvis an easy target for accusations of thievery. While bluesman B.B. King knew the young Wlvis well enough to appreciate his sincerity, many pioneers of rock'n'roll were jealous of Presley's success if not outright contemptuous of his talent. "If it wasn't for me, Elvis would starve," Little Richard once said when comparing their respective bank accounts.

Little Richard may have had more than economics to gripe about. Pat Boone's wimpy recording of Richars's "Tutti Frutti" is often cited as the most painful example of white musical carpetbagging.

It's undeniable that in popular culture from ragtime to rap, whites have tried to estabish their hipness by imitating or adapting black idioms. By the '50s, the impulse had been codified, in essays such as Norman Mailer's "The White Negro" and in the slumming escapades of the Beat poets. To the fearful, Elvis was the embodiment of forced integration, and although blacks were conspicuously absent from his films, he never denied his debt to African American music. When clerics repudated Presley for unleashing teen sexuality and high-culture mavens suggested that white people might better express themselves within the European tradition, it only fed the stereotype of the uptight, racist Caucasian.

For the flower children of the mid '60s, whiteness was a condition that needed to be cured. Many film of that era proselytized for a color-blind utopia where love-beaded waifs and tallAroed revolutionaries would make love, not war. Yet after the race riots of the late '60s, all but the disco denizens retreated to their separate corners, and movies such as "Saturday Night Fever" taught us that the rew whites who could dance were either gay or on the swarthy side of the color wheel.

Today, the conflicted Caucasian is a recurring motif in movies and television. A fairly benevolent example is white ballerina Julia Stiles learning how to boogie from black schoolmate Sean Patrick Thomas in "Save the Last Dance."

But when white make characters enter the ostensibly black milieu of physical exuberance, they are made to look foolish. In the recent hit film, "Barbershop," the lone white guy is an insecure stylist whose urban togs and ghettospeak are the object of ridicule. More overtly hostile is a recent commercial for a malt beverage in which a black rapper is outraged to discover that two white doofuses are dancing in the background of his latest music video.

And yet, like Elvis in the '50s, white rappers Vanilla Ice and the Beastie Boys scored hit albums at a time when superior black rappers were struggling to get airplay (as were countless "square" whites whose music reflected their Euro-American heritage). today, Emminem has become the biggest star in idiom to his white, working-class experience. He exploits the irony in his single "Without Me": "No, I am not the first king of controversy./I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley,/ to do black music so selfishly/ and use it to get myself wealthy."

Funk-deprived whites have been juicy targets for comedians such as Richard Pryor, who often affected a nasal whine to caricature Caucasians. Whites are not only reluctant to respond to such put-downs, but they also reinforce them in the white-controlled media. A particularly twisted example is dreadlocked drug-dealer Gary Oldman taunting "white boy" Chirstian Slater in "True Romance" (which was penned by Quentin Tarantino). In an episode of the cartoon TV series "King of the Hill," white pre-teen Bobby Hill gets a gig at a black comedy club, where he mocks the "flat booties: of white people. From the mayonnaise-loving suburbanites in Martin Mull's cable series "The History of White People in America" to the patronizing matrons in Todd Hayne's upcoming film "Far From Heaven," Anglos routinely portray themselves as greedy and out of touch with the masses (even though the majority of America's poor people are, technically, WASPs).

Of course, many white people are indeed greedy and out of touch, and surely the distorted self-image that white artists promote in the media is a function of guilt. (Guilt about African-American poverty may explain why inner-city muggers and heartless moguls are almost always portrayed by white actors.) Unlike some activist black, who can excuse O.J. Simpson in the name of preserving their solidaeity, whites are quick to demonize their own kind. And because sniffing out political deviation within their ranks is a favorite parlor game of white liberals, no mainstream organization is likely to complain about the depiction of whites in the media. The term "white trash" has not been expunged from movies, TV and magazines, whereas blacks unilaterally control the usage and interpretation of the so-called "n-word." Uttering the notion that white characters deserve equal respect will get you a prompt lecture about three centuries of unequal treatment.

And yet it is not just racist crackpots who insist it is time for whites to scritinize their racial identity. In academia, the emerging field of "whiteness studies" is not a front for hate-mongers but rather a movement to dispel that illusion that whiteness is the default face of humanity. By accepting that they are just one race among many, whites can celebrate their heritage, atone for their collective sins and advance the cause of diversity. When all people are free to discuss their racial history, even the children of privilege can join in the chorus of "Don't be Cruel." @

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