Black music defined British groups in ways that were unusual in the United States. John Fogerty remembered the playlist of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s predecessor the Golliwogs—who got their name because it sounded “British” to the PR men in the front office at Fantasy Records—as a typically eclectic American mix in which “Mustang Sally” and “Green Onions” showed up alongside “Wipe Out” and “Louie Louie.” In contrast, many of the British bands prided themselves on playing nothing but black music. Burdon remembered the English R & B scene as “a genuine underground. It was amazing to find out that what we were doing in Newcastle, which we thought was strictly our thing, was being done in other places by other people.”
In London, the Rolling Stones established their reputation with an approach almost identical to the Animals’. The Stones got together as a direct outgrowth of their shared interest in black music. Keith Richards described the crucial moment: “I get on this train one morning and there’s Jagger and under his arm he has four or five albums. I haven’t seen him since the time I bought an ice cream off him and we haven’t hung around since we were five, six, ten years. We recognized each other straight off. ‘Hi, man,’ I say. ‘Where ya going?’ he says. And under his arm, he’s got Chuck Berry and Little Walter, Muddy Waters. ‘You’re into Chuck Berry, man, really?’ That’s a coincidence. He said, ‘Yeah, I got a few more albums. Been writin’ away to this, uh, Chess Records in Chicago.’ ”
Unlike Dylan, whose acid-etched meditations were as likely to concern Ezra Pound as Howlin’ Wolf, most of the English bands went out of their way to pay honor to their sources. Ten days into their first U.S. tour in 1964, the Stones took a break to record at Chess Studios, where they met Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, and Muddy Waters, who, Stones bass player Bill Wyman remembered, “helped us carry our gear inside.” He helped them do a lot more than that. The Stones’ early records were filled with Chicago blues, and Muddy’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You” was their first U.S. single. They felt equally at home in Memphis. In addition to recording Southern standards like Otis Redding’s “Pain in My Heart,” the Stones went out of their way to see every Southern soul star playing in the cities where they performed, expressing particular admiration for Wilson Pickett.
The relationship between Jagger and James Brown reflects the nature and the tone of the interactions between the British rockers and their black idols. Brown took genial glee in reporting the origin of Jagger’s “distinctive” stage mannerisms. The Stones were scheduled to follow Brown at the filming of a TV special, The T.A.M.I Show. Never one to underestimate the competitive elements of performance—he once booked Solomon Burke as an opening act and then paid his “rival” for the title “King of Soul” to sit and watch his show—Brown remembered:
The Stones had come out in the wings by then, standing between all those guards. Every time they got ready to start out on the stage, the audience called us back. They couldn’t get on—it was too hot out there. By that time I don’t think Mick wanted to go on the stage at all. Mick had been watching me do that thing where I shimmy on one leg and when the Stones finally got out there, he tried it a couple of times. He danced a lot that day. Until then I think he used to stand still when he sang, but after that he really started moving around. . . . Later on, Mick used to come up to the Apollo and watch my shows.
Brown didn’t resent the interest. He described the Stones as “brothers” rather than “competitors” and emphasized that the British groups—he specified the Animals, Kinks, and Beatles as well as the Stones—”had a real appreciation for where the music came from and knew more about R&B and blues than most Americans.”
It wasn’t that white American bands were totally ignorant of what was happening in black music. Some pockets of American popular music remained interracial even after the collapse of the first generation of rock and rollers. From the start, white groups in the ethnic enclaves of the East Coast played an active part in the doo-wop scene. The list of doo-wop classics includes records by black groups such as the Penguins (“Earth Angel”) and the Five Satins (“In the Still of the Night”); white groups such as the Mystics (“Hushabye”) and Dion and the Belmonts (“I Wonder Why”); and integrated groups such as the Dell Vikings (“Come Go with Me”) and the Crests (“Sixteen Candles”). The Four Seasons’ “Let’s Hang On” combines doo-wop harmonies and R & B intensity; their ability to place two singles—“Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry”—at the top of the R & B charts anticipates the “blue-eyed soul” of the mid-sixties. Although no white soul singer came anywhere close to the appeal or power of Otis Redding or James Brown, a somewhat incongruous group of white musicians have succeeded on Billboard magazine’s “black” charts—which have variously been labeled “Harlem Hit Parade,” “Race Records,” “Soul,” and “R & B,” which, Little Richard always joked, stood for “real black.”
The success over the years of distinctly “black”-sounding singers like Teena Marie, Hall and Oates, Bobby Caldwell, or even the young Elvis Presley, who had six number one R & B singles, comes as no real surprise. The Righteous Brothers (“You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,” “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration”) and the Rascals (“Groovin’,” “People Got to Be Free”) fit in easily with the soul mix of the mid-sixties. Righteous Brother vocalist Bill Medley credits black audiences with helping the duo overcome the resistance of white programmers who considered their sound “too black.” “One thing we’re most proud of,” Medley said, “is that the black audience accepted us point blank and they didn’t have to, they just didn’t have to. The great thing about the black audience is that if you are emotionally cuttin’ it, that’s what it’s all about.”
But it’s anyone’s guess why the Beach Boys enjoyed as much “R & B” success as the Rolling Stones. Part of the reason may be that the Stones—whose biggest “crossover” hit, “Satisfaction,” peaked at number 19—began to record during the fourteen-month period when Billboard eliminated the separate black chart. The magazine explained the decision by observing that the pop and R & B charts had become so similar that there was no point in publishing both. Primarily a testament to Motown’s crossover success, the decision suggests a belief that the nation was on the verge of a fundamental change. Three decades later, the idea that race may soon be irrelevant seems as remote as it must have in the 1850s, when Abraham Lincoln argued that the only solution to the race problem would be to return emancipated slaves to Africa. The music of the sixties offered a tantalizing promise of a world where blacks and whites could live together, work out their differences without denying who they are. But the glimpse proved fleeting.
16
The Minstrel Blues
The British Invasion illuminated some shadowy corners of America’s multiracial culture. As Ralph Ellison suggests, many black-white cultural exchanges can be understood as an elaborate minstrel show. Even as it perpetuates stereotypes and exploits blacks economically, Ellison argues, the cultural imitation across racial lines reveals connections we usually prefer to deny.