An argument can be made, articulated by Michael Bertrand and Nelson George, that rockaphobia as described here is a perpetuation of the racist backlash against rhythm ‘n’ blues that preceded the advent of rock ‘n’ roll. For many White adults, however distasteful rock music may have seemed, it was preferable to R&B, a sexually and often politically charged musical expression of the Black experience in America. As George indicates, the adoption of the term rock ‘n’ roll “dulled the racial identification and made the young White consumers of Cold War America feel more comfortable. If rhythm & blues was ghetto music, rock ‘n’ roll, at least in name, was perceived to be a ‘universal music’” (67). From this point of view, the crowning of Elvis Presley as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was less of an acknowledgment of Presley’s crossover talent, or his status as a cash cow, but as a way of assuring that rock ‘n’ roll would have a White face. According to Bertrand, “television had done its part in both bringing Elvis to the attention of, and then legitimizing him the eyes of, the American mainstream…while it would be a stretch to argue that the entertainment industry had conspired to concoct an entity capable of bringing down R&B, it is fair to say that it had stumbled upon one that would do just that…” (304, 307). Television may have emasculated rock ‘n’ roll, but it represented an existential threat to rhythm ‘n’ blues.
Even as rock ‘n’ roll presented its own unique characteristics and challenges to the status quo, three factors made rock ‘n’ roll a surrogate for racial animosities. First, the Black influence on the music was obvious and irrefutable. Second, the forbidden, sexualized aspects of rock ‘n’ roll, most readily associated with Black artists, were hugely attractive to White teenagers. And third, just as the music itself was a hybrid, it carried the obvious potential for bringing the races together. As Bertrand relates, White kids had been turning out at Black music venues since the late 1940s; he cites a concert in Knoxville, Tennessee at which White teenagers had filled the balcony of a “Negro dance hall” and demanded “the right to go onto the floor, mingle with the negroes and get a better look at R&B singer Bull Moose Jackson” (174–75).9
Especially in the South, where a social and economic hierarchy based on White supremacy was deeply entrenched, any event that drew numbers of Whites and Blacks together triggered fear. Anti-integration groups, in a defensive mode after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, outlawed segregation in schools, and seized upon rock ‘n’ roll as a Trojan horse sent to insinuate Black styles and ideas into the mainstream. Asa Carter, leader of the North Alabama White Citizens Council, decried “be-bop” music as a plot by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to encourage integration and pull the White man “down to the level of the Negro” while attempting to have rock records removed from jukeboxes in and around Birmingham (Martin and Segrave 41).←34 | 35→
But television was a fledgling industry, with many hours to fill with content. As Murray Forman points out, “black musicians were regular and prominent participants in early television” (One Night 232). But there were strict limitations; even when all they did was play music, Black musicians were required to play the role of “Black musician,” accepting a supporting, if not servile, status. But rock ‘n’ roll posed a further problem. Television producers took steps to suppress rock’s sexuality, but the racial makeup of the artists could not be hidden. “On records,” Evan Eisenberg says, “the Black musician was no longer a minstrel with shining eyeballs, but simply a musician” (Angel 90), but this blessed anonymity was lost on television.10 When television became more prevalent in the late 1940s and local stations relied on local talent to fill time, numerous jazz, R&B, and blues artists made guest appearances, but they were sequestered in one-off segments that Black audiences relished but White audiences could dismiss as novelties.
In the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll established a beachhead on television teen dance shows but, with few exceptions, these programs were strictly segregated. An overwhelming preponderance of rock ‘n’ roll presented on television in the 1950s was performed by White artists. In order to satisfy television programmers and avoid a racist backlash from radio broadcasters, distributors, and retailers, record companies began the practice of having White artists record “cover” versions of songs by Black artists.11 Albin Zak identifies two kinds of cover, or crossover, songs. The first is a long-established industry practice revolving around sheet music and designed to maximize the value of a copyright by getting as many versions recorded as possible. This practice was common in the 1920s and 1930s, when almost any big hit would be recorded multiple times by a wide range of artists. The second kind of cover uses different arrangements and styles to adapt a record that is successful in one segment of the market to another audience. This kind of cover version gained currency in the 1940s with the appropriation of “hillbilly” music by pop singers but became a routine tactic with rhythm ‘n’ blues records in the 1950s. Poet Langston Hughes referred to this practice as “highway robbery across the color line” (9–10). It is no accident, as Michael Coyle demonstrates, that a significant increase in the recording of White artists covering songs that originated with Black artists took place when rock ‘n’ roll became visible on television.
One of the first such cover songs was Kay Starr’s 1952 version of “Fool, Fool, Fool,” an R&B hit by The Clovers. Two years later, Mercury Records signed The Crew-Cuts (guess their skin color) for the express purpose of making a pop copy of The Chords’s inventive R&B hit “Sh-Boom.” A notable victim of this practice was R&B artist LaVern Baker, who never recovered after her songs “Tweedle Dee” and “Tra La La” were hijacked by Georgia Gibbs, who was White and appeared regularly on television.12 Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of this trend was Pat Boone,←35 | 36→ whose 1955 rendition of “Ain’t That a Shame” far outsold the original by Antoine “Fats” Domino, thanks largely to Boone’s television exposure. Fans were far more likely to witness Boone’s excruciating, rhythm-challenged version of “Tutti Frutti” on American Bandstand in 1956 than Little Richard’s rousing original.
While the appropriation of songs represented a real transfer of assets from Black to White hands, the impetus for this practice cannot be tagged as inherently, universally racist. The cross-fertilization between genres blurs clear-cut distinctions between legitimate interpretation and exploitation.13 June Valli’s 1953 version of “Crying in the Chapel” might be considered a clear case of White appropriation of the R&B hit by Sonny Til and the Orioles, but “Crying in the Chapel” was written by a White man, Artie Glenn, and first performed by his son Darrell in a country “sacred” style that enjoyed some success with pop and country audiences. It must be recalled that many record buyers in the 1950s were still oriented to songs rather than singers, as indicated by the continued viability of Your Hit Parade, a radio show that made the transition to television (NBC 1950–58; CBS 1958–59) with its practice of offering “treatments” of hit songs by in-house regulars rather than the recording artists. Plus, at this time, it was a rarity in the popular arena for artists to write their own