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racism in the music industry in the 1950's: how white artists took over the charts - a thread
In the 1950's, rock n roll was starting to become more popularized. Black artists were releasing songs that ended up crossing charts, appearing on both the billboard r&b charts and pop charts. The most popular example of this is the song "Sh-Boom."
The original artists of "Sh-Boom" are a Black doo-wop group called The Chords. "Sh-Boom" reached no.2 on the r&b charts and no.9 on the pop charts, which was a milestone at the time because it was the first rock n roll/doo-wop song to be in the top 10 of the pop charts.
A few months later, a Canadian group called the Crew-Cuts covered "Sh-Boom," and their cover reached no.1 on the billboard pop charts and stayed there for 9 weeks. This version of the song is still widely popular today.
Another popular white artist at the time was Pat Boone. He covered many songs by Black artists, including Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" and Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti." To compare, Boone's cover of "Ain't That a Shame" reached no.1 on the charts, while the original
version by Fats Domino was no.10 on the charts. So why did the white versions of the songs do well in the charts? There are several points that can be brought up. One is that these white artists were seen as "vanilla" and "clean cut," which, at the time, was more "appealing" to
white audiences (*cough* they were racist). White artists even changed some of the lyrics of the original songs, since the originals were seen as too "provocative" for audiences. An example of this is Bill Haley's cover of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," originally by Big Joe Turner.
Even Boone's cover of "Tutti Frutti" changed the lyrics in order to make it more "acceptable" for radio play.
Another example is Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog." This song spurred many covers. It was Freddie Bell and the Bellboys who had changed the lyrics in order to make it more "publicly acceptable," and performed it as part of their Las Vegas act, more as a parody than a cover.
This comedic twist on the song was then covered by Elvis Presley, which is now the most well-known version of "Hound Dog" in the public eye. Jerry Leiber, one of the original songwriters, disapproved of the changed lyrics, since they take out all the power and bite of the
original anthem of female empowerment. Below are the original lyrics and the lyrics of the cover by Elvis.
So were the original Black artists payed royalties for their work? In most cases, no. A lot of the record companies back then had the artists sign contracts that would pay them up front, but ownership of the song would pass from the artist to the record company, meaning the
record companies could keep all the royalties from the song.
This concludes the thread. Reply with any other cover songs you can think of below!!
This concludes the thread. Reply with any other cover songs you can think of below!!
Here is the main article where I got my information: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.bnd.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/answer-man/article134070984.html
A lot of the information was also from my intro to rock history class!
A lot of the information was also from my intro to rock history class!
