Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Coming back late from out of town with a couple of late comments--<fom>, 
you are right that there was a short period in the '60s when black and 
white music were often heard on the same pop stations. Wasn't true in the 
'50s, and hasn't been true, for the most part, since.

On a personal note, I have to say that hearing Holly Near's "A Live Album" 
opened so many doors in my perception of how grounded and relevant music 
could be. Could I listen to it today? I dunno, and I think my copy has 
long disappeared. But I think that social change is relevant primarily to 
time and place--the change we needed in the '60s (a little bit of which we 
got) is not what we need today in the age of Tea Party and anti-NYC Mosque 
hysteria. 

Finally, since I opened my participation in this particular discussion 
with Yiddish song of 100 years ago, I highly recommend a relatively 
recent Yiddish/English CD by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird called 
"Partisans and Parasites," and a new CD, due to be released in two weeks 
by Adrienne Cooper, "Enchanted." Among other things, it features music 
from her anti-war program.
  

    
Actually, it was later than the '60s. I think the split really started
to happen with disco. I began listening to radio in the early '70s (I
was born in 1961), and I now own several collections of hits from that
era. Here's "AM Gold: 1970-1974"; I count 7 black artists out of 18.

Three Dog Night - Joy To The World
The Guess Who - American Woman
Edwin Starr - War (What Is It Good For?)
Shocking Blue - Venus
Three Dog Night - Mama Told Me Not To Come
Charlie Rich - The Most Beautiful Girl
Helen Reddy - I Am Woman
The Stories - Brother Louie
Ray Stevens - The Streak
George McCrae - Rock Your Baby
The O'Jays - Love Train
Isaac Hayes - Theme From Shaft
Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting
Billy Preston - Will It Go Around in Circles
Love Unlimited Orchestra - Love's Theme
Vicki Lawrence - The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
Harry Chapin - Cat's in the Cradle
Jim Croce - Time in a Bottle
John Denver - Sunshine On My Shoulders
Don McLean - American Pie
  

    
The change, according to the industry people who told me about it, 
occurred around 1972-74-ish. It was simply a marketing decision -- I 
forget which company did it first but they all followed suit. The social 
aspects and possibly more important musical aspects weren't really a 
consideration.
  

    
So you see <essau> it just isn't being able to find a record in the
record store. There are real consequences. You dismissed my comments
upstream a little to cavalierly.  Marketing decisions shouldn't be
treated lightly.  I'd say that they function as a traffic light. 

If we let the marketing people control the definitions, then we are
ceding much too much power.  That's one of the problems with the way
our culture is these days. 
  

    
I didn't dismiss your comments at all. Short of labelling everything
after 1956 as "Rock" -- which is the same as having no label -- what
choices for orgnization are there? Alphabetical? Chronological?

Categories don't work for many artists. Is Prince Rock, Dance, R&B, or
something else? Is k.d. lang Country, Jazz, Pop, or what? How is it
possible for every rock act in the last ten years to be Alternative?
But if I walk into Amoeba, I know where I can probably find Okkervil
River. (Not sure where Ratatat will be: Electronica? Alternative?)

The fact that I don't agree with marketing categories doesn't mean they
shouldn't exist. My own categories in iTunes are about controlling mood
while shuffling through a large collection, but they also have
unfortunate segregatory consequences.