The Originals: Songs for Black Music Month

As I have been working my way backward through the hit songs, I would come across a lot of songs that I knew by white artists but they were originally recorded by Black artists. Sometimes I knew about the remake, but sometimes I didn't.

The most surprising one was definitely that Otis Redding sang "Hard to Handle".

With June being Black Music Month, I wanted to spend some time on that. 

There were a few that came to mind immediately. I started off with songs from Big Mama Thornton and Erma Franklin that I had found all the way back in 2015. I could not think of enough on my own to fill out thirty days, though, so I started looking things up.

I learned more. I knew about "Twist and Shout", but I did not know that the Beatles had an album, Please, Please Me, that was almost all covers of Black artists. I also had no idea that "Baby It's You" did not start with Smith, though I probably would have gotten there eventually.

It did solve one problem; I remembered an episode of Married with Children where Al is obsessing over a song that turns out to be "Anna (Go To Him)" by Arthur Alexander. It did chart in 1962 but it did not make the top 100. I looked it up after I had already done songs from 1962. Because of this theme, I got to use it anyway.

I also had to rethink things. "You Can't Hurry Love" came up in the articles, but I wasn't going to use that because surely everyone knew that was a cover. Then a friend of a friend mentioned lots of people thinking "Love Rollercoaster" was originally by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

Maybe it wasn't so obvious. 

Maybe sometimes you only know because of which records your parents had. 

As it was, I knew that Soft Cell was covering "Where Did Our Love Go" but I thought "Tainted Love" was their own.

I hate that anyone thinks that "I Shot the Sheriff" belongs to Eric Clapton, but they do.

I should point out that a lot of these covers were not thefts. The Trashmen (accurately named) were the most egregious in giving interviews about how they "wrote" the songs they stole from the Rivingtons, but there were artists who were respectful and tried to promote the original singers. There were others who did not try so hard or care so much. There are a lot of stories.

I do like some of the covers better, maybe from habit or maybe from some changes to them. 

Also, the artists here are not always the writers of the songs; music writing and music performing were often seen as different jobs back then. 

Despite that, I know that racism is a real thing, with real economic effects. I know that is also true of erasure.

Taking time to know and remember is important.

Here's the list. It could have included a lot more country if I'd wanted, but I didn't. Besides, I kind of covered that last June (and they still invented a whole new Grammy category because white people can't handle it). 

6/1 “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton 
6/2 “Piece of My Heart” by Erma Franklin
6/3 “Hard to Handle” by Otis Redding
6/4 “Oh Girl” by The Chi-Lites
6/5 “Unchained Melody” by Roy Hamilton
6/6 “Louie Louie” by Richard Berry
6/7 “Love Rollercoaster” by Ohio Players
6/8 “That’s All Right Mama” by Arthur Crudup
6/9 “Anna (Go To Him)” by Arthur Alexander
6/10 “Chains” by the Cookies
6/11 “Boys” by The Shirelles
6/12 “Baby It’s You” by The Shirelles
6/13 “A Taste of Honey” by Lenny Welch
6/14 “Twist and Shout” by The Isley Brothers
6/15 “Mercy Mercy” by Don Covay
6/16 “Mystery Train” by Junior Parker
6/17 “The Bird’s The Word” by The Rivingtons
6/18 “You Need Love” by Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon
6/19 “Good Lovin’” by The Olympics
6/20 “Good Rockin Tonight” by Wynonie Harris
6/21 “I Shot the Sheriff” by Bob Marley
6/22 “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince
6/23 “Tainted Love” by Gloria Jones
6/24 “You Can’t Hurry Love” by The Supremes
6/25 “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” by Cherelle
6/26 “I Get Lifted” by George McRae
6/27 “Armageddon Time” by Willie Williams
6/28 “Police & Thieves” by Junior Murvin
6/29 “Cherry Oh Baby” by Eric Donaldson
6/30 “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” by Harold & The Blue Notes feat. Teddy Pendergrass

Related links:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-whitewashing-of-black-music-five-singles-made-popular-by-white-artists/

https://www.salon.com/2014/05/17/elvis_wasnt_the_first/

https://werehistory.org/the-beatles/

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/07/musical-black-girls.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/06/black-music-month-daily-songs-for-june.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/07/black-country-black-music-month-2024.html 

 

Forms of direct action: Rallies

I was originally going to write about marches. I still will, but the march problem I was thinking about was actually a rally problem.

I was at University of Oregon when the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. That was April 29th, 1992.

What happened in Eugene was nothing compared to what happened in Los Angeles, but it was still a big deal for us. It was also sadly pointless.

There was a rally in the student center courtyard that turned into a March on city hall. I was at the rally; I did not go on the march. Therefore, I was not there when they rushed the building and kicked in the front windows.

I say "windows", but really they were big glass panels, like you see on a lot of public buildings built in the 60s.

Honestly, I am amazed that there weren't a lot of injuries reported. Big breaking glass can be dangerous, but also the footage on the news of this mass of humanity moving up against the building looked like people could have been easily crushed.

I don't think anyone planned on that happening. When you start with anger, concentrate it and give it some exercise, it can build momentum.

I was angry about what happened to Rodney King and how many people justified it. I don't think that the Eugene city government made sense as a target.

I do remember that there was an incident of a Black man who was coming on a campus visit getting harassed at the Eugene airport. I don't remember now whether that was by police or airport employees, but there might have been an area for action there. If we wanted to organize against police brutality, we could have investigated the Eugene police department's history and petitioned the city for oversight or something like that. That long ago, we might even have been optimistic about police reform.

We could have marched to city hall to deliver a petition; that happens in a lot of marches. (I'll get there. Probably Tuesday.)

Rallies are good for creating energy, which is great if you have a way to harness that energy. Maybe you do it before canvassing a neighborhood or doing a park cleanup or something that is a lot of work so needs some excitement to carry it through.

The way this post doesn't work with the others is that I am trying to suggest things other than protests that people can do. I am leery enough about rallies that I don't see myself recommending one in the foreseeable future.

It's still important to write about for a few reasons.

• Since rallies can serve a purpose, the information should at least be out there..
• Sometimes we might not be planning on a rally specifically, but there are elements there where you could develop that same energy, which you don't want to do without consideration. Partly, we just need to be more informed.
• Rallies are very popular on the right. They don't harness that energy in productive ways so it then walks around as aggrieved racism. That is a dangerous situation.

Finally, for no reason whatsoever, I just want to mention that the most visible figure in the footage as the windows gave way was a confident white man who would spout off a lot, sometimes doing okay things but also saying some messed up things and feeling pretty good about himself. Then the news coverage varied between making him seem more dangerous than he actually was or doing wordplay with his last name.

I don't know why that seems pertinent. 

Forms of direct action: Teach-ins

What's a teach-in? A sit-in with speakers!

Obviously that's an oversimplification, but there is some overlap.

First of all, one thing to remember with organizing any type of direct action is that it requires planning. If you are there peacefully and the police declare a riot, that's highly hypothetical but what do you do? 

If "The Man" is not directly interfering, so you have time, what do you do to keep people focused and interested?

Ideally, those answers will all work toward the initial goal.

Perhaps not surprisingly, teach-ins developed through professor action. Faculty at Ann Arbor were planning to strike to oppose the war in Vietnam and there was opposition to the strike.

Isn't there always?

Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins was thinking about alternatives. I love this quote regarding his though process:

"They say we're neglecting our responsibilities as teachers. Let's show them how responsible we feel. Instead of teaching out, we'll teach in—all night." 

I think that particular idea was especially appropriate for the times. For your white middle class and upwardly mobile working class -- so the people most likely to be sending their children to the University of Michigan -- I believe there was this sense of homogeneity, where we are all kind of thinking and believing the same way.

I specify race and class because if you were actually poor, or you were not white and especially if you were Black or Indigenous, there were things that you couldn't ignore that didn't get seen on Leave it to Beaver.

That is a show for which my family has a lot of affection, but we are also aware of its limitations. It ran from 1957 to 1963. For context, the murder of Emmett Till and the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott are 1953. The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963, which was also the year of the 16th Street Street Baptist Church bombing.

There were cracks appearing, but there had been a long period where the underlying problems were easy to ignore. Beyond that, without context it would be more comfortable to continue ignoring those problems. 

They should just be patient. It's always been that way.

Teaching can provide that context. Understanding why colonialism put us on the side that we took in Vietnam, and why Black people were not being allowed to vote even though they'd had the vote during Reconstruction, and all of those things that led to white supremacy and patriarchy and about the Military-industrial complex -- a term first used in 1961, but increasingly relevant -- were all things that teaching could help with.

So it made sense that the first teach-ins were anti-war, but it also makes sense to have teach-ins about civil rights and white supremacy and capitalism. Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and environmental groups have all found uses for them. There are so many things that are poorly understood and important that teach-ins can fill a genuine need.

Of course, you will notice that those topics count as "woke", so there will be people against the concept. However, they would also be against run-of-the-mill protests; here there is more of an option for learning.

That can be worth something. 

Forms of direct action: Sit-ins

One thing that will be clear as we go through this is that the boundaries between the various forms of direct action can be fuzzy.

For example, I was thinking of the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building as a sit-in. It is not generally considered one.

In 1972 the American Indian Movement went to Washington DC, organized as the Trail of Broken Treaties. When leaders were refusing to meet with them, they ended up staying in the building and it became a kind of headquarters for the people there.

There was some destruction of property, but one of the most useful things that happened was going through documents and photocopying them.

It may not be the best example of a sit-in, but there was some sitting.

We are more familiar with sit-ins protesting segregation by race, but there have also been sit-ins protesting refusal to serve queer patrons (and getting to decide who "looked" queer, see Dewey's in Philadelphia), women entering men's only spaces to protest gender discrimination, and sit-ins for disability rights.

In a demand for the Welsh language to be used more in broadcasts, the Welsh Language Society sat in at news studio. 

As recently as last April, students at Columbia had a campus sit-in demanding that the university divest from Israel.

There is an image that the protesters assemble somewhere, then sit down to take over the space. Being inside and sitting are implied by the name. 

It doesn't always happen that way. Maybe the reason that the AIM building takeover was not seen as a sit-in is that it started as something else and then had to adjust.  

There will be times when new opportunities will present themselves, but there should also be clear goals at the start. If the new direction will support the goal, that could be an argument in favor. If the change would end up being in support of a completely different goal, well, maybe that's not such a good idea, even if it is a separate good goal.

Getting back to the lunch counter sit-ins demanding integration, the action made sense, but did not operate in a vacuum.

Individual businesses could have their own policies for service, and so could be targeted for change. The action of a sit-in is very direct. Sure, the employees at the shop at that time may not be the owners who can make the decision, but the owners are whom they will appeal to. 

Well, okay, they may call the police first.

That leads us in two directions, both of which are important.

First is that while there may be individual business decisions they still depend on what society will accept legally and morally. 

That was fought with legal cases against discrimination and pushes for legislation guaranteeing civil rights on the legal side. 

On the moral side it was fought by the protesters dressing nicely and not fighting back as people were rude to them, physically assaulted them, and getting arrested on camera. People who were okay with racism that they didn't see, or racism that it looked like it was against poor, uncouth people by solid middle-class citizens, had a harder time seeing the white people looking cruel and uncouth. 

It was strategic, and that shouldn't be a dirty word. It was strategy that made sense for accomplishing the right thing.

That leads to the other direction; you might get arrested, or beaten or have condiments poured on your head.

Effective protest requires effort. It requires thinking about what we want done, what is possible, and how it is possible.

They generally don't all work, at least not on the first try. Columbia did not divest from Israel, but students at other schools were inspired by those students. Some universities have agreed to consider divesting.

I don't even know that occupying a federal building would be helpful for finding documents in filing cabinets now; a hack-in might be more to the point.  

Those working toward disability rights did get to see the Americans with Disabilities Act passed, but many years later there are still issues with enforcement. 

Slow progress is slower when people keep getting elected who actively work to destroy. I believe I have previously expressed frustration with that.

However, to become the kind of country where we quit doing that, maybe a good step in that direction is thinking and planning more for what kind of change we want to see and be. 

W-Kind-R-P

In thinking about the general nastiness (and dominator culture) of the reels, it was a relief to have some entertainment experiences with some kindness in them.

One was a blast from the past.

WKRP in Cincinnati is one of those shows where my sisters and I have watched every episode in order. 

Actually, we did that one a while ago (we are currently going through The Big Bang Theory), but after quoting some lines, we needed to watch a few episodes again. 

The episode that usually pulls us in is "Turkeys Away", but one of my other favorites is "Commercial Break". I like the snappy jingle and a cadaverous Fred Stuthman's cheerful dancing, but there is more to it than that.

To recap, WKRP has been a struggling station, even before the switch to the rock format. An extremely lucrative opportunity comes along with heavy rotation ads for the Ferryman Funeral Home chain.Venus writes the jingle, which is then sung by Venus, Les, Bailey, and Jennifer, with Johnny doing the voice-over. 

Johnny is less impressed (probably having done many voice-overs), but the rest of the gang is pretty excited. Salesman Herb Tarlek -- who arranged the deal -- is over the moon; this is a career high for him.

Then Mr. Carlson can't accept the level of poor taste involved in a snappy jingle about prearranging funeral services and pulls the deal.

Herb is devastated, though you can notice a bad case of the blahs around the rest of the station after.

The thing that is important about this is that in a cast of quirky characters, Herb is definitely the worst. He's kind of lazy, conceited, and annoying. A lot of his traits make sense for a salesman, especially an old-school one, but he could be easily punctured and could easily be only a punchline.

They don't treat him that way. There are laughs -- especially at his outfits -- but they do care about him. When his marriage is falling apart or when he needs a heart test or when he is about to be fired, the others come through for him.

So when Herb finds a way to repurpose the jingle for Morrison Tires -- an account he has wanted for a long time -- and comes in playing the new version, everyone joins in. 

It is good for them -- that means more budget, a chance at raises, and there was a loss in having made a commercial but then knowing it only aired once -- but the happiest one is Herb, and they are happy for him. 

Johnny -- the one you would least expect to see celebrating Herb -- creates some confetti for the moment and even hands Herb a flower at the end.  

That may be the most fun example, but even earlier, when after hopes have been crushed with the account loss, Andy tells Mr. Carlson he likes his style, or Mr. Carlson tells Herb they should do lunch, they show it.

In "Turkeys Away", when Mr. Carlson has made a really boneheaded error (no, turkeys cannot fly), Andy understands that Mr. Carlson was feeling left out and convinces the others to see that point of view as well. Coming up with helpful things to say is hard, but they try.

The show has a good heart. 

It's really funny, too, but there are shows sometimes where I do laugh but I don't feel good about it.

Not this one.  

Also a good idea

I like arrangements of three, but there was never a third professional caution that stuck with me the way "First, do no harm" and "... to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" did.

While I admit it does not have quite the same resonance, the Boy Scout slogan "Do a good turn daily" has been growing on me.

It's a good idea.

While I definitely hope that any resistance I do will end up being good, there is good to do that may not necessarily fit under resistance.

You could make a case that anything we do to care for each other under a regime that thrives on dehumanization is resistance. I can't argue with that.

Regardless, I am thinking of it more as that no matter how much we are looking at the big picture, we must not get so caught up in it that we forget each other.

We cannot always do big things, but there are small acts of service and caring that are always within reach. They can have a huge mental impact for both the giver (I can still do something) and the receiver (someone cares).

I have been pretty clear about my frustration with artificial intelligence and the damage it can do, but I can't help but know that it would not be so destructive if people were not so vulnerable and isolated.

(The decline in critical thinking is also a factor, and also makes me sad, but for the purposes of today's post it may be more useful to focus on the loneliness.) 

We need to be looking out for each other. 

It's not just that there is no point in accomplishing any resistance otherwise, though that is again an argument that you can make.

If we don't value each other, or if we intend to value each other but think we need to put it aside temporarily until some of the more pressing issues are solved, we are not going to make it.

One of my frustrations with leftists is that they are so scornful of harm reduction; otherwise how can insist that the party that keeps incrementally reducing harm is just as bad as the party that actively thrives on harm?

That gives us people who are currently wavering between silence or arguing the President Harris would also bomb Iran as various protections get dismantled. They are not contributing to the common good. 

When we decide that harm doesn't matter, or that it's a fair price for some other goal on the horizon, we can end up being just as destructive. 

Actively looking for ways to help -- for family, for coworkers, for strangers -- keeps us in touch with what is needed and what is possible. 

It may lead us to the next most important steps. 

Guidelines

There are two phrases that made a strong impression on me years ago, and that I continually think about a lot.

• First, do no harm.
• ... to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable

Respectively, they are a caution for doctors and a statement of the responsibility for newspapers. 

I am not in either of those professions, but I have a strong interest in healing and in information. I think they can go together well.

Those are thoughts that I keep in mind. I believe they should be applied to how we resist.

I do think it is completely possible that some of these protests could irritate Donald Trump. I would be fine with that, in theory, but it does seem worth remembering that he is petty and vindictive and has access to troops and weapons and courts. 

That doesn't mean that we should coddle his feelings either, but I would hope that the irritating things we might do would also accomplish some good beyond that irritation. 

Back when I wrote about boycotting, it is true that I mentioned the possibility of hurting Bezos' ego. The real goal was for economic impact and Bezos does not have the same military options.

Boycotting from your homes also does not collect you all into easy targets.

I am sure the protests irritate law enforcement, and I remain appalled by how easily Portland Police will declare a riot. Here's the thing: racism runs deep in our country and especially in our policing.

A Portland protest is going to involve hundreds of white people, just based on our population breakdown. Some of them might get hurt, and some of them have. However, there is a level that is not even necessarily conscious where abuse -- whether at the protest or a little while later when the officers are still irritated -- is going to be targeted at people with darker skins. Their complaints are then more likely to be ignored by investigators and by medical staff.

I know I bring up race a lot. It's necessary that we remember. There are people who don't get the option to forget.

Also, if we are causing disruptions, whom are we disrupting? The comfortable or already afflicted?

It's way easier to add more affliction to those who already have it.

You can't prevent everything. Boycotts can contribute to job losses for people who need the money and you wouldn't necessarily know that. There are things we can think about and know, though.

It might be worth disrupting traffic when ordinary people are on their way to work, but all that might do is ruin many days without affecting anyone who has any power to change anything.

Protesting outside a company that provides weapons to Israel might be worth something. 

Protesting on a campus after asking the administration to divest might be worth something.

It can be hard to make real change, which is a source of deep frustration to me.

That is not a reason to give up analysis and strategy about what kind of changes we want and how we might get there. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/06/i-protest.html