For Diehard Elvis Fans

[JSngry]

What you are possibly seeing is the end of America's period as the undisputed dominant force in the world

No "possibly" to it...which would be ok, welcome, even, perhaps, except that the pigs that brought us here will not yield graciously, and will not hesitate to use any and every measure on us "common people" to hold on to as much as they can by any means necessary. They were gangsters when they could afford to be, but will open a plantation in a heartbeat if they have to.

And they will have "Love Me Tender" on a 24 hour loop.

The GREAT Ricky Nelson-- to name another (underrated) giant influenced by Elvis-- DESTROYS every 5th-4th-4rd-2nd-1st rate "break beat" bullshit touted as transgressive revelation by the Right Rev. Sngry

Who VERY ** clearly ** has NO interest-- no ability?!-- to LISTEN.

Dude - you didn't even recognize the greatness of Andy Williams. I'm supposed to take you seriously?

[AllenLowe]

well, no offense to Dimitry - but I wouldn't say his posts indicate an embarrassing wealth of knowledge -

claiming that Lennon and McCartney did not write half their songs because the later stuff wasn't as good is like saying that Richard Rodgers didn't write his early stuff because the stuff he wrote with Hammerstein was so mediocre - and we have absolutely no evidence that L and M did not write those songs -

and not understanding the connection between Wagner and the Nazis indicates another wide gap in knowledge - you guys need to do some research here -

[Dmitry]

well, no offense to Dimitry - but I wouldn't say his posts indicate an embarrassing wealth of knowledge -

No offense taken. I've never been embarrassed about my wealth, material or otherwise.

What you are possibly seeing is the end of America's period as the undisputed dominant force in the world, but that's just part of a natural cycle.

What would be the signs of that? And who would assume this dominant role, step into the now vacant cowboy boots, so to speak?

[desertblues]

What an amazing thread, thanks for posting this - I had no idea there was so much Elvis-hatred (or is it Elvis envy)! Speaking only for myself, I can dig Elvis, Sinatra and even Elton at the right time and place. It has never interfered with my other musical likes-I would even go so far as to say it enhances them! One more thing-I have even been to Graceland (twice) and would recommend it!

[MomsMobley]

Coming from a Sharon Jones fan... Now find me a better Dylan cover, esp. at this time when the sub-genre was dying--

I Shall Be Sngry

Doesn't hurt to have one of the handful of greatest ever lap steel players in the band, true-- just like it didn't hurt having James Burton but you can say the same about fucking Miles.

And once in a while he wrote an original--

Easy To Be Sngry

And, lastly, compare Joe South (a fine writer) to Elvis, or ** ANY ** goddamn imagined black R&B version? NOBODY could cut him, and few would come close; undead Otis, maybe? O.V. Wright? (Whom nobody has ever said was a great live performer.)

Walk A Mile In Sngry's Shoes

And, speaking of Andy Williams

I do NOT, by the way, think Elvis version of "Gentle On My Mind" (Waylon's might be) is best but it sure as shit blows -->

away Aretha Sngry

Which is sorta cute, sure, but also a mere stunt, neither true reinvention or interpretation.

Still waiting for you to find me better versions of "Promised Land" and "Long Black Limousine"--

You fall in a gopher hole or sumpin there, Rev.?

The GREAT Ricky Nelson-- to name another (underrated) giant influenced by Elvis-- DESTROYS every 5th-4th-4rd-2nd-1st rate "break beat" bullshit touted as transgressive revelation by the Right Rev. Sngry

Who VERY ** clearly ** has NO interest-- no ability?!-- to LISTEN.

Dude - you didn't even recognize the greatness of Andy Williams. I'm supposed to take you seriously?

Edited December 28, 2010 by MomsMobley

[JSngry]

Coming from a Sharon Jones fan...

"Fan" in 2010, almost 2011, more than a few years and albums later, is just a bit strong, and reveals a failure to keep up with the evolution of what it is you seek to "attack" and/or "challenge".

Keep trying, though. If/when you get some new schtick it should be pretty good!

Now there's a challenge!

Elvis-hatred (or is it Elvis envy)!

Yes it is. Just like there is so much Wynton-envy.

Edited December 28, 2010 by JSngry

[AllenLowe]

well, let's not forget Little Elvis.

[JSngry]

Little E!

[medjuck]

Coming from a Sharon Jones fan... Now find me a better Dylan cover, esp. at this time when the sub-genre was dying--

I Shall Be Sngry

Gotta say I didn't like this that much. Greil Marcus claims that the great cover is a one minute version by Elvis on the '70s box set (one of many Elvis recordings I don't have). Marcus may be a Dylan fanatic but he's very disparaging of the later sing along versions by Dylan or The Band and especially the one on The Last Waltz.

[MomsMobley]

Medjuck-- that's actually not my fave Rick Nelson does Dylan but it's all I could find on youtube then. The other three Dylan tunes he does on the '69 Troubadour gig are "If You Gotta Go, Go Now," "She Belongs To Me" and, my fave among them, "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You."

I say this too as someone who absolutely would have said NO MORE DYLAN COVERS!!! before hearing them.

I've had many issues with Greil over the years but I'll give him credit for sometimes changing, backtracking, re: Kingston Trio, whose great accomplishment he now recognizes. Still no excuse for writing all the Sly nonsense without George Clinton, or the Robert Johnson mythmaking or the ersatz American Studies (he's gotten a bit better there too, via Frederick Douglass and Allen Lowe) etc... but, the capacity for change is something.

Any Rick(y) was a superb musician who continued to evolve/grow throughout his unlikely career. A shame we lost him in the 1980s tho' I ** do ** shudder what horrible duets he might have made.

***

Right Rev. Sngry: schtick? You're spritzing me yiddish now?

Who the are you trying to be, Jack Ruby with bbq in your ears?

Coming from a Sharon Jones fan... Now find me a better Dylan cover, esp. at this time when the sub-genre was dying--

I Shall Be Sngry

Gotta say I didn't like this that much. Greil Marcus claims that the great cover is a one minute version by Elvis on the '70s box set (one of many Elvis recordings I don't have). Marcus may be a Dylan fanatic but he's very disparaging of the later sing along versions by Dylan or The Band and especially the one on The Last Waltz.

Edited December 29, 2010 by MomsMobley

[JSngry]

Who the are you trying to be, Jack Ruby with bbq in your ears?

http://www.rubyrevue.com/picture/uploaded-file-31602?pictureId=5423117

http://www.rubyrevue.com/picture/_bbb3877.jpg?pictureId=4961391

[Alexander]

Not to derail the thread, but a question: Has Elvis's esteem fallen in recent decades? He seemed so huge once. Now, it seems that random samples of listeners will still gush over the Beatles and Sinatra, but Elvis's following seems to be confined to a subculture of diehards.

Elvis died first, then Lennon, then Sinatra. The public attention span is what it is...

Also, for all these guys, as the actual music becomes else and less relevant to "everyday people", the marketing machines of the estates will resort to manufacturing all kinds of iconography that will attempt to "guilt trip" you into thinking that THESE PEOPLE ARE IMPORTANT SO YOU MUST BUY THIER(OUR) PRODUCT!!! That's going to work, because so few people have fully-formed senses of self these days (due to a combination of malevolent social forces and just flat out personal sloth) that any easy image they can latch on to works for them.

So, what are the images for sale?

Beatles/Lennon - Songs that changed music forever, ended a war, ended hate, ended everything bad, all you need is love, yadayadayada.

Sinatra - Rough, Rugged Lone Wolf Tough Guy With A Sensitive Heart who defined the Great American Songbook for all time

Elvis - three categories:

Young Elvis - redneck rebel, shook his hips and shook up the world, still called everybody m'aam & sir, went off and joined the Army like any other Good American would have done.

Movie Elvis - uhhh...yeah

Vegas/Fat Elvis - Memphis Mafia, specTACular white jumpsuits, TCB, and dead too soon, poor thing.

Really, what are the most "attractive" images of these for today's world? Sinatra and the Beatles at least had a core "reality" inside them. Elvis? He let others make it up for him from jump, pretty much. So there's really nothing to his image but image.

And as far as music, hell, Elvis is not well-served by his "icon songs" being borderline-novelty songs and/or bloated unintentional self-parodies. If he'd have had the guts/brains/whatever to insist on everything (or at least enough of everything) being as good as "Little Sister" (one of the very few Elvis song I can listen to enjoyably, "Kentucky Rain" almost being another, but only on those quirky days we all have from time to time), then there would be something to work with.

But no...

"Little Sister" is a favorite of mine. British Invasion sound before the invasion...

I LOVE "Kentucky Rain." GREAT performance.

[Teasing the Korean]

Welcome back, Clementine. We missed you.

[Dave James]

My two cents.

The guy was an entertainer. His first name wasn't Adolph...he wasn't a terrorist. He sang a bit, lots of people liked him, some didn't. Lots of people still like him, some don't. Why anyone would see Elvis as a prime mover behind the development of Western Civilization in the last half of the 20th century is beyond me. There were so many socio-economic-cultural forces at work during this time that to attribute anything of lasting import to EAP is, IMHO, sticking one's neck out further than it can be safely extended. I've got no quarrel with anyone who doesn't like Elvis, but let's not make this bigger than it really is.

[thedwork]

i've just read through most of this thread and apparently elvis was possibly "lying" about something. can anyone here succinctly, in non-sarcastic, straight-forward literal language describe what he was lying about?

Life. Truth. Reality.

oh, i see.

(...which becomes really ugly in comments like the one about Wagner and concentration camps.)

That comment, sir...

[JSngry]

Coming from a Sharon Jones fan... Now find me a better Dylan cover, esp. at this time when the sub-genre was dying--

I Shall Be Sngry

Gotta say I didn't like this that much. Greil Marcus claims that the great cover is a one minute version by Elvis on the '70s box set (one of many Elvis recordings I don't have). Marcus may be a Dylan fanatic but he's very disparaging of the later sing along versions by Dylan or The Band and especially the one on The Last Waltz.

Allow me to suggest the Earl Scruggs version.

[king ubu]

But now... am I still allowed to enjoy the music of Elvis (one of my big discoveries of this year) - or do I automatically turn into a lie then... and even worse, get a member of the SS? (Will they find that I signed entry papers in 1933, even though I was born a mere 46 years later?)

[AllenLowe]

you know, if it's ok, I have an entire (short) chapter in my (unpublished) rock and roll history which is a parallel between Louis Armstrong and Elvis. I think I'll post it; if there's a mighty objection, I'll delete the post.

ok here goes; I'm not sure how the formatting will translate:

2. A Critical Digression:

Bolder Than Love: Armstrong as Post-Modernist Presley

Or: What's Louis Got to Do With It?

By now it's a given that Louis Armstrong created something of a revolution in American popular music, changing the way we, as a musical country, hear rhythm in its very direct relationship to both composed and extemporized melody. Less well understood, by not just pop people but by the jazz world itself, is how closely connected Armstrong was to the spirit of not just rock and roll but to one of rock's founders, the late, lamented King of rock and roll, Elvis Presley.

The unfortunate truth is that, in the mainstream, post-modern jazz world, there is general agreement on two things: 1) Louis Armstrong is a God, an icon of icons who stands (or, maybe, sits) at the summit overlooking the kingdom of music; and 2) Elvis Presley is (was) a peanut butter and banana sandwich eating gag, a hip-swiveling - but not hip - ephemeral teen fad, a running joke, really, among those who value quality in music. To jazz people he's also much more, and much worse, because he almost single-handedly brought down the House of Good Music, he brought, to carry the metaphor just a little further, the money lenders into the temple of good music in a way which changed the way we do musical business. After his arrival, according to this line of reasoning, immaturity was popular music's continual frame of reference, pandering to the lowest or simplest common denominator.

If we are to believe the jazz press from the 1950s to the present, Elvis Presley's greatest crime was to ensure the growing and continued commercial hegemony of rock and roll, a music that has, particularly since his recorded debut in 1954, been the dominant strain of American pop. Before Elvis there was Swing and bop and there was pop balladry, not to mention rhythm and blues, a respectable African American form if, to the jazz way of thinking, sometimes a bit repetitious and frivolous. There was also, and most important of all, Louis Armstrong, who represented the golden age of American jazz and American popular music, with the shining beauty of his golden horn and the great transformative power of his singing voice. After Elvis there was only, essentially and unfortunately, Elvis, and than, later, the Beatles; and though Louis carried on past the fall of the House of Good Music, jazz after Elvis was never the same, its audience share fatally reduced to permanent marginality. (And if Elvis was jazz's 1950s whipping boy, the Beatles served this purpose for the 1960s. Read, for example, the jazz drummer Arthur Taylor's book of interviews with other jazz musicians, Notes and Tones. One of its most important and recurring themes is how the Beatles, with their masturbatory three chord abominations, completed the youth-dominated ruination of the business.)

Now it's true that not everyone in jazz feels this way; many of jazz's first generation of retro modernists (thinking of the likes of Bill Frisell, Don Byron, Brandon Ross, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, and John Zorn), are of the generation that grew up with rock and roll as their main point of reference, and they understand and respect not only rock but country music. But someone like Wynton Marsalis has made sure to re-enforce at every turn, among his followers, the point that nearly anything short of jazz is just that, short of jazz, historically transient and shallow, fun to listen to, perhaps, but just the kind of passing fancy that a mature person outgrows. Pop, rock, and country music, in this view, instead of being part of a great continuum which does, indeed, also encompass jazz, are historical aberrations, unfortunate musical digressions and cultural dead ends. They are the illegitimate and misguided children of the American vernacular, worth a quick historical glance, perhaps, and even, on occasion, some sociological consideration, but never a real or serious listen. Louis Armstrong is the source of all virtue, we are told, because he is not just jazz, he is American music, hillbillies, big-haired rockabillies, and make out-obsessed teenyboppers be damned.

Now just what is wrong with this worldview?

A lot of things are wrong, and they're not all the fault of jazz critics and musicians. The world of rock and roll has its share of blind spots as well, many of its writers afflicted with historical tunnel vision. There is a pervasive sense in the literature of rock that every musical expression in the world is merely a function of rock and roll history, not to mention a belief (in academic circles) that convoluted notions of sociology will rescue the music intellectually, as though, lacking certain credentials, it desperately needs rescuing. Rock and roll music is rarely allowed to stand on its own in any purely musical sense; rock and roll journals load it up with glib and hopefully hip tie ins to lifestyles and trends, and academics, in need of peer justification, tend to weigh it down with jargon and incomprehensible phraseology, interminable tomes for which the operative buzz word is "contextualize."

But it's not only academics who fail to see the big picture in real-life terms. Most popular approaches to jazz history depict the deeply American character of that music. They tell us, with great accuracy, that the music called jazz could only have happened here, in a land of great ethnic and cultural convergence, of cataclysmic social stratification and bizarrely juxtaposed racial conflicts. They fail to note, however, that forms like country music and rock and roll are also distinctive creatures of the great socio-historic conflagration of modern times. And rising from the ashes we see not just Louis Armstrong but Elvis Presley who, in his way, was every bit as revolutionary.

The truth is, in the overall professional and musical picture, Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley had much more in common than not. Both men emerged, in their earliest years, with musical styles that were inseparable from their socially undesirable and underground, working-class origins, and both worked hard, later on, having achieved great initial success, to find a middle ground reconciling their own personal, roots-laden instincts with real-world commercial considerations. And both came, not coincidentally, from the South, a region which has mid-wifed nearly all, if not all, of our popular music. And it is the South (not just New Orleans) that is the common denominator of not just early jazz but most other offshoots of the peculiar African-American genius for musical transformation, like ragtime, the blues, white hillbilly music, and rock and roll.

Our problem, however, if that we have difficulty reconciling our image of Southern social backwardness with the ingenious creations of its citizens, particularly the white ones. If Elvis was forever a hillbilly greenhorn, a country bumpkin in the minds of people who had a particular distaste for his music, well, than, Armstrong was regarded in much the same way when he first came to New York in the 1920s to play with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. Neither man, through professional thick and thin or the prerogatives of international fame, ever lost his basic country innocence or humility, though Presley was, of course, much more the tragically flawed hero. And there is no doubt that Presley, with his intuitive acceptance of a broad universe of music, and ability to absorb and integrate all kinds of musical styles from Tin Pan Alley to the blues to country music, grew and shed as many musical skins as Armstrong, who spent the 1950s in constant search of new musical sources and fresh musical angles (and who found them in ways surprisingly similar to Elvis). Each wanted to find as large an audience as possible, and neither felt, contrary to some critical speculation, that, in doing so, he had abandoned his musical principals in any way. As a matter of fact, just the opposite was true, the careers of each representing a fierce and unrelenting dedication to musically populist principles of the first order.

Both have been criticized in similar ways, for veering, musically, from the paths which first established their great reputations. Armstrong went from what seemed like purely jazz settings to a cushioned seat in front of ever-larger bands, singing songs that seemed more and more frivolous to some his more dedicated followers, in settings contaminated, to their way of thinking, by background choruses and a middle-of-the-road pop repertoire and sensibility. Little did those who objected to such things understand that all of this was less, for Armstrong, a matter of commercial concession than of self image; in his own eyes he was jazz's ultimate everyman, the embodiment of the music's deepest popular potential. There was no one he couldn't reach with a song.

And so it was with Presley who, leaving the musically inbred hot house of Memphis, Tennessee, where he made his first recordings, found himself in a much larger musical universe. Instead of running away from it he reached out to it, because it matched his own musical fantasies, of a world in which he was a rock singer, country musician, and pop crooner, all in one. With the assistance of assorted record producers and latter-day song pluggers, publishers who fervently wished to have a song associated with the new King of Rock and Roll, it was a fantasy he was allowed to live out.

In truth, both men were allowed, though the oddball courage of their own musical convictions, to live out a particular fantasy of American (and world) mega-stardom. They were able to do so because when it came to song both were simply fearless. Elvis sang country, gospel, rock and roll, soul music, inspirational ditties, pop ballads, and more. One of Armstrong's most effecting post-1960s recorded performances was his rendition of the country staple Almost Persuaded, and it was no accident that he had recorded, in the 1950s, two Hank Williams songs, Cold Cold Heart and Your Cheatin' Heart. Those are two things you are unlikely to hear Wynton Marsalis play in any Armstrong tributes, but they are beautifully done by Louis, who, ultimately, was even more adventurous than Presley. Which means that, maybe, those in the jazz world who have made such a fetish of Armstrong and his legacy are really right, if for some of the wrong reasons: he was, indeed, American music, but an American music that encompassed not just the "elevated" forms of jazz and classic pop balladry, but the deep and broad, and sometimes dark, underbelly of American song.

Edited December 29, 2010 by AllenLowe

[Big Beat Steve]

Edit again:

Just finished reading it.

Very interesting and illuminating. It goes to show it cannot do any harm to step outside the trodden paths of music history and music criticism to look at things from a somewhat different angle.

BTW, while a lot of what Elvis Presley and his peers have been accused of after 1954 (i.e. "ruining" "good" pop music and pushing the entire pop music spectrum onto an excessively youth-laden road to "banality" and musical three-chord limitations) has been a recurrent theme in a LOT of what the music establishment wrote (not only in the USA but even in Europe) after 1954 and throughout the entire rest of the 50s (and for the most part, and with the benefit of hindsight, is exceedingly funny to read today), I wasn't aware this is still such a gripe with that many exponents of jazz TODAY.

O.K., so we know neither the Beatles nor the Sex Pistols nor Michael Jackson nor Hip Hop nor Techno nor Lady Gaga would have happened without Elvis ... maybe ... but what if the pop section of what you refer to as "The House of Good Music" had lasted? All the lesser Frankieboy imitation crooners, lush orchestra sounds such as Hugo Winterhalter's plus the lachrymose likes of Teresa Brewer, Patti Page, Eileen Barton or the McGuire Sisters (for whom Down Beat in a fit of middle-of-the-roadishness found no better tag than "wholesome" to characterize them) had continued to set the tone for pop music to come? How saccharine can you get? And the teens (who'd already been flocking to R&B etc.) would have accepted this kind of syrupy, gutless make-believe assembly line pop as "THEIR OWN" music forever? Elvis may have been the catalyst in changing the direction of the streams but even if he had not been there those powers-that-be in the mid-50s music establishment would not have been able to stem the tide forevermore IMHO. Because the tide had already been swelling by the time Elvis entered Sun Studios for the very first time.

Besides, I think you are being a bit kind with describing R&B as being, from the JAZZ ESTABLISHMENT point of view, "a respectable African American form if, to the jazz way of thinking, sometimes a bit repetitious and frivolous". No doubt this was what some jazz exponents thought, but others from the jazz field were much harsher in their disdain of the "popular" aspects of R&B. And I'd venture to say that one of the major gripes that the POP establishment of the mid-50s had against Elvis was that in adding a WHITE side to R&B he made it a LOT harder (and eventually impossible) to restrain R&B to the ghetto where undoubtedly it belonged according to the majority society "reasoning" of the (white) pop music establishment of those days. Signs of the times ...

OTOH if the jazz world did indeed accuse Elvis of "bringing down the House of Good Music" which, if I got this right, included all the abovenamend streams of mainstream POP of the early to mid-50s, then the jazz exponents apparently were playing a pretenders' game in a big way. After all, wasn't it the diehard jazzmen and jazz fans who accused each and every jazzman of note who settled down to the security of (pop and film) studio work, to pop music backing dates etc. of "selling out"? Were they ACTUALLY trying to keep up a facade of pretending that "selling out" to mainstream pop was somewhat "less" of a "sellout" than "selling out" to post-Elvis teen music? Strangely enough I'd venture a guess a good many R&B musicians with strong jazz credentials found work in the backing bands of those teen singers much LESS of a "sellout". But then they did have more of a feeling for that music than white 50s pop crooners and string orchestra hacks of the pre-1954 era ever would have been able to muster. Which of course remained another sore spot with THAT part of the pop establishment of the day.

Louis Armstrong, OTOH, showed how to do it and how to make the best of all of those worlds in combining jazz and pop into just his very own brand of "music". And I'd guess that one of the reasons why he probably was not accused of "selling out" (to the degree that other jazzmen who branched out into the security of studio work, etc. were accused) was that he remained a safe harbor for ALL of those who wanted to be remain on safe and familar musical territory by being able to listen to a breed of pop music beyond the teenagers' rock'n'roll etc.

Edited December 29, 2010 by Big Beat Steve

[medjuck]

Hey Allen will that history of Rock and Roll ever be published? One question: If they had no commercial considerations what kind of music would Pops and Elvis have made? IN Elvis's case there's reason to believe that it would be gospel. But Pops? I think you're right in suggesting that he didn't really care as long as he could reach an audience.IIRC even the Hot Fives seem to have been suggested by someone else and they never performed live. Who knows he might have preferred playing with Guy Lombardo.

[AllenLowe]

so far I've had no one willing to publish the history - part of the problem is that it's too "complex" fpr the trade presses, but not "scholarly" enough for the academics - and it was turned down rather nastily by U of Illinois (courtesy of Burton Peretti, but that's anoother story). The U of California Press editor told me she liked it but it would not pass "political muster" with her board (not enough allegations of white musical thievery); and I managed to convince the editor of Duke U Press, in a conversation, to not even look at it (he did not like the way I flipped the script on black/white influence when I cited, in re: Jimi Hendrix, an ironic reversal of the usual scheme in which white musicians are liberated by black music; I maintained that with Jimi there was an element of "black musician liberated by white music and audiences," hence his love of the Beatles and Dylan, and his first major success with the young British rocker audiences, after being rejected on the black bar circuit as too flamboyant).

As for what Elvis and Armstrong might have done outside of market forces.....extremely difficult to even ask, as they were both so determinedly a (willing) part of that system. Certainly gospel often served as a (death) insurance policy for Country sinners; as for Armstrong, problem is that he lived so long and so far past the era of his real musical formation (as in the whole blues/whore/funky butt world, followed by that of great pop songs).

and to further answer your question, I may, ultimately, self-publish the rock book. I have a few revisions I still want to make.

Edited December 29, 2010 by AllenLowe

[medjuck]

Allen: I was just reading about the Amazon self publishing program for e-books. They pay a 70% (though I suspect that there are set-up and promotional fees.)

[JSngry]

I managed to convince the editor of Duke U Press, in a conversation, to not even look at it (he did not like the way I flipped the script on black/white influence when I cited, in re: Jimi Hendrix, an ironic reversal of the usual scheme in which white musicians are liberated by black music; I maintained that with Jimi there was an element of "black musician liberated by white music and audiences," hence his love of the Beatles and Dylan, and his first major success with the young British rocker audiences, after being rejected on the black bar circuit as too flamboyant).

How old is that clown? I mean, that was such a "common knowledge" part of the Hendrix story as told in "real time" (aka back in the day), that only a total cranius en recti would have a problem with it.

It was also repeated with George Clinton, whose love for The Beatles is repeatedly on record, and lord knows how many other times with how many other people...in East Texas where I grew up, there was a family of African-Americans kids, the three Stephenson brothers, who were only into the whole "Black Rock" scene of the time, and who, when they reached back at all, reached back to Jimmy Page, not Jimmy Reed. They were "unusual" in that regard, but they were still as real as everybody else.

I think I would start referring to Duke U Press as Fake U Press, or even better, F*** U Press.

Edited December 29, 2010 by JSngry

[AllenLowe]

funny thing is that I met that editor at a conference last April and, though he clearly had no recollection of our conversation, he was a real academic snob -

but I'll tell you the best part of this - a few months after our conversation I was reading an interview with George Clinton - and what does he say - something to the effect of "and you know who we have to thank for our success? All those white kids who were more open to the new music." And GUESS WHO PUBLISHED THE BOOK that had this quote in it?

Duke University. I almost fell over laughing.

Joe - I've just started to think about the self-publishing thing - another way that I may go, as I revamp my web site, is a pay-per-download thing. We'll see.

[JSngry]

I don't know how many white fans Funkadelic had back then (hell, I don't know how many fans they had then period ), and Parliament (at lest the 70s version of it...) broke big in the hood long before crossing over, but the fact of the Beatlelove remains, and the irony is indeed delicious.

I mean, really, that's just lame to be so ignorant and have that much influence. Maybe they should be called Dookey U Press!