The Myth Of The
Twenty-First Century Part III
by
R.E. Prindle
The Music Assault: a
-I-
As the
Fifties of the last century began voices were beginning to be raised objecting
to the Communist influences in music. Of
course the Communists and their Fellow Travelers denied the accusation. As the Fifties witnessed the birth of Rock n’
Rollers we innocent teens rejected the idea outright as an attack on our music. And yet…and yet…it now is proven true. Of all the cultural weapons for changing a
culture music is one of the most effective.
It was
perhaps the ancient Greek legislator Solon who first pointed out that when
there is change in a nation’s music it presages major cultural changes in that
society. While Solon may have been
first, I first had my attention drawn to the notion by that great American
social historian, Marc Sullivan who wrote in the thirties. Sullivan who was the premier journalist of
the first third of the twentieth century wrote his terrific six volume social
history of the US for the same period and he was especially concerned with the
role of music as he recorded the various changes to American music over the
period.
The period
also saw the rise of the phonograph and recording industry as it evolved from
the three minute 78 rpm shellac record to the 45 rep vinyl disc and the to the
10” long playing disc or LP then to high fidelity then to the 12” LP that
perfected the size of an LP and finally in 1958 to stereo hi-fi that became the
standard until the development of the compact disc or CD. At the point of the 12” stereo LP the medium
that would influence the generation was perfected. More efficient production methods with a
greatly expanding market brought prices within the range of nearly everyone
while rising wages added the frosting to the musical cake.
America had
a rich and wide range of musical styles to choose from. As Mark Sullivan pointed out each immigrant
group brought its musical tradition with it.
Thus, there were first Irish tunes contributing Celtic traditions to the
American pie, German tunes, Italian tunes, traditional British tunes and what
have you. As Sullivan points out the
Jewish contribution was different. No
specific Jewish music came to light however the Jews were capable of mimicking
every national music. Thus seeming songs
of every race and nationality may upon examination prove to be of Jewish
provenance.
Post WWI
when the current American scene began it rise there was a large body of music
available from Negro to Irish, German, Italian, White Hillbilly and Western, as
well as White popular music. After 1920
an astonishing amount of popular music was written and not infrequently
performed by Jews. The cultural
direction of the US then fell into the hands of Jews. The Jews would take a commanding role in all
phases of popular music as the century evolved.
An important
source of music came from the Negro population.
Early ragtime evolved into jazz then combined with the New Orleans
style. The New Orleans style moved
upriver to Chicago where it changed once again from country blues to Big City
Blues and Rhythm and Blues, R&B.
Behind these
musics lay native White music that evolved from British folk music. This music turned into Hillbilly or its more
refined and socially acceptable name, Country.
Cowboy or Western music was a separate genre. Although combined into one
category the two musics were quite separate.
One Shreveport DJ boasted that the played both kinds of music, Country
and Western. Originally Hillbilly and
Negro music were termed Race music but developing sensibilities caused Race
music to be changed into Country and Western and Rhythm and Blues. Jazz, of
course was always a separate category.
A most
significant musical event occurred in 1926 when Carl Sandburg published the magnificent
musical compendium The American Song Bag.
This was a collection of Folk and bar tunes that centered around the
period 1880-1910 including such classics as The Midnight Special and Frankie
and Johnny, Betty and Dupree and others that were the staple of Rock n’ Roll
through the Sixties and seventies and that began to disappear with the coming
of homosexual disco music and Negro rap.
Mark
Sullivan’s six volume Our Times was a best seller. It is impossible to tell who all were
influenced. Carl Sandburg’s American
Song Book influenced musicians in both the US and Great Britain down through
the eighties. Nevertheless, using
popular songs to influence popular mores was taken up seriously from the
thirties on by the Communists. Recently
an attempt has begun to dissociate Communist crimes by referring to a Stalinist
period, now making Stalin a sort of Communist Hitler personally responsible for
the crimes, the Trotskyist party being the good Communists, thus absolving
Communism. Of course, for the Jews, the
backbone of Communism, they seized the song and dance business as early as the
turn of the century so the business became second nature to them.
Songs by
Jewish writers that seem innocent enough on the surface, Jews claim are
actually subversive of ‘Christian’ or American culture. A song writer the country revered during the
period was Irving Berlin. According to
Jewish writers a song like the Easter Parade of the apparently devilishly
clever Irving Berlin, pleasant enough on the face of it, is actually an attack
demeaning the resurrection of Jesus as nothing more than a fashion parade. Another Berlin tune, White Christmas, they
say, turns the birth of Jesus into a paean for snow. Berlin’s God Bless America is a call for Jews
to quit causing trouble as WWII became imminent and ‘to stand beside (America)
and guide (America) with the help from God above.’
The propaganda
of those three songs may be too subtle for most people to grasp but if the Jews
say that was their intent then it must be so.
It is
interesting to note that the patriotic content of Hillbilly and Western songs
made their listeners more impervious to the Communist propaganda than the
general public. Thus ‘native’ American
music became a propaganda tool putting a stick in the spokes of the Communist
wheel. That may be part of the reason
that Country music has been denigrated while its listeners are depicted as low
class ignorant Whites. And it may be
part of the reason about 1977 that an edict went out to Country radio stations
forbidding them to play fifties and sixties country records. Any DJs who ignored the edict were summarily
fired. From that time forward only
current country artists could be played as old patriotic motifs were attempted
to be deleted in favor of the new Communist mores. New technological development of course
placed that edict beyond their enforcement temporarily although still in effect
for radio. But, from 1977 forward only
current country artists could be played, a subtle change occurred although it
was too difficult for C&W to abandon its patriotic roots entirely. It is interesting that in October 1917 an
attack was made on a C&W concert in Las Vegas Nevada in which over five
hundred people were gunned down, dead or wounded. The assault goes on, this time deadly.
It is
interesting that during the thirties the Roosevelt Administration funded Leftist
folk song collectors such as Alan Lomax to rove the nether reaches of White
Appalachian cultures and Southern Negro culture in search of ‘folk’ tunes. The search can be construed as an attack on
culture as from that time Folk music was accused of being Communist
influenced. Indeed, such performer’s
when found were coopted by the Left as much as possible. Thus the Negro Huddie ‘Leadbelly’ Ledbettor
became a key icon of the Left although I doubt if Leadbelly had any politics.
A key
performer was the influential Woody Guthrie who was a Communist and who sported
a sticker on his guitar claiming that ‘this machine kills Fascists.’ Fascists in the Left’s lexicon means only
non-Communists. Guthrie thus became a
propagandist for the Communists and FDR.
And he was superb. Once again,
his songs may not have been apparent as propaganda but such songs as Grand
Coolie Dam and the celebration of the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam certainly
were but so subtle you wouldn’t notice.
Grand Coolie was Roosevelt’s attempt to shade Herbert Hoover’s
magnificent achievement Hoover Dam on the Colorado renamed Boulder Dam in spite
by FDR and changed back to Hoover after FDR’s death.
So, as
Hoover Dam neared completion FDR began Grand Coulee as a propaganda ploy. Just as Hoover was billed as making the
desert bloom so Grand Coulee was said to transform Washington State’s Columbia
River valley. FDR began Grand Coulee and
requested Guthrie to compose a song celebrating it. Guthrie actually composed a suite of songs
around the Dam. Hoover Dam was by far
the greater achievement but through the magic of propaganda Grand Coolie took
the spotlight. Great song too, one of
Guthrie’s best; I recommend the Lonnie Donegan version.
John A.
Lomax and his more famous son Alan
remained fixtures on the folk scene that matured and expired in New York City’s
Greenwich Village during the Sixties.
That movement was both Jewish and Leftist. Alan was a very important figure in American
Negro and World Music to the time of his death in 2002.
Setting the
Folk tone in the forties along with Woody Guthrie was the redoubtable Pete
Seeger who remained a significant figure in the urban Folk scene until his
death in 2014. Seeger was instrumental
in the forties in the formation of the Almanac Singers which while not
particularly successful in attracting audiences was nevertheless a key element
in the urban Folk revival. The troupe
attracted Guthrie who was in and out and eventually morphed into the post-war
group, the very successful Weavers. The
Weavers ran afoul of the House Un-American Committee and were forced into
temporary inactivity. Still, they were
very influential on subsequent folk groups of the late Fifties such as the
Kingston Trio. Folk groups like the
Kingstons were also key figures in the development of World Music.
The forties
mentality of the urban folk tradition continued in New York City until the
early and mid-Sixties when it was transformed by people like the Chicago
transplant, Albert Grossman who was key in taking the NYC folk scene commercial
through his formation of the group Peter, Paul and Mary and his association
with a callow Bob Dylan from Minnesota as a songwriter.
While White
people despised and rejected their own Country and Folk music including the
performers they very actively embraced Negro or Black music. Negro music can be broadly divided into three
categories, pop, rhythm and blues and jazz.
Negro pop music was packaged for White consumption led by stellar
performers of the forties group, The Ink Spots and the Fifties Platters.
The Ink Spots
would be very influential on the quintessential rocker Elvis Presley. Negro pop was very smooth and agreeable to
White ears while still distinctly Negro.
Rhythm and
Blues by the early groups was Negro music for Black people. Whites generally ignored it but many
dedicated White enthusiasts worked to make it palatable. The music was very
alien in sound to White ears. The Blues
part of Rhythm and Blues before English performers revolutionized the music
during the British Invasion had no White audience except for a negrified
minority. All of the near sacred names
of today had no audience back then.
Jazz with
its long history and many variations was more of a crossover music although
perhaps not quite so popular as C&W.
Jazz, Rhythm and Blues and Country and Western were all styled Race
Music by the industry. That all changed
with the 1954 Brown vs. The Board Of Education Supreme Court decision when
strong racial distinctions were dropped.
It was then
that crossover recordings suddenly became popular. Race songwriters such as the great Hank
Williams had several of his songs recorded by schmaltzy pop singers although he
himself was too Hillbilly to be accepted by the haut Whites. Western singer Marty Robbins temporarily
gained acceptance of a sort by the haut Whites.
At least they bought his records.
Robbins competed on the pop charts with schmaltz singer Guy Mitchell.
Dozens of
R&B songs were covered, that is hits on the R&B charts were rerecorded
by White schmaltz pop singers. The Negro
artists themselves didn’t make it to the pop charts as their sound was still
too raw and designed for ethnic markets.
This would change shortly as Country style Negro singer Chuck Berry
turned out hits aimed at the White teen rock n’ roll market. Black artists more ethnic than the earlier
Ink Spots began to have hits. However
the rock n’ roll market per se would remain White.
The jazz
market was tightly bound to Negroes and those Whites who were sympathetic to
the Negro spirit and psychology. That is
how the musical scene stood c. 1955-’60.
As Mark
Sullivan knew and predicted changes in the music portended great changes in
society. The various musics would then
be used for propagandizing political agendas.
That would be to directly challenge what was known as White Supremacy.
During the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Europeans had successfully invaded and
conquered the world. With few exceptions
the world had been colonized and essentially annexed by Europeans, principally England
and France. By the end of the nineteenth
century North America was European; Africa had been conquered and divided by
the European nations, almost without exception all the islands of the world
flew European flags, Japan being the major exception. Even huge China had been divided into spheres
of interest, the Imperial City sacked, much as ancient Rome had been plundered,
while the Chinese government was subservient to the European powers. Not since Genghis Kahn had such an empire
been in existence. Times had changed and
while historians are still in awe of the Mongol conquests, Europeans conquests
were somehow seen as evil.
Then the
reaction set in.
European
populations were too small to provide settlers for all but a few choice
locations and those mainly in North America while the fratricidal war of
1914-18 shattered European power as European manhood was destroyed in the
millions on the battle fields. At the
same time Europe divided into two opposing camps, the Communist and the
Traditional, styled Capitalist by the Communists.
The
nominally free of the West and the bond or serf of the Communist world. The Communists could attack the West
externally, that is arouse the colonies to resist ‘Imperialism’ and at the same
time cultivate dissenters internally to unbalance internal politics while being
immune themselves as totalitarian State brooking no dissenting opinions.
As the
thirties, also known as the Red Decade, began, then, Communists agents were
entrenched in the institutions of the ‘free’ West with the exception of
Germany, Italy and Spain. The West was
between two jaws of the vice.
What I say
next goes against everything you have been conditioned to believe. Your first reaction will be to be deeply
offended. The driving and dividing force
in the destruction of the West and Whites is the Jewish nation. The Jews are not only citizens of the
countries in which they reside but they are a semi-autonomous nation operating
within the various national boundaries and also as a supra-national nation or
people organized to function over the nations with their own international
government. You will resist this reality
but it is the truth nonetheless.
Jews were an
integral unit in the Roosevelt Administration while Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Morgenthau Jr. considered himself almost a co-president. As such, they needed a bludgeon to fracture
the US into its separate national and racial constituencies. The race issue was the easiest to
exacerbate. Not only were the Jews the
ultimate victims themselves after the concentration camps of the Nazis were
confirmed, and they were very difficult for most people to believe, but the
Negro was even a bigger and heavier bludgeon of guilt. While US Whites had nothing to do with Nazi
methods, White guilt over Negro slavery was very active.
However,
with Jim Crow firmly seated a good lever was needed to divide the Whites into
two camps styled the racists and the anti-racists, haters and anti-haters, Semitophiles
and anti-Semites, the good and the bad.
There was no neutrality or reason; it was either-or. If you were not an ardently professing
anti-racist then you were perforce a racist.
Nevertheless, Jim Crow was so solidly entrenched and, actually,
satisfactory to the Whites of all regions, that a plan to enter the wedge had
to be found. This was—music.
Bear in mind
that with the connivance of FDR and his wife Eleanor his Works Progress
Administration (WPA) through its Federal Writer’s Project, Federal Theatre
Project and others funded so-called unemployed writers, actors and directors
and such, including Alan Lomax. How a
writer or actor qualified for this money isn’t clear to me. Almost all, but the lucky few, can be
considered full time unemployed unless they stoop to a day job. As a consequence under the direction of
administrator Hallie Flanagan the Projects were filled with Communists, Leftists,
whatever name you give them to the exclusion of non-ideological applicants thus
the whole of literature, stage and music became a propaganda tool for
Communism. Members of the Arts Projects
would be active guiding members of the arts for decades so that non-Ideologists
were frozen out of influence and prosperity.
Most especially beneficiaries was the Folk music wing under the
leadership of Lomax and Pete ‘If I Had A Hammer’ Seeger. The only reason Pete didn’t have a hammer is
because he was an artist and his words and music were a hammer. He was sponging his way through life.
After the
Folk tactic that included deconstruction of Folk into useful elements and then
reconstructing it into Leftist propaganda the idea was to introduce Negro music
into the White culture, in this case an assault on the vulnerable young person
who would soon become the consumer category, teenager.
This would
not be easy as the contrasts between the Negro culture and the White culture
were no more apparent than in music. You
must realize that in this hundred year period differences were much stronger
than today so that the two musicals styles might have been from parallel and
dissimilar universes. Of course, pop
groups like the Ink Spots had been molded, accepted and given a place but they
were packaged specifically for a White audience; I doubt if many Negroes
listened to them. The Negro blues music
was too raw except for a marginal White audience and that left Rhythm and Blues
(R&B) that was mostly pop music specifically for the Black audience.
In the big cities
with a large Negro audience specific Negro radio stations existed appealing
also to members of a larger White audience.
There was a sort of missionary aspect in the attempt to make White kids
accept the music. The music crusaders
were almost all Jews and Jewish disc jockeys, (DJs, radio employees who played
records). New York City was a hot bed
for them although the top DJ of all time, Alan Freed, originated in Cleveland
then moving to New York City before he was punished by the US Congress for being
too successful.
So,
gradually over a decade or so authentic Negro groups gained a White audience
but it was only Jewish songwriters writing in the Negro idiom made palatable
for Whites that put R&B over, such as the most successful writing team,
Leiber and Stoller plus Doc Pomus, Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin
among many others. It all came out of
Tin Pan Alley and that was Jewish. An
interesting story about Tin Pan Alley and Bob Dylan will appear further along.
I came from
a smaller town that offered a half hour a week show on one station of Detroit
R&B, always delivered in sacred tones by the White DJ. As the Sixties began Berry Gordy of Detroit
discovered the formula for making Negro pop records for a White audience by a
Black producer and company although many of the authentic sounding Negro
musicians backing the singers were White.
By 1960
then, Negro R&B had conquered the White market but not yet Negro artists
like James Brown or Bo Diddley. That
would take a lot of propaganda and the two were never put over to a universal
audience. The success of R&B
coincided with the success of the Civil Rights Movement. It would become racist not to prefer Negro music to White.
To back up a
little to put things into perspective, that is the reaction of Folk musical
development. In his travels through the
Negro regions of the South looking for authentic Negro songs Alan Lomax
discovered a murderer in prison by the name of Huddie Ledbettor known by his
nickname Leadbelly. Leadbelly was a
mediocre guitar player and so-so singer, but he captured Lomax’s fancy. I am always amazed at Lomax’s extreme
dedication in pursuing these songs of which very few would ever be heard by
anyone else. Prisons seem like the last
place I would go. There must have been
many venues on the outside offering many knowledgeable singers of Negro
Tunes. As it turns out a large part of
Leadbelly’s repertoire can be found in Carl Sandburg’s American Song Bag of
1926 that Lomax apparently never consulted.
Leadbelly
supposedly knew hundreds of songs unfamiliar to anyone but himself, however as I have pointed out the most
popular ones can be found in Sandburg. I
make no further comment. It must be that
the Left needed some Negro singers to be so astonishingly talented as to put
White listeners in awe. Leadbelly today
has a legendary status. Hence Leadbelly
rescued by Lomax not once but twice from prison – two separate offenses – was
taken to New York where he was feted, lionized and recorded. With all this hoopla Leadbelly within a few
years became a legend in his own time.
Although he
only learned the songs he is often credited with writing them. I’m sure most Folkies think he wrote
them. For instance Midnight Special
which was a foundation song of the Folk and Rock years can be found in two
different verstions (pp. 26 and 217 in Sandburg) and Sandburg himself only
collected songs that dated back to the years surrounding the turn of the
century. Thus a nondescript murderer
became a legend of profound Negro creativity.
The Almanac
Singers who turned into the Weavers were led by the indefatigable Pete
Seeger. Thus, from the forties through
1953 when the Weavers were blacklisted the group banged the gong for Huddie
Ledbettor making a hit of Goodnight Irene as sung by Leadbelly. Now, as these songs reportedly came from the
soul of the Magic Negro they became anthems if not religious hymns. It would become racist to not only not like
them but not revere them as high water marks in music.
Before
blacklisting the Weavers were very popular.
Their next release was eagerly awaited.
Not only did they promote the Negro case but they were instrumental, if
not one of the originators, of forming World Music. World Music then was used to denigrate White
music. The Weavers made a big hit out of
a Jewish song called Tzena, Tzena, Tzena.
It was a catchy tune with a lot of joyous whooping that made it hard not
to like.
Now, this
was shortly after the founding of Israel in 1948 so there was a lot of hoopla
concerning the Jews as the Christian Fundamentalists heralded the founding of
the Jewish state as the prophesied return of the Jews of the world to the ‘Holy
Land’ whereby when that was accomplished the Final Judgment would be at
hand. The Great Gittin’ Up Morning. The end of one world and the beginning of the
next. In fact, at this time there was a
lot of gathering by the river music and some actual dates prophesying the end
of the world that came and went several times while stirring the people up
mightily.
At this
time, somewhen around 1954, TV was becoming established as the eye in the
living room and a favorite show was ‘Your Hit Parade’ of the top ten songs in
the country. Pete Seeger seized the
moment although he misinterpreted it trying to mainline politics into entertainment. Tzena being Jewish and having been a hit Pete
thought that the ditty was a hit because it was Jewish rather than a lilting
tune. In a burst of enthusiasm to
promote the Jewish State and people Pete came up with a song called Song Of The
Sabra. Sabras were people who had been
born in then Palestine so were native, as it were, to Israel. The song either was so offensively pro-Jewish
that it had no chance of becoming a hit or it was a dud of a song. It was unadulterated propaganda. Nevertheless, though barely released and not
even in the top ten, probably using the fame of the Weavers, Seeger persuaded
Your Hit Parade to let him style the song as an ‘extra.’ He used the set of a phony camp fire with
‘Sabras’ gathered around singing in absolute solidarity. Well it was a bomb, setting up a reaction
condemning it. I wouldn’t be surprised
if the song was the main reason the Weavers were blacklisted.
Nevertheless
World Music had been launched. It came
about in various ways. For instance,
there were musical fetes in the Negro Caribbean, Trinidad, where calypso music was
performed by groups with exotic names like Lord Invader and Mighty Sparrow.
There were calypso competitions and champions proclaimed. At the same time the Mambo and Samba became
dance crazes as South American music was celebrated. Those were the days when pidgin English was
still an accepted dialect. Of course
there was Harry Belafonte and his Banana Boat Song – daylight come and me want
to go home. Belafonte hated the US; his
concerts were put downs of it and the West.
His attitude was either ignored or embraced and he was very popular for
a while.
Now, all
this music was pleasant enjoyable stuff while few people realized that they
were being propagandized and conditioned to despise or devalue their own
culture and America. This would become
more obvious and embraced in 1957 when Eugene Burdick published his book ‘The Ugly American.’ American’s embraced the idea that they were
ugly, actually seemed to enjoy it, glory in it.
And, also,
Jac Holtzman who had founded his Electra Records label about this time began
issuing a series of records on his subsidiary label, Nonesuch Records,
displaying Japanese Koto Music, Balinese Gamelan Music and others, Bulgarian
Folk Songs, pretty nifty stuff, all excellent enjoyable records, mainly for the
intelligentsia of the time, but moving World Music along. On the pop front Martin Denny’s recording The
Quiet Village and similar others may also actually have been a contribution to
World Music. Americans were beginning to
have money and felt the lure of far away places. They were footloose and the big transatlantic
707s came into use in 1959 making traveling to faraway place easy. The 1948 song by Alex Kramer and Joan Whitley
expresses the desire:
Far away places with strange sounding
names
Far over the seas,
Those far away places with the
strange sounding names
Are Calling me, calling me…
Goin’ to China or maybe Siam,
I wanna see for myself
Those far way places I’ve been
reading about
In a book that I took from a shelf.
I start getting restless whenever I
hear
The whistle of a train.
I pray for the day I can get under
way
And look for the castles in Spain.
They call me a dreamer, well, maybe I
am,
But I know that I’m yearning to see
Those faraway places with strange
sounding names
Calling me, calling me away.
There is the
general post-war musical scene. Now, in
1954 Bill Haley and the Comets officially introduced rock n’ roll to the
world. This was as upsetting to the WWII
generation as the atom bomb. It was a
change in culture they didn’t see coming and absolutely rejected. Haley was made to pay a price for this. Rock n’ Roll.
Just like the atom bomb rock n’ roll blew the world apart. It split the older and younger generations in
two. There was no gap; there was a
cleavage. There was no connection between
them and no room for conciliation.
At the same
time the music alarmed the anti-Communist people who were just coming off the
McCarthy years. Joe McCarthy had just
been discredited by Eisenhower.
The
Protestant and Catholic clergy that had the most to lose from the Communist Revolution
succeeded, deep in a frenzy, in declaring that rock n’ roll was the leading
edge of the Communist conspiracy.
Sixteen at the time and quite taken by R&R I found this claim
ludicrous. Of late I begin to understand
their concern.
Here is a
quote from the Reverend David A. Noebel’s Rhythm, Riots and Revolution
published by Christian Crusade Publishing.
Noebel was associating with the Billy James Hargis Crusade.
Quote:
When Pete
Seeger made the comment that “the guitar could be mightier than the bomb,” he
wasn’t engaged in wishful thinking. The
truth is these Marxist folk singers are achieving their nefarious
objectives. Singing their Marxist
ditties and making their listeners feel nauseated at living in America is
proving extremely effective; and their scientific modus operandi is described
thus by Dr. William J. Bryan Jr:
“Sometimes a well-known folk-song’s tempo will be changed to the same
beat as the normal pulse beat which makes it more effective for induction. This is identically the same technique used
by Young People’s Records for children.
[In point of
fact it was also the technique that Sixties singer and guitarist Jimi Hendrix
used. As he explained it the idea was to
set up a steady beat lulling the audience over a period into a hypnoid state and
then when in a passive mental state injecting the propaganda then continuing
the song.]
“Right now,” according to Seeger, “many of the song
traditions of the 1930s are seeing new life as never before – in the freedom
songs of the South and in the topical singers of many a campus.”
The
revolutionary folksong of the Communists in this country is Pete Seeger’s
famous “We Shall Overcome.” In fact as
Dr. Fernando Penabaz has pointed out, Fidel Castro’s official slogan for his
Communist regime in Cuba is precisely “Venceremos i.e. “We Shall Overcome.” Fidel Castro closes every public speech with,
“Patria o muerte, venceremos.”
(Fatherland or death, we shall overcome.) and his captive mobs dutifully
chant, “Venceremos.”
Unquote.
As can be
seen this was a massive coordinated attack on the mores of the US. Beginning with the very young the effort is
to condition young minds to a very definite Weltanschauung. The effort quite clearly is toward a Jewish
and Communist system. These operatives
function unhampered and unhindered.
David Noebel, a Protestant minister, is well informed, he knows whereof
he speaks, but he couldn’t find a publisher, he had to self-publish which means
he has no distribution so he has effectively been silenced. As a religious he can automatically be
dismissed as a crank, so thoroughly discredited.
In an
instance like Noebel’s someone, some organization has to be able to shut off
all approaches and those parties or party will direct the great propaganda machine
that will become rock n’ roll. That
points directly to the Jews who effectively control or controlled the whole
music industry from top to bottom. It
was an exceptional person who broke through the blockade and that guy never
showed up.
The Jews and
the Communists quarreled after the War was over so that the Left expelled the
Jews and was then denounced as anti-Semitic rather ruefully by the Jews,
leaving them with a solo act. The two
organizations function independently
although within the same Weltanschauung even though the Jews were
concerned with furthering only their own interests.
Bearing in
mind this general survey of the music scene we move into the main area of the
post-war R&R scene. Rock and Roll
was the expression of the generation.
While most other generations were centered on literature shading into
movies, the post-war generation expressed itself through songs which is to say
vinyl records seconded by movies and TV shows.
The driving force behind the record industry, its sales agent, was
radio.
The
important radio disseminator was the disc jockey, the DJ. DJs, those who selected which 45 rpm records
out of thousands that could get airplay, controlled the industry.
Prior to
television the radio was the great popular communicator; radio was controlled by
three networks that managed what people could hear. TV changed that. The first television screen was functional as
early as the late twenties, there were broadcasts by the late thirties. Sax Rohmer in his Fu Manchu novels
demonstrated how TV could be used to hypnotize although he had the wrong
technique.
The war
throttled the emerging technology until after war’s end when TV became
commercially viable. By 1954 the death
rattle of network radio was audible. The
radio stations didn’t know which way to turn. At that time some bulb invented the Top 40
record format just after Bill Haley pushed rock n’ roll into the limelight.
Now, the
rock n’ roll generation begins with those born in 1938 although the first
artists, such as Elvis Presley, were born in 1935. Nineteen thirty-seven, then, was the cut off
date for the generational divide. The
1938 cohort was the swing or transitional group. They graduated in 1956. Perhaps as little as 30% of the class of ’56 were
rock n’ rollers; the class of ’57 born
in 1939 and after were wholehearted rockers except for the reactionary few. The early performers after the founders were
from 1935 to 1943, perhaps ’44.
So rock n’ roll preceded Top 40 radio that created the
mind of the generation. Radio, nearly
killed by TV, was then saved by becoming 24 hour, seven days a week rock n’
roll music radio. They said it wouldn’t
work but it made station owners rich.
The idea
with Top 40 radio was that only the top forty hit records could be played non-stop
with only a couple new introductions every week or so. The top five were two plays per hour while a
smash hit would be played every quarter hour for its stay on top. The biggest smash I can remember was Lonnie
Donegan’s Rock Island Line. I once jockeyed between radio stations and succeeded in
hearing the song for twenty-three straight minutes. After two weeks in the top position the DJs
demoted its rotation over the objections of the radio audience. So, you can see the importance of getting the
right message on the air. This was
conditioning par excellence. The right
message had to get through.
R&R was
the propaganda machine of propaganda machines.
Obviously the C&W stations were putting out the wrong propaganda
while the rock n’ roll stations could be controlled to propagate the ‘correct’
attitudes. This required
organization. Out of the thousands of 45
rpms produced every year as few as perhaps one or two hundred would ever find air
time. This power could not be left in
the hands of DJs.
One couldn’t
have hundreds of disc jockeys individually selecting would could be
played. So, there were promotion men who
brought their releases to the dis jockeys to persuade them to play their record
and not someone else’s. Actually there
were only three important break out markets in the country, NYC, Chicago and
Los Angeles. Disc jockeys in lesser
markets took their cue from those three markets. The number of disc jockeys to be influenced
then narrowed down to maybe a dozen.
In addition
to the radio DJs the other important player was Dick Clark and his TV show
American Band Stand which nearly every kid in America rushed home from school
to watch. So, just because you had a potentially
hit record it wasn’t worth anything unless you could get it played in a break
out market or on Bandstand. Thousands of
releases and a dozen men who stood in the way of getting your record
played. The best way to get it played
was to do favors for an important disc jockey.
This could involve almost anything but the best thing was to give points
in publishing. Royalties per unit were
small but accrued from millions of sales of several records a year, my, how the
money rolled in. Certain DJs were poised
to become some of the richest men in America.
Easy street for life as many of these songs popularity went on for
decades. It wasn’t realized at the time
that this was to be so but it was. It
was too good to last. The payola scandal of the late fifties erupted in the
halls of Congress. It was worse than the
famous ‘Red Scare’ of the late forties and early Fifties. It was vicious and the DJs of America paid
heavier penalties than any Commie ever did.
I mean, this
wasn’t Communism on trial, this was rock n’ roll, worse than the Nazis, it was
the greatest scourge of the millennium, it was the Devil’s music. They might only have been able to get the DJs
for excess profits, but that was it;
they were getting too much money for too little effort. Payola, how else were you going to get your
single disc played out of thousands of which maybe a few hundreds were
potential hits? It’s not like the DJs
were paid to play lousy records; no record is a hit by simple exposure. Hits are made by people, many people, not
just the singers or musicians themselves and when it’s right the disc sells a
million. Otherwise, straight to the
cutout bins.
But for
Chrissakes, these DJs were corrupting the youth of America with jungle beats
and rock n’ roll. Precisely. That’s what they were intended to do and that’s
what the Reverends were complaining about.
Didn’t anybody but these religious types get it? If the Congressmen had gotten the coded
messages as well they would have been walking around in circles and stuttering
for decades which, as a matter of fact, they have.
But they
were only thinking of the loot. They
told Dick Clark for instance that he could have his TV show or the publishing
he had gotten from payola. That was like
saying Dick, you can have a hundred million from your TV show or a billion from
your publishing, which is it? I have no
idea what the legal basis was for making such an offer but Dick opted for the
TV show and let the big money ride. He
discovered his mistake later and the Congressmen had they known would have approved.
Alan Freed,
number one top DJ in this or any other universe felt so disgraced he committed
suicide. ‘What did I do wrong?’ might
have been his last moan. Who cared? He should have taken the money and run. But, that was just it, no laws had been
broken put punishments were draconian.
Mom and Daddy told me:
Son, we don’t like that rock n’ roll.
You can stay boy, but that music’s
got to go.
Oh but, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna
Hang up my rock n’ roll shoes.
Well, we all
did eventually; rock n’ roll wasn’t really here to stay, it just kind of faded
away it didn’t really die. It wasn’t
quick enough for some really vociferous groups though.
Continue to
Part II.
