blues
Although it was socially acceptable for the Blues musicians to write, compose and produce their music, it was frowned upon, until the late 1950's, that the teenage generation be exposed to black Blues musicians. However, white Blues musicians were another story. The distribution of Blues music was eased into the public by using white covers of black artists (Covers and Dances). Ironically enough, the white covers of these black artist's music never climbed as high on the top-seller list as the ones originally put out by the black musicians themselves. In 1956, white musician Pat Boone did a cover of the black Blues artist Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" that reached number 18 on the bestseller chart. However, when Little Richard put out his own release of "Long Tall Sally" later in that same year, before Boone put out his cover of it, Little Richard already had it at number six. This simply proves that, however attempting to slow the eventual rise of black artists, they were in fact hastening the inevitable. "Nothing did more than the cover phenomenon to facilitate a mass market for r&b and extend the opportunities for black artists..."(Ward 44). These covers si
The music instilled faith into the hearts of many black Americans and at the same time instilled empathy and passion in the white Americans. While this sort of activity seemed to happen while the music was playing, and playing good, this remains symbolic of the whites' willingness to deconstruct the racism and prejudice prominent of the time. The owner, Ray Mahoney, suggested that the Ku Klux Klan did not think that "The Playboy" was good enough to play for them. Blues was similar to a small leak on a dam, and once the water broke through, it was best to watch it run its course. It seemed as though Blues music did more for the civil rights movement than Brown vs. After Elvis, the barriers between black and white music were broken down entirely. This Blues phenomenon created a neutral ground for both blacks and whites to share and, henceforth, improve their relationship. "As the evening wore on, the music was able to swallow up the Jim Crow laws . As there will always be, there were those people who were disgusted with this sort of music, behavior, belief, and lifestyle. Although the black slaves had long been freed, notably there remained in the southern United States an excessive number of restrictions on the black population. The dances would begin with the officials stringing a rope dividing the dance floor in half to keep the races from mingling. However, the Napoleons of the Blues shall never be forgotten because they fought a war America had at one time decided it could never win. It was because of Blues music that white kids ventured into black areas and had a sense of "fair play" long before the civil rights movement (Blues and Rock). It not only congregated people, it congregated two separate cultures, both as different as black and white.
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