When people think of black rock musicians, Jimi
Hendrix is often the first name that springs to mind. To some degree this makes
sense; Hendrix is an incredibly talented and important songwriter, and certainly
one of the all-time rock greats. But regarding Hendrix as the beginning and end
of a genre can be deceptive.
The list below proves that rock has been black
music from the beginning, long before Hendrix, and has remained black music up
to the present day. (Hat tip to Dee at http://blackrockandrollmusic.tumblr.com for the idea for this post.) Basically, black rock
music is central to the most critically acclaimed pop of the last 60
years.
Roy Brown, “Butcher Pete”
1950
Roy Brown was one of the great jump blues
vocalists, foreshadowing Little Richard in his explosive vocal style, and any
number of raunchy rockers in his single-entendre penis jokes (“Oh, Pete, he
loves that meat!”). Rockabilly is often presented as the beginning of rock. As a
result, jump blues performers like Brown and Wynonie Harris, who laid the
groundwork for Elvis and Jerry Lee, are mistakenly seen as outliers rather than
founders.
LaVern Baker, “Soul on Fire”
1953
Musicians like Chuck Berry
and Bo Diddley are, like Hendrix, performers who can be easily slotted into a
narrative about white guitar bands. LaVern Baker shows how limited that view is.
A major, successful, early rock star, her music was horn- and piano-based rather
than rooted in guitar and country. “Soul on Fire” in particular, is in a torch
song tradition that has remained part of rock, from Aretha to Joni Mitchell to
Journey.
Ray Charles, “What’d I Say”
1959
One of the most massively
influential rock records of all time. The rhythmic assault and lascivious lyrics
of “What’d I Say” convinced Paul McCartney to become a musician; it was the
first song performed by the band that would become the Rolling Stones, and the
blueprint for black rock artists from James Brown to Aretha Franklin. It became
a standard in the repertoire of Jerry Lee Lewis. Yet Charles is rarely mentioned
among the seminal early rock artists like Elvis or Little Richard. Instead, he’s
pigeonholed as the inventor of soul, as if inventing soul somehow means he can’t
have invented rock as well.
Howlin’ Wolf, “Mama’s Baby”
1962
Even playing guitar isn’t
necessarily enough to get black artists acknowledged as rockers. Howlin’ Wolf’s
harsh, dirty sound, influenced by blues and country, is an essential part of the
DNA of heavy rock, and Wolf was recording at the same time as canonical rock
stars. Yet he’s called “blues.” Maybe it’s all part of some sort of plot to make
“Exile on Main Street” look original?
Cookies, “Wounded”
1967
Girl-group pop was an
essential subgenre in early rock. It was a major influence on rock bands like
the Beatles and the Beach Boys, not to mention Ray Charles, with whom many of
the Cookies recorded as the Raylettes. This track shows that Beatles and Beach
Boys’ influence is coming back around. “Wounded” isn’t some embalmed source for
the rock music innovations of white-boy geniuses, but a slice of psychedelic
rock itself.
Otis Redding, “Papa’s Got a Brand
New Bag” 1968
Redding was a huge Little
Richard fan, and performed with Richard’s backing band early in his own career.
But, in a quintessentially rock star mode, his influences were eclectic; he’d
cover blues and country as well as rock songs like the Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
This performance of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” is so tight and
fierce it just about turns into metal — hard rock funk.
Freddie King, “Going Down”
1971
One of the great
progenitors of electric guitar rock listened to his disciples on both sides of
the Atlantic, and then stepped up to show them he could beat them at their own
game. King is supposed to be a blues artist, but if this were recorded by
Zeppelin or ZZ Top, there’s little doubt where it would be shelved at your local
record store.
Miles Davis, “Black Satin”
1973
Davis’ “On The Corner” was
hugely controversial when it came out; his use of tape loops and electronics and
the studio as an instrument alienated jazz purists and just about everybody
else. The album’s genius has long since been recognized. And yet, though its
eclecticism, experimentation and fierceness scream “rock!”, “On the Corner”
still never gets mentioned in lists of greatest rock albums, and Miles is never
really considered as an important rock musician. But he is.
Donna Summer, “Hot Stuff”
1979
Rock and disco are supposed
to be sworn enemies. But if the rhythmic funk of Ray Charles and the vocal
tradition of LaVern Baker are seen as part of rock, it starts to look like disco
is an offshoot rather than an opposite. Donna Summer’s great, swaggering
disco-rock fusion in this case isn’t a synthesis of strangers, but a
reunification of siblings, separated briefly perhaps, but both raised on gospel,
blues, snarling guitars and rhythmic hot stuff.
Stevie Wonder, “Did I Hear You
Say You Love Me?” 1980
Like Hendrix, Funkadelic is
often presented as the quintessential example of black funk rock; the one soul
funk band interested in crossing over. Funkadelic was certainly rock — but
seeing George Clinton as singular obscures the way that ’70s funk in general
both engaged with the tradition of Ray Charles and reached out to the
neighboring subgenre of hard rock. Stevie shows here, as he often did, just how
arbitrary that line between soul and rock is.
Run-D.M.C., “King of Rock”
1985
“Hey, this is a rock and
roll museum! You guys don’t belong in here!” Run-D.M.C. begs to differ. Who says
a hip hop band can’t play rock? “Music ain’t nothin but a people’s jam/ It’s DJ
Run-D.M.C. rockin without a band.” I think the best part is when they unplug
Jerry Lee Lewis. He really would have hated that.
Jody Watley, “Looking for a New
Love” 1987
Like Funkadelic before him,
Prince is seen as the iconic soul-to-rock crossover artist of his day. This is
especially confused given how pervasive the man’s influence was; the Minneapolis
Sound was everywhere., and Jody Watley’s massive hit is just one example.
“Looking for a New Love” was produced by André Cymone, a bassist who worked with
Prince, and it’s got that archetypal synth-New Wave funk sound. Which makes it
rock, even if Prince himself didn’t happen to be in the studio to do a guitar
solo.
de la Soul, “Who Do You Worship?”
1991
Run-D.M.C. presented hip
hop as a logical extension of rock. De la Soul is less straightforward; “Who Do
You Worship?” is basically a parody, sneering at the banal satanic posturing of
hard rock from Mick Jagger to Slayer. Part of the joke, though, is that that
posturing is part of hip hop too. Rap, de la seems to say, is just more rock
stars pretending it’s cool to be an asshole. And of course you have to be a
swaggering jerk to point that out — which is totally rock and roll.
Aubrey and Lori Ghent, “Praise
Music” 1993
The importance of gospel
performers like Rosetta Tharpe to early rock is rarely discussed, but you can’t
miss it when you listen to this amazing recording. Aubrey and Lori Ghent perform
in a sacred tradition of steel guitar which has grown up in Florida and a number
of other states. This fiery live show has obvious links to both Ray
Charles-style rhythmic rock and the gritty blues guitar of performers like
Howlin’ Wolf and Freddie King. The compilation Sacred Steel, which collects
performances by Ghent and many others, is one of the great unsung rock
recordings of all time.
Mariah Carey, “Heartbreaker” 1999
Carey’s mixture of pop and
rhythm recalls girl groups, classic Motown and bands like the Beatles. How is
“Heartbreaker” categorically different in approach, or message, or execution
from something like “I’m a Believer” — and why do the Monkees get to be
(critically appreciated) pop rock, and Mariah Carey doesn’t?
Cee Lo Green, “El-Dorado Sunrise
(Super-Chicken)” 2001
In 2008 James Hannaham
wrote a Salon article about
TV on the Radio in which he bemoaned “the nearly total segregation among bands
who have played rock music since the early ’70s.” That segregation existed — but
in the minds of music critics, not in the performances of black musicians. Cee
Lo Green is generally pigeonholed as a hip hop artist, even though, as
“Super-Chicken” shows, he’s steeped in a Southern stew of soul, gospel and funk.
In case you missed it, that’s the formula for rock.
Brooke Valentine, “Thrill of the
Chase” 2005
Brooke Valentine is
virtually forgotten, but she was one of the most inventive and audacious R&B
performers of the 2000s. This non-album track is a good example of why — “Thrill
of the Chase” is built around a massive hard rock riff spiced with touches of
reggae and gangsta heavy bottom. Valentine’s willingness to experiment was
probably what doomed her commercially; the separation of R&B from rock can
inhibit the kind of intermixing of black and white styles that made rock
possible to begin with.
Rye Rye ft. M.I.A., “Sunshine”
2010
The Dixie Cups’ “Iko Iko”
was a famous early rock girl group performance that incorporated folk rhymes and
nursery-like chants; the Dixie Cups used an aluminum chair, an ashtray and a
Coke bottle for percussion. Rye Rye and M.I.A. pick up on that gleeful
tradition, blending girl harmonies and skip-rope rhythms.
SZA ft. Rashad, “Warm Winds”
2014
SZA’s recent
release “Z” is part of the latest wave of alt-R&B by folks like Solange,
Kelela and Dawn Richards — artists who are as much indie rock as soul, and seem
as influenced by Bjork as by Beyoncé. It would be nice to think that this
innovative effort to cross musical boundaries could prompt a reconsideration of
those boundaries themselves.
EnlargeJimi Hendrix (Credit:
AP/Legacy)