Is this really true, or is this some kind of fabricated history made up by liberals to help further their own narrative about this country? I wasn't alive in the 50's, and I was very young in the 60's, so I don't have a strong recollection of that period. I used to take it as gospel that this was the case, given how it has been pounded into our craniums over the decades. But in the last year or so, I've really been questioning just how much of the written history of this country, pop culture or otherwise, from the past 100 years or so is truly authentic, and not just some made-up, Leftist fantasy designed to make Americans hate their own country. Given how they've lied pretty openly about global warming/climate change - and, well, pretty much everything - I'm thinking that I'm onto something. Maybe some of the older Freepers can set me straight, though.
Listen to the Andrews Sisters. A lot of their songs were way more influenced by black culture than the Rolling Stones. Maybe the audience didn't always realize it, but it's not exactly hidden.
The quote you cite is more or less true, and the proof is demonstrated by the very stupidity of Dino’s lines and the laughing audience in the video clip. The Stones, as the Beatles, and the Swinging Blue Jeans among others threatened and rebelled against the naivete and innocence of that white bread “humour” on display.
Nevertheless, to finish the thought, as an old rock’n’roller friend dating back to Elvis and Jerry Lee, said to me a while back: “We won, and now what?” He meant of course that rock and roll and the youth culture had won the cultural war that started in the 1950s, and the results, as we all, including him, know, ain’t pretty.
Absolutely true. There were black radio stations and there were white radio stations. Alan Freed combined the two on his show, but the music itself didn’t start to be combined until the Rolling Stones. Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis did pretty well before that. I think someone said about Jerry Lee Lewis he had a black left hand and a white right hand on the piano.
Whereas the Beatles did covers of Chuck Berry songs, the Stones immersed themselves in all the great black American musicians and came up with their own amazing blend.
We all lead individual lives, but I vote for fabricated history, What I saw in Southern California was a low level of parental objection to the Stones for being enthusiastically oversexed bad boys. (As opposed to the clean-cut Beatles with prostitutes in their hotel rooms.) I never heard anyone complain that the Stones sounded too black. They sure didn't sound too black to anyone who listened mostly to black blues and jazz musicians, as my white friends and I did.
My two cents on your question:
Kids didn’t care if it was white or black music, but ‘race records’ were not played on top 40 and not sold outside the black areas or big cities.
DJ Alan Freed is, correctly in my opinion, credited with discovering that race or black music would sell to white audiences, which started the crossover.
The Rolling Stones copied black tunes right at the time of the “British Invasion” or the British fad in America. This resulted in white rock and roll becoming the phenomenon rather than black R&B/blues getting the ride.
I wish I could remember the song that, to me, sums it up. There was an incredible song released by a black group, immediately covered by a brit group. The British song soared.
I don’t really think it was a black/white thing, well other than there were a lot more white teens buying records and they gravitated toward white groups. I think it’s kinda understandable that white teens would like jagger more than james brown.
But, IMHO, at the beginning, the brits stole the black music and did it more poorly than the blacks.
As for the “white bread Mainstream America” bit: in my part of America, the South, it wasn’t a black white thing, but was a generational thing. Parents, in general, hated it, kids loved it.
FWIW.
(Elvis of course is a whole ‘nuther story line.)
Its BS...
The Stones were more dirty.....bad boys....not poppy like the Liverpool lads
That they did some Delta blues and whites feared that is such crap...new media template
Hell....Chuck and Little Richard had already paved that road and had been very popular
Whites thought James Brown very odd but interesting
wilson...Percy....Otis...etc were beloved
Whites feared very white and openly racist Jerry Lee more than any black performer
Parents hated the sexual culture of rock and roll period
Some groups like doo wop and Beach Boys got a pass
The psychedelic rock arrived and parents gave up....
In retrospect those long dead parents were more right than wrong
Ignore anything rolling stone says....chickenhawk Wenner is a nut
Chet Flippo was ok....
The thing is, way before the Beatles and the Stones came on the scene, adults were condemning Rock and Roll and calling it evil.
By the time those two groups arrived things had begun to quiet down a bit, no one was thrown in jail for simply scheduling the bands(as was the case in the late 50s)in certain areas and the large protests against Rock and Roll and stopped being put on by adults, mainly because a large section of the original teens who had started the rock movement were now adults themselves in 1964.
For even though I, and many of my friends(people who had graduated 1958, 59, 60), didn't like the Beatles and the Stones we by no means tried to protest them or get them banned. By 1964, Rock was half way respectable.
I was a teenager then and the sentiment is pretty much accurate although the ‘black’ angle is a bit over-stated.