Williams recalls that in 1956 "a gang of white men dragged the famous black singer Nat 'King' Cole off a stage and beat him because they said he was singing love songs to white women." They weren't wrong about that: my mom loved him. In the early sixties, he called up his record company, whose coffers he had enriched for many years, and hung up in disgust when the receptionist answered: "Capitol Records, home of the Beatles." I think we can guess how Cole would have felt about gangsta rap. Duke Ellington has more in common with Ravel than with Snoop Dogg. Scott Joplin would have regarded today's "black culture" as an oxymoron.
To eliminate a century and a half's tradition of beauty and grace from your identity isn't "keepin' it real"; it's keepin' millions of young black men and women unreal in ways the most malevolent bull-necked racist could never have devised. Thanks for the Ping Pokey.
Just thought I'd toss in that there's a company in Britain called Proper Records that releases 4-CD boxed sets of digitally-remastered, out-of-copyright songs by people like Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald at really low prices. I can pick them up in bargain bins around here for as little as $22 and have quite a few. The King Cole Trio box ("Cool Cole") is currently playing all day long at my house. God, was he great!