{"id":431,"date":"2007-03-28T22:19:30","date_gmt":"2007-03-29T02:19:30","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-03-28T23:25:28","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T23:25:28","slug":"don-t-look-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/don-t-look-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Look Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In yesterday&#8217;s <em>Dugout Chatter<\/em>, <strong>Townsman Scott<\/strong> asked:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If it&#8217;s hard for white people to get into B.B. King, why do white people make up the vast majority of his fanbase?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Today, I&#8217;m no longer concerned with B.B. King, but I think the answer to this question raises a broader point: African American musicians and music fans seemed to have taken Satchel Paige&#8217;s advice to heart: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/sportscentury\/features\/00016396.html\" title=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/sportscentury\/features\/00016396.html\" target=\"_blank\">Don&#8217;t look back. Something might be gaining on you.<\/a><\/em><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2gsabFEZbnU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s extremely rare to find an African American musician who tries to re-create a vintage sound the way white rock musicians have done since about a week after the genre was hatched. What&#8217;s the closest you find, <strong>Prince<\/strong> dressing up styles from the past and paying homage to the masters? A modern-day R&amp;B singer dressing up like Diana Ross circa 1966 for a few quick cuts in a video? Where&#8217;s the African American artist who&#8217;s trying to re-create the sounds of a Motown record or record an old blues-style song in scratchy mono? Where&#8217;s the African American artist who&#8217;s trying to sound like Prince circa-<em>Dirty Mind<\/em>? I find this seeming disregard for re-creating the past both fascinating and totally alien to the white rock mentality. I have some ideas about what&#8217;s behind this, but I&#8217;ve never seen anything written on or heard anything talked about the subject. <\/p>\n<p>By the way, I am specifically using the term <em>African American<\/em> to identify a particular group of people, not just to follow a style guide&#8217;s suggestions for race terminology. British blacks don&#8217;t have a baseball history, and as a result, they&#8217;ve had artists re-creating classic ska and other styles. <\/p>\n<p>So here are my questions: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Has anyone read anything on what&#8217;s really behind this cultural tendency? I suspect it has a little more to do than reverance for Satchel Paige&#8217;s six &#8220;master maxims.&#8221; Any African American Townspeople out there who might have some insight or personal reactions to this issue?<\/li>\n<li>Is there a form of &#8220;white&#8221; American music that white Americans have let be and not tried to re-create slavishly and reverently?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I look forward to your responses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In yesterday&#8217;s Dugout Chatter, Townsman Scott asked: If it&#8217;s hard for white people to get into B.B. King, why do white people make up the vast majority of his fanbase? Today, I&#8217;m no longer concerned with B.B. King, but I think the answer to this question raises a broader point: African American musicians and music <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/don-t-look-back\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}