Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eric Weisbard is the organizer of the annual Experience Music Project Pop Conference. He was a curator and senior manager of the Experience Music Project from 2001 until 2005. Before that, he worked as an editor and contributing writer at Spin and The Village Voice. He is the author of Use Your Illusion I and II and the editor of This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project and the Spin Alternative Record Guide.

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"The EMP papers are a text radio, spilling out evidence of so many strange brilliant forays into the starry night of our common culture. Here's where my American history--and yours--goes to find itself."--Jonathan Lethem, author of "You Don't Love Me Yet"

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Listen Again

Duke University Press

Contents

Introduction ERIC WEISBARD........................................................................................................................................................71. Whittling on Dynamite: The Difference Bert Williams Makes W. T. LHAMON, JR.....................................................................................................262. Searching for the Blues: James McKune, Collectors, and a Different Crossroads MARYBETH HAMILTON................................................................................503. Abie the Fishman: On Masks, Birthmarks, and Hunchbacks JOSH KUN................................................................................................................694. The Kingsmen and the Cha-Cha-Ch NED SUBLETTE..................................................................................................................................955. Ghoulardi: Lessons in Mayhem from the First Age of Punk DAVID THOMAS...........................................................................................................1036. Magic Moments, the Ghost of Folk-Rock, and the Ring of E Major DAVID BRACKETT..................................................................................................1207. Mystery Girl: The Forgotten Artistry of Bobbie Gentry HOLLY GEORGE-WARREN......................................................................................................1378. "Is That All There Is?" and the Uses of Disenchantment FRANKLIN BRUNO..........................................................................................................1509. Ghetto Brother Power: The Bronx Gangs, the Beatles, the Aguinaldo, and aPre-History of Hip-Hop BENJAMIN MELENDEZ, AS TOLD TO HENRY CHALFANT AND JEFF CHANG.....................15710. Grand Funk Live! Staging Rock in theAge of the Arena STEVE WAKSMAN............................................................................................................17211. The Sound of Velvet Melting: The Power of "Vibe" in the Music of Roberta Flack JASON KING.....................................................................................20012. All Roads Lead to "Apache" MICHAELANGELO MATOS.................................................................................................................................21013. On Punk Rock and Not Being a Girl LAVINIA GREENLAW............................................................................................................................21914. The Buddy Holocaust Story: A Necromusicology ERIC WEISBARD....................................................................................................................23115. ORCH5, or the Classical Ghost in the Hip-Hop Machine ROBERT FINK..............................................................................................................25616. White Chocolate Soul: Teena Marie and Lewis Taylor MARK ANTHONY NEAL..........................................................................................................27217. Dancing, Democracy, and Kitsch: Poland's Disco Polo DAPHNE CARR...............................................................................................................28618. How to Act Like Darby Crash DREW DANIEL.......................................................................................................................................29619. Death Letters GREIL MARCUS....................................................................................................................................................307Acknowledgments....................................................................................................................................................................309Contributors.......................................................................................................................................................................313

Chapter One

1. The Bottom of the Flow

At the onset of recorded sound, Bert Williams and his partner George Walker billed themselves as "Two Real Coons," thus tossing up for grabs every term in the phrase but the word "two." Right at the beginning they put wink to the promise of recorded documentation. The reality they documented was not individual, not ethnic, but the power of performance protocols on every level of life and culture. Williams wore blackface and white lips, sometimes a ragged chicken suit, and always an enigmatic chortle. His darky business ripened the role's full vocabulary on stage and record. He somehow remained urbane while strutting the cake walk and insisting that "Dancing am de poultry ob motion." He stropped his razor, threw bones, drew cards, and never played by Hoyle. But to what end? Just the way martens prey on porcupines by treeing the spiky creatures, gutting their soft bellies from below, eating their antagonists from the inside out-just so, Williams and Walker held open season on conceptual coons. Isolating the concept on a stage with few props beyond minstrelsy's pancake and cackle, lore grading toward spectacle, Williams and Walker eviscerated whatever "coon" resided in the imagination of their diverse audiences. It was an important and constant gambit for American pop.

Bert Williams sketched strategies for talking back, and for surviving, too, to talk another day. A good example is "Borrow from Me" (1913), a performance from the middle of his career. Walker had died two years before. Their troupe disbanded and Williams's theatrical career had shrunk back again to his solo act in vaudeville. Thus the character he projected was a thoroughly consolidated precipitate of his performance experience. The scene he isolated in "Borrow from Me" used his characteristic confrontation with a manager-who might also be an officer, Pullman car customer, or a mother-in-law-proposing some outrageous scheme. You can hear him on the Archeophone disc as if he were still as alive as his strategy remains necessary.

Williams begins quietly, speaking: "I met a manager here on the streets yesterday. Said, 'I've got a great part for you to play and I am so sure you can get a minute right away-I want you to just listen and see now how sweet this sounds. I'm gonna take out in a day or so Uncle Tom's Cabin. You know it's a marvelous show. My cast is most complete, you know, but I thought I'd like to have you to play the bleedhound.' I said, 'well ...'" Here Williams slides slightly out of speech toward melody and rhythm but achieves only recitative for the rest of what starts to sound more like a verse. He goes on: "Bring me the Czar of Russia, just have him come on over here, 'n' blacken up to play Uncle Tom's part. From Mark, the lawyer, I 'spect we better have Mr. Othello-provided, that is, we can find a brother who doesn't come too dark. We have the Statue of Liberty to play Miss Eva and Rip Van Winkle playin' Legree. Now if you can bring me for the cast them folks I've asked you to bring, then oh boy, the bleedhound part's for me." It's less the issue of material than emotional reparations that slams into the singer's mind after hearing the manager's offer. During the phrase "'I said, 'well ...,'" emphasized above, one hears him recalling all the demeaning slights managers have offered men like Williams. And then,...