| Contents |
Introduction: Dreams and nightmares -- Darkness at the break of noon: Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan and the birth of Sixties music -- The White Atlantic: cultural origins of the "British Invasion" -- Friends across the sea: Motown, the Beatles, and sites and sounds of crossover -- Being good isn't always easy: Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the color of soul -- House burning down: race, rock writing, and Jimi Hendrix's war -- Just around midnight: the Rolling Stones and the end of the Sixties. |
| Abstract |
By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become "white"? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic--and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, the author underscores how ideas of 'authenticity' have blinded us to rock's inextricably interracial artistic enterprise. According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the Sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive. |
