First the Birth of the Blues, Then the Fight Over Who Owns the Baby
September 28, 2003
By BRENT STAPLES
The rap impresario Sean Combs, known as P. Diddy, had a huge hit this fall
asthe lead producer of the soundtrack for the movie "Bad Boys II," which
included the hot party tune "Shake Ya Tailfeather." Rap fans would be
surprised to know that the title dates back to the Mississippi juke joints
ofthe early 20th century, where black field hands gathered to hear blues
music after long days in the cotton fields.
Northern rap artists pride themselves on being urban sophisticates but are
playing a version of the music enjoyed by black field workers in the Deep
South more than 50 years ago. Stripped to its essentials, "Shake Ya
Tailfeather" is a dead ringer for any number of blues tunes by
Mississippians, including "Shake Your Moneymaker," by Elmore James, and
"WangDang Doodle," by the legendary Willie Dixon.
The alchemy that transformed the blues music into jazz, then rock 'n' roll -
and later on into rock music and rap -
did its work in the speakeasies, brothels, juke joints and churches that sat
cheek by jowl on the South Side of Chicago in the early 20th century. Among
the millions of black people who fled the South in the Great Migration,
hundreds of thousands came to Chicago, including the talismanic blues stars
Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, and the bass man and songwriter Willie Dixon,
all of whom recorded for Chess Records. Depending on who tells the story,
Phil and Leonard Chess, the founders, were either benevolent patrons or
rip-off artists who created the
paradigm for how to fleece musicians.
The seven-part film history of the blues music that begins tonight on PBS
does a decent job of showing how the Delta blues came in with slaves from
West Africa and changed the way that the world listened to music, thanks in
part to Chess, which handled not just the blues giants, but early rock 'n'
rollers like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. But the series scarcely mentions
thebitter controversy over how much the Chess brothers and the music
publishing company they partly owned exploited these artists. The segment
that should tell this story - the one on
Chess itself - dismisses the exploitation as a figment of the bluesmen's
imagination.
The blues music that began in the Mississippi Delta was a distinctly black
art form enjoyed by black people all over the South. Visit a blues concert
inthe North today, however, and you will find that the audience is almost
entirely white. The directors of this film series took note of when the
audiences turned white but seem not to grasp why. In the segment "The Road
ToMemphis," B. B. King, now one of the world's most famous blues musicians,
painfully recalled being booed by a young black audience in Baltimore in
whatappears to be the late 1950's, when Little Richard was packing them in
with his patented scream and hard-driving piano rock 'n' roll.
The Northern black community's rejection of blues music was partly a matter
of aesthetic evolution. But by turning their back on the blues, black urban
audiences were also distancing themselves from a rural Southern past that
hadcome to seem backward and shameful to many of them.
B. B. King describes the rejection he experienced during this period as like
"being black twice." Mr. King
persevered, crisscrossing the country year after year, until blues came back
into fashion - but this time for a white audience that discovered it during
the folk revolution.
The real money came into play when British rock bands - like the Rolling
Stones and Cream - began to rerecord blues standards, paying out millions in
royalties that should have gone to the blues artists who wrote the songs.
Many bluesmen found that the rights to their work belonged to publishers
associated with their record companies.
The lawsuits flew hot and heavy in Chicago, where the big artists associated
with Chess Records filed nasty claims charging that the publishing firm
ownedpartly by the Chess brothers had swindled them. Muddy Waters and Willie
Dixon received undisclosed settlements and eventually regained ownership of
the disputed songs. Howlin' Wolf died while his case was still tied up in
litigation - a lesson to other musicians to settle while they could.
Those interested in this aspect of the story should begin with "Spinning
Blues Into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records," by
Nadine Cohodas. The film in this series on the Chicago blues, titled
"Godfathers and Sons," does not mention the lawsuits. The director
inexplicably allows Marshall Chess - whose father and uncle started Chess
Records - to dismiss the royalties issue in a few, glib lines. Marshall
Chessdescribes the blues artists as childlike men who were interested only
inCadillacs and beautiful women, and who
needed what he unfortunately describes as a "plantation owner" to look after
their affairs.
The decision to let these remarks go unchallenged was grotesquely
irresponsible. Even rappers fresh off the street who couldn't name a blues
song if you paid them know that many of the musicians who came before them
were cheated. These rappers show up at the record company door demanding
deals that allow them to own their works, which allows them to get rich -
andto sing about getting rich. These songs, too, are a legacy of the blues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/op...065799713&ei=1[1]
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