Revolution Televised.pdf

204 Notes to Chapter 3
Listening to black radio created an “imagined community” and reflected
black nationhood and fellowship, a bond between the listening audiences.
7. The Harvard Report, cited in George, The Death of Rhythm and
Blues, 136.
8. Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay “The White Negro” described and
embraced the white social outlaw who seized the style, sexuality, and
music of African Americans. The stereotypical underpinnings of Mailer’s
arguments are clear. However, the article did reflect aspects of American
society in the late 1950s. Figures such as Elvis Presley epitomized the
donning of the accoutrements of black culture without understanding it,
using it for profit without any benefit to the black community. This pattern
would culminate when producer Alan Freid of New York radio’s WINS
began to disguise the blackness of R&B by calling it rock and roll and
marketing it to young white teenagers.
9. For more detailed analysis of the Blaxploitation movement, see
Guerrero, Framing Blackness; and Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies
& Bucks.
10. On the other hand, films of the Los Angeles School, such as Haile
Gerima’s Bush Mama (1974) and Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977),
and films produced through the Black Filmmakers Foundation, such as
Warrington Hudlin’s Street Corner Stories (1977), although written, produced,
and directed by politicized African American filmmakers, were often
ensconced in academic or high art settings. These films often did not reach
the everyday black person. For a detailed analysis of the Los Angeles School
of Black Filmmaking, see Ntongela Masilela, “The Los Angeles School of
Black Filmmakers,” 107–17.
11. Del Shields quoted in George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues,
111–12. Evidently the inherent power of black radio also produced a level
of fear among white station owners—all plans to support the growth and
development of black programming were dropped. The person who best
represents this transition is Gary Byrd, a black deejay personality whose
style influenced up-and-coming deejays across the country. His impact diminished
when he was confronted by the station managers’ use of the Bill
Drake format of radio. This pattern attempted to systematize radio into
“time, temperature, artist, title of record” and indeed sapped the deejay of
any distinct personality traits. George asserts that this was brought about
by two central factors: the fear of the power of the black deejay after
King’s assassination and the assimilationist trend in black America. Those
who desired to move into white circles were embarrassed by the sound
of black radio deejays who were grounded in the oral tradition and used
black vernacular.
12. Sonia Murray, “Soul Train,” 4.
13. Cornelius quoted in Andy Meisler, “The Beat Goes on for ‘Soul
Train’ Conductor,” 7.