Did true stars like the Beatles or the Stones or the Bee Gees (etc, etc.) ever play Clear Lake, IA?
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The Day The Music Died
- Thread starter landtuna
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Did true stars like the Beatles or the Stones or the Bee Gees (etc, etc.) ever play Clear Lake, IA?
Are you trying to compare the birth of rock & roll with the money machines that promoted the artists you mentioned?
1959 was hardly the birth of rock & roll.
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I don't know where you got the notion that people did not know Richie Valens was Latino. All you had to do was listen to him or look at him and it was apparent. My friends and I didn't necessarily know of his name change (until later) but we sure knew he was Latino.
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I should forward you the emails I have received the past two days from a number of former high school friends. Without exception they echo my sentiments.
You should still know some old, retired T-40 DJ's. Go ask them what kind of phone calls they received in the weeks following the crash. I don't need to speak for them.
I didn't just dream up a connection between a band and a place that I had never been (and still haven't). The connection obviously came from somewhere and that was within the music/radio community. That was my only link at the time. But, Muscle Shoals was not the subject of my original post and I could care less just what music genre is more closely associated with it or any other studio location for that matter.
The term "swampers" is referred to in the lyrics of Sweet Home Alabama and is a term that described a group of musicians from Muscle Shoals (originally) who backed many other groups who recorded there including both R&B, Rock and Roll and Country. They were officially known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section no matter what studio they recorded from.
And one last thing. I posted my personal feelings as well as those of a great many friends of the day. I could have also quoted hundreds of DJ's and others in the music industry who made similar public statements following that day. I could have quoted Don McLean's song "American Pie" which also exhibited some of those same feelings from someone who was a decade removed from the event. I don't think I need to suggest that historical perspective is on my side on this particular event and while there are obviously some people who were less affected than others the general feelings, particularly among teens of the day, were very similar to my own no matter where they lived. I need no more of your rebuttal.
All three groups you mention were genuine stars in their home countries before ever touring the USA.
1959 was a different economic time for touring musicians and the Winter Party Tour that Holly set up that January was because he and his band needed money. I don't know the specifics but would estimate that proceeds from that tour were not nearly as lucrative as current artists get when backed by large corporations. It was a different time.
I can remember Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band playing a Country Western bar in West Phoenix in the mid-80's. Cover charge was $5/head - hardly in keeping with his former glory.
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That is perfectly logical.
There was no such genre as Oldies in the 60's or even the 70's. And as some of Holly's early stuff was Rockabilly it didn't get airplay on mainstream T-40 stations unless covered by some of the groups you mention. Valens gets played fairly regularly on Oldies stations that dip into the 50's but the Bopper's songs are viewed mostly as novelty and you don't hear them much any more.
That may have been true for those who lived in the the four states that border Mexico, but most of those who didn't -- especially east of the Mississippi River, where most of the TV audience lived then -- had probably never seen a Mexican-American in their lives at that time. "Playing to Peoria" was important then, and Peoria was White. Singing La Bamba in Spanish was probably not an issue, but he must have looked sufficiently Caucasian on a grainy black-and-white TV picture to be acceptable to Middle America. After all, this WAS the 1950s, when "different" was not acceptable.
And, was "Latino" even a commonly-used word in 1959?
Geez................here comes that race thing again. Are you saying that Anthony Benedetto (Tony Bennet), Francesco Castelluccio (Frankie Vali), and Robert Ridarelli (Bobby Rydell) all changed their names because of discrimination against Italians? It's common for performers to create "stage names" for professional purposes.
Art Laboe's "Oldies But Goodies" first album (of 15) was issued in 1959. He was using "oldies" as a term on the air before that in LA. He did "oldies" dances, starting with his first one in El Monte in 1958, IIRC.
Among the first "oldies" stations WMOD in Washington, DC, used the term, "oldies" in 1968 (late) or 1969 (early). That prevented Art Kellar's WEEL from using the term, favoring "gold" and "million dollar music" when launching that market's second "oldies" station.
Geezers like Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and Bruce Springsteen listen to the radio. They just don't listen to the kind of radio YOU work for.
You missed the point: Why would any station today do a special or commemoration of the Iowa crash of 1959 when the people who relate to it are now mostly in their 70's or older and are not an audience that radio stations seek out.
And the "kind of radio" I work for is the kind that get listeners in the sales demos and enough of them to be profitable.
The Bahstun-NooYawk-Filthydelphia metro areas already had many Spanish speaking residents in the 50's but the majority of them were Puerto Ricans. Take a look at this picture of Ritchie Valens https://www.google.com/search?q=ritchie+valens&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 and tell me whether you can tell he is Latino or not? I sure can, grainy TV and all.
But remember, it was the white American teenager who, in the 50's, adopted so-called "race music", called it Rock n Roll and made it popular with white artist covers until the rest of the nation caught up. Most of the teenage population back then would have had no problem with Latinos (except perhaps for severe economic differences as used to occur in farm country from time to time).
The Mexican immigrants who lived in the Western states in the 50's would have likely as not immigrated years before and were living here for many years as part of the general community. Example: The Ronstadt family (remember a famous singer named Linda?) had members living on both sides of the border and had first settled in Mexico many years prior before some moved to Tucson and became one of Tucson's First Families. The Earnhardt's of car dealer fame were also another family who moved north but left part of their family in Mexico. There were many families like that.
A "Hispanic" would be someone who comes from the island of Hispanola. It is incorrectly used to describe anyone coming from a Spanish speaking country. That is why I use the term Latino (male) and Latina (female) to describe people of Spanish/Mexican/Indian/Puerto Rican/South American/etc descent. It isn't absolutely accurate but is closer than Hispanic.
And even in markets without dedicated oldies stations, Top 40 stations would often program "million dollar weekends" or "solid gold weekends" with several '50s and early '60s songs played each hour. WRKO Boston put out a couple of 2-record sets called "30 Now Goldens" that featured hits from about 5 to about 15 years old. As a 12-year-old, I recognized songs like "Duke of Earl" and "Jailhouse Rock" in 1968 even though I never knew them as currents, because I'd hear them on WRKO on weekends all the time.
No, I am not saying that. All of those artists changed their names to make them more commercial, not because they were Italian. By the time all those artists started their careers, there was little prejudice against Italian entertainers in any event as folks like Perry Como and Frank Sinatra had proven.
This was not the same with "Spanish" entertainers who were pretty effectively marginalized in the 50's.
While "Valens" is certainly more catchy than Valenzuela, the name was changed mostly to make it not sound "Spanish".
I have several of those very early Oldie albums but the music didn't go much past the mid-50's and the songs were mostly what we would call Standards today or Doo-wop. I don't know whether it is official or not but I always considered "Rock Around The Clock" (1956) being the first RnR Oldie (today's definition).
My OTA radio experience obviously comes from AZ and CA which is where I grew up. I know places like Philly had different music but there was no way to hear it back then. "American Bandstand" didn't air in my town until the very late 50's. In Phoenix, for instance, the first Oldies station calling itself that was probably KOOL-FM in the very late 70's or early 80's. There were one or two AM's that played some classic RnR but I don't remember them using the term Oldies (KOPA which was KOOL's AM side and another I can't recall at the moment).
Hispaniola consists of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. No one would refer to a Haitian as Hispanic. Haiti was a French colony and its inhabitants today speak French and a local French-based dialect called Kreyol (Creole). Why would "Latin" be any more accurate? Latin, the language, originated in Italy and became today's Italian.
No, an Hispanic would technically be someone whose language heritage traces back to the Roman province of Hispania.
That is why the Census Bureau pretty much created and defined the term in the 70's as they prepared for the 1980 Census which was the first one to enumerate "Hispanic" populations in the US. They wanted a generic term that would not be offensive (although it still is to many) which obeyed the mandate to differentiate from both race and ethnicity and which could be limited to linguistic heritage of or from the Spanish language.
"Latino" includes Brazilians and, albeit inaccurately, may include all residents of anyplace south of the United States, including Belize, Suriname, etc. Thus it is very inaccurate for the usage you describe.
"Latin" includes people from or of the places where romance languages, based on Latin, come from.
Like it or not, "Hispanic" is the most precise and accurate term for use in the United States as the term was invented to describe the wide diversity of people who directly or through heritage have the Spanish language as part of their culture.
Screen stars had been changing their names since the Silent Movie Era if, for no other reason than to make them shorter and easier for the American tongue to pronounce. Many of them had come over on the boat from Europe recently and had names that were tongue twisters or just didn't fit their screen persona.
Ritchie Valens got his start in L.A. and it already had a substantial Spanish language heritage so I tend to doubt the primary reason was because he was Latino. Rather, it was just easier to shorten it.
Funny, while I was in college in 1973 I interviewed at KOOL-FM and they were pretty definitely playing oldies then.
Wikipedia, with classic inaccuracy, says KOOL-FM was the nation's first "oldies" station having started in 1971. It was actually beaten by 3 to 4 years by others.
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