We are continuing with the "Roots of Rock and Roll" book, and today we read the chapter on Pat Boone's cultural piracy. In fairly blunt detail, the book describes how he took Black songs, Bowdlerized the lyrics, sucked the soul out of the music, and got rich. Fortunately, my class recognized that Boone's rendition of "Ain't That a Shame" was infinitely inferior to the Fats Domino original. They also took great delight in defacing his picture in the book. I was especially pleased when one student raised his hand and said "Teacher! Pat Boone is a right-wing, Christofascist hate monger!"
OK, I made the last part up.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Leaving aside the matter of talent (where the differences are obvious), I would be interested to know how the book distinguishes Elvis from Pat Boone in terms of cultural piracy.
They certainly are distinguishable (even Chuck D has repudiated his denunciation of Elvis in "Fight the Power" - see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/opinion/11guralnick.html). I'm just curious to know how the book deals with it.
Well, bear in mind this would probably be a 2nd grade book in the U.S. But they do point out that Elvis had sung Gospel music and they describe his sound as "raw and real" while hinting strongly that Pat Boone was only in it for the money.
Post a Comment