How Whitewashing Rock Let Down the Black Voice

It’s important to talk about what came between 1949 and 1954, especially since we lost Little Richard last year. Most of Rock’s pioneers are deceased, leaving generations to believe rock is white-created and has always been white-dominated.

How in the hell did a genre with such deep roots in black traditions become the “natural province” of whites? Over the years, people have seen a “whiter” and “whiter” variation of rock.

While no one character initiated rock ‘n’ roll, rock indeed got its start with blues and soul music. Rock was really a variation of the two and “race music,” music comprised of various genres, including blues, jazz, and gospel. Then it was called R&B. But as Little Richard said, they needed a white man “to come in there,” perhaps to draw publicity. “It [rock ‘n’ roll] started out as rhythm and blues, “Little Richard said to Time in 2001. He continued, “There wasn’t nobody playing it at the time but black people - myself, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry. White kids started paying more attention to the music, white girls were going over to this, they needed somebody to come in there - like Elvis.”

However, the over-arching issue is that for decades Elvis Presley has been declared to have invented the music. Rolling Stone presented this modification to Rock n Roll as an advertising gimmick. It’s important to underline what Little Richard was saying about Elvis coming into Rock. He didn’t invent it yet still became the face of it. “I knew Elvis,” said Lloyd Prince in 2004. “This is media history, not real history.” Rolling Stone stated in 1967. “So how can they say who started rock and roll in 1954? The fact is That Fats Domino sold more records than Elvis between 1953 and 1956. I loved Elvis, but it’s a lie to say he invented anything.”

Some even believe rock’s “staple bands” (like Queen, KISS, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc.) were “ripping off black music.” As John Lennon liked to claim that there was “nothing before Elvis.” In a short twenty years, white people became the face of rock and roll. Black people in rock became outliers, aliens, and just unusual.

In 1973, after Jimi Hendrix passed away, Margo Jefferson wrote, “The night Jimi died, I dreamed this was the latest step in a plot being designed to eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites. Future generations, my dream ran, will be taught that while rock may have had its beginnings among blacks, it had its true following among whites. The best black artists will thus be studied as remarkable primitives who unconsciously foreshadowed future developments.”

The Rolling Stone magazine came into the picture ten years after black pioneers started publically playing. Rolling Stones promoted an industrial myth to sell magazines, get publicity and make money. Throughout the years, they falsify and simplify the records of America’s music. In 2018 Dickinson would go on to say, “bloody Americans who wouldn’t know rock’ n’ roll if it hit them in the face.”

It’s impossible to ignore the influence of black Americans during the genre’s birth. However, it still is.