One of the most controversial or we might say in a certain sense dangerous at least

to white audiences' elements of Rhythm and Blues music has to do with the Hokum
Blues and the perception that these lyrics were sexual and maybe a kind of a
shocking kind of way in Rhythm and Blues music. Now the Hokum Blues tradition is
not limited to black styles. There's this big misconception out there that Hokum
Blues is the property of the black community and for people who hold racist views
that it somehow indicates the sort of lack of sophistication of the black community
but it's not actually true. You can find Hokum Blues in white music and Jimmie
Rodgers, who we spoke of several videos ago, has got a great Hokum Blues called
Pistol Packing Papa from 1930 which really sort of proves that this is not the
exclusive province of the black tradition. I don't say this any way to disparage
the black tradition at all but just to sort of guard it from over generalizations
through perhaps racist generalizations that it really comes out of some kind of
racial thing there. The Hokum Blues effect is a playful type of song, a humorous
kind of saw meant for adult audiences not for teenagers. And so in an adult
audience to playfully, through the use of double entendres and metaphors, talk
about sexuality, sexual relationships and activity between a man and a woman in a
way that plays with the idea of the thing without ever actually saying it in a raw
or vulgar way, continuing to work with metaphors and double entendres in ways that
are clever. Everybody knows what you're getting at and you're taking joy and how it
is that singer can say it in a way that doesn't actually say the thing but says it
in a colorful way that makes it fun and that's what the Hokum Blues is about. Most
white parents who heard the songs their kids were listening to sometimes, didn't
really understand that those songs were never intended for kids. This was not the
stuff that they nobody really sort of thought about this for teenagers, so there
was a real reaction against some of the sexual lyrics in RnB and in Hokum Blues and
that's a big part of the change over from Rhythm and Blues to Rock and Roll that
we'll talk about next week. So, one of the reasons why whites tended to
misunderstand this practice is first of all, they didn't know very much about the
black community at all. And secondly, one of the myths that existed in culture was
this staggeringly myth and the idea that black men are really only ever concerned
with deflowering virginal white women and so, when you hear a black man singing a
song about sexuality and you are a white person who doesn't really understand very
much about black culture, hearing this it may reinforce all of these negative
stereotypes and you may say, "I don't want my daughter listening to that as hell
and perdition you know." And so there was a real reaction against these kinds of
tunes. Now, to be fair, some of the titles were pretty obvious what some of the
songs were about. Here are some of the titles for you, Let Me Play With Your
Poodle, Sixty-Minute Man, Work With Me Annie, Annie Had A Baby. Right? So it's not
real hard to figure out what these tunes are going to be about. What white artists
did when a Hokum Blues would get big on the charts in the RnB charts and they
wanted to cover that song for the mainstream pop charts, is they would do the song
but they would change the lyrics and they would take or obscure the sexual parts of
it such that in many cases Froy would love it, the sexual references are replaced
with references to dancing and so in many ways, sex is sublimated into dancing. And
so the songs become squeaky clean, inoffensive and acceptable to everybody and just
about good, clean, teen age white middle class fun. So even a song like Shake,
Rattle, and Roll originally done by Big Joe Turner, when it's covered by Bill Haley
and the Comets becomes a hit for him and nobody has any idea what a one eyed cat
could possibly be peeping at a seafood store. It's almost like we're talking about
one of the characters from Disney's Aristocats or something. But of course, in the
original Big Joe Turner that is a very colorful metaphor for the male and female
genitalia. In a group of adults hearing this it's fun, when your kids are in the
room it's maybe a little bit embarrassing. And so, one of the things that starts to
happen, next week we'll talk about cover versions and crossover and this kind of
thing, is that a lot of these songs that were originally hits on the RnB charts had
to have the lyrics changed significantly before they had any chance of landing on
the mainstream pop charts. The black artists that were involved in this didn't like
this idea at all and saw it as just another way in which black people were being
discriminated against and not having the same opportunity as white people. So this
kind of racial element that's already a part of the community is very much a part
of those first days of Rock and Roll. But this anticipates our story. Let's think
about all that next week when we think about the first days of Rock and Roll 1955
through 1959.