Two Excerpts from 1978 Black And White Minsterel Show and some questions

[anthonyeaston.livejournal.com]

some questions for the britshes:

1) is this really what punk was working against? because if this went out to 18m homes, and sold number ones, that is the story of punk defeating traditional middle class culture? i dont have my reynolds with me, but i do not remember he mentioning this?
2) why are the men blacked up and not the women?
3) Why was this so popular, between the stage shows, the traveling revue, the tv show, the singles, the albums, the charting--this was a massive success.
4) How do critics of pop integrate this kind of material into the narrative of the UK? If we are poptimists, is there a way of redeeming this? I mean Where Dead Voices Gather by Tosches has a connoisseur's taste, a crate digger's sense of history, and founding mythology to rest his rennovation of Emmet Miller on, if one was going to write about this, what lens would you use?

I am mostly thinking of Tom's upcoming entries on early 70s pop on poptimist, an the comments about the history of UK no. 1s, but anyone can pop in.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

there's an interesting story, i think in will freidwald's book on jazz singers, where someone (possibly freidwald himself) is nervously broaching to the jazz figure they're interviewing the idea that eddie cantor, a singer who blacked up a la jolson, was nevertheless an awesomely talented popular performer, and the (black) jazzman in question somewhat testily agrees, saying "yes, you know, black folks aren't idiots, we ARE able to spot talent beneath silly greasepaint ..."

bcz blacking up was so widespread in a particular era -- including a handful of black performers who felt they had no option but to black up -- it became the repository for a wide range of elements of pop culture, good AND bad, and there's a bit of a pushback argument that its banishment has meant that some of these good elements were lost with the bad