[78-L] Today Kate Smith; tomorrow ...?

[Elizabeth McLeod]

I've been following this story as a curiosity more than anything else, and
what I find most disturbing is that no media outlet that I've been able to
find has made any effort to investigate the particulars of Miss Smith's
career. I don't fault the sports teams involved -- what else are they going
to do when they don't know anything about the popular music industry and how
it operated in the 1930s? But the media outlets covering the story don't
seem to want to investigate any of it beyond quoting press releases.

There are plenty of people on this list who could provide a detailed
explanation of the music industry in general in 1931, of how an artist in
Smith's position didn't choose their own music, and how Smith specifically
had her music chosen for her by Ted Collins with no say one way or the
other, and how That Song was written for Everett Marshall in White's
Scandals of '31 to sing in the most overblown manner possible as a specific
parody of "Green Pastures," -- with angel chorus girls, yet -- and, as noted
by others, how she was one of dozens to record the song or perform it on the
air. I doubt there was any popular singer over the winter of 1931-32 who
*didn't* perform it in one venue or another.

So -- has anyone here been contacted? I know I haven't.

Elizabeth


On 4/20/19 9:51 PM, "Lloyd Davies" <all_my_linx at yahoo.ca.invalid> wrote:

> 
<<<Sports teams dump Kate Smith's 'God Bless America' because of her racist
> songs>>>

I'm not writing as a defender of Kate Smith.  Altho a few of her
> recordings reveal her lively and emotive stage persona [I'm a big fan of
> "Somebody loves me" (1941)], most of her career was spent playing it safe as
> milk for her radio audience.  People are currently taking umbrage at a couple
> of her recordings from the early 1930's which a) have fallen out of
> circulation, and b) were hardly the most cringeworthy discs of their
> time.
HonkingDuck is letting me down, so I'm unable to search who else
> recorded "Pickaninny Heaven", but a simple search shows the other offending
> title "That's Why Darkies Were Born" was recorded by many others, including
> Paul Robeson.
I'm not claiming that people have no right to look backward with
> a revisionist lens, but I'm wondering what other artist who is still
> recognizable today should more fittingly be the subject of boycott.

I would
> nominate Bing Crosby for his blackface performance of "Accentuate de positive"
> in "Here come the waves" (1944).


I also won't object if Admin wants to
> cancel this thread.
- Stephen in
> Calgary
_______________________________________________
78-L mailing
> list
78-L at klickitat.78online.com
http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinf
> o/78-l