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

[David Lennick]

This has been covered for the last few days on a couple of Facebook groups but 
it's new here. And the stories I read keep referring to Darkies as being 
recorded in 1939, not 1931, so nobody is doing any research, just copying each 
other's errors.

dl


On 4/21/2019 8:18 PM, Elizabeth McLeod wrote:
> 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
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