November 4th – It’s interesting to see how time alters
the focus of things, softens them in some cases, or brings others into sharp
focus. Take racial perceptions as an example.
It was in my lifetime that it was perfectly acceptable to have a
sign outside your rental property that read;
No Dogs
No Blacks
No Irish
It was all in order for the Robertson’s Company, on their line of jams
and preserves, to have a golliwog as the emblem for their various varieties of
jam and marmalade. Indeed, us, as kids, were encouraged to collect these tokens
on the jar and send them in to the company in order to receive a metal badge of
a golliwog so’s we could wear it with pride as being a member of the Robertson’s Golliwog Club. As things are
and in our enlightened state, confirmed by the ever growing stature of the
black community over the past forty+ years, those statements and commonplaces
are now no longer acceptable in either content or comment. As populations begin
to mix and mingle greater understanding and connection makes itself felt and
pre-conceptions handed on to children by misguided elders are seen for the
stupidity they are. Growing up in a colonial past, the preaching’s accepted as Urban Myths by the children of a
supposedly superior civilisation are seen for what they are; the oppression and
abuse of a different civilisation who should have expected, if our
self-aggrandising statements about Great Britain being the cradle of Democracy,
honour and tolerance, much better. These things we can now understand from our
position of experience and greater learning but what these understandings also
do is alter our perception of things from our past that we re-read anew only to
dress them in clothes that just do not fit.
Tricky one this; take it as I write it, you know the cut of my jib
by now.
The Mills Brothers were a vocal quartet of the very highest
quality who released more than 2,000 recordings (yup, not a typo, that’s as in two thousand recordings) and these 2,000
recordings sold more than 50,000,000 copies world-wide (yup, not a typo, that’s
as in fifty million copies) and the
selling of these 50,000,000 copies gained the quartet at the very least 36 gold
records (yup, not a typo, that’s as in 3
dozen gold discs). They guested with the very best in game, Mr. Crosby, Mr.
Powell, Mr. Sinatra, Ms. Fitzgerald, Mr. Miller, Mr. Martin, Ms. Midler, Mr.
Como, Mr. Boone, Mr. Benny…the list goes on and on. Anybody who was anybody in
the 30’s/40’s/50’s/60’s/70’s big-band music and film scene queued up to gig
with them or get them on their show; they really were that good.
Using their hands and voices to recreate the sounds of trumpets,
trombones, tuba, bass guitar, all manner of big-band instruments, they layered
them on top of succulent and captivating vocal harmonies and what’s more
important to an old has-been muso like me, they could do it all live. I got to
know their music from my dad who’d come across them during the 39-45 conflict
and enjoyed the quartet for their musical and harmonic abilities as well as
their frequent work in the movies of the time which, as every service person
from that era will testify, was the one of the few highpoints in any break in
hostilities; to me they weren’t black musicians they were just brilliant.
Thing is (and here I hand it all over to you and
await your verdict on whether I really am the silly old duffer I suspect I am)
with all that has happened in the intervening period, all of the changes we've been through and the redefining of racism and it's shifting to become the edges
of covert and undercover but still prevalent in some strata of society; when we've all too late discovered institutional racism in so many aspects of
public life and services; when the word outranks the deed but doesn't stop
it, that what I once saw for what it was, enjoyed for what it was and smiled at
what it was, is now tinged with a streak of knowledge and, like looking at
spring blossom and being unable to separate its beauty from the knowledge that
the thread of eventual death runs through it, I can’t rediscover that innocence
and enjoyment. S’bugger, innit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14QEoEIvUuk&list=RDn2m8VZBfRYo
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