🎵 Happy African-American Music Appreciation/Black Music Month 🎵
Decreed by former and 39th President Jimmy Carter on June 7, 1979, it took a score plus a year for the bill to pass through Congress in 2000 to make this annual celebration official. Without question, music made by Black Americans has had a profound impact on music made in America and throughout the world. While criticisms arise when Black artists are inducted almost annually into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, here are the facts: • 60% of the their inaugural class of 10 performers in 1986 were Black: Chuck Berry, James Brown & The Famous Flames, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, and Richard Penniman, aka Little Richard. The other esteemed inductees were: The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. • 65% of the following class of 17 performers in 1987 were also Black: The Coasters, Bo Diddley, Aretha Franklin (the first female), Marvin Gaye, Louis Jordan, B. B. King, Clyde McPhatter (the first three-time inductee – solo, The Drifters, The Dominoes), Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Big Joe Turner, Muddy Waters, and Jackie Wilson. The other esteemed inductees were: Eddie Cochran, Bill Haley, (Jerry) Lieber & (Mike) Stoller, Ricky Nelson, Roy Orbison, and Carl Perkins. So, according to the pundits and learned folk, at its foundation, almost two-thirds of those artists who were recognized as the creators of Rock and Roll music, a genre not normally associated with Black people, are from this very same group. The music of legendary groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Police, while clearly brilliant in its own right, was heavily influenced by the similarly-hued artists whose inductions are sometimes met with controversy. I’m just sayin’. 🎶 Happy African American Music Appreciation/Black Music Month 🎶
