Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 12

July 14, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: Coogler’s Career

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hopeyou’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do soright now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired bydifferent layers to this phenomenal work!]

On howCoogler’s prior (great) films foreshadowed this masterpiece.

Back inMarch 2018, I ended a weeklong series on Black Panther (2018) with a special weekendpost on Coogler’s film career up to that excellent superhero film.I’ll be following up and expanding on those thoughts in my next two paragraphs,so would ask you to check out that prior post if you would and then come onback for more CooglerStudying.

Welcomeback! One of the most clear throughlines in Coogler’s career has been hisability to make genre films that are also much, much more, and that’sdefinitely true of the ways Sinners is and is not a vampire horrorflick. One of the most impressive aspects of Black Panther, for example,is that its villain, Michael B. Jordan’s ErikKillmonger, is as multilayered and nuanced and even sympathetic as itscomic book hero. It took some extended conversation after our viewing for mywife and I to get to this point, and then I read Outlaw Vern’s phenomenalreview where he expounded on the perspective even further, but I would now saythat the villainous head vampire Remmick in Sinners is an equallycomplex and even in some ways sympathetic bad guy, and at the very least thathe has as much of a case as Killmonger did, both about his own past/heritageand about the world he’s trying to create (if, in both cases, through way moreviolent means than would be ideal). At the very least, both Black Pantherand Sinners feature antagonists who directly and consistently threatenour heroes and yet aren’t easily hated and certainly can’t be dismissed, whichis quite the genre achievement.

Another throughline,and one I discussed a good bit in that prior post as well, is Coogler’s abilityto create wonderful, multilayered female characters within largelymale-centered genres and stories (whether superhero films or boxing/sportsmovies or even the gritty realism of Fruitvale Station). And despite thoseexcellent prior characters, I think it’s very safe to say that a Coogler filmhas never featured a more stunning female character than Wonmi Mosaku’s Annie.I’ll be talking more about layers of her character and role in the film intomorrow’s post, so here I’ll just say that in a film featuring not one but twoMichael B. Jordan performances, a Hailee Steinfeld performance, a Delroy Lindoperformance, and a deservedly-acclaimed performance from the young musicianMiles Caton, it’s Mosaku who is the film’s beating heart. Sounds like a RyanCoogler joint to me!

NextSinnersStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 12-13, 2025: Crowd-sourced Rock Responses

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ve shared blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to this crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

First,responses to this week’s posts:

Inresponse to my Chuck Berry & Little Richard post, Jessica Parr sharedon Bluesky, “Love Chuck Berry and that whole era. My late father DJ’ed schooldances in the late 1950s, and had a pretty extensive vinyl collection. Grew uplistening to it with him. That and blues.”

In responseto my Holly & Valens post, Dan R. Morris commented, “So I dida story on this as well. I was thinking Valens hasn't gotten as muchacclaim in anything because he wasn't around very long. How did you becomeentrenched in someone's heart with one or two songs? I feel like that's whenyou decide you like the band and you get their next album.”

Next, acouple prior posts with recent rock recs of my own:

TheKillers, and especially their “The Land of the Free”

Gary ClarkJr., and especially his “This Land”

and MidnightOil, and especially their Resist.

I’d lovesome additional recs from other RockStudiers, y’all!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 11, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Women Who Rock

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

Four ofthe many women who helped launch the rock revolution, as highlighted in greatpieces by women journalists and historians:

1)     SisterRosetta Tharpe

2)     Ruth Brown

3)     MemphisMinnie

4)     CarolKaye

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what recent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 10, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Fats Domino

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

On a fewiconic moments in the career of a pioneering, legendary rock ‘n roller.

1)     “The Fat Man”: Domino’s first hit under hisdebut recording contract with Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records,co-written with his frequent producer and collaborator (and an influentialartist in his own right) Dave Bartholomew and recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s J&MRecording Studios on Rampart Street, wasn’t just the first rock record tosell a million copies (although it did hit thatgroundbreaking number by 1951). It also embodies rock’s profoundlycross-cultural origins, on so many levels: from Domino’s own French Creoleheritage (his first language was Louisiana Creole) to Matassa’smulti-generational Italian American New Orleans legacy, from Chudd’s childhoodin Toronto and Harlem as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to AfricanAmerican artist Bartholomew’s time in the US Army Ground Forces Band (anintegrated band despite the army’s segregation in the era) during WWII. It tookall those individuals and all those legacies to make “Fat Man” and get Americanrock music rolling.

2)     “The King”: Over the next couple decadesDomino would record many more hit records and albums, with “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955)and “BlueberryHill” (1956) the two biggest smashes. A February1957 Ebony magazine featuredubbed him (on the cover no less) the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.” But it was anoffhand line from another “King,” more than a decade later, that most potentlyreflects Domino’s status and influence. On July31, 1969, Domino attended Elvis Presley’s first concert at the Las VegasInternational Hotel; during a post-concert press conference, a reporterreferred to Presley as “The King,” and he responded by pointing at Domino andnoting, “No, that’s the real king of rock and roll.” At the same event Elvis tookan iconic picture with Domino, calling him “one of myinfluences from way back.” I’ll have a bit more to say about Elvis and hisinfluence in a couple days; but regardless of any other factors, thisrecognition for Domino from one of the most famous American rockers in historyillustrates just how iconic Fats was within (and beyond) the industry.

3)     Katrina: Domino was known to be one of themost humble and grounded rock stars, and he and his wife Rosemary continued tolive in their home inNew Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward throughout the late 20th centuryand into the first decade of the 21st. Because of Rosemary’s ailinghealth they did not evacuate in the days before Hurricane Katrina hit the city,and in the storm’s chaotic aftermath their home was flooded and Domino andRosemary were feared dead for a couple long days. But it turned outthey had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter, and in 2006 and 2007 Dominomade triumphant returns to the city and the music world: first with his 2006 albumAlive and Kickin’, the proceeds from which benefittedTipitina’s Foundation; and then with his last public performance (and first inmany years), a legendary May 19,2007 concert at Tipitina’s. If there had been any doubt that Dominorepresented New Orleans just as much and as well as he does rock ‘n roll, theseculminating iconic moments laid them forever to rest.

Lastgroundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 9, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

On twoways to separate a forever-linkedpair, and one non-tragic way to pair them.

The firstway I’d separate Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens is found in a prior post: this one, where Iargue that the prominence given to Holly and not to Valens in Don McLean’siconic song “AmericanPie” (1971) is due, at least in part, to the former’s whiteness incontrast to the latter’s Mexican American heritage. I stand by that argument,and would ask you to check out that prior post before I say a bit more aboutthis famously tragic pair of pioneers.

Welcomeback! Whether you agree with my take on McLean’s song or not, there’s nodisputing that these two young musicians came from profoundly different heritages,not only ethnically but also and even more relevantly musically. Buddy Holly (1936-59)was born into a musicalfamily in Depression-era Lubbock, Texas,and grew up influenced by the countrymusic world that they were part of, including listening to the Grand OleOpry radio program. Ritchie Valens (1941-59) was born into a Mexican Americanfamily in California’s San FernandoValley, and grew up listening to and making with his community traditional Mexicanmariachi music, as well as learning the flamenco guitar that had made itsway from Spain to Hispanic America. As that last hyperlinked piece puts it, thoseinfluences made Valens a pioneer of Chicano rock, while Holly might best bedescribed through the country-rock hybrid knownas rockabilly. Both of those heritages and influences were unquestionablypart of early rock, but, to echo and extend the point of my earlier post, Ibelieve that our collective narratives have tended to prioritize country/rockabilly,making it that much more important for us to add Valens and the legacy of mariachimusic in this era (and beyond).

Despitethose important differences, however, there are also important ways to linkHolly and Valens, even if we leave aside their shared tragic endpoint. To citeone striking example: Valens’s youthful successes are well known, as he signed a record dealjust after his 17th birthday and by the end of that year was performingon the Dick Clark Showand at the ApolloTheater; but Holly was an equally impressive teen prodigy, starting his first bandat the age of 17, openingfor Elvis Presley while still just 18, and signing hisown record deal at 19. Popular music has long been defined by teen idols, butI feel that sometimes the narratives suggest that that trend evolved over time,or at least became more pronounced in eras like the 80s(for example). But in truth, some of early rock ‘n roll’s most prominent and popularartists were teenagers, immediately establishing this evolving genre as notonly directed at teen audiences, but frequently created by teen artists aswell. A story that we can’t tell without the forever linked pair of Buddy Hollyand Ritchie Valens.

Nextgroundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 8, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Chuck Berry and Little Richard

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

On a pairof foundational icons whose stories represent some of the worst and best ofrock and race.

Lists area famously contested way to commemorate musical history, but also one of the mostcommon ways to do so—and for both reasons I have no qualms aboutstarting a post on Chuck Berry and Little Richard by noting that the pair ofmusical pioneers account for no less than nine of the top 27 rock and rollsongs of the 1950s per this (I’m sure quite authoritative and impossible todispute) list. And intruth, while that list and all lists might be made for good-natured disputes,there’s simply no arguing with the fact that we can’t narrate nor commemoratethe origins of rock and roll without a central place for Charles EdwardAnderson Berry (nicknamed the “Father of Rock & Roll”) andRichard Wayne Penniman (nicknamed “thearchitect of rock and roll”; a nickname perhaps bestowed by himself, butwhat’s more rock and roll than that?!). They’re far from the only ones, as Ihope this week’s series will make clear—but at the same time, if I were togoing to narrow it down to just two groundbreaking icons (there’s that listidea again), I think I’d have to go with Chuck and Richard.

While theyhave much in common, then, it’s fair to say that Chuck Berry and LittleRichard’s respective stories and arcs diverged quite a bit, and not just in theways that the careers and lives of any two distinct artists and individualsalways would. After dominating the charts, airwaves, and rock tours throughoutthe mid- to late-50s and into the early 60s, Berry’s career took a precipitousdecline in 1962 when he was chargedand convicted under the Mann Act and sentenced to three yearsin prison, an arrest and sentence that I can’t help but believe were tiedto the power structure’s racist fears of both Black sexuality and rock androll’s cross-cultural influences on young (white) people. To be clear, it seemsto be genuinely the case that Berry transported a minor with whom he was in asexual relationship across state lines, making him legally culpable under theMann Act; but I would note that just a few years earlier, in 1957, the whiterocker Jerry Lee Lewis had famously marrieda 13 year old (and his cousinto boot) and was to my knowledge never charged nor arrested, andcertainly never convicted nor jailed, for doing so. Moreover, after graduallyrebuilding his career, in 1979 Berry was once againsentenced to jail for doing something that numerous artistshave done and likely continue to do—getting paid in cash to avoid paying taxes.

WhileLittle Richard was not without his share of criticisms and controversies—manyalso related to issues of sex and sexuality, sinceRichard was a truly groundbreaking artist who consistently crossedboundaries around those issues, dress and appearance, and many relatedlayers of identity (although he also went through frustratinglyregressive periods)—he avoided any such legal challenges andmaintained his striking 1950s success throughout the subsequent 60+ years ofhis career and life. Moreover, Richard similarly and even more influentiallycrossed boundaries when it came to race and music, as exemplified not just bythe constant covers of his works by white peers (including Elvis Presley, who toldRichard in 1969 that he was “the greatest”), but also by his influences on TheBeatles—the group opened for Richard on some early 1960s tour dates, andRichard apparently taught Paul McCartney some of his vocalizations in theprocess. The history of rock and roll can’t be told without remembering theracism and double standards faced by artists like Chuck Berry—but at its heartI believe it’s a profoundly cross-cultural and boundary-crossing genre, and noone embodied those trends more than Little Richard.

Nextgroundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 7, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Bill Haley

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

On the limitsbut also the importance of mythology in the story of early rock ‘n roll.

Accordingto Haley’s Wikipedia page, the liner notes for BillHaley and His Comets’s 1955 albumRock Around the Clock (featuring the title sing, which reached #1 70years ago this week and fully established the artist and band at the forefrontof the emerging genre of rock ‘n roll) included an overtly mythologized accountof Haley’s ascent to stardom: “When Bill Haley was fifteen he left home withhis guitar and very little else and set out on the hard road to fame andfortune. The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, werehard and poverty-stricken, but crammed full of useful experience. Apart fromlearning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he workedat an open-air park show, sang and yodeled with any band that would have him,and worked with a traveling medicine show. Eventually he got a job with apopular group known as the 'Down Homers' while they were in Hartford,Connecticut. Soon after this he decided, as all successful people must decideat some time or another, to be his own boss again – and he has been that eversince.”

As thephrase “continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner” overtly indicates, this narrativeof Haley’s early career is far from exact (to put it mildly). To cite just oneparticularly striking contrast, Haley not only got steady work as a cowboy yodeler in the1940s (during his late teens and early twenties), but for much of that decadewas one of the nation’s most prominent and successful yodelers, performing underthe stage name “SilverYodeling Bill Haley.” He also fronted his own band during that time, TheFour Aces of Western Swing; perhaps that’s what the liner notes mean by “behis own boss again,” but saying that on the notes for a Comets record makes it seemas if it’s that 1950s band to which the phrase refers. Which is to say, Haley’sstory, like that of most artists who make it big, was a long-developing andmulti-stage process; and given that rock ‘n roll only really emerged in the1950s, it makes clear that his process and stages included genres and stylesquite different from the rocking one that he and His Comets would embody.

On theother hand, liner notes for a rock album aren’t necessarily intended to be ahighly detailed and precise biography—nor, indeed, would we want them to be.Just like an album cover or a music video (a medium not yet invented in 1955 ofcourse) or even a concert performance, those notes are part of the mythmaking,part of the ways in which artists and bands and songs and albums are made intosomething larger than life, presented to audiences as an entertainment that we’llwant (no, need) to experience. If that’s still true today (and I’d say itdefinitely is), it was significantly more true in the first years of rockmusic, when the genre was anything but a sure thing and its performers had toscratch and claw to create a foothold on the landscapes of music and popularculture. That Bill Haley and His Comets did so, and so successfully at that,isn’t just a reflection of their rockin’ hits (although they had a number ofthem to be sure)—it’s also an illustration of the importance of mythmaking.

Nextgroundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 5-6, 2025: Keeping the Critical Patriotic Conversations Going!

[As theauthor of a book onthe contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikinglyrelevant. So for this year’s July 4th series, I wanted to share& expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of criticalpatriotism from across our history, leading up to this special post hoping forfurther conversations!]

I hopethat the excerpts from Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotismthat I’ve shared all week have not only highlighted that book’s profoundrelevance to our current moment, but have also made you excited to check outand talk about the whole project! If that’s the case, I wanted to make oneoffer and one request of y’all:

The offeris one I’ve made many times before but always mean, now more than ever: I havean electronic copy of the book’s proofs, and would always be happy to send it alongto anyone who’s interested. Feel free to leave a comment here or to email me (brailton@fitchburgstate.edu) andI’ll get the book to ya!

And the request,whether you ask for a copy or not, is if you can think of communities andaudiences with whom I could talk about the book—from students/classes to libraries/museumsto book clubs/organizations to podcasts to anything and everything class—I’dreally love to hear about them, and/or for you to reach out to them and keep meupdated (again, email works great). I believe this book and all that itincludes couldn’t be more present in our current moment, and I’d love thechance to talk about it at any and every point!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Youknow what to do, and thanks in advance!

July 4, 2025: Models of Critical Patriotism: Thoreau

[As theauthor of a book onthe contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikinglyrelevant. So for this year’s July 4th series, I wanted to share& expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of criticalpatriotism from across our history, leading up to a weekend request for furtherconversations!]

On two interconnectedtexts through which the naturalist and activist embodied critical patriotism.

The bookexcerpt: “[Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s Concord neighbor, friend, and protégé, theauthor and naturalist Henry David Thoreau(1817–1862), expressed in one of his most prominent actions and works adistinct and more critical form of active patriotism. In late July 1846, whenhe was about a year into what would be a two-year sojourn in his cabin at WaldenPond, Thoreau happened to meet Concord’s tax collector, SamStaples. Staples asked Thoreau to pay unpaid poll taxes, and he refused,citing his opposition to both the Mexican American War and the concurrentextension of slavery into new American territories, themselves two directreflections of the violent and divisive effects of myths of Manifest Destinyand national expansion. Thoreau would spend a night in the Concord jail beforea family member paid the tax against his wishes, and he turned that experienceinto the source for two interconnected texts: his January and February 1848lecture series “The Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation toGovernment,” delivered at the Concord Lyceum; and his 1849 essay “Resistance to Civil Government,”published by his fellow Transcendentalist and reformer Elizabeth Peabody in aMay 1849 collection entitled Aesthetic Papers and posthumouslyre-published under its more well-known name “CivilDisobedience.”

In thatessay, Thoreau advances a clear argument about the active patriotic duty ofeach American if the nation is to move closer toward its ideals. “To speakpractically, and as a citizen, …I ask for, not at once no government, but atonce a better government. Let every man make known what kind of governmentwould command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it”(Thoreau’s emphasis). He connects that argument to an alternative, stillcelebratory but more active account of the “Revolution of ’75” and its legaciesin his own moment, noting that “I think it is not too soon for honest men torebel and revolutionize.” And he ends with a critical patriotic vision of anAmerican government and community that lives up to the founding celebrations ofliberty and equality, writing, “I please myself with imagining a State at leastwhich can afford to be just to all men.” Thoreau’s active patriotism, expressedin this essay and embodied throughout his tragically short life, weds theTranscendental emphases on the individual and the unfolding present to anargument that it is the expansion of justice and equality to all Americans,rather than the expansion of the nation’s territory, which should be America’smanifest destiny.”

Earlierthis year, for a Patriots’ Day installment of my Saturday Evening PostConsidering History column, I connected those Thoreau moments and texts toanother even more overtly critical patriotic one, and the reason why I’msharing this particular post on July 4th: Thoreau’s speech “Slaveryin Massachusetts,” delivered at a July 4th, 1854 anti-slavery rallyin Framingham, Massachusetts (and inspired by the AnthonyBurns saga from earlier that year) and then turned into apublished essay later that year. Thoreau’s culminating, impassionedcontrast of the Burns case with Patriots’ Day celebrations at Lexington andConcord—“As if those three millions had fought for the right to be freethemselves, but to hold in slavery three million others”—makes for a perfectcomplement to another critical patriotic speech I’ve writtenabout often in this space, Frederick Douglass’s “Whatto the Slave is the 4th of July?” (1852). Two authors andactivists, and a number of interconnected texts of theirs, that can serve asexemplary models of critical patriotism, on this holiday and every day.  

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Models of patriotism you’d share?

July 3, 2025: Models of Critical Patriotism: Carlos Bulosan

[As theauthor of a book onthe contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikinglyrelevant. So for this year’s July 4th series, I wanted to share& expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of criticalpatriotism from across our history, leading up to a weekend request for furtherconversations!]

On one ofour most poetic and powerful patriotic passages.

The bookexcerpt: “While the Joads [in John Steinbeck’s novel TheGrapes of Wrath] experience some of the worst of the period’soppressions and destructions, the Filipino immigrant, migrant laborer, andauthor CarlosBulosan (1913–1956) experienced those and much more besides. Bulosan immigratedto the United States in 1930 at the age of 16, and for the next decade workedas a migrant laborer throughout the Western U.S., witnessing not only theeconomic and social hierarchies and divisions that Steinbeck depicts, but theera’s exclusionary prejudice and violence targeting Filipino Americans,including constant police brutality, outbreaks of racial terrorism such as the 1930Watsonville, (California) massacre, and legal discriminations such as the1934 Tydings-McDuffieAct and 1935 FilipinoRepatriation Act. As I trace in my book Wethe People, those anti-Filipino exclusions were a defining element ofearly 20th century America, and reflect the ways in which the Depression’smyths affected immigrant and minority communities with especial force.

Bulosandocuments all those exclusions and horrors in depth and with graphic detail inhis first book, the autobiographical novel Americais in the Heart (1946). But from its title on, that stunning workoffers a critical patriotic perspective, one that refuses to turn away from allthat Bulosan has experienced and witnessed yet likewise refuses to abandon hisfundamental belief in America’s community and ideals. In the book’s finallines, he expresses that vision of the nation with particular clarity andpower: “It was something that grew out of the sacrifices and loneliness of myfriends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines—somethingthat grew out of our desire to know America, and to become a part of her greattradition, and to contribute something toward her final fulfillment. I knewthat no man could destroy my faith in America that had sprung from all ourhopes and aspirations, ever” (Bulosan’s emphasis). That final “our” isto my mind intentionally ambiguous, encompassing not only Bulosan’s family andcultural community, but all those Americans whose struggles and hopesconstitute the idealized nation that he, like [John] Dos Passos and Steinbeck,imagines and contributes to.”

I’m not goingto pretend I can follow up with anything that will be as eloquent as whatBulosan already wrote there, but I do want to add one thing to my own analysisof that beautiful closing passage. I really love that Bulosan links not onlyhis “brothers in America” (by which he means his actual brothers, but of coursealso the broader Filipino American community) but also his “family in thePhilippines” (by which ditto on both levels) to this process of knowing, becomingpart, and contributing to America’s community, tradition, and finalfulfillment. Far too often, even those of us who fully support the equal placeof immigrant communities in the United States act as if it is only those folksin the U.S. who are part of that national identity. But the truth, as anyonewith any experience of immigration in any way knows well, is that thesefamilies and communities and cultures maintain global connections, and thusmake them part of our American story and identity as well. Making that case, asBulosan does quickly but potently, is a profoundly critical patrioticperspective.

Lastpatriotic model tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Models of patriotism you’d share?