Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 71

July 13, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime

[Now that we’rereally in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for someof our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertimefavorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On two distinctbut equally significant ways to AmericanStudy the Fresh Prince.

He had had hisfamous failures, but by the time Will Smith released 1991’s “Summertime”(under his rap name the FreshPrince, and in conjunction with his partner and co-writer DJ Jazzy Jeff),the multi-talented artist was back on his path toward world (or at leastcultural) domination. He had just completed the first season of his TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,which would over its six seasons become one of the decade’s most popularsitcoms; he was only two years out from his acclaimed film debut in Six Degrees of Separation(1993), and only a handful from his first mega-hits, Bad Boys (1995) and IndependenceDay (1996); and “Summertime” itself became one of his first huge hits,reaching #4 on Billboard’s singleschart and #1 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart. It wasn’t quite the Willenium yet in 1991, but the occasionwas at least approaching.

I’m not sure ifit’s possible to argue with Smith’s uniquely successful presence in 1990sAmerican culture (has any other artist had simultaneous hits in TV, film, andmusic?), but how we AmericanStudy that presence, well, that’s a more complexand open-ended question. On the one hand, I think it’s possible to see Smith’srap career, and more specifically a song like “Summertime,” as a crucial stagein the genre’s evolution from something locallyand culturally grounded (in urban, African American communities andexperiences) to something more mainstreamand marketable (more, you could say, Bel-Air). “Summertime” even opens withlyrics that explicitly contrast its vibe and identity with other contemporarysongs: “Here it is the groove slightly transformed/Just a bit of a break fromthe norm/Just a little something to break the monotony/Of all that hardcoredance that has gotten to be/A little bit out of control.” Seen in this light,the song’s sample of (and closing allusion to) Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness” (1974)indicates that it is a “new definition” (as that closing lyric puts it) of suchmusical and cultural traditions.

On the otherhand, this reading of Smith’s music and/or persona would seem to me problematicin precisely the same ways as were critiquesof The Cosby Show for beinginsufficiently representative of particular versions of the African Americanexperience. That is, Will Smith’s raps were no less (and no more)“representative” than Tupac Shakur’s, and vice versa—each are first andforemost the expression of a particular artist and voice, but each can alsoconnect to multiple possible communities and experiences, and thus communicatethose to their audiences. Seen in that light, “Summertime” can be read as aprofoundly intertextual conversation with tradition, one that opens with averse that entreats its audience to “think of the summers of the past” and thenalludes in each of the next two verses to “Summer Madness,” that source of itsmusical sample. Whether that tradition is specifically African American orbroadly American (or simply human) depends in part of the listener’s ownidentity and perspective, and of course the different possibilities are farfrom mutually exclusive. Indeed, they’re all part of that complex culturalentity that was and is the Fresh Prince.

Last summer jamtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts onthis song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 12, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summer in the City

[Now that we’rereally in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for someof our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertimefavorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On whether allart is political, and why the question matters more than the answer.

In the summer of1966, The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City” becamea mega-hit, staying at #1 on the Billboardsingles chart for three consecutive August weeks. The song’s famous bridge,which features a series of car horns and ends with a jackhammer, is only themost overt of the many ways in which the song perfectly captures its titlesubject, especially for young city dwellers (like the Spoonful themselves): the contrastbetween sweltering days and cool (figuratively if not literally) nights; theway in which the former seem to move so slowly when all you want is to get tothe thrills of the latter; the grit and sweat that cake necks and sidewalks,bodies and spirits, making all feel nearly dead yet also somehow more alive atthe same time. Given how many of those young record buyers lived in cities likeNew York and Los Angeles, it’s no surprise that “Summer in the City” became oneof the season’s and year’s biggest successes.

Of course, thesummer of the song’s release also featured “hot towns” that had nothing to dowith the thermometer: 1966 was the third of what would turn out to be fiveconsecutive years of “Long HotSummer,” periods of urbanunrest and riots connected to the decade’s simmering racial, cultural, andsocial tensions, activisms, and conflicts. Indeed, oe of the first suchconflicts had erupted in the Spoonful’sown New York City two years earlier, following the July 1964shooting of a Harlem youth by a white police officer; by 1966 few majorurban areas had been left unaffected. It’s difficult to imagine, from myadmitted temporal distance, any 1966 city dweller thinking of summer in thecity without connecting it to these seasons and years of strife; given earlyrock and roll’s combinationof racial interrelationships and social radicalism, it’s even moredifficult to think about a rock group penning such a song without having thelong hot summer in mind. But on the other hand, there is absolutely no evidencein the lyrics for “Summer in the City” (nor in the band’s smiling performancecaptured at the first link above) that it had such less cheery contexts.

By a certainline of critical reasoning, allart is political precisely because it has such contexts, whether it overtlyengages with them or not (and indeed, by a certain line of reasoning thefailure to engage is itself a political act, even in the most pop of popularculture). But to my mind, the goal shouldn’t be to figure out whether toimplicate a song like “Summer in the City” in its political and historicalcontexts, or even how to read the song in light of them—the goal, and I wouldsay it represents a central AmericanStudies project, should be to think aboutboth The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Long Hot Summer as part of American culture inthe summer of 1966 (along with, for example, the iconic surfing film The Endless Summer).There would be all sorts of ways to think about the combination of thesedifferent moments and texts, events and voices, but the vital first step issimply to recognize their co-existence, the way in which any Americansummer—every American season—is comprised out of all of them.

Next summer jamtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts onthis song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 11, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summertime Blues

[Now that we’rereally in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for someof our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertimefavorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On what a summerclassic reveals about the voices of youth.

I listened to alot of early rock and roll growing up (something about having a couple babyboomers for parents during the era that first defined the concept of“classic rock” and produced countless “Best of the1950s” type collections, I suppose), and few songs stood out to me morethan Eddie Cochran’s “SummertimeBlues” (1958). I don’t know that any single song better expresses the clashof youthful dreams and adult realities on which so much of rock and roll and popularmusic more generally have been built, and I definitely believe that Cochran andhis co-writer (and manager) Jerry Capehearthit upon the perfect way to literally give voice to those dueling perspectives:in the repeated device through which the speaker’s teenage desires areresponded to and shot down by the deep voices of authority figures, from hisboss to his father to his senator.

Coincidentally,Cochran himself died veryyoung, at the age of 21, in an April 1960 car accident while on tour inEngland. Cochran’s death came just over a year after thetragic plane crash that took the lives of three other prominent young rockand rollers, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. There’s obviouslyno direct relationship between these two accidents, nor would I argue thatthese artists’ youthful deaths were the cause of their popularity (all fourwere already popular prior to the accidents). But on the other hand, I thinkthere’s something iconic, mythic even, about rock and rollers dying young—or about,more exactly, ournarratives and images of such figures—and I believe it’d be difficult toseparate those myths from the idealistic and anti-authoritarian attitudescaptured in Cochran’s biggest hit. That is, it feels throughout “SummertimeBlues” as if the speaker’s youthful enthusiasm is consistently being destroyedby those cold adult responses—and melodramatic as it might sound, the loss ofchildhood dreams can certainly be allegorized through the deaths of the kindsof pop icons who so often symbolize youth.

Yet of coursemost young people continue to live in, and thus impact, the world far aftertheir youthful dreams have ended (“Life goes on long after the thrill of livingis gone,” to quote anotheryouthful anthem), and in a subtle, unexpected way Cochran’s song  reflects that human and historical reality aswell. When Cochran’s speaker tries to take his problem to more officialauthorities, he is rejected by his senator for a political reason: “I’d like tohelp you, son, but you’re too young to vote” is the reply. In 1958, when“Summertime Blues” was released, the national legal voting age was 21, and so the20 year old Cochran could not vote; but over the next decade a potentsocial and legal movement to lower the voting age would emerge, in conjunctionwith the decade’s many other youth and activist movements, and in 1971Congress passed and the states ratified the26th Amendment, which did indeed lower the eligible age forvoting to 18. Being able to vote certainly doesn’t eliminate all the otherproblems of teenage life and its conflicts with adult authority—but it doesremind us that neither the gap nor the border between youth and adulthood arequite as fixed or as absolute as our myths might suggest.

Next summer jamtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts onthis song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 10, 2023: AmericanStudying Summer Jams: Summer Wind

[Now that we’rereally in the dog days of summer, a series on AmericanStudies contexts for someof our most enduring summertime songs. Add your responses or other summertimefavorites for a crowd-sourced weekend bbq—I mean, post. Okay, both!]

On performance, authorship,and collective memory.

Frank Sinatra’s “SummerWind” (1966) was far from Old Blue Eyes’ most successful song, but thenostalgic ballad of summer love lost was certainly a hit, rising to #25 on the Billboard singles chart and #1 on theEasy Listening chart, and helping to make its album, Strangersin the Night, one of the most successful of Sinatra’s long career. YetSinatra’s “Summer Wind” was not only not the first recorded version of thesong, but it was released less than a year after that first version, Wayne Newton’s, which itselfhad reached #78 on the Billboard singleschart and #9 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1965. And less than a yearafter Sinatra’s, Welsh star (and James Bond title track titan) Shirley Bassey releasedher own version of the song! Such was the culture of popular music in the1960s.

Newton, Sinatra,and Bassey were able to record and release their own verisons of “Summer Wind”in large part because the song had been composed by none of them, and insteadby an outside songwriting duo: the music was by Heinz Meier and the lyrics bylegendary songwriter JohnnyMercer.  For more than 40 years, fromhis earliest songs as a twenty-something in the early 1930s to just before his1976 death, Mercer composed the lyrics (and occasionally also the music) tosome of the 20th century’s best-known works: from “P.S. I Love You” (1934)and “Jeepers Creepers”(1938) to “Moon River”(1961) and “Days of Wineand Roses” (1962), along with more than 1400others. So there’s no possible way to see Mercer’s career as anything lessthan a triumphant success; yet Mercer was also a singer in his own right, andit’s fair to ask whether it might have been difficult to see other performersgain fame from his compositions—which might explain why Mercer released hisown version of “Summer Wind” (1974), just two years before his death.

WhateverMercer’s own perspective, the question is an important one for any student ofpopular music and culture. Does it matter that most of Frank Sinatra’shits were written by other songwriters? Does it matter that manyof Elvis Presley’s were? When we remember these hugely influential andtransformative artists, are we simply remembering their talent and presence,irrespective of these questions of authorship? (With Elvis there are of course relatedbut distinct questions of race that these issues also raise.) These arecomplex questions, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should not rememberSinatra or Presley (although it’d be possible to argue that the differencebetween Sinatra and Wayne Newton, for example, was at least partly one ofaccess to better songs). But I would strongly suggest that our collectivecultural memories need to include songwriters like Mercer far more fully thanthey do, and indeed that it is such songwriters whose works and voices can oftentruly capture the arc of American popular culture.

Next summer jamtomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts onthis song? Other summertime favorites you’d share?

July 8-9, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Talking Of Thee I Sing

[It’s beentwo and a half years since my book onthe contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’s just say itdoesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July 4thseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of places andways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023.Leading up to this special request for any and all further such opportunitiesto share the project!]

I hopethis week’s series has illustrated the continuing, crucial relevance of Of Thee I Sing and the contested historyof American patriotism. I’m always a big fan of talking about my projects andideas, but in this case I genuinely believe that our future depends on theseconversations, and that I have a small but real role to play in helping us havethem. I’ll keep looking for such opportunities of course, but I’d really loveto hear from you all withideas as well, and I am quite literally open to everything: from the morefamiliar (libraries, museums, historic sites) and the educational(classes/students/institutions of all kinds) to what might seem like a longershot but I promise is of interest as well (book/discussion groups of all types,for example). Got an idea for a place/community/conversation where we couldtalk about Of Thee I Sing and thecontested history and contemporary relevance of American patriotism? You know what to do!

Summertimeseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 7, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: “Patriotic Education”

[It’s beentwo and a half years since my book onthe contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’s just say itdoesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July 4thseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of places andways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023.Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share theproject!]

In my mainbook talk for Of Thee I Sing, I startwith two January 2021 events that together reflect the contemporary relevanceof debates over American patriotism. One is obvious, and was the subject ofanother SaturdayEvening Post Considering History columninspired by the book’s ideas as well as the one-year anniversary of thatinsurrection. But I would argue that another January 2021 event foreshadowedjust as fully what has happened over the two and a half years since: therelease (on MLK Day, no freaking less) of the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission report.I’m sure there had been other right-wing voices calling for a return to“patriotic education” before thatdocument made its vision of that concept a centerpiece; but it’s far fromcoincidental that the 2.5 years since the report have been dominated by statelaws and other efforts to reshape American education (or rather, attackAmerican education) under the aegis of that “patriotic education” frame.One of the main ideas of my own project is that for far too long and much toofully we have ceded definitions of American patriotism over to the particularversion that I call mythicpatriotism, the propagandistic, exclusionary, often overtly whitesupremacist form that is clearly driving these extremist educational efforts. Tochallenge them, we have to be aware of the long histories of both thisparticular vision and of debates and alternatives—so, as I’ll say again thisweek, let’s keep talking about them!

Specialrequest this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 6, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Critical Patriotism and the Court

[It’s beentwo and a half years since mybook on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’sjust say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July4th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of placesand ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023.Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share theproject!]

One of thevery best parts about teaching adult learning courses is that the students feelvery free to continue the conversation by email after the class is officiallydone (often years down the road, in fact, which are some of my favorite emailsto receive). As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, that happened again with thisSpring’s BOLLI course on patriotism, and with a particularly thoughtful andhelpful idea at that. The student (whom I won’t name as I haven’t gotten herpermission, but she was a great contributor throughout the course) shared aNew York Times article entitled “SupremeCourt Justices Don’t Like Being Criticized in Public, Which is a Good Reason toKeep Doing It,” calling it “a beautiful illustration of critical patriotism atits best.” As someone who has directlycriticized a Supreme Court Justice in order to advance my ideas about theworst and best of American ideals, I wholeheartedly agree; but until she sharedthe article and this perspective I really hadn’t thought of that practice as anembodiment of critical patriotism. I’m definitely convinced, however, and thisadditional and important application of our class conversations really drovehome how much Of Thee I Sing can helpus analyze in our contemporary politics, debates, and culture.

Lastpatriotic post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 5, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Adult Learning Conversations

[It’s beentwo and a half years since mybook on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’sjust say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July4th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of placesand ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023.Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share theproject!]

Podcastsand columns are both great ways to share a book project, but for me nothingbeats a true conversation with a full audience, a community that serves more asactive fellow conversants than just passive listeners. As I’ve discussedcountless times in this space, I’ve never found a better suchconversational community than adult learning courses and programs, which is whyI’vetaught for multiplesuch programs for more than a decade now. This Spring I had the chance to returnto one of those programs, Brandeis’BOLLI, after many years away, and decided to focus the five-week course ondifferent layers to Of Thee I Sing (Icalled the class “What We Talk about When We Talk about Patriotism,” natch). Itwas a phenomenal series of conversations as always, but for its instructor wasespecially inspiring as a way in which we—and I do mean we, myself entirelyincluded—consistently found new and compelling contemporary applications forthe book and its different categories of patriotism. I’ll highlight in tomorrow’spost one specific example that a student shared with me after the class wasofficially completed, so here will just make clear the overarching takeaway: that,to my mind, we’ve never had a moment more defined by our debates overpatriotism than the last 2.5 years have been. Sounds like a job for me!

Nextpatriotic post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 4, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Black Legislators, Past and Present

[It’s beentwo and a half years since mybook on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’sjust say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July4th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of placesand ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023.Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share theproject!]

I’vetalked in many different settings, including onthis blog, about the role that online writing has played over the last 15years of my career in helping me develop pretty much all of my ideas, includingthose that became my books (at least books three through six, and probably agood bit of book two as well). In the case of Of Thee I Sing, I can trace that process specifically through aseries of Saturday Evening PostConsidering History columns: from thisone in January 2020 on Martin Luther King Jr. and critical patriotism; to thisone exactly a year later on critical patriotism and the AmericanRevolution; to thisone right when the book was coming out in March 2021 on critical patrioticwomen. So it was fun to circle back to my project’s ideas and categories for anew column this past April, using that moment’s controversy around twoBlack state legislators in Tennessee to discuss our contrasting butinterconnected histories of racist imagery and critical patriotism. I believethat’s a great example of how a frame like critical patriotism can help usunderstand and analyze current events, one more reason I’m determined tocontinue sharing this project everywhere I can!

Nextpatriotic post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

July 3, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: What the Gerrymander? Podcast

[It’s beentwo and a half years since mybook on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’sjust say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July4th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of placesand ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023.Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share theproject!]

One of thebest things about giving aseries of book talks is that every one, every setting and audience and conversation,opens up distinct and significant angles on the project. That’s doubly truewith podcasts, of course, where the entire conversation is driven by thequestions, perspectives, interests of the podcast hosts. Over these two and ahalf years I’ve had the chance to talk OfThee I Sing on overtly political podcasts like BurtCohen’s Keeping Democracy Alive, journalistic ones like Axelbank Reports History andToday, AmericanStudies scholarly ones like Impressionsof America, and many more. A couple months back I got to return to thepolitical realm with a conversationabout all things patriotism on StephanieGerber Wilson and the HooserVictory Alliance’s excellent What the Gerrymander? Podcast. It was a great conversationin all sorts of ways, but I was particularly inspired by the chance to connectmy two most recent books, both from Rowman & Littlefield’s American Ways series:putting Of Thee I Sing and those contestedpatriotisms in direct conversation with Wethe People and the battle between exclusionary and inclusive visions ofAmerica. I think it really helped me frame my ongoing work and goals even moreexplicitly, and I highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance!

Nextpatriotic post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?