Certainly black and white songwriters were lining up to get the attention of Boone, or of Dot Records' chief Randy Wood. Indeed, Boone landed four singles on the 'Billboard' R&B singles chart. While nobody's going to confuse a Pat Boone recording with one by Little Richard, Domino or Big Joe Turner, several of his R&B-influenced songs were legitimate hits, and had their own kind of charm. You see this ring?' He had a big diamond ring on every one of his fingers, and he pointed to the most prominent of his diamond rings and said, 'This man bought me this ring, with this song.' And we sang 'Ain't That A Shame' together."Years later,Domino would bring Rick Nelson onstage to duet on I'm Walkin',a Domino original that Nelson had taken to the top on the heels of Fats' own version. "When he heard I was in the audience, he called me up on stage and he said to the crowd, 'I want you all to know something. "I went to see…Domino at Al Hirt's place in New Orleans,"Boone recounted to Smith. It kind of hurt."ĭomino, who profited from writers' royalties as well as indirect exposure, may have changed his mind in later years. "It took two months to write, and he put it out almost the same as I did. "When I first heard I didn't like it,"Domino told biographer Rick Coleman. It would change later on…but we were sort of like catalysts who helped R&B become rock and roll." In fact, the original artists hoped and prayed that their records would get covered by someone who could get airplay, because it meant that their records were going to get even more recognition in their own field. They were not going to play an R&B record by Chuck Berry, or Fats Domino, or Little Richard. …And to Joe Smith, ".Everybody was aware that the original artists were not going to get played on 90% of the radio stations in America. It was pop artists doing R&B music that focused the spotlight on the original artists and opened the door." People don't understand the necessary role the cover versions played. But when we would do a more polished pop version of a song, it had a chance, and it began to catch on. Deejays weren't ready to play it and people weren't ready to receive it. People were used to big bands and polished productions. It was too raw, rough, unfinished sounding, garbled – you couldn't understand all the words. But in those early days, R&B music did not get played on pop radio. Many acts, including Teresa Brewer, Gale Storm, Georgia Gibbs, the McGuire Sisters, the Diamonds, and Bill Haley were recording their own versions of R&B hits for the white market.Īs Boone himself explained to former 'Newsweek' pop critic Karen Schoemer, "The revisionist idea has sprung up, somehow, that when pop artists covered an R&B record we were inhibiting the progress, instead of enhancing the progress, of the original artists. Of course, in life nothing is that simple. But in general, the policy of the 'white' record companies covering the songs of black artists was a cruel larceny of original talent."(While Boone’s version was a cover and did compete, Presley’s came out later and only as an album cut). Many years later, Little Richard biographer Charles White wrote: "As 'Tutti Frutti' climbed the charts, it was covered by two white artists – Pat Boone and Elvis Presley.This actually helped sales of Richard's original version, as people who had never heard Rock 'n' Roll (sic) before became turned on to the new sound. The other…well, as Ruth Brown, another of the stars on the show, later put it, "Pat Boone, with them white bucks on his feet, runnin' in late from school."īrown may have been somewhat bemused by the Columbia University English Literature student wearing his signature white buckskin shoes and singing to a predominantly black audience songs that many of them recognized from earlier versions by black acts. One of the two white acts was a vocal group, the Cheers, protégés of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose hits (to that point in time) included Bazoom and Black Denim Trousers And Motorcycle Boots. Jive.' He had a strong line-up of R&B performers on the show, among them Bo Diddley, Clyde McPhatter, the Flamingos, the Five Keys, and the Turbans. While Freed's stage shows – like his trendsetting radio program – had always been integrated, this was a first for 'Dr. Jive' Smalls the opportunity to move his show from Harlem to the Brooklyn Paramount, where it opened its week-long engagement on December 23, 1955, a day following the premier of Freed's 12-day stand, downtown. Which gave competing disc jockey Tommy 'Dr. U nwilling to meet the increased rent imposed by the managers of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, New York City disc jockey Alan Freed moved his hugely successful 'Rock 'n' Roll Holiday Jubilee' to the Academy of Music in Manhattan.
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