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Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024)
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Caroline Alt
Hello everybody and welcome back to New Books in History, a podcast channel by the New Books Network. I'm Caroline Alt. This year Sinners, a movie about the power of the blues by director Ryan Coogler, shocked Hollywood after it unexpectedly grossed over 300 million in the box office. A couple years ago, Elvis Foundation Baz Luhrmann's Burning Love Spectacular swept major award nominations. Clearly, America has a continued interest and appreciation for the sounds of the South. Today I'll be talking to Dr. Michael Bertrand about his 2024 book Southern History Remixed on rock and roll and the dilemma of race, published by the University Press of Florida as part of their Southern Descent series. From the music's 19th century origins in the American south to the Jazz age and the blues to gospel music and Pentecostal performance, to bar dance radio and black radio programming up through the era of Elvis. In Southern History Remixed, Michael Bertrand analyzes the significance of rock and roll and the position the music held amongst listeners leading up to and during the south civil rights movement for racial equality. Bertrand highlights the shadow rock and roll cast over the long standing racial divides of the south and the culture war it stoked as the popularity of black artists and artistry grew amongst audiences across racial and economic lines. This book stands at the intersection of the region's social and cultural histories, as Bertrand makes a solid case for the necessity of studying the sound of the south in tandem with studies of the region's complex racial histories. I'm excited to introduce my guest, Dr. Michael Bertrand. Michael Bertrand is a historian of the American south and the postmodern United States, studying the interrelationships between race, class, class, gender, region, and generations, particularly as they have evolved within the dynamics of popular music, popular culture, memory, and social change from the late 19th through the 20th and 21st centuries. Michael, welcome to the show.
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Oh, thank you, Carolyn. Thank you for having me over.
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Caroline Alt
Okay, so before we get into discussing your book, Southern History Remixed, on rock and roll and the dilemma of race, I was thinking that we could talk about your background as a historian and this book. I know, as an expert on all things Elvis, but there is so much more. You do?
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Yeah. Thank you. It's interesting. The first academic job I had, actually, I went over to a history department, and I was with the whole faculty, and they were asking me questions and things. And then this one faculty member was late, and she came in, and the first thing she said was, I've never interviewed an Elvis scholar before. Well, I'm not really an Elvis scholar. I mean, I'm a scholar of the American south with an interest in popular music. And so, yeah, I am interested in Elvis Presley as a representative of that music and of the South. But my interest really is in Southern culture, history and music and race relations and class relations. And what really got me into this was when I was growing up, I grew up in a working class, working class household. My father works for the railroad. My mom pretty much did whatever she could to help end me. And these were people that would basically do anything to help anybody. And I was fascinated by that. But I was also sort of torn by watching in the family. And when certain issues came up in terms of people getting out of their place, whether it would be women or whether it would be children or whether it be African Americans, they changed. They really did. Their whole personality changed. And it made me curious, and I really wanted to figure this out. And they were really big fans of music, and they were in country music and big band music, and they were into even soul and Lizzie and blues. And I was like, you know, I didn't understand. And so it came through a quest for me. And I'm surrounded by music my entire life, Whether it was stereos in my house, radios, little tiny record Players, Jude boxes. We go to places where there were jute boxes and everything else. And so I was surrounded by music. It was so important. And it was even more important, it seemed to me, growing up, than politics. My family knew anything, everything about Johnny Cash or Percy Sledge. They could tell you just about anything. Elvis Presley. I never really heard politics discussed at the dinner table, but I heard music all the time at the dinner table. And so when I. Even in high school, I went to high school and wanted to do. When I was a senior, I wanted to do a research paper in a history class that was combined with an English class. Two instructors, and I wanted to do something on music. And they were like, you can't do that. You can't do something that's not each creek, and it's not English, obviously. And so I got to college. I'm thinking, well, when I finally get to college, I'm going to have classes where they're going to talk about music in history. Nope, they're not. And I was so curious as to why they did not do that. And so when I finally got to graduate school, I said, this is what I want to do. You know, I really want to try to. I really want to try to bring music into. Into history and understand how. What the music meant to the people and how they use it as a voice, however limited that might have been. And so I've been on a quest my entire adult life, I guess, trying to bring music into historical studies. But it's been fun. I've enjoyed it. It's really been. For me, it's been very humbling and fun. But also I've learned a lot other aspects of Southern history by going through the music. Yeah, yeah.
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Caroline Alt
Kind of elaborating on this. How did you start working on Southern History Remixed? And how does it fit into your research or as an elaboration on your previous works like Race Rock and Elvis?
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Well, the Race Rock and Elvis thing started basically because my mother was a huge Elvis fan and we heard Elvis all the time. And then when Elvis Presley died in 1977, in the summer of 1977, it was almost like a family member had died. The grief within my family, not just my mother, but several members of our family, and people were calling us up to say they were sorry. And it just. It really intrigued me on how that it meant so much to everyone. And so when I did get to graduate school, I thought, I want to try to find out what this is about. And. And so I did my master's thesis looking at basically Elvis Presley is a historical figure. And then my dissertation on Elvis Presley and race relations and the civil rights movement. And so in doing that research, again, it wasn't just about Elvis. And I found out there was so much more to understand. And so this book, Southern History Remix, is somewhat of a prequel. I know that's kind of common today in movies with prequels that come up something like a prequel in terms of understanding not just the immediate context of Elvis Presley's rise. We're trying to go back a little further, go back a little bit further into the late 19th century, in the post Civil War, into the New south area and to understand what was going on there. And that really, again, it's about studying Elvis Presley, but Elvis Presley as a representative of something else. And the way that I perceive Elvis is more like a consumer rather than a performer. And so I see him as a consumer and I see him as basically representative of a generation of consumers who came of age in the late 19th, excuse me, late 1940s, early 1950s. And so I wanted to dig deeper into that. I wanted to dig deeper into what was it, what was the culture that he came up in, what was it that basically was. Was there both to encourage him, but in many ways to discourage him. And so I wanted to go back and try to figure that out. And. And so. So yeah, it's basically what I wrote him in. I wrote him in the wrong order. I should have written. And then I should have written the other one on race, rock and Elvis.
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Caroline Alt
I think that will be a great kind of segue to get into talking about the book more specifically. So right from the top, Your book cites W.E.B. du Bois and how he's putting his faith in music as a vehicle to achieve the enormous task of gaining racial equity. Essentially, he's saying that the notion of studying popular music is a means to understand our past. It's actually not new, it's just overlooked. So elaborating on that more specifically in Southern History Remixed, you suggest that the rise of rock and roll in the mid century south has been largely overlooked as an indicator of social change or to reference a series title that it's part of, it is overlooked as a form of Southern descent from the norm. So can you speak more to what music can reveal or offer to moments of significant social change and more precisely, what music can reveal about a place to use kind of like the common catch, all that you use complicated as the American South?
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Yes, well, I think Du Bois is. Was a very perceptive intellectual and I think he looked at. I think he looked at the world around him and he didn't break it down into, you know, history or sociology or, you know, he saw the whole thing. So it was an organic realm. And so I think when he looked at music and I think, you know, he's the gift of black music. And basically what he saw was an. An opportunity in the south, particularly in the south, where it would be the music that would serve as the engine to get people to see other people not by their skin color, but by their souls, by their inner selves. And so, and that was in his book the Souls of Black Folk that came out in 1903. And so, interestingly enough, at the same time, and I mentioned this in that same section with Du Bois, there's. You had John Sharp Williams, who was a Mississippi senator, Congressman, well educated man, the largest landowner in like Yazoo County. He was somebody who had gone to the University of Virginia, he had gone to Vanderbilt, and he had actually gone to Oxford. And so he was a well educated man. But he never, obviously, in terms of his writing, in terms of what he ever said, he never read Du Bois. He never read Du Bois. You know, that's one of the things about Southern history that is so intriguing to me and so fascinating is the tragic aspect of it. It is so tragic in terms of basically two peoples, particularly from the descendants of West Africans, the descendants of British, Celtic or whatever, but how they have lived together, how they have worked together, but in many ways they never knew each other. And in some cases, particularly in the case of like a John Sharp Williams, never wanted to know, really know. And I find that so tragic. And so his whole thing, writing at the same time as Du Bois, he's basically telling the Mississippi Historical Society at their annual meeting in 1903, he's telling these people that history, what history is in Mississippi and the south, to total. What history is about here is to basically prevent any recognition of the interaction between black and white and the creation of a common culture. And that is what history is about here. And that's basically, you know, make sure that this never comes to light, that basically African Americans and whites in the south would come together culturally to deny that cultural interaction. And then of course, you get Ub Phillips a little bit later. And so what I'm with Du Bois, for me, is that. And then with Williams, and then we'll talk more, I guess, about UB Phillips and the south, shall we? And remain a white man's country. It creates a tension, There is a tension within Southern culture within Southern history. There is a tension here between basically what Du Bois is arguing and then what John Sharp, Williams and UB Phillips would be arguing. And so, to me, that's the interesting aspect of all this, is that tension, because out of this tension comes possibility. It comes possibilities of change. And I think when we look at music in the south and we look at the various genres that come out, you know, we can look at jazz, or we can look at rhythm and blues and gospel, rock and roll, hip hop. I think what we see is that there's always. According to Du Bois, and he was correct in predicting this, that there's always sort of this attack against the white supremacy that is so much interweaved with the politics, the economics, the social mores. But there's always this tension because music is always sort of undermining it. Undermining it all the time. All the time. All the time. And again, these consumers, which I'm really interested in. And again, it's really difficult. And, you know, this, Caroline, that consuming popular music, popular culture, we never really know exactly what consumers are thinking when they consume. You know, we. What we can do, though, is we can. We can kind of study the context. We can study the context, and we can study the other things that are happening at the same time, and we can make some deductions about what we think is going on. And that's where I think the study of popular music and history is so valuable, because we can bring in maybe a different voice. And it's complicated. Again, going back to that thing. It is complicated, but I think it is possibilities that are so significant here. And I think that the boy set that up. I think he set it up for the future. And. And again, he, you know, later on, because he. He lives a very long life. Later on, in 1956, he was interviewed by someone, and they asked him about Elvis Presley. He was very dismissive of Elvis Presley because he thought Elvis Presley was just sort of this, you know, this person who was appropriating or misappropriating African American music and acting the fool with all the dancing and everything else. And so he didn't see it. You know, by the time he was in his 80s, in the 1950s, he didn't see that it was significant. But overall, I think he set. To me, the way I see the south is that he set up really a paradigm in terms of understanding how Southern history was affected by music. Music provided some sort of undermining sort of force that was always there, often not recognized. But still there. I think he was Lewis Morton, who was an African American newspaper publisher you wrote for. He actually published an African American newspaper, which African American newspapers are extremely significant here because they often provide a perspective that you don't see in mainstream newspapers. And so Martin basically wrote the Michigan Chronicle that he saw popular music as sort of silent. And that's kind of ironic here, kind of leading a silent revolution in race relations. I think that's going along the same lines as we dubois. You know, it's interesting too. It's rock and roll music. Later, Cashbox, one of the trade magazines, the trade magazine that was geared towards jukeboxes, but it had a much broader appeal. Cashbox came out at the same time as the Nat King Cole. And we'll talk about Nat King Cole later, the Nat King Pole attack. And it pretty much said, what better way for people to understand people different from themselves than through music? How better, you know, how much quicker can you learn through music than through any other means? And so again, repeating. Pretty much the voice is the same, is that same theme that goes throughout. So, yeah, I think the voice really helped me a lot in understanding, I think, what was taking place.
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Caroline Alt
Absolutely. It's a. It's an incredible thread that you've found that kind of weaves its way through so many different thinkers and academics of the south and even great publications. So in your book, you. And you kind of touched on this. You introduced the central theme of Southern history by UB Phillips as a master narrative before delving into your explanation of remixing the master, which I thought was very interesting. So can you discuss what you mean by remixing the master more here? And along with that, where do you find Southern history remix sitting within that kind of existing historiography of the South?
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Okay, well, I really was interested in terms of the sort of the wordplay, remixing the master in a recording set situation. And when commercial recording, basically when you have a master that's recorded, and then technology, technological changes that came later, you were actually able to go in to the master recording and perhaps capture some things that were not necessarily captured earlier or not heard. You could actually go in and enhance the context. You can bring in different sort of voices, different sort of instrumentation, you know, all through the use of technology with tape and everything else. And so remixing the master, basically, again, is when you take a master recording that was done and you are able to enhance it and bring to the fore in the studio, bring to the fore elements that basically have been lost, that have been sort of not included for whatever reason. And so what I want to do with Ub Phillips, because unfortunately, Ub Phillips wrote a piece for the American historical review in 1928, in the midst of the Jazz Age, called the Central Theme of Southern History. And while he talks about, while he writes about in this essay, basically the 19th century south, Ub Phillips was very much influenced by the present, and he was very much writing not to the past, but to the present. And so what I argue is that he was very concerned about the changes that were taking place with modernity. The Harlem Renaissance troubled him, I think, but I think jazz troubled him. And it's interesting that at his university, for most of his teaching career, he taught at the University of Michigan. And at the University of Michigan, in the mid-1920s, the president of that university actually came up and complained publicly that students at the University of Michigan were not taking their studies seriously because they were too infatuated with this new Jasten. And so it's hard to believe that Ub Phillips would not have been influenced by that thing happening on his own campus. And so I think when he wrote that the south shall, shall be and remain a white man's country, he's writing that the Negro should be made innocuous. He's basically saying they should be seen and not heard. I think he's basically referring to what's happening with the music. And we know that he was into music. And this is interesting too. We're going to talk maybe a little later about surprises that I ran into during this whole research thing. If you look at. And Ub Phillips was. He published quite a bit articles, but he had two major books, American Negro Slavery and Life and labor in the Old South. Now, if you look at the indexes of those and you're looking for music, you won't find anything. You won't find references to instruments, you won't find music to singing. You won't find references to anything about music, either one of those books. But when you read through the books, when you actually read them, it is full of references to music. It is like full of Things talking about the, you know, having. Having dinner on the ground and some sort of religious revival and that music is so important. Or you have talking about African Americans at Christmas time, who basically are singing and then just singing all the time. All the time. And so when you start looking at what he does with music, and despite the fact that it is not officially recognized in the index, this guy is. This guy is looking at music all the time. And you look at his American Negro slavery. In the very beginning of it, in the preface, he actually describes a scene. He describes a scene of basically people. He's a. He's in Georgia at the time, at a. It's right during beginnings of World War I. And so he's actually at a military installation working there. And there are African Americans who are working there. And he describes them. Basically, they're singing, and he describes their singing, and he describes them in a way that's very stereotypical. One of the things about Phillips is that he came of age at the same time that we see blackface minstrelsy in the south really come to the fore. And so much of his writing about African Americans, despite the fact that, you know, he was considered at the time as the foremost historian of slave in the American south, interestingly, there were still many people around who had been enslaved, and he never interviewed them. He relied on planters, records and things with the plantation. But many of his characterizations, if you think about Kenneth Stamp, who later ruled in slavery, Du Bois, when Du Bois reviewed American Negro slavery, he said, these are not real people that he's describing. He's describing minstrel characters. His characters are basically from a minstrel show. And so he was very much influenced by the music. And I think about George Tyndall, another historian, Southern historian, who said that anybody of that generation and further, were all influenced by popular music and the minstrels of. They were just because it's context. I remember Linda Gordon said, you know, like, we think about music, music is background noise, right? Well, music is just background noise, but background is context, and context is the key. So if you can understand the context of when Ub Phillips was writing or, you know, anybody, you can understand kind of where they're coming from. And so that. That's sort of where I come from too. Did I answer Ub Phillips question or just does that go off?
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Caroline Alt
I. I think I. I totally think that you did. And I think you, through this conversation, have been kind of getting at this next question I have, which is kind of. That none of this really would have been popular. Without the rise of technology like radio and records, which, as we know, are very slow to get to the south comparatively. So, however, you also cite instances where this innovation was actually used to create a regressive landscape in this modernizing movement. So what insight do you have to share on the role of technological change in Southern music history?
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Well, I think, again, what's interesting in the south is that in many ways the south has been somewhat isolated, it's been somewhat insular, but it's never been completely cut off. You have always had musical groups coming into the south, and you've had the technology coming to the south, whether it be recordings or radio or what have you. What is interesting, though, it seems, is that what happens in the south and Southern culture is that. So the Southern culture incorporates the technology to go along with the culture. So it doesn't necessarily change the culture, but it sort of enhances the culture in many ways. But there are exceptions to that. And again, that goes to like, you know, with Martin talking about the invisible revolution, obviously, you know, one of the keys, I think, is looking at the rise of. Well, if I can say this about something we may talk about later in terms of the Nat Keen coal attack. And in Birmingham in 1956, when those individuals attacked Nat Keen Cole on the stage, one of the guys, one of the men basically stood up and yelled, let's go. Grab that. And that was sort of the rallying cry to do it. Now, obviously, everybody in that auditorium, it was the Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham, everybody in that auditorium, they understood that we're not talking about raccoons, the ringtail things. They knew what he was saying. So to me, what happened with that is fascinating in terms of. And this is again where the music can be leading to regressive cultural landscapes. Back in the 1880s and 1890s, we see the rise of basically songs that reiterate stereotypes, racial stereotypes, most importantly. And this is a time, again, technology in this point, it's not recordings, it's not going to be records, it's not going to be. It's sheet music. Sheet music in the 1890s is basically the way that popular music is sold. And so the sheet music they had these folios to cover would basically have the song title and the authors and the composers, but they'd also have images. They'd have these images. And so what you saw in these images were these very stereotypical and very animal like portrayals, particularly of African American men. What is interesting for me is that these things are coming out at the same time. Emerged at the same time as Jim and Jane Crow, segregation laws that separated people racially and the rise of lynching. The rise of lynching is basically the violence toward African Americans, particularly African American males, but not exclusively. It's really unprecedented. It's unprecedented. Now, again, the sheet music, the lyrics are all talking about African American males as animal. Like, they have these. These features that basically are unhuman. They dehumanize people, and they, you know, so to me, it's like, okay, is that just a coincidence, or is there a connection between the lynching and. And. And the music? Then it seems to me like maybe the music is not creating something new, Although I think it is, because we see the term which is going to become common in southern white vernacular. It's basically being popularized by the music. It's the music that is popularizing that term. And so, again, when you see the connections, that's again, going back to looking at popular culture and how is it perceived? What did it mean to people? But when you see, on one hand, all the lynching, all the violence, all the laws, and you see the music, that is basically suggesting that's what you should do. You know, I think there's a connection there. And so, again, talking about the regressive aspect, I think that popular music is actually. It doesn't have to be necessarily progressive. It can be very. And we see the continuation of blackface, Matrice in a Cell. We're going to see this. You know, the born dance programs, like here in Nashville, we have the Grand Ole Opry, and we have wsn. And early on in the history of these programs, up until the mid 20th century, from the 1920s to 1950, you see some of the most popular acts on the Opry, a country show, one of the most popular acts would be actually a blackface, a blackface act. And so again, you get into, why? What was that doing? So, yeah, I think there are some. Again, there are ways in which people can see popular music as a force for change, but sometimes it's not, sometimes it isn't. And so, yeah, that makes it complicated.
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Caroline Alt
Exactly where it keeps coming up.
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
So.
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Caroline Alt
So in your book, you also quote Billboard editor Paul Ackerman's proclamation that in one aspect of the South's cultural life, integration has already taken place, and it's occurred in the field of popular music. This observation is a very, like, demonstrative recognition of the role pop culture has played in politics or real life. Kind of what you were talking about earlier or just now, and from your studies of Billboard Charts to advertising on radio stations. Corporatized consumerism is a crucial part of understanding popular music in this era. So I was wondering if you could speak more to the role of that consumer aspect of rock and roll and what that played for listeners and their shifting politics, kind of. What does Elvis mean?
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Dr. Michael Bertrand
Sure. One of the things that I found interesting is that when you look at. Because again, you can look at the Billboard charts and you can look at the Billboard magazine Variety and Cash Box and these various. And so it is somewhat unto its own self. It does actually talk about almost like a separate history that's taking place here. At the same time that you see public school desegregation. Well, we can look in the 1950s and see. We read mainstream newspapers about public school desegregation. But you can also look in Billboard and see that there's something going on. The desegregation of record charts and desegregation of. Because the popular music industry. The popular music industry is one of the most. Has historically been one of the most segregated entities Right. In American society. And so, again, what we see happen. So this is underground sort of upswelling is important because I think the music industry itself was not necessarily prepared for what happened with rhythm and blues becoming so popular with all these kids. But the one thing I wanted to. A couple of things is the historian, Southern historian C. Van Woodward. At the same time that you see rhythm and booze catching on with All Kitchen with South black and white. And then rock and roll sort of shoots off on that. C. Van Woodward is talking about how he recognizes. He's talking about his bulldozer revolution. He recognizes that there is something else going on in the cell to him. He recognizes some sort of generational upheaval divide. A generational divide that's happening right there. Right when he's, you know, in the. In the early to mid-1950s, he sees something going on and he talks about how this change seems to be just as important as. As any other changes that go on with the bulldozer revolution and the industrialization and the urbanization and so forth. And so he never names rock and mill. And in fact, I was very fortunate in my career that I actually corresponded with Woodward. And we actually met and hung out together for a couple of days. And I asked him about rock and roll music and he's like. Didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. It was, you know, he was into jazz and he was. But no, he didn't like rock and roll music. And so, you know, that's interesting, too, in terms of taste and everything else. But. But, yeah, but he did recognize at the time that there seemed to be something happening on a generational level that seemed to be a change, that one generation is different from another. And so after I wrote Race, Rock and Elvis, I had someone. I was teaching at the University of Mississippi in the center for the Study of Southern Culture. And somebody told me that Nelson Mandela was coming to Memphis to accept an award from the National Civil Rights Museum. And in his speech. I watched his speech. In his speech, he basically said, I can't come to Memphis. And he said, you know, and he said. He did say that this is probably politically incorrect. I can't come to Memphis and not talk about Elvis Presley. Because Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley basically represented a generational change. And that what he was thinking of, I think that he was thinking about Elvis Presley as more of a consumer than a performer. And that you have people like Elvis. And this is what Steve Van Woober is probably referring to. You had people like Elvis. There were tons of people like Elvis throughout the south, you know, whether it be Atlanta or Nashville or what have you, Memphis. But they were just getting tuned in to something different. And they were. Their. Their ideas about race were changing. So Nelson Mandela was very. Was forthright about that. And he said he was basically celebrating that generation, that rock and roll generation. And so I think that what's happening there. I think those people who attack Mackenzer understand that too. And that's what worries them so much. So, yeah, no, I. I do see that. When I look at this and I look. I look at the Billboard charts and I look at what's happening there. And there are some changes. I mean, there are some. You see developments occurring that appear, you know, because you have crossover. The crossover you had, you basically had. Elvis Presley was a country when he came up. Carl Perkins, they were considered a country. All of a sudden, these guys are on R and B charts, on national charts, on local charts, because Billboard has it broken down. They had it broken down into different cities in different regions of the country. And so they basically have. Where, you know, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins and some other rock and roll performers are on these rhythm and blues charts. You go on with that. And you see when Elvis appears and Carl Perkins appear, particularly in front of African American audiences. And the most famous one for Elvis is in front of the Goodwill Review in 1956. He wasn't performing, and he just basically was there as a consumer. He wanted to watch. And when he's introduced on the stage by Rufus Thomas. The whole place goes nuts. And all these young kids, all these young kids stormed the stage because they want to get a hold of Elvis. Something similar happened in Chicago. In Chicago, Carl Perkins was part of a package. And what they did was in the 50s, they had these rock and roll, rhythm and blues packages where you had basically like a Little Richard, a Carl Perkins, a Buddy Holly, you know, different people who were on the. On the play bill. And so they appeared in Chicago for an all African American audience. And Carl Perkins was on the. On the. On the playbill. Well, everybody in there thought it was Elvis. You know, this is like the summer of 1956. They all thought it was Elvis. They stayed, they stormed the stage thinking that it was Elvis Presley. So, yeah, I think there's something going on here that historians tend not to see what's happening here, but there's something rumbling underneath. To me, something going on.
- [38:25]
Caroline Alt
Absolutely. And so moving on to kind of like my final question, something that we've hinted at throughout this conversation. At the beginning of the book, you replay and then discuss the night that white segregationists attacked Nat King Cole at his own concert in Alabama event that shows just how aware white audiences were of the impact of popular music. Yet right at the end of the book, you mention that an inspirational source for this project was James A. Weschler's response to the event in the New York Post, the one in which he explicitly rounds on bystanders of this event as encouraging this hate crime by doing nothing. I had never heard this story before, and I'm sure, sure there are more instances of discovery. As you prepare to write this, I kind of want to know more about the discoveries you made and the research you found and how it impacted the project going forward.
- [39:23]
Dr. Michael Bertrand
Okay, sure. Well, the Nat King Coal thing is basically, that's an episode in itself that is extremely, I think, pivotal in understanding what's going on here. Nat Kingle was part of a larger package. They had. They actually had several other performers on this bill, but because he was an African American performer with a popularity with white consumers in Birmingham, they basically had to have segregated conditions. And so they created a situation where they have one show for whites and one show for African Americans. And so they appeared first show where, again, all these various acts came on and then cold came on. Now, at the same time, what's happening? Like, in the week and a half before this, there was a group, the White Citizens Council. And the White Citizens Council was in groups across the south that had formed following the Brown V. Board Supreme Court decision. And they basically, the White Citizens Councils were made up of four unquote respectable races, generally speaking. And they were like bankers and lawyers and what have you. But in North Alabama and North Alabama, there was this White Citizens Council where it actually was made up of a more ragtag group of people. And one of the leaders of the group was actually a former disc jockey. Going back to how you can use music different way. Former disc jockey. His name was Azer Carter. Ace Carter. And Carter, what's interesting about this whole thing is that many of these people are going to be involved in other things. Ace Carter was someone who later on would become a major speechwriter for George Wallace. And he's the guy that in 1963, when George Wallace was inaugurated as governor, if that speech that Wallace gave about segregation now, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, is the only line that does. Well, that's actually Carter. Carter wrote that thing. So Carter was here in 1956, and he was very much concerned. He and his citizens conference group was very much concerned with the influence that Rhythm and Bloom through the radio, through record stores, through Jude bosses, the influence it was having on white teenagers. And so they started a campaign at the beginning of 1956 to try to get all these entities to ban Rhythm and Boom's records, to get them off the radio, to get them off the jukebox, to get them all. And they met. No success at all. They had no success at all. And you had all these kids that were basically interviewed and they were saying, you know, we're not interested. We just want the music. We just love the music. And. And so they weren't getting anywhere. They were not getting anywhere at all. They had a meeting, a larger state meeting for the. For the Citizens Council. They met down in Montgomery, and it was a huge meeting, the largest meeting, political meeting that Alabama had at that point. And it was a meeting that was extremely volatile. We had several speakers, but including James Eastland from Mississippi and James Eastland Delta planter. James Eastland was a senator. He was down there. He was basically got these people into a rousing pitch where it almost became a mob. He almost created a mob right there. And they actually had leaflets passed out beforehand that were misquoting the Declaration of Independence by basically using it to say that we need to kill African Americans at any chance we get. And so he's getting them all roused up. We can't let the NAACP come in here and use our kids in this type of thing. And so. And you got all these people riled Up. So they get back home to Birmingham. And they had just recently, they had just recently, Arthurine Lucy had attempted to enter the University of Alabama graduate school. And it was these people, this white Citizens Council group with Ace Carter and the other guys here that they had actually gone to the campus in Tuscaloosa at University of Alabama and they have had a riot and they had basically used all sorts of hate speech. They bought eggs with them, rotten eggs that they used. They threw them and everything else. So these people, when they get back home after this Citizens Council meeting in Montgomery, they get back home and they realize we have to basically stand out anything that is calling for integration and desegregation. And so they. And actually what we see was a speech with Ace Corner. Ace Carter is going to say something to the effect, you know, these R and B rock and roll disc jockeys and performers, they're just as bad as the worst of the civil rights activists because they are basically working inside. They are getting into the homes of these kids and they are basically destroying segregation from the inside out. And so he tells, you know, he's. He's out there speechifying and so he gets everybody riled up. And they're going to meet like 150 people at a gas station before Nat King Cole comes to town. And they plan, they plan this attack. I'm not sure what they're going to do, but they're going to do something because they have to make a statement to get everybody aware of this virus that is infecting these kids. And so they suggest, let's bring, let's bring these rotten, rotten eggs with us. That way we can, you know, do the same thing they did with Arthur and Lucy. And they got, you know, Arthur and Lucy was basically suspended, kicked out. And so they succeeded what they would get there and it brought a whole bunch of publicity. They want to do the same thing here. And so they, they end up going to this, to this concert and they do attack coal. And, and basically there's, you know, the whole thing is ironic because they have a. There is a British band that's playing with it, a white band and African American performer. They basically. They had three curtains separating Cole from his own. Cole separated from his own trio. And then behind that was another curtain that was separating them from the white orchestra. And so they attack Cole. And eventually they are arrested and they are brought in front of the audience. The audience boo. The audience just goes, you know, ballistic on them and boos them. And they, the, the guys that are arrested, they shout back at them basically saying that, you know, the worst epic that you can think. And so. So, yeah. So the interesting thing though, and this is what Jimmy Weschler brings up in the New York Post, all these people were there and there were like 4,500 people, an all white audience. They all knew something was going on. The attack lasted several minutes. They basically stood there or sat in their seats and did nothing. Now, Weschler is a Jewish editor for the paper. And so he's recalling, he writes that in his editorial about what happened in Germany and everything else during the recent Nazi thing, but. And the Holocaust. And so he basically says, you know, these people were. They obviously were not part of it, which is a positive. They didn't attack with them, but they didn't stop it. They didn't stop it. And then you have to start asking questions, why didn't they stop it? What was keeping them from stopping it? Now, for me, it's interesting because like you said, I think it does. What they were doing was somewhat. I guess we could argue that it somewhat encouraged a hate crime. But it also, for me, that they didn't do anything at the same time that they apparently were opposed to also says something else. And I often think about this attack is somewhat of the civil rights movement in the South. And microcosm it is. The modern civil rights movement is meeting up with the modern south and the south is changing. The south in 1956 is not the same south as 1936 or 1926. The south is changing. And so to me, it seems like, again, they're bystanders, which is a negative thing. But if you think about rock and rollers as well, you're not going to see a whole lot of rock and rollers, either performers or consumers. You're not going to see a whole bunch of rock and rollers and picket lines or in demonstrations against, you know, segregation. But that. So again, Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn, who was teaching up at, I think Millsaps. I think Millsaps, I forget. But no, I think he was teaching at an African American school in Jackson College, and he was part of the movement and getting his students and demonstrating everything else in Mississippi. He said he wrote in 1961 in the midst of all this, he basically wrote that if white Southerners had wanted to prevent the civil rights movement from happening, they could have done so. They could have risen en masse and basically stopped it. But they didn't. And they didn't. And it's complicated. They didn't because they had different Priorities now, the south had changed. The south had become part, you know, the South. You know, talk about C. Van ruins earlier, bulldozer, revolution. In many ways, by the 1940s and mid-1940s or later, the south was entering the 20th century for the first time. By mid century, the south is in. And so the south is becoming much more affluent, it's becoming much more prosperous. And African Americans are enjoying that prosperity too. Which leads to another issue here. I think the key to all of this, really the key to all this is the rise of African American radio programming. African American radio programming, I think, is the key to bringing about all this change. Because you got consumers who are white kids who are listening to African American radio programming at the same time that African American kids, who we often think of as like John Lewis, you know, Diane Nash, well, they're all listening to the same thing. And you know, some of the things that are being said on this African American radio program, it's not just the music. The music is the key draw. But there are also some political commentary that's being pushed out there, despite the fact that most of these stations are white owned. But they also are. The personalities at the mic are generally African American. And so they're presenting a message that basically, from my perspective, it seems interesting, like tensioning and the tensioning like a W.E.B. du Bois. So here you have white kids listening to African American DJs that are presenting a message about African Americans being human, that they're basically equal, that they're basically people who are just like us. Then you have them, at the same time you have, in another space, you have. Where they have the segregationist politicians, like in Eastland, for instance, they're basically yelling top of their lungs that, you know, African Americans are not like us. They are even. Not even human beings. And so to me, it creates that tension. What do these kids, what do these kids do? How do they think? How do they. Obviously not all of them are going to become civil rights activists. They don't. We know that. But at the same time, maybe going back to Howard Zinn, maybe by not being out there protesting against the civil rights movement, basically, maybe that's progress as well. And so obviously it's not the same as those people who put their bodies and everything else in line under fire. But yeah, so I think the popular music can help us to at least see this and think about it and kind of consider it. Like, what does it mean? What does it mean? One of the things that really surprised me, because I have watched Eyes on the Prize, you know, for years and years and years, use it in classes and. And did everything with the public school desegregation and seeing all the footage. But one of the things that surprised me when you actually get. When you start looking into the schools that were being desegregated and you start looking at, you know, some of the demonstrations that took place. Actually, I don't know that there was a. One sort of way of thinking on the part of these white kids. A lot of times, like in Central High School and in Little Rock, you actually had, in the mornings, these kids would go to a disc jockey show, and it was an African American show, African American radio show. They go there. We see the same things here in Tennessee and in Georgia, but in Arkansas, too, other parts of Arkansas. And so what I found interesting is that when you start looking at the individual schools, a lot of times the demonstrators who are against desegregation, they're actually out there yelling at the white students who are in the school, trying to get them to come out, and the white kids in the school refuse to come out and join them in their protest. And so, again, trying to think about this in terms of, you know, are these kids that are listening to the radio show, like in the morning, walking into the, you know, into the radio station was only a few blocks from the school. And so they're going to that. To that radio station, and they're listening to this, like, early morning dance party. And so they're listening, you know, to the music. And, you know, you even had these segregationist leaders that were sitting there saying, I don't know what's wrong with these kids. I don't know what's wrong with these kids. They don't seem to know what they're doing. But these kids are basically saying, oh, you know, we're not going to go into the. In the protest against desegregation. And they're actually in the school building and they're being yelled at and attacked by the white kids outside. And so that. That totally surprised me. And I see this on several, several different places where it seemed like it was much more complicated than what we might see sometimes on footage. It was more complicated. More complicated. I think that's, you know, I mentioned in the book, you know, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King as well. Andrew Young was saying in a meeting with. With activists who are getting ready to go into Mississippi to do, you know, one of the surprising things that I found was this was surprising. He was speaking to a group of people getting ready to go into Mississippi to basically the voting rights and voting education. He was telling them that, you know, I think, listen to the music. And he said. He actually said, you know, I think Elvis Presley and rock and roll music is just as important as the church in bringing about change. It's like, whoa, you know, that's cool. I was like, wow. And, well, he's right there in the middle of it, Martin Luther King. And in 1967, he speaks to a group of disc jockeys and tells them, you did the work. You know, that made our work so much easier, you know, by exposing all these kids. So, again, I. I just, you know, I'm proselytizing here, but I just think the music is so significant in documenting change. We just got to come from a different angle, perhaps. But it's a. To me, it's. I've enjoyed the ride.
- [55:47]
Caroline Alt
No, absolutely, it is. I found that Southern History Remix really made me believe in the power of music, something that I already believed in. But, you know, to have the actual, like, quotes in front of me about how instrumental it can be in social change and was just so fascinating, I guess. Actually, this will be my last question of this interview. This is just such a great book. I really enjoyed reading it. And I wanted to know, what are you working on now?
- [56:18]
Dr. Michael Bertrand
Well, what I like to do, and I'm doing some work with it so far, is I would like to see. Because this book sort of takes the generation from race, rock and Elvis and looks at what they had to deal with specifically. And so. And it sort of takes them, in this book, in Southern History Remix, it takes them into the mid-1960s. And, you know, the polls, the Gallup polls, the Harris polls, the other polls that they actually show that there seems to be something happening in terms of what their feelings were toward racial change. But we do know that something happened by the time we get to the mid to late 1960s, something happened that changed him again or did something that changed a lot of them. And so, wow. I'm interested how. Interested in how, you know, George Wallace comes into power, like in the late 60s. I'm interested to see if what this generation did. And so what I'm looking at really is I'm going back, you know, going back to the Baz Luhrmann movie earlier. I'm going Back to the 1968 special where Presley is going to do the if I Can Dream to End the show. And again, it's obviously a reference to Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech, you know, four years earlier or five Years earlier. And so I'm trying to play with that and. And to get. It's really interesting if you. They have something on YouTube now, and I wasn't aware this. My daughter brought it up to me. You know, they got people who watch, like, they watch the if I Can Dream performance with Elvis look, and then they make comments on it, and they talk about it, and they spend a whole hour commenting on it. And so I've been watching these things, you know, for a while now with. You have these young African Americans who are basically watching Elvis Presley saying. And they're like, wow. And they seemed really genuinely surprised. Genuinely like, you know, and so I'm interested to see. I really want to find out how. Use that as a starting point in terms of. Okay, so it is like, possibilities. And obviously it's talking about a change. Like Sam Cooke. A change is going to come. It's like, you know, and so it's. I want to see. I want to use that. Because one. One thing that is really troubling is, is we have a tendency, I think, historians in general and population in general, of basically seeing white Southerners as one sort of entity, that they have same thoughts from the very beginning of the south until now. I think it's more complicated than that. And I'm not saying that, again, this, like this bystander generation, they weren't going to be the kids who went out there and demonstrated against segregation. The political scientist V. Oki, Southern Politics and state nation in 1949, he did a study talking about political patterns in the south, voting patterns in the South. And what he discovered was that between one quarter, only one quarter and one third of Southerners, black and white, actually participated electorally. And there was reasons for that. The Democratic Party was problematic in a single party, and then also, you know, issues of repression, obviously. But basically, both white and black Southerners voted only between a quarter and a third in the South. Okay. So if they're not getting there, you know, if we're looking at politics as the engine that drives Southern history, but yet you have like 75% or 70% of the people who actually don't vote. What kind of engine could that be? Right. I'm not negating politics, but what I'm saying is there may be some other voices as well. Music. Music consumption. Not just the people who perform music, but the people who actually consume the music. What are they saying when they purchase music and they go and see concerts and they do this? And so, again, I'm not negating politics. I'm Just saying that how can we base all of our. Put all of our eggs in that basket when that basket is so small and, you know, for whatever reason that, you know, they're not voting? And so apparently the numbers have not really dramatically improved in the 50 years since then. And so how do people express themselves is what I'm interested in finding out. And so I like to find out. I like to, from my own understanding, I would like to find out what exactly did they do? You know, they love the music opposite. What else did they do or did they not do anything? Why didn't they do anything? It's the same thing with that crowd in the coal thing that King Cole. Okay, sure, they just stood there, or they sat there. They didn't do anything. But the question is, why not? Why didn't they do what built them from doing something? So that's what I want to take this generation that I've been looking at for a while. I like to extend them to when they get, you know, 50, 60 years old. What happened to him? So, yeah.
- [61:38]
Caroline Alt
Absolutely. That is so interesting. I can't wait to find out where that all those threads go. On that note, I'd like to thank Michael for being on the show today and sharing more about his recent book, Southern History Remixed on Rock and Roll and the dilemma of Race.
- [61:53]
Dr. Michael Bertrand
Well, I want to thank Caroline for inviting me on this show. This has really been a great, great discussion. I really enjoy all the questions and everything we did with the going back and forth.
- [62:04]
Caroline Alt
Yeah, this was great. So Southern History Remixed on Rock and Roll and the Dilemma of Race by Michael T. Bertrand is published by the University Press of Florida and is available wherever you get your book.
- [62:30]
Dr. Michael Bertrand
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