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

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for that centennial 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 few iconic moments in the career of a pioneering, legendary rock ‘n roller.

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

2)      “The King”: Over the next couple decades Domino would record many more hit records and albums, with “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955) and “Blueberry Hill” (1956) the two biggest smashes. A February 1957 Ebony magazine feature dubbed him (on the cover no less) the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.” But it was an offhand line from another “King,” more than a decade later, that most potently reflects Domino’s status and influence. On July 31, 1969, Domino attended Elvis Presley’s first concert at the Las Vegas International Hotel; during a post-concert press conference, a reporter referred to Presley as “The King,” and he responded by pointing at Domino and noting, “No, that’s the real king of rock and roll.” At the same event Elvis took an iconic picture with Domino, calling him “one of my influences from way back.” I’ll have a bit more to say about Elvis and his influence in a couple days; but regardless of any other factors, this recognition for Domino from one of the most famous American rockers in history illustrates just how iconic Fats was within (and beyond) the industry.

3)      Katrina: Domino was known to be one of the most humble and grounded rock stars, and he and his wife Rosemary continued to live in their home in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward throughout the late 20^th century and into the first decade of the 21^st. Because of Rosemary’s ailing health 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 and Rosemary were feared dead for a couple long days. But it turned out they had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter, and in 2006 and 2007 Domino made triumphant returns to the city and the music world: first with his 2006 album Alive and Kickin’, the proceeds from which benefitted Tipitina’s Foundation; and then with his last public performance (and first in many years), a legendary May 19, 2007 concert at Tipitina’s. If there had been any doubt that Domino represented New Orleans just as much and as well as he does rock ‘n roll, these culminating iconic moments laid them forever to rest.

Last groundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What recent 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 that centennial 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 two ways to separate a forever-linked pair, and one non-tragic way to pair them.

The first way I’d separate Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens is found in a prior post: this one, where I argue that the prominence given to Holly and not to Valens in Don McLean’s iconic song “American Pie” (1971) is due, at least in part, to the former’s whiteness in contrast 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 about this famously tragic pair of pioneers.

Welcome back! Whether you agree with my take on McLean’s song or not, there’s no disputing 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 musical family in Depression-era Lubbock, Texas, and grew up influenced by the country music world that they were part of, including listening to the Grand Ole Opry radio program. Ritchie Valens (1941-59) was born into a Mexican American family in California’s San Fernando Valley, and grew up listening to and making with his community traditional Mexican mariachi music, as well as learning the flamenco guitar that had made its way from Spain to Hispanic America. As that last hyperlinked piece puts it, those influences made Valens a pioneer of Chicano rock, while Holly might best be described through the country-rock hybrid known as rockabilly. Both of those heritages and influences were unquestionably part of early rock, but, to echo and extend the point of my earlier post, I believe 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 mariachi music in this era (and beyond).

Despite those important differences, however, there are also important ways to link Holly and Valens, even if we leave aside their shared tragic endpoint. To cite one striking example: Valens’s youthful successes are well known, as he signed a record deal just after his 17^th birthday and by the end of that year was performing on the Dick Clark Show and at the Apollo Theater; but Holly was an equally impressive teen prodigy, starting his first band at the age of 17, opening for Elvis Presley while still just 18, and signing his own record deal at 19. Popular music has long been defined by teen idols, but I 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 popular artists were teenagers, immediately establishing this evolving genre as not only directed at teen audiences, but frequently created by teen artists as well. A story that we can’t tell without the forever linked pair of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Next groundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What recent 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 that centennial 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 pair of foundational icons whose stories represent some of the worst and best of rock and race.

Lists are a famously contested way to commemorate musical history, but also one of the most common ways to do so—and for both reasons I have no qualms about starting a post on Chuck Berry and Little Richard by noting that the pair of musical pioneers account for no less than nine of the top 27 rock and roll songs of the 1950s per this (I’m sure quite authoritative and impossible to dispute) list. And in truth, 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 commemorate the origins of rock and roll without a central place for Charles Edward Anderson Berry (nicknamed the “Father of Rock & Roll”) and Richard Wayne Penniman (nicknamed “the architect of rock and roll”; a nickname perhaps bestowed by himself, but what’s more rock and roll than that?!). They’re far from the only ones, as I hope this week’s series will make clear—but at the same time, if I were to going to narrow it down to just two groundbreaking icons (there’s that list idea again), I think I’d have to go with Chuck and Richard.

While they have much in common, then, it’s fair to say that Chuck Berry and Little Richard’s respective stories and arcs diverged quite a bit, and not just in the ways that the careers and lives of any two distinct artists and individuals always would. After dominating the charts, airwaves, and rock tours throughout the mid- to late-50s and into the early 60s, Berry’s career took a precipitous decline in 1962 when he was charged and convicted under the Mann Act and sentenced to three years in prison, an arrest and sentence that I can’t help but believe were tied to the power structure’s racist fears of both Black sexuality and rock and roll’s cross-cultural influences on young (white) people. To be clear, it seems to be genuinely the case that Berry transported a minor with whom he was in a sexual relationship across state lines, making him legally culpable under the Mann Act; but I would note that just a few years earlier, in 1957, the white rocker Jerry Lee Lewis had famously married a 13 year old (and his cousin to boot) and was to my knowledge never charged nor arrested, and certainly never convicted nor jailed, for doing so. Moreover, after gradually rebuilding his career, in 1979 Berry was once again sentenced to jail for doing something that numerous artists have done and likely continue to do—getting paid in cash to avoid paying taxes.

While Little Richard was not without his share of criticisms and controversies—many also related to issues of sex and sexuality, since Richard was a truly groundbreaking artist who consistently crossed boundaries around those issues, dress and appearance, and many related layers of identity (although he also went through frustratingly regressive periods)—he avoided any such legal challenges and maintained his striking 1950s success throughout the subsequent 60+ years of his career and life. Moreover, Richard similarly and even more influentially crossed boundaries when it came to race and music, as exemplified not just by the constant covers of his works by white peers (including Elvis Presley, who told Richard in 1969 that he was “the greatest”), but also by his influences on The Beatles—the group opened for Richard on some early 1960s tour dates, and Richard apparently taught Paul McCartney some of his vocalizations in the process. The history of rock and roll can’t be told without remembering the racism and double standards faced by artists like Chuck Berry—but at its heart I believe it’s a profoundly cross-cultural and boundary-crossing genre, and no one embodied those trends more than Little Richard.

Next groundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What recent 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 that centennial 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 limits but also the importance of mythology in the story of early rock ‘n roll.

According to Haley’s Wikipedia page, the liner notes for Bill Haley and His Comets’s 1955 album Rock Around the Clock (featuring the title sing, which reached #1 70 years ago this week and fully established the artist and band at the forefront of the emerging genre of rock ‘n roll) included an overtly mythologized account of Haley’s ascent to stardom: “When Bill Haley was fifteen he left home with his guitar and very little else and set out on the hard road to fame and fortune. The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, were hard and poverty-stricken, but crammed full of useful experience. Apart from learning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he worked at 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 a popular group known as the 'Down Homers' while they were in Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after this he decided, as all successful people must decide at some time or another, to be his own boss again – and he has been that ever since.”

As the phrase “continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner” overtly indicates, this narrative of Haley’s early career is far from exact (to put it mildly). To cite just one particularly striking contrast, Haley not only got steady work as a cowboy yodeler in the 1940s (during his late teens and early twenties), but for much of that decade was one of the nation’s most prominent and successful yodelers, performing under the stage name “Silver Yodeling Bill Haley.” He also fronted his own band during that time, The Four Aces of Western Swing; perhaps that’s what the liner notes mean by “be his own boss again,” but saying that on the notes for a Comets record makes it seem as if it’s that 1950s band to which the phrase refers. Which is to say, Haley’s story, like that of most artists who make it big, was a long-developing and multi-stage process; and given that rock ‘n roll only really emerged in the 1950s, it makes clear that his process and stages included genres and styles quite different from the rocking one that he and His Comets would embody.

On the other hand, liner notes for a rock album aren’t necessarily intended to be a highly 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 of course) 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 into something larger than life, presented to audiences as an entertainment that we’ll want (no, need) to experience. If that’s still true today (and I’d say it definitely is), it was significantly more true in the first years of rock music, when the genre was anything but a sure thing and its performers had to scratch and claw to create a foothold on the landscapes of music and popular culture. 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 of them to be sure)—it’s also an illustration of the importance of mythmaking.

Next groundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What recent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

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

[As the author of a book on the contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikingly relevant. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to share & expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of critical patriotism from across our history, leading up to this special post hoping for further conversations!]

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

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

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

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. You know what to do, and thanks in advance!

July 4, 2025: Models of Critical Patriotism: Thoreau

[As the author of a book on the contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikingly relevant. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to share & expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of critical patriotism from across our history, leading up to a weekend request for further conversations!]

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

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

In that essay, Thoreau advances a clear argument about the active patriotic duty of each American if the nation is to move closer toward its ideals. “To speak practically, and as a citizen, …I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it” (Thoreau’s emphasis). He connects that argument to an alternative, still celebratory but more active account of the “Revolution of ’75” and its legacies in his own moment, noting that “I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.” And he ends with a critical patriotic vision of an American government and community that lives up to the founding celebrations of liberty and equality, writing, “I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men.” Thoreau’s active patriotism, expressed in this essay and embodied throughout his tragically short life, weds the Transcendental emphases on the individual and the unfolding present to an argument 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’s manifest destiny.”

Earlier this year, for a Patriots’ Day installment of my Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, I connected those Thoreau moments and texts to another even more overtly critical patriotic one, and the reason why I’m sharing this particular post on July 4^th: Thoreau’s speech “Slavery in Massachusetts,” delivered at a July 4^th, 1854 anti-slavery rally in Framingham, Massachusetts (and inspired by the Anthony Burns saga from earlier that year) and then turned into a published essay later that year. Thoreau’s culminating, impassioned contrast of the Burns case with Patriots’ Day celebrations at Lexington and Concord—“As if those three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others”—makes for a perfect complement to another critical patriotic speech I’ve written about often in this space, Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4^th of July?” (1852). Two authors and activists, and a number of interconnected texts of theirs, that can serve as exemplary models of critical patriotism, on this holiday and every day.  

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Models of patriotism you’d share?

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

[As the author of a book on the contested history of American patriotism, every day of 2025 feels strikingly relevant. So for this year’s July 4^th series, I wanted to share & expand on excerpts from that book that feature models of critical patriotism from across our history, leading up to a weekend request for further conversations!]

On one of our most poetic and powerful patriotic passages.

The book excerpt: “While the Joads [in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath] experience some of the worst of the period’s oppressions and destructions, the Filipino immigrant, migrant laborer, and author Carlos Bulosan (1913–1956) experienced those and much more besides. Bulosan immigrated to the United States in 1930 at the age of 16, and for the next decade worked as a migrant laborer throughout the Western U.S., witnessing not only the economic and social hierarchies and divisions that Steinbeck depicts, but the era’s exclusionary prejudice and violence targeting Filipino Americans, including constant police brutality, outbreaks of racial terrorism such as the 1930 Watsonville, (California) massacre, and legal discriminations such as the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act and 1935 Filipino Repatriation Act. As I trace in my book We the People, those anti-Filipino exclusions were a defining element of early 20th century America, and reflect the ways in which the Depression’s myths affected immigrant and minority communities with especial force.

Bulosan documents all those exclusions and horrors in depth and with graphic detail in his first book, the autobiographical novel America is in the Heart (1946). But from its title on, that stunning work offers a critical patriotic perspective, one that refuses to turn away from all that Bulosan has experienced and witnessed yet likewise refuses to abandon his fundamental belief in America’s community and ideals. In the book’s final lines, he expresses that vision of the nation with particular clarity and power: “It was something that grew out of the sacrifices and loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines—something that grew out of our desire to know America, and to become a part of her great tradition, and to contribute something toward her final fulfillment. I knew that no man could destroy my faith in America that had sprung from all our hopes and aspirations, ever” (Bulosan’s emphasis). That final “our” is to my mind intentionally ambiguous, encompassing not only Bulosan’s family and cultural community, but all those Americans whose struggles and hopes constitute the idealized nation that he, like [John] Dos Passos and Steinbeck, imagines and contributes to.”

I’m not going to pretend I can follow up with anything that will be as eloquent as what Bulosan already wrote there, but I do want to add one thing to my own analysis of that beautiful closing passage. I really love that Bulosan links not only his “brothers in America” (by which he means his actual brothers, but of course also the broader Filipino American community) but also his “family in the Philippines” (by which ditto on both levels) to this process of knowing, becoming part, and contributing to America’s community, tradition, and final fulfillment. Far too often, even those of us who fully support the equal place of immigrant communities in the United States act as if it is only those folks in the U.S. who are part of that national identity. But the truth, as anyone with any experience of immigration in any way knows well, is that these families and communities and cultures maintain global connections, and thus make them part of our American story and identity as well. Making that case, as Bulosan does quickly but potently, is a profoundly critical patriotic perspective.

Last patriotic model tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Models of patriotism you’d share?