antiMUSIC is pleased to welcome industry insider Jake Brown to give us his perspective on topics involving the music business. Jake comes to us with an impressive resume that not only includes heading his own record label, but also as an established music biographer with several books under his belt. 
 

Years ago, Ike Turner, who is credited with technically recording the first �Rock N' Roll' song ever with �Rocket '88', remarked prophetically that "Rock n' Roll is just the white man playing the blues."  Consider just a few examples- that Bill Haley's �Shake, Rattle and Roll' was a remake of a Big Joe Turner tune,  Elvis Presley's first record, �That's All Right' was a cover of a tune by blues artist Arthur Crudup and Presley's smash hit �Hound Dog' was originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1953, as well as Jerry Lee Lewis's smash rendition of �Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On', which was originally recorded by the Commodores in 1954- all African American country/blues artists.  

Rock N' Roll commercially began with Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly in a time when, ironically, rock was arguably on a more racially equal footing than any other in its 50+ year history.  Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry could share the same concert bill in a co-headlining capacity, Buddy Holly and the Crickets could blow out the Apollo to an all-African American audience.  The Billboard Pop Charts were dominated by as many B-Bob groups as white crooners.  Still, throughout the later 1950s as Rock N' Roll exploded as a nation-wide phenomenon, and especially when the decade turned and the 1960s began, early rock A&R pioneers like Sam Phillips and Morris Levy saw the potential for black music in white markets on a national level as it had never existed before.  Sadly, the translation would largely leave the black musicians who had first invented and pioneered Rock n' Roll in the dust, as the suits knew this transition could only be sold to the suburban masses if this inherently black music had a white face on it.  Hence the second generation of Rock N' Roll, which began in the early 1960s and brought about the British Invasion, dominated by bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, as well as American bands like the Beach Boys, who could get away with being raunchier and more sexual with their music, image and message solely because of their skin color.  

Barring exceptions like Sammy Davis Jr., Ike and Tina Turner Review, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix, white America as always been more comfortable with its rock stars as Caucasians, especially on the part of parents.  The latter fact is supported statistically by the sheer number of white rock groups (and in turn the virtual absence of black rock groups) that have dominated the last 40 years of Rock N' Roll even though they were, in essence, playing black music.  Because of racial norms societially in the 1960s, Rock N' Roll was the only means by which to bring the blues into America's pop culture mainstream, that is until the racial reigns of tolerance would loosen in the wake of the long-overdue Civil Rights movement in the later part of the decade.  Even still, there is another school of thought that argues, in spite of the inherently racist element existent in the rock n' roll listening audience, without a white musical messenger, blues music never would have been given to any real appreciation by broader white America, and ultimately, America in general.  White-faced bands had to introduce this music, and a real case can be made that blues legends like Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, B.B. King, Sun House, and Peetie Wheatstraw are properly appreciated and recognized today because of players like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, and others, who made no secret of the fact that their roots lied with the aforementioned blues legends.  

Still, as Rock N' Roll in the later 1960s gave birth to sub-genres like Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, which dominated the 1970s and produced an entirely new generation of rock n' roll legends, predominantly including Led Zepplin, Aerosmith, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and David Bowie, blues was still ever-present in the roots of this sound.  Even if its presence was lost on most of the fans listening, it certainly wasn't on players like Jimmy Page and Joe Perry, who kept blues roots vibrant and alive in the 1970s rock n' roll sound, as did vocalists like Robert Plant, Rod Stewart, Steven Tyler, and even Ozzy Osbourne.   

Sadly, the third generation of Rock N' Roll, which would rise in the 1980s, would be its most commercial, and therein musically diluted, i.e. generic.  As such, where Keith Richards had been a derivative of Robert Johnson and Chuck Berry, and Joe Perry had been a derivative of Richards, next came players like Jake E. Lee, Brad Gillis, and George Lynch, who despite their being smoking players whose influences were Joe Perry and Jimmy page, had really lost touch stylistically with the blues roots of their genre.  There were standouts like Randy Rhodes, Slash, and Eddie Van Halen, whose blues roots were readily acknowledged in their playing styles, but by and large, the majority of 1980s rock bands had lost touch with blues' true place in rock n' roll guitar playing and songwriting. 

Hairspray, spandex, pyrotechnics, and the later 1980s worked to effectively kill off any authentic acknowledgement or celebration of the blues in the commercial sense of the word (and �Your Mama Don't Dance' by Poison, and �Once Bitten, Twice Shy' by Great White do NOT COUNT, since they were both cover tunes).  I am speaking in terms of rock bands who WROTE music that readily reflected the blues as an IDENTIFIABLE influence.  The latter was really only achieved completely, or appropriately as it would stand in a historical parallel with the legends of the 50s, 60s, and 70s in Rock n' Roll's continued evolution (in part via a ready celebration of its root influence in the blues)- by Guns N' Roses and Cinderella.   Guns N' Roses certainly were the more commercially popular of the two, and the blues root in the band's style rested largely in Izzy Stradlin's songwriting and Slash's lead guitar playing style, as well with Axl Rose in certain vocal terms.  Still, Cinderella always held an equal respect in terms of the blues derivative that was readily obvious in the texture of Tom Keifer's songwriting and playing/ vocal style, and fans responded in kind to the tune of 14 million records sold.  Keifer was always regarded as one of the genre's only legitimately talented songwriters, and in terms of the band's commercial presentation, he always made sure to reflect a bluesman/gypsy imagery, as well as thematically in the band's videos and singles that was largely singular to the genre.  
 
According to Tom in an interview we conducted not long ago, the blues roots that reflect in his songwriting and his band's sound began with a unique appreciation on his part for the blues, a discovery which began with "the first rock/hard rock stuff I heard growing up- (which) was Zepplin, The Stones, Aerosmith, Bad Company, Humble Pie, and Janis Joplin.  When I first heard that, all I knew was that I liked it.  I didn't realize that it was blues, I just liked it.  And I started figuring out, at some point, where they got it from, that it came from blues music.  Then I started going back, listening to the old blues recordings- Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Elmore James, Johnny Winters, Robert Johnson, and just started delving back, and looking what influenced Jimmy Page, and what influenced Keith Richards, and Joe Perry, all those people I admired.  I did that pretty early on, as a teenager, 17 or 18 years old.  I started getting really into James Brown too, and I think when you do that- being that my first exposure was second generation- like the 70s rock bands' interpretations of the blues.  And I got to a point where the blues was all I listened to, and when you do that, as a musician, you get to interpret those roots your own way.  I think that really affected my playing, and songwriting particularly, because all my songs are about life, and that's what blues music is about."  It was Keifer's first-hand appreciation for the blues, as the band's leader, that informed the rest of Cinderella as a group in terms of their adoption to a more core blues sound, rather than a derivative one, that might have threatened to make them more generic considering hard rock's tendency toward that shallower end of the pool in general in the later 1980s, "The players in Cinderella, we all came basically from the same place.  But I would say their (blues) influences are more the second generation of rock- Zepplin, The Stones, AC/DC, Bad Company, Aerosmith.  They didn't delve back as far into the original stuff as I did (but did adapt well)...(In terms of fusing the blues back into commercial hard rock), I don't think it was anything intentional, it was just the music I love to play, its what I grew up playing.  Its what I do, I couldn't see myself playing any kind of music really. So in that sense, I don't think there was any kind of vision, �Hey, we have to bring the blues back into hard rock.'  It just kind of happened, its what I love to play, and I had a band that came from similar roots, and it gelled with our sound, and just kind of happened." 

Cinderella's songs reopened rock fans eyes to the importance blues played as an underpinning or fundamental in Rock n' Roll in a way that they arguably never could have learned on their own, because this generation of listeners needed their hard rock idols to show them the way. Just in the way Tom's idols had years earlier, when Blues was more inherently a part of what was contemporary hard rock and heavy metal in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s.  Whether Tom Keifer desires recognition or not personally for what his band did to re-infuse and introduce the blues back into hard rock in the 1980s, historically he is deserving of an extraordinary thanks.  

For his own part, Tom seems to prefer to point any historical spotlight on the Blues' place in Rock n' Roll's annals back onto the importance of stars (Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, etc) and style of the BLUES genre, be it through an examination of how bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Led Zepplin, Aerosmith, or Guns N' Roses grew fundamentally out of that influence, or the place of Keifer's own songwriting historically in doing so.  In either scenario, Tom's history lesson for rock fans through his own songs and sound clearly appears to be: appreciate your Rock N' Roll elders, i.e. the Bluesmen as much as you do any of their Rock n' Roll offspring!  I'll defer to Tom Keifer, one of the greatest American Hard Rock songwriters of the past 25 years, and few true patriots of Rock n' Roll's honest roots in the same time, in closing, "To me, Rock n' Roll is the culmination or intersection of all American Roots Music, its country, its blues, gospel, R&B.  When you put all that together, you have rock.  So I am really kind of influenced by all those styles.  And all that music, lyrically, from a song-writing standpoint, its about life, and the ups and downs of life, the good times and bad times, love- finding love, love gone bad- its all kind of tied into one for me.  Playing guitar, writing songs, singing, its all kind of one in the same.  (I think its important) we remember that at any point in a discussion of Rock N' Roll and the blues, be it with my band, or any rock band (that the blues got us this far)."
 

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To gain some aural appreciation for the blues or Rock that truly reflects its roots, pick up a copy of Cinderella's Greatest Hits collection or �Long, Cold Winter' or �Heartbreak Station' (both masterpieces from the Hardrock Genre), or any Robert Johnson Essentials Collection, or for something perhaps more contemporary to introduce you to Johnson, pick up Eric Clapton's Crossroads Box Set!   

About the author: Jake Brown is owner/operator of Nashville-based Versailles Records and a biographer who has published several books. Click here to more details.