Mere urban legend that Richard Rodgers placed ads urging people not to buy the Marcels' "Blue Moon"?

[koganbot]

Although Wikipedia says Richard Rodgers took out full-page ads urging people not to buy the Marcels' version of "Full Moon," the article cited, by Marv Goldberg, contains an update in which Goldberg states he can't find any such ads and that Rodgers' wife Dorothy said in a 1982 Billboard interview that he loved the Marcels' version. In half an hour on Google I'm seeing the story of the ads repeated but no citations, no identification of where the ads appeared (though some specify "UK trade papers"), copy-cat wording in the claim (the word "urging," for instance), and no quoted text from the ads. Also, the claims are all posted after Goldberg's original 2006 posting. Good reasons to be skeptical.

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Speaking of blue moons and debunkery: According to two pieces in Sky & Telescope, the phrase "blue moon," meaning "rare or improbable occurrence," goes back 400 years, but the supposed derivation from "second full moon of the month," based on a misreading of a Maine almanac, only comes into existence in 1946 and doesn't become widespread until the 1980s.

Comments

Debunkathon

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The Big Fact I've always been curious about is whether or not white people are actually the majority purchasers of most rap and hip-hop music. I just saw this claim again in Questlove's memoir -- not claimed by Questlove, IIRC -- and it always makes me suspicious.

Re: Debunkathon

[koganbot]

This meme about hip-hop has almost a quarter-century history, if not longer — which doesn't necessarily make it wrong. But the trouble with the Internet — and with a lot of people's brains — is that the statement rarely comes with citations. I know there was an article (11 November 1991 says a bibliography) in The New Republic by David Samuels with the horrendous title "The Rap On Rap: The Black Music That Isn't Either," though Samuels may not have been responsible for the headline. I can't find it online, though,* so I won't take it to task in the way it probably deserves. But I do remember one of the points being that hip-hop in the U.S. sold more to whites than to blacks; the questions I had reading it way back when, though, were which hip-hop and which whites. If the number was just total sales, that could just mean that the great majority of sales of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer were to whites; but sales to whites could also have been more across the board, in every subgenre; I don't know. And I remember him not making that distinction, though don't spread this as a fact because, again, I may be misremembering, so my apologies to Samuels if I am. (If DPL has the book I should swing by and try to find out; also should see if they have any Rodgers bios.) [EDIT: And of course I don't know if Samuels was correct in the first place about overall sales. Are measures of such things easily available? Soundscan doesn't tell you the race or ethnicity of who makes the purchase.]

I remember you reblogging someone quoting someone else (a black woman) who was writing in a childishly accusatory tone to the effect that it was teen white males who were the majority buyers of the more destructive and misogynist rap and that that was the hip-hop the "media" liked to focus on and promote. Maybe it was only the white media rather than white males who were taking the rap, so to speak (and black teens who were being let off the hook?), and I do remember the author's name but since I never clicked the link or read the whole piece or remember the exact wording I'll hold off citing her. I recall you asking, in your comment, if there was any backing for the assertion.

I remember in 1991 or 1992 someone on a panel, a Latina who seemed trustworthy, saying that an overwhelming majority of the audience for Public Enemy was white (she gave a percentage, and she wasn't saying this in a way that implied that Public Enemy were illegitimate thereby). And I've heard the same of the audience for "conscious" rap. But again, for the latter, citations are infrequent, as is the identification of which whites, and so forth. Also usually absent from what I've seen (yes, that's a caveat) are smart attempts to either interrogate these claims or to ask what they actually mean.

The Web both has the capacity to work through to the sources of these claims (which is one reason I'm willing to go public with such questions before knowing the answers myself) but also has the capacity to promulgate these claims unquestioned. It's rather telling that no one who wasn't Wikipedia tried to back up the claim on Rodgers, and that so many people were willing to simply cut and paste it, without even putting it in their own words. (I myself lifted the word "urging," which is more powerful and pointed than, for instance, the word "asking.") Anyhow, if you could ask the Rodgers question on your Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr, maybe it will make its way to someone who actually knows the answer.

*It's in an anthology, That's The Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, that's up on Google books, but when I try to access it I get "image not available."

Re: Debunkathon

[koganbot]

See no hashtags on Twitter for #richardrodgers, #marcels, #themarcels, or #bluemoon, so the Web's vaunted ability to help me answer my question is questionable. Can find no mention of anti-Marcels ads in any Rodgers bio or anthology on Google books, but that might just be because such mentions are in portions of the books that are unavailable on the site. But if he did take out such ads, that's such an effortful act that I don't see how a biographer could overlook it; and that all references to such an act would fall through the cracks of Google books seems too much of a coincidence. Actually, in the Rodgers bios I could find no references to the Marcels at all, and not much on "Blue Moon," either (Google books does give us the indexes for at least some of those books).

Re: Debunkathon

[koganbot]

dubdobdee emails me (noting that he's being entirely speculative):

Very briefly — as I have even less evidence than I have time to contribute at the moment — I first began hearing versions of the "biggest audience for rap is white teenagers" meme 10-15 years ago, around the era of Nu-Metal. Assuming it has any validity at all — it may have none — it may well be more an artefact of a moment, a local uptick as it were, or an exaggerated tendency rhetorically exploited, than anything permanent or statistically secure.

Re: Debunkathon

[koganbot]

Okay, maybe it's my search skills that have gone weird: do see hashtag now for #RichardRogers (and for #RodgersHammerstein and #RodgersHart).

Re: Debunkathon

[koganbot]

On the Facebook thread Brian O'Neill linked this Wall Street Journal article from May 2005 by Carl Bialik which gives a figure of 60% white for the hip-hop audience, based on some MRI surveys. The surveys themselves hardly seem definitive (were they representative, well-sampled?) since they don't seem to distinguish between someone who buys one hip-hop recording and someone who buys five hundred; and I can't tell from the article if the responses are by household or by person; and from the description it seems possible that, if the latter, people are allowed to answer for other people in the household. And then there are the questions of what is hip-hop and who is white or black or Latino (not to mention Asian and so on). The article itself has these caveats:

It's unclear how well respondents can recall what they've bought in the last year; gifts count, even if the buyer isn't a rap fan; MRI can't say how much rap respondents buy — maybe white buyers are more, or less, intense fans than blacks; respondents decided what music is included in rap — others may dispute their definition; and it's unclear how the numbers would come out if you removed just a few artists — platinum-selling, white rapper Eminem, for instance — or labels.

But at least this was an attempt to back up the claim, and think about whether it was right.

Chuck

[(Anonymous)]

Posted these questions on my fb page; will report back.

[koganbot]

Thanks to Kevin John, who forwarded a jpeg of the Billboard article by way of Chuck.

As for Peggy Lee's overdubbed version of Rodgers & Hart's "Lover" in the '50s, Dorothy Rodgers says, "Dick thought it was wild and wonderful. He didn't object at all. He was always open to completely new sounds." She also says Rodgers shared a similar feeling with the Marcels' doo-wop rock version of "Blue Moon," a No. 1 record in 1961.

--Irv Lichtman, "The Rodgers Legacy Continues," Billboard, July 10, 1982

[koganbot]

I pasted in the Facebook convo:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/346236.html

Marv Goldberg

[(Anonymous)]

Could that (somehow) be the same Marv Goldberg who had a sports show (basketball, boxing, billiards--all *indoor* sports) on WHBI, Newark NJ, just before I think) Mr. Magic's slot, the first all-hiphop radio show ever?

Re: Marv Goldberg

[koganbot]

It's not impossible that he was on WHBI, since he's in the New York area and appeared on radio. But Google gets me no links between Goldberg and WHBI, and his specialty is R&B, not sports. Of course, people can have more than one interest. Here's his Website, which I haven't explored much, yet:

http://www.uncamarvy.com