RE: Jewish involvement in R&B/soul music

[Seth Rogovoy <seth.rogovoy...>]

Eva: You make very good points here, and it's a shame that Benarde didn't
make any attempt to explore the how or why of this in his book. p.s. Jerry
Ragovoy is a first cousin -- his father and my grandfather were brothers
who, after they immigrated to the U.S. from Odessa by way of Hungary,
spelled their Russian names slightly differently. p.p.s. Jerry's grandfather
was a chazan. p.p.p.s. Jerry worked in a record store in a black
neighborhood of Philadelphia as a teenager and soaked in the music during
that time. the result, as we now know, includes "A Piece of My Heart" (Janis
Joplin), "Time Is On My Side" (Irma Thomas, the Rolling Stones), pretty much
Howard Tate's entire oeuvre (including his terrific new comeback CD) and
tons of other r&b hits. -- seth rOgovoy

Though it's not strictly Jewish music, I'd just like to comment on the
review of "Stars of David", reviewed by Seth R. I'm not that familiar with
the world of (somewhat obscure?) white rock that this book deals with, but
I've been listening to/collecting R&B and soul music for some time, and in
those genres there is a massive Jewish involvement that deserves to be
researched. Of course, the Jewish label owners, song writers, producers,
record promoters etc in R&B/soul were almost exclusively "back door"
men/women-and since they were working within an essentially African-American
musical tradition, some might say that they didn't influence the music as
such. On the other hand, I'm sure one could detect jewish/yiddish influences
in, for example, the humourous "novelty" tunes that Leiber/Stoller created
for the Coasters. Furthermore, there were the legendary song
writers/producers such as Bert Berns, Seth's (almost) namesake Jerry
Ragovoy, Jerry Wexler, Phil Spector and many others who were instrumental in
shaping the special "uptown" NY soul style that would become so popular in
the sixties. Moving west to Chicago, there was Ralph Bass, the man who
discovered James Brown, and who produced many great albums for Chess, among
other labels. Guitarist Bobby Eli was one of the chief engineers behind the
"Philly sound" along with song writer Linda Creed. I could go on and
on....there are countless examples if you look for them. 
 
There seems to be a sense of affinity between African-Americans and Jews
which facilitated this type of co-operation across racial lines, even at
times when segregation was strict elsewhere in society. I'm neither American
nor Jewish, so it would be hard for me to assess...However, many of the bios
of these people reveal that they grew up in mixed neighbourhoods (at a time
when blue collar neighbourhoods might have been more integrated than they
are now?) and that they became fascinated by jazz and R&B at an early
age....so writing songs for/working with black artists was just an extension
of this interest.
 
These are just some scattered thoughts-and if anyone has any recommendations
for books/articles on the subject, I'd be much obliged.
 
All the best, Eva