ABSTRACT
Title of Dissertation: QUEERING THE TEXTURES OF ROCK AND ROLL HISTORY
Vincent Lamar Stephens, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005
Dissertation Directed by: Professor Nancy L. Struna, Department of American Studies
My dissertation provides an alternative history to traditional rock histories by exploring how the experiences of several key gay, lesbian and bisexual musicians expose the restrictive sexual and gender economies of the rock era music industry.
Industrial discrimination has led many queer performers to downplay their sexualities and simulate conformist gender behavior. Rock historians have consistently overlooked hierarchies of sexuality and gender which necessitates a corrective history. My study begins by challenging historical views of rock music as socially progressive and illuminating how the rock industry failed to correct pre-rock industry racial biases, which are evident in the economic exploitation of early African-American rock performers and the scarcity of African-Americans at the executive levels of rock production and distribution. Premature historical celebrations of racial progress have
severely limited critical attention to more invisible forms of sexual and gender discrimination in the industry including homophobia and sexism.
I also challenge the dominant historical argument of canonical rock histories that rock music’s corporate expansion fundamentally tainted the rock’s aesthetic quality and social importance during periods when the commercial and creative influence of queer and/or female performers and audiences gained centrality. Rock has maintained its vitality as more diverse performers and sensibilities have informed its cultural scope.
My study describes the contributions of several queer performers to rock era music and illustrates how they have resisted sexual and gender invisibility through discernible strategies signifying sexual and/or gender differences. I employ gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, Christopher Nealon’s theory of pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian culture and
Marlon Ross’ notion of the gay and lesbian crossover dynamic to trace the complex relationships between queer strategies of negotiation and the development of self- consciously queer identified community based in post-WWII era social and political movements. Overall, this dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach, including an analysis of canonical rock histories, supplemental histories of American popular music, queer social histories and popular press materials to address historic absences.
QUEERING THE TEXTURES OF ROCK AND ROLL HISTORY
by
Vincent Lamar Stephens
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005
Advisory Committee:
Professor Nancy L. Struna, Chair Professor John L. Caughey Professor William A. Cohen Professor Sherri L. Parks Professor Clyde A. Woods
© Copyright by
Vincent Lamar Stephens
2005
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my committee members whose support and direction have shaped the completion of this study. I am particularly grateful to my director Nancy
Struna for her enthusiasm, consistency, sound advice and good humor. Your contributions have been indispensable. I want to acknowledge Bill Cohen for his intellectual thoroughness and professionalism. I would like to thank John Caughey and
Sherri Parks for years of support and encouragement inside and outside of the classroom and Clyde Woods for supplying several useful resources for this study.
I am thankful to Koritha Mitchell and Bruce Johansen who have been kind enough to share their research and exchange ideas with me during this process and have served as great dissertation study partners and friends. Special thanks to Carmen
Gillespie who has served as an excellent outside advisor on this study, supported my scholarly development and been a great friend. I must recognize Christopher Nealon for kindly meeting with me to discuss my work and sharing his insights.
I am grateful for good memories with my American Studies classmates especially Jane, Cheryl, Isa, and Raquel, my colleagues in Afro-American Studies, and my co-workers in the CMPS Dean’s Office. I also want to acknowledge some my closest friends for their support during the dissertation process including Susan
Lombardi-Verticelli, Eric Nelson, Seth Peterson, Laurice Smith, Jennifer Weisman,
Dawn Johnson, and Sherwynn Umali.
Finally, I want to express my appreciation to my family, especially my parents
Betty Brown and Ralph Stephens, for giving me the personal, intellectual and creative nourishment to cultivate my academic and extracurricular interests. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………ii
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1
PART I: Revisiting Rock History
Chapter One As Read in Books—The Story of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Rock and the Rest……………………61
Chapter Two Outing Rock History’s Racial and Sexual Closets…………………………………...125
Chapter Three Betrayed Authenticities from Schlock Rock to Disco………………………………...174
PART II: Historicizing Queer Musicians
Chapter Four 1950s Queer Chameleons……………………………………………………………238
Chapter Five 1950s Queer Non-Conformists………………………………………………………287
Chapter Six Recovering Rock’s Invisible Queer Women………………………………………….331
Chapter Seven Integration, Exploitation and Separation in the 1970s………………………………377
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...417
Appendix A iv
General Bibliography and Works Cited……………………………………………...448
1
Introduction
On June 26, 2003 I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in
Cleveland, Ohio. Within the stunning I. M. Pei designed waterfront building their is an odd tension between its functioning as a museum, aiming to capture compelling stories of one of the most influential cultural industries of the twentieth century. . . . and suburban shopping mall-cum-tourist spectacle replete with grey bubble floors, floating oversized objects and a museum store where one could purchase CDs and museum magnets. Like rock ‘n’ roll itself the museum seemed caught in an attempt to convey heart, soul and guts but in forms that were palatable to ensure broad appeal and maximum profitability. These aims were not unusual but compromised the range of stories it could tell about the people and activities that shaped rock ‘n’ roll.
The first official activity my fellow attendees and I experienced was a little film called Mystery Train, intended to show how rock ‘n’ roll was a synthesis of indigenous forms of American music—country blues, hillbilly music, and spirituals--and a liberator for the cultural underclass. Throughout the film segments were divided by footage of moving trains, presumably a metaphor for progress. The first segment showed still images of poor rural whites and blacks mixed with images cotton fields, chain gangs, and segregation era signs, and people dancing and playing music. The film progressed showing footage of country and bluesmen Hank Williams, Bob Wills & the Playboys,
Jimmie Rodgers, Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, Woody Guthrie, etc. The next segment continued and we saw swing era images of Louis Armstrong, the Savoy, the Cotton
Club, Count Basie, people swing dancing with Louis Jordan singing. The concluding segment introduced us to rock ‘n’ roll via footage of Sun Records, footage of Elvis 2
Presley, color pastiches of teens dancing, Buddy Holly footage interspersed with rebel imagery of Marlon Brando from the Wild One, followed by rapid fire clips Chuck
Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Bo Diddley, Eddie
Cochran, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, Carl Perkins, the Everly Brothers, Gene Vincent and Jackie Wilson.
Near the beginning of the film the narrator stated, “Imagine there was a time in
America without rock ‘n’ roll . . .” Then viewers saw stock 50s footage of white people buying products, with Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera” playing in the background, followed by images of Dean Martin, an excerpt of Perry Como’s “Hot Diggity (Dog
Ziggity Boom),” a clip from TV’s Hit Parade spliced with people sitting at home and concluding with a white child being put to bed followed by the segments I’ve described.
The film was slick and amusing in its suggestion that rock ‘n’ roll literally saved
America from the cultural evils of Perry Como but ultimately I found the film naïve, off-putting and disingenuous. From this film you’d never know how Elvis Presley, the
“King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” idolized Dean Martin.1 Nor would you imagine the “Queen of
Soul”—Aretha Franklin--admired Doris Day enough to mention her in her autobiography. 2 Never mind Liberace’s impact on America’s biggest 70s rock star
Elton John. More importantly one might think rock ‘n’ roll was the quintessential ticket for the liberation of the social and economic underclass. Guitars and dancing closed the
1 See p. 69, 123 in Miller, James. Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll: 1947-1977. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
2 “Rosemary Clooney was cool and so was Doris Day. I always thought Doris was underrated as a vocalist,” p. 89-90 in Franklin, Aretha with David Ritz. Aretha: From These Roots. New York: Villard, 1999.
3 cultural gaps between the races and classes as opposed to say, increased access to education, progressive political movements, pivotal judicial decisions and legislative reform throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century. These details were a lot less interesting when you had more obvious enemies (Day, Como, Martin ) and heroes
(Williams, Presley, Berry, etc.)
Perhaps the film’s most unintended piece of truth was its absence of women from the rock ‘n’ roll canon of influences and performers—a constant trend in rock histories. Black blueswomen Memphis Minnie and Big Mama Thornton were notably absent from the country and blues segments, as were swing era influences like Billie
Holiday and Dinah Washington. Further, it was unfathomable that a rock ‘n’ roll film would exclude Ruth Brown, who sold so many records for independent label Atlantic that it was nicknamed “The House that Ruth Built,” not to mention Etta James or Tina
Turner.
Less obvious but also disturbingly absent from the film were two influential pre- rock 50s pop musicians, Liberace and Johnnie Ray. Perhaps their role as “pop” musicians defied the portrait of rebellion the film sought. After all people often perceive “pop” as less dangerous or representative of the underclass “folk” culture rock historians attempt to align rock with, though rock has much in common with pre-rock pop. Further, Ray and Liberace’s reputations as eccentric bisexual and gay men may not have lent themselves to superficial film clips. Liberace may come across as an easy punchline but he was pivotal in teaching pop musicians how to fully utilize television to sell their personae, centralized the piano as a pop music instrument, and, as his career developed, he made spectacle, wit, and glamour fundamental part to modern popular 4 music performance. Alongside musical contributions Liberace constantly battled the burgeoning 50s tabloid press which attempted to “out” him because he was too successful and accepted for such a “colorful,” “eccentric” bachelor. His resistance to gender conformity, which resulted in Liberace successfully suing two publications in two successful libel suits, illustrated the gender economy of 50s popular culture and its ongoing presence in the music industry throughout the rock era.
Gender behavior is relevant to my discussion of rock ‘n’ roll because it is a dynamic area shaped by popular culture, in which notions of masculinity, femininity and androgyny are constantly generated, adapted, rejected, revised, and retrieved. A wide range of political, social and cultural developments mold the gender economy. I define the gender economy as historically mediated notions of gender normativity.
Gender normative textures of speech, dress, movement, etc. accumulate and underlay the construction of a type of visual and behavioral hegemony. Queer textures are queer specifically because queer people often diverge from the norms of their respective eras.
There is an implicit relationship between normative ideas of gender behavior
(gender economy) and modes of sexual behavior. The constructed, historically mediated nature of gender propriety and normalcy correlates to standardized notions of “normal,”
“natural,” and “healthy” sexual expression. Essentially gender normative people engage in sexually normal behavior and vice versa. Popular culture is a central source for influencing perceptions of what behaviors and relationships constitute normal sexuality because it constantly reproduces images and creates consistent portraits of what sex, love, romance and intimacy look like. In the context of this study, heterosexual acts or those between people of different sexes, define the cultural sense of sexual normalcy. 5
The nature of such acts and the structure of these acts have steadily shifted, especially since the integration of television.
For example on 1950s and 1960s TV, marriage or courting, between a man and a woman, was the presumed context for normal adult sexuality and it was generally expressed in light touching and kissing. However sexual intercourse was never shown between non-married partners or even implied as most married couples were shown sleeping in separate beds. By the 1970s sexual foreplay, premarital sex, married couples sharing a bed, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies became more common. Heterosexuality was still at the center of TV’s sexual economy even when its expression changed.
Similar parallels were evident in other popular media including film and images of popular music. One of the results of the heterosexual economy of post-WWII popular culture was the invisibility of bisexuality and homosexuality, or the stigmatizing of these sexualities through mendacious or narrow portrayals. In post WWII popular music sexual deviance were signified by non-normative gender behavior, which raised suspicions about the sexuality of many performers as my study details.
The 50s gender, and related sexual, economy, which I describe in detail in
Chapter Four, directly shaped cultural responses to Johnnie Ray. Ray was the first white pop singer to incorporate blues mannerisms in his singing and live performances and achieve mainstream commercial success with white and black audiences. Ray developed his musical persona in racially mixed “black and tan” clubs and was popular with black and white audiences, evident by his 1951 hit “Cry” which topped the pop 6 and rhythm and blues (R&B) charts.3 Ray merged crooning with cues from R&B singing, and bridged the gap between Frank Sinatra-style crooning and Elvis Presley- style rock and roll. However, he has always had a tenuous place in rock history perhaps because of the gap between his fey persona and emotive demeanor and the hypermasculine rock ‘n’ roll ideal historians sometimes project onto male rockers as sexual liberators. Like Liberace, Ray was also a victim of tabloid scandals as a result of his “eccentric” persona. Interestingly, Presley covered “Cry” early in his career and many of the criticisms Ray received as a corruptor of youth and an affront to good taste foretold much early criticism of rock ‘n’ roll.
These instances of sex and gender inequality belie the usual tales of rock ‘n’ roll as cultural triumph. They complicate the history of popular music by illustrating how the imperative for gender conformity is an ongoing component of the music industry rock n’ roll did not erase or significantly challenge. Rock ‘n’ roll histories construct a gender hierarchy where women and queer people as secondary and marginal to its mainstream. But my analysis takes a closer look and reveals rock ‘n’ roll was not the simple race and class liberator traditional histories purport. Those with non-normative sexualities complicate whatever symbolic and material gains the rock ‘n’ roll era provided for some. Such performers may have had commercial hits but they often veiled their innermost desires and politics to remain marketable. In spite of the broader
3 Ray’s 1951 rendition of “Cry” was the only song by a white singer to top the pop and R&B charts between 1946 and 1956. See p. 81 in Whitburn, Joel. Top Rhythm & Blues Records 1949-1971. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research, 1973. For discussion of Ray’s racial crossover see p. 181 in Starr, Larry and Christopher Waterman. American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
7 cultural demand for conformity governing the music industry, several generations of queer musicians have achieved success in the rock ‘n’ roll’ music industry through shrewd negotiations of external pressure and internal needs for identity. Their struggles indicate a broader pattern of cultural marginalization that popular culture industries reflect and contribute to through their wide circulation and cultural influence.
Problematizing Rock History
Rock histories define rock ‘n’ roll as a signpost of U. S. social history. According to such histories the most consistent effects of rock ‘n’ roll on American culture include a broader integration of African-American performers in the cultural mainstream, a cultural synthesis of musical genres and the cultural sensibilities, and a newfound awareness of teenage subjectivity. One of the defining aspects of rock ‘n’ roll’s growth from the teen dance music of the 1950s into 60s rock was the proliferation of songwriters and performers who integrated the political zeitgeist into their song lyrics and public personae. The anti-racist politics of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti- war movement were among the most prominent political themes of progressive 60s rock. The 1960s showcased rock’s potential as a vital art form that not only symbolized a broadening cultural sensibility but also directly promoted such ideals to its youth- oriented audience. The growth of rock ‘n’ roll into a serious form spawned a host of rock subcultures and publications dedicated to covering rock music and culture, such as
Rolling Stone Magazine. As rock culture has gained cultural momentum, a bevy of books covering rock’s historic role on the 20th century continuum of America popular music and its sociological value has emerged since the 1970s, including Charlie 8
Gillett’s The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll and Greil Marcus’ Mystery
Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.4 These books, alongside TV documentaries and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, have officially declared rock ‘n’ roll as one the most significant cultural and social developments of the century.
Despite the argument that rock ‘n’ roll increased the participatory role of ethnic minorities and young people in popular culture, one of the glaring absences in coverage of rock history is the virtual absence of how norms of sexuality and gender affected many performers of the rock era. Most histories acknowledge racism, and usually at least comment on gender bias as social problems, but the role of homophobia and gender conformity in national culture and the music industry, and its impact on rock era musicians, is absent. Aside from the mention of Little Richard’s flamboyant, sexually ambiguous image in the 1950s and the communal origins of disco among gay men, the experiences of gay and lesbian musicians, such as how industry expectations affect their public images and intersections of gay liberation and lesbian feminism in their music, are invisible. The key to uncovering these hidden histories is demonstrating how homophobia and gender conformity are structural realities that affect the ability of sex and gender non-conformists to fully participate as citizens within popular culture and the public sphere. My dissertation argues that the gender economies of popular culture reflect a central regulatory aspect of American culture discernible in popular music. I
4 First published in 1970, I reference the Second Edition, Gillett, Charlie. The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll. 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. First punblished in 1974 I use the Fourth Edition, Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. 4th rev. ed. New York: Plume, 1997.
9 address the gender economy in rock by interrogating consistent narrative themes in rock histories and drawing from theories of gender, sexuality, and marginality to critique and reframe rock’s history.
The alternative history my study offers performs defines rock and roll against the dominant historical narratives, which champion the genre as a marker of social progress which declines when corporate expansion and feminized or softened elements, synonymous with “pop” are incorporated into the genre. My study questions the presumed break between pre-rock pop and rock by suggesting a greater level of continuity, regarding corporate interests in capitalizing on musical trends and musical roots. I also challenge the historical presumption that rock fundamentally altered
American views of minority identities. First, I demonstrate how the corporate power structure of the music industry is not racially progressive and how the separation between “white” and “black” music remained intact during rock’s history. Second, I argue that given the deeply limited racial progress of rock, it is significant that rock historians often skirt the notion of progress to describe rock era sexual and gender oppression in popular culture and rarely critique this aspect in-depth. Thus, my study serves to recover a hidden history of sexual and gender oppression by detailing the ambivalent mix of commercial acceptance and the downplaying or erasure of sex and gender non-conformity which characterizes the experiences of bisexual, gay and lesbian musicians.
Though my study notes how bisexual, gay and lesbian performers were integral to rock and pivotal to some of its major artistic developments, I focus on how the experiences of such musicians throughout the rock era reflect regressive ideas about 10 what types of sex and gender expression warrant historical discussion and analysis. It is telling that many bisexual, gay or lesbian musicians are virtually excluded from most histories because they are deemed irrelevant “pop” performers, their sexualities are downplayed or invisible even when relevant to their art and public images, and/or those who represent queer politics are rarely accorded the significance and attention of other politically-oriented rock era performers. By focusing on the relevance of queer historic developments to rock’s formation and key musicians my study seeks to stimulate new conversations about how sexual and gender non-conformity shapes our historic understanding of bisexual, gay and lesbian popular music performers and reflects a broader tension for queer public participation and citizenship.
Several research questions compelled my study’s goal of authoring an alternative history to traditional rock and roll histories including the following: