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On Theme, Part One: Ernest Hogan's Success and Regret · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
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  Speaker 2: always so much for tuning in. Who's that in the booth.
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  Speaker 2: It's our super producer, mister Max Williams.
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  Speaker 3: I am a super producer in the booth and my
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  Speaker 3: name is Max Williams.
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  Speaker 4: Maximus is I like to call you in our secret
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  Speaker 4: text threats.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: That we only send to each other late at night.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: I know, I know it's all about hot nighttime, private times.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: I know it's all about hot touch.
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  Speaker 4: Look, we got to clarify. Okay, we didn't meet in
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  Speaker 4: a hot tub, per se. We met and then got
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: into a hot right. We were at an event, a
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  Speaker 4: weekend long event. Yes, there were others with any others
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: and many others got in hot tub with us. It
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: was a collaboration, and then the next year we did
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: a larger collaboration with more people.
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  Speaker 3: He doesn't want to hear the hot tub.
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  Speaker 2: You have guys who told me the hot This is
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  Speaker 2: the fourth time, and now we're in a different situation
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  Speaker 2: because it's not just ben Nol and Max here. We
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  Speaker 2: have company, you guys, We have company this week, which.
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  Speaker 3: Is why we're trying to make really good first impressions
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  Speaker 3: of the hot tub talk. You just got to get
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  Speaker 3: a bigger hot tub, so let us a Jaws reference.
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  Speaker 2: Yea, let us Welcome to the show, podcasting luminaries, good
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  Speaker 2: friends of ours one returning guest in particular Katie Mitchell
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  Speaker 2: and Eves Jeffcoat, the creators of on Theme. You guys,
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  Speaker 2: thank you for sitting through that.
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  Speaker 5: Thank you. Honestly, it's kind of like we're in a
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  Speaker 5: hot tub.
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  Speaker 4: Now, sort of a hot tub time machine, you see,
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  Speaker 4: it's weird in this studio. We're here in person and
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  Speaker 4: little sweltery more like a sounda.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we thank you.
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  Speaker 4: At the end of every single Ridiculous History episode. We
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  Speaker 4: refer to you as being here in spirit because secret
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: or behind the curtain peak. I guess Eaves was one
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  Speaker 4: of our very first research associates.
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  Speaker 3: That's right this way, like for a brief.
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  Speaker 4: Moments back in the day, and then you, you know,
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  Speaker 4: spread your wings and moved on to bigger and better things, which.
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  Speaker 3: We're going to talk about today.
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  Speaker 4: But we still thank you every single episode.
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  Speaker 5: Ye're welcome.
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  Speaker 2: Now, let's start before we dive into this week's exploration.
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  Speaker 2: Let's learn a little bit more about on theme and
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  Speaker 2: about your history together as as creators. Katie, you and
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  Speaker 2: I were catching up a little bit before we rolled
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  Speaker 2: on air, and I was fast. I knew you have
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  Speaker 2: a book coming out in February, but I did not
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  Speaker 2: know you also run a bookstore.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I have a book coming out. The book
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  Speaker 6: is about black bookstores in the United States, and that
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  Speaker 6: idea came from my experience being a bookseller. So my
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  Speaker 6: bookstore is called Good Books, and the book is called
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  Speaker 6: pro to the People. And so I went around the
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  Speaker 6: country interviewing booksellers from yesteryear and current booksellers. So it's
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  Speaker 6: been really fun getting to know all these people and
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  Speaker 6: putting this like really unique history all in one volume
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  Speaker 6: because before it hasn't been all together.
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  Speaker 4: It's so interesting, I mean with you know, I guess
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  Speaker 4: the advit of like the Amazons of the world and
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  Speaker 4: all that bookshops and independent bookshops in particular. I had
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  Speaker 4: to really lean into the community aspects exactly.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, and they all have I think, like one thing
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  Speaker 6: about black bookstores in particular. We're like always put on
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  Speaker 6: these lists like here's like ten black bookstores to go support,
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  Speaker 6: but they're all so different.
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  Speaker 7: They all have their different political leanings.
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  Speaker 6: Some of them are feminists, some of them like focus
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  Speaker 6: on sci fi, some of them are really activist based.
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  Speaker 6: So when you go in there, you're like, oh, I'm
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  Speaker 6: at a black bookstore. But like you can really tell
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  Speaker 6: the owners like political leanings by the books that are
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  Speaker 6: on the shelves.
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  Speaker 2: Because it's kind of like a portrait of the person
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  Speaker 2: who owns the store exactly.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, and even as a bookseller, I try not to
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  Speaker 6: like let my own politics, like holy shape it because
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  Speaker 6: I'm like, okay, like I'm not the smartest cookie out there.
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  Speaker 6: Like there's some other things and some interesting things like
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  Speaker 6: I'm not into ya or comics, but like other people are,
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  Speaker 6: and I'm like, okay, I should carry some of that.
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  Speaker 6: But yeah, it definitely shines through because you're the one sourcing.
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  Speaker 2: The books, and as as two literary luminaries here, you
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  Speaker 2: of course are old friends right started in middle school
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  Speaker 2: and you've maintained nol. This was surprising to me, as
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  Speaker 2: you know, kind of a schlubby dude. They've been able
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  Speaker 2: to be friends for so long. And I will defend
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: you against yourself. That's bitter end. But it's also interesting
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: as long time ridiculous historians know. Eves has classed up
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  Speaker 2: our show a number of times and is a prominent
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: author here in Atlanta. It's doing a million things pretty
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: much every time we hang out, I learned something new
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  Speaker 2: and you two took from your your friendship and your
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  Speaker 2: love of history. You built this show on the theme.
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  Speaker 2: Could you tell us a little bit about what on themes?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah?
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  Speaker 8: So on Theme is a podcast that Katie and I
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  Speaker 8: co host and co create, and it's about black storytelling
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  Speaker 8: and all of its forms, because there are so many
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  Speaker 8: forms and shapes that black storytelling takes. So some of
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  Speaker 8: those being books, like Katie was just talking about, but
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  Speaker 8: we also talk about plays, we talk about music, we
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  Speaker 8: talk about poetry, we talk about TV and film, we
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  Speaker 8: talk about all kinds of black storytelling. Black storytelling being
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  Speaker 8: black stories created by black creators essentially, and.
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  Speaker 5: We both have a love for black stories.
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  Speaker 8: I mean, I know Katie grew up around black stories
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  Speaker 8: a lot, and we're both black, so we're like invested
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  Speaker 8: and embedded in black stories as black people in the
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  Speaker 8: United States. But yeah, our show covers black storytelling and
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  Speaker 8: the things that we care about a lot of the time.
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  Speaker 8: But like So Katie and I a should say we
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  Speaker 8: have different interests in a lot of ways. She was
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  Speaker 8: just saying, you know, y A's and comics. The other
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  Speaker 8: day I brought up to her like talking about black cosplayers,
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  Speaker 8: and she was like, oh, I don't want I'm.
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  Speaker 5: Good on that.
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  Speaker 8: That's your thing and so like, and there are things
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  Speaker 8: that Katie's into that don't necessarily align with my interests.
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  Speaker 5: So I feel like we bounce off of each other
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  Speaker 5: really well that way.
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  Speaker 8: But we have episodes like for Haters, like Katie about
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  Speaker 8: black haters and in rap music and so that's like
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  Speaker 8: her thing.
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  Speaker 4: And then well we got to get you away in
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  Speaker 4: on the Kendrick Drake beef, really.
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  Speaker 5: I know it.
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  Speaker 3: There is one who has a pulitzer. I mean that's
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  Speaker 3: totally true. I just think it's there's a guy, gosh,
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  Speaker 3: I'm forgetting his name now.
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  Speaker 4: He's like an old school hip hop guy and I'm
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  Speaker 4: totally spacic on his name. But he said that he
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  Speaker 4: thinks it's the most important beef in hip hop music,
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  Speaker 4: like since forever, because of how it actually affected these guys' lives,
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  Speaker 4: like Drake is basically I don't know for all kids
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  Speaker 4: and purposes sort of over you know, and Kendrick has
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  Speaker 4: a number one song where he calls a.
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  Speaker 3: Dude a pedophile. Yeah, any thoughts.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, I I think it's a very important rap beef.
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  Speaker 6: I I love all things hating, love all things beef.
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  Speaker 6: I think so the hating episode that he is talking about.
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  Speaker 6: My thesis statement was that haters are muses. So if
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  Speaker 6: you have somebody hating on you, maybe you're gonna pop out.
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  Speaker 6: You're gonna be like, oh you hating on me, Like
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  Speaker 6: I'm gonna show you. But Kendrick flipped it and he's like, no,
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  Speaker 6: I hate you, and my hate for you is driving
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  Speaker 6: this art. And I was like, WHOA, didn't think about that,
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  Speaker 6: But it's true. But yeah, I think it's really important.
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  Speaker 6: I think that there are a lot of people who
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  Speaker 6: like put on blackness as a costume who may be
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  Speaker 6: black fully, maybe half black, or not black at all.
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  Speaker 3: Cough cough Drake cough. Yeah.
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  Speaker 7: Like, and I mean when Kendrick said.
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  Speaker 3: Canada, but.
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  Speaker 6: Let's be real, when he said, you run to America
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  Speaker 6: to imitate heritage, you can't imitate this violence, and like, yeah,
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  Speaker 6: like there's there's things.
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  Speaker 3: As I'm a colonizer, yeah, he is.
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  Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of things that Black Americans
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  Speaker 6: have put out into the world as far as art
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  Speaker 6: that people of all stripes feel like they have entitlement
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  Speaker 6: to co opting. Yeah, right, And so Drake being you know,
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  Speaker 6: the personification of that in many ways, like pretending to
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  Speaker 6: be from Atlanta. He's from Memphis. Sometimes he's from you know, Houston.
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  Speaker 6: Sometimes he's vaguely Caribbean.
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  Speaker 3: He does put on the pets occa to don't love it.
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  Speaker 4: So I love it, I too, you know, I mean,
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  Speaker 4: I really think it's interesting too, the forensic level of
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  Speaker 4: like investigative journalism that has gone into this rap beef.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's kind of.
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  Speaker 6: There's so much lower Wait, it is all this real,
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  Speaker 6: but I'm living for it.
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  Speaker 2: And we're getting to, uh, we're getting to part of
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  Speaker 2: this exploration for this week where we're talking about the
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  Speaker 2: importance of art and culture and communication in the way
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  Speaker 2: that it isn't you know, Black American cultures, as weird
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  Speaker 2: as it is to say it, and I know a
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  Speaker 2: lot of people in other parts of the world don't
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  Speaker 2: want to hear it. Black American culture has historically been
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  Speaker 2: one of the most successful exports of the United States.
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  Speaker 3: Can we agree with that?
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  Speaker 8: It has been completely commodified in so many ways across
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  Speaker 8: the world. And I mean it influences a lot, it
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  Speaker 8: has a lot of threats. It's got origins here, and yeah,
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  Speaker 8: it's huge. And I think today's episode we're talking about
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  Speaker 8: today is Ernest Hogan and Coon songs and the history
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  Speaker 8: of ragtime. All of those things have like influenced American
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  Speaker 8: and shaped American culture and American music in enormous ways.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get to know Ernest. So he's Ernest Hogan.
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  Speaker 2: Is his stage name, right or did he legally change
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  Speaker 2: I think it was Ernest Crowded.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah, Ernest. The history of why he changed his name
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  Speaker 8: is pretty nebulous. It's one of those things where got
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  Speaker 8: like a story around it, like you took it from
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  Speaker 8: an Irish guy or something like that. But I'm not
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  Speaker 8: sure the actual veracity of that story.
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  Speaker 3: We have those all the time.
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  Speaker 4: Apoper full Kin. Yeah, like it was, you know, a
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  Speaker 4: good story, but not necessarily true. The truth exists somewhere
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  Speaker 4: in the middle.
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  Speaker 5: Problem exactly somewhere in the middle.
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  Speaker 8: So whatever his reasons were changing it was he was
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  Speaker 8: born Ruben crowdis our crotus and He was born in
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  Speaker 8: Kentucky and he started performing at.
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  Speaker 5: A pretty early age.
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  Speaker 8: He was working in a local circus at first, and
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  Speaker 8: I guess I should stop to say that, like Ernest
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  Speaker 8: Hogan was a tipping off point from one of the
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  Speaker 8: episodes that we did on Regret on on theme, So
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  Speaker 8: we were talking about in that episode regret that black
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  Speaker 8: people have had, Black artists have had in the past,
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  Speaker 8: about work that they did that was race related. And
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  Speaker 8: so that's how we came upon Ernest Hogan and this
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  Speaker 8: song that we'll get into in a second, that he
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  Speaker 8: did say that he regretted, but of course it's more
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  Speaker 8: complicated than that. So at twelve years old, he joined
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  Speaker 8: a traveling actors troupe and he played the role of
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  Speaker 8: a black child in Uncle Tom's cabin, and he kept performing.
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  Speaker 8: He was doing this from an early age, and eventually
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  Speaker 8: he started to join different black menstrual groups, and then
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  Speaker 8: he joined a vaudeville quartet.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: Remind people what menstrual groups were in just the concept.
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  Speaker 4: I know it's really fraught in and of itself, but
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  Speaker 4: just a quick overview of the idea of menstrul shows.
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  Speaker 8: Okay, Yeah, so there's this history of Vauteville, which people
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  Speaker 8: might be they might already.
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  Speaker 3: Have some knowledge of asthma exactly, Razmataz.
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  Speaker 8: It was like a variety show essentially, so people might sing,
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  Speaker 8: there might be like skits, one act plays, there would
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  Speaker 8: be music, and there's also this history history of minstrel
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  Speaker 8: syat in the United States, and so these minstrel shows
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  Speaker 8: were kind of similar to that same idea of these
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  Speaker 8: variety acts that were on stage. But in these menstrul shows,
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  Speaker 8: you had white people who were performing in blackface. So
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  Speaker 8: they would take a exactly al Joson so and blackface
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  Speaker 8: continue for quite a while. But yes, so people would
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  Speaker 8: paint their faces in cork with cork to be black,
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  Speaker 8: and then they would be these caricatures of black people
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  Speaker 8: on stage. And so they would try to affect their
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  Speaker 8: ideas of what they thought black culture and black performance was.
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  Speaker 3: Beyond stereotypical caricatures. We're talking about.
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  Speaker 5: Beyond in voice. There were you know, they were doing
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  Speaker 5: jigs on stage.
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  Speaker 8: You know, they had a really affected dialect that was
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  Speaker 8: obviously derogatory and wasn't truly indicative of the breath of
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  Speaker 8: like black dialect.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, weren't there kind of stock characters almost like
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  Speaker 4: almost like you know in the lexicon of theater where
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  Speaker 4: you have like you know, the the rogue and the
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  Speaker 4: the whatever. Like in menstrual shows, there was like the
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  Speaker 4: kind of lazy character and there were different ones, the
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  Speaker 4: sneaky character, there was I believe I'm forgetting.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah, So I will say that generally to the menstrel
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  Speaker 8: like was based around an idea of black masculinity. So
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  Speaker 8: there were women who showed up, but a lot of
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  Speaker 8: the people who were in blackface were white men performing
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  Speaker 8: as black men, and their idea of black masculinity often
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  Speaker 8: revolved around their laziness. So they couldn't do this, you know,
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  Speaker 8: they weren't capable, Like they were kind of bumbling around.
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  Speaker 8: They were idiots, they were fools, and so that was
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  Speaker 8: often the stereotype that they would use in minstrel shows.
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  Speaker 8: And then oftentimes when the woman was involved, she was promiscuous.
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  Speaker 5: That was kind of her character.
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  Speaker 8: Which she came in like a Jezebel, and her relationship
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  Speaker 8: was based off of this character, the black male character
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  Speaker 8: that they were performing.
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  Speaker 4: So Hogan's coming up in this kind of this culture,
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  Speaker 4: like he's how is he a part of this as
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  Speaker 4: a black man?
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  Speaker 5: So as a black man.
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  Speaker 8: He does he creates Kon songs, so he has a
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  Speaker 8: really really interesting history. I mean, he's called has been called,
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  Speaker 8: I think the father of Ragtime or something like that.
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  Speaker 8: So he was very integral in the early stages of ragtime.
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  Speaker 8: But that also included Koon songs, and Coon songs were
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  Speaker 8: songs that were they were the same idea as minstrel
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  Speaker 8: shows we were just talking about. So in addition to
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  Speaker 8: this lazy character character, it was also like a violent
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  Speaker 8: character as we can see continues today in the way
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  Speaker 8: that black men are often portrayed. That was the case
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  Speaker 8: in minstrel shows back then too. But basically Coon songs
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  Speaker 8: were kind of minstrel shows in song form, so they
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  Speaker 8: included these derogatory characters of black people, often black men,
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  Speaker 8: and that was the rage at the time. And this
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  Speaker 8: is where Ernest Hogan's story came in. He wrote one
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  Speaker 8: of the like, if not the most popular, like one
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  Speaker 8: of the most popular songs at Koon Songs at the time,
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  Speaker 8: and that was all Kuon's look alike to me, which
• 14:58
  Speaker 8: I must say that you can listen to to a
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  Speaker 8: rendition of that song on our episode. We might regret
• 15:03
  Speaker 8: this episode later on theme because a musician named Coolie
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  Speaker 8: Gilchris performed it.
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  Speaker 5: So we still have the sheet music.
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  Speaker 8: Everybody can go online and find the sheet music and
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  Speaker 8: you can see exactly how to sing it if you're
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  Speaker 8: into that thing. Yea, Honestly, it's a catchy song, I
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  Speaker 8: must admit. But there are lots of intricacies for sure,
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  Speaker 8: which we talked about in our episode about like why
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  Speaker 8: Ernest Hogan was invested in coon songs so heavily and
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  Speaker 8: why he like truly was compelled to create coon songs.
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: And going back to your question about like the different
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: stereotypes within the Mintell Shows, one of the biggest ones
• 15:44
  Speaker 6: was a character called Jim Crow. And so if you're
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  Speaker 6: familiar with Jim Crow laws in America, you can see
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  Speaker 6: how this art form really impacted kind of like public
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  Speaker 6: policy throughout.
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  Speaker 7: The twentieth century.
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  Speaker 6: So we're going from Mintell Shows to Yah, you need
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  Speaker 6: to get to the back of the buzz y'all can't
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  Speaker 6: loiter here.
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  Speaker 7: So it really is like this through line to inform.
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  Speaker 4: The perspective like of what white people thought about black
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  Speaker 4: culture and black people exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And this also this strange, this strange relationship between public
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  Speaker 2: policy the world of entertainment systematic racism. This brings us
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  Speaker 2: to Earnest as a singular example of larger pattern, because
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  Speaker 2: I think for a lot of people, unfortunately in the US,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: they didn't learn about the nature of menstrual shows until
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: they saw films like Bamboozled, right, and when they saw that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I remember a lot of people being surprised
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  Speaker 2: by the idea that if you are a black entertainer
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  Speaker 2: at this point in American history, one of the few
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  Speaker 2: ways that you can be a paid performer is to
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  Speaker 2: participate in this thing, to wear black face even though
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  Speaker 2: you are already black, and perpetuate some of those stereotypes.
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  Speaker 2: Is that what happened to Ernest's.
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  Speaker 5: That's exactly what happened. So Ernest himself wrote coon songs.
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  Speaker 8: He did not, as far as I know, wear black
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  Speaker 8: face and perform in black face, if I'm remembering correctly,
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  Speaker 8: But there were plenty of other entertainers who did. But
• 17:19
  Speaker 8: of course, like I said, coon songs were like minstrel shows,
• 17:21
  Speaker 8: just in song forms, so it's kind of like a
• 17:23
  Speaker 8: musical black face in a way. So yes, he was
• 17:27
  Speaker 8: in that predicament. He had to sustain his life, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 8: he had to put food on his table. You know,
• 17:32
  Speaker 8: he had to live. So the thing that he chose
• 17:36
  Speaker 8: to do to do that was publish coon songs. And so,
• 17:39
  Speaker 8: like I said, coon songs were hot. So you have
• 17:41
  Speaker 8: to think about back in this time, like people were
• 17:43
  Speaker 8: buying sheet music to have in their homes, and then
• 17:47
  Speaker 8: there were people who were performing across cities in the
• 17:49
  Speaker 8: United States in like actual entertainers who were performing in venues,
• 17:53
  Speaker 8: but then there were people at home who were also
• 17:54
  Speaker 8: buying sheet music. So entertainers at the time would sell
• 17:57
  Speaker 8: their sheet music. That didn't work out so well for
• 18:00
  Speaker 8: all entertainers because they were selling sheet music for like
• 18:04
  Speaker 8: fifty a pop one hundred of pop, where they weren't
• 18:07
  Speaker 8: getting royalties and things like that. They could have made
• 18:10
  Speaker 8: more money. So that did happen to some people. But
• 18:12
  Speaker 8: it was an avenue for making money. And this was
• 18:17
  Speaker 8: his career. He was an entertainer and he was a
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: composer and he wrote all Kunes look alike to Me.
• 18:22
  Speaker 8: He also wrote another song called Aapasma Law, and that was.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: A pretty popular song too.
• 18:28
  Speaker 8: It was a song that is very rooted in black
• 18:31
  Speaker 8: tradition and black folk music because it did go along
• 18:33
  Speaker 8: with it had a dance that went along with it,
• 18:37
  Speaker 8: but just.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: So it was familiar, almost like TikTok culture in a way.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're talking about this sucome full circle in
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: an interesting way.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: It's all about attention deficit theater and like the path
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: of least resistance and the cashiest little melody with the
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: most easy to wrap your head around like lyrics.
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, that song in particular had like, uh lyrics
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: that tells you how to do the dance, which I
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: was like, hey, like this sounds like a dance we
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: would dude today. And I think just like the echo
• 19:05
  Speaker 6: of Ernest Hogan, he you can still kind of see
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: him in Hollywood now, like people, you know, black men
• 19:11
  Speaker 6: or Latino men saying like, oh, I can only get
• 19:14
  Speaker 6: casted as like a thug, but I want to be
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: in Hollywood, so I want to take these roles and
• 19:19
  Speaker 6: hope and pray that my hard work will you know,
• 19:22
  Speaker 6: make me the Denzel of my time or something.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: But Danny Trejo says, hey, could I be a love
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: interest at some point? You know what I mean?
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so you definitely see like Ernest Hogan in all
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: these contemporary ways.
• 19:35
  Speaker 8: I feel, Yeah, for sure, we were thinking about snap
• 19:38
  Speaker 8: music and how it would say lean back, you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 8: rock side to side.
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: It will tell you exactly what to do.
• 19:42
  Speaker 8: And that's how LAPASMLA was and that's clearly rooted in
• 19:47
  Speaker 8: a long standing black tradition.
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: But just help people know.
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: I mean, you can go listen to all who's like
• 19:51
  Speaker 8: look alike to me, but just so people know some
• 19:54
  Speaker 8: of the lyrics and so they can see how character Yeah,
• 19:57
  Speaker 8: they see how these characters show up. I will I
• 19:59
  Speaker 8: will say some of them for you. I won't sing it,
• 20:00
  Speaker 8: but I will say it. And that's all coons look
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: alike to me. I've got another bow, you see. And
• 20:05
  Speaker 8: he's just as good to me as you nigga ever
• 20:08
  Speaker 8: tried to be. He spends his money free. I know
• 20:11
  Speaker 8: we can't agree, so I don't like you know how
• 20:14
  Speaker 8: all coons look alike to me?
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: That's the chorus of that song. So they were that
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: tell a story in between. It takes you to the.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Moment with that underlying theme.
• 20:26
  Speaker 8: Yes, So, like I was talking about earlier, that relationship
• 20:29
  Speaker 8: between black men and black women in these minstrualized forms
• 20:33
  Speaker 8: of these stories is that the.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: Man is lazy. He's not making the money.
• 20:38
  Speaker 8: So this black woman is who's a character who's speaking
• 20:41
  Speaker 8: those lines that I just read, is saying she's reinforcing
• 20:44
  Speaker 8: stereotypes that white people would have placed upon black people
• 20:48
  Speaker 8: at the time.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: And don't make sure I clear on this, the use
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: of the word kon here is not a reappropriation of
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: a word that was used by white people as a negative.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: It's just basically saying, yeah, that's the word, and we're
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: on board with that, kind of like. It's not the
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: same as the N word used in rap music. This
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: is like calling themselves koons. Was just a horrible thing
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: that white people call black people, right.
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: Yes, it was.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Probably it's complex too, So.
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: It wasn't what do we call it today when we I.
• 21:15
  Speaker 6: Don't think it was a term of endearment now, it
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: wasn't a term of endearment at all.
• 21:18
  Speaker 7: Our reclaiming, reclaiming that's the word.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: Right, No, but it's a word that was thrown around
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: and hate and hate from white folks, right yeah.
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah, And that's how they were saying it in the songs, yes, exactly.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: And just for anybody who didn't hear that correctly in
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: that chorus, bo b a U is just like another
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: lover right yeah, other parent yeah uh and this Okay,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about the success of
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: this song just a bit earlier. So it was an
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: absolute hit. People considered it a banker.
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: Yes they did. It was a bop for people.
• 21:58
  Speaker 8: The song got really popular and a bunch of different
• 22:00
  Speaker 8: people sang it, and there were parodies of it that
• 22:03
  Speaker 8: were made that people can go look up to. So
• 22:07
  Speaker 8: people enjoyed the song, and it was also part of
• 22:10
  Speaker 8: the larger culture of Coon songs. I'm not sure why
• 22:12
  Speaker 8: people enjoyed it so much this one, particularly because a
• 22:17
  Speaker 8: lot of other Coon songs that were written at the
• 22:18
  Speaker 8: time had similar themes. So I don't really know why
• 22:22
  Speaker 8: people were like, yeah, I really like this one. It
• 22:24
  Speaker 8: was set to ragtime type music, which people, you know,
• 22:28
  Speaker 8: say syncopation is a big part.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Of He was a pianist as well, right like he was? Yeah, okay,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: he was, he really did.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: I mean lyrics aside and the offensiveness of all of
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: this and the complexity he created a form as well,
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: kind of right like in terms of the music.
• 22:43
  Speaker 8: Yes he did, And so he wasn't the first person
• 22:46
  Speaker 8: to write a Coon song. So I guess this is
• 22:48
  Speaker 8: where I can start getting a little bit into the
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: history of coon songs, please, So the coon songs or
• 22:56
  Speaker 8: coon songs, there were coon songs were created before ragtime
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: kind of came around. So at a certain point we're
• 23:04
  Speaker 8: talking about Ernest Hogan and that how he's the father
• 23:07
  Speaker 8: of ragtime, about how he really helped popularize the form,
• 23:11
  Speaker 8: and how he was really one of the early composers
• 23:13
  Speaker 8: in ragtime. But there were coon songs that weren't set
• 23:18
  Speaker 8: to ragtime that came up before ragtime did. So Hogan's
• 23:22
  Speaker 8: song had these same caricatures that other coon songs would
• 23:26
  Speaker 8: have had at the time of black people as bumbling, lazy,
• 23:30
  Speaker 8: and violent. But the first coon songs came out around
• 23:33
  Speaker 8: eighteen eighty, so this was after the Civil War, after
• 23:37
  Speaker 8: ish the reconstruction era, and there were people like black entertainer,
• 23:42
  Speaker 8: so these were white and black entertainers who were creating
• 23:44
  Speaker 8: coon songs, but ones like black entertainer Billy Curson's who
• 23:48
  Speaker 8: wrote this song called Mary's Gone with a Coon that
• 23:50
  Speaker 8: was in the eighteen eighties, and this minstrel comedian named
• 23:54
  Speaker 8: Charles Hunt has been credited. Okay, this is one of
• 23:57
  Speaker 8: those this is one of those things where there's so
• 24:00
  Speaker 8: many things that can be called a first for what
• 24:02
  Speaker 8: the coon song was, but he's been credited with writing
• 24:05
  Speaker 8: the first real coon song, whatever that means.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Since we're an audio podcast, everybody, I want you to
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: hear the air quotes.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, combo there. I mean parallel thinking is a thing too,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: by the way.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: I mean like, this is something that that was in
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: demand even if people didn't know what to call it yet, right, Like,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: so people probably sort of created it at the same
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: time in a lot of cases.
• 24:25
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and you also have to imagine, like, of course
• 24:28
  Speaker 8: these ideas of black people being inferior are going to
• 24:31
  Speaker 8: work themselves out in song, like no matter what the
• 24:36
  Speaker 8: the beat is.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Because the music will reflect the zeitgeist that if the zeikeeist.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Is thoroughly unclean unclean indeed, speaking of unclean, but I
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: found a post on an Internet archive of the sheet
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: music cover of the published sheet music of this and
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: it is about as awful as.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: You might think. I'm sure you see this before.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: It's just these, you know, just cartoonish caricatures of blackface,
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: kind of these these stock characters with big red mouths
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: and wearing kind of weirdly almost like they're mocking them
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: because they're wearing like fancy dress clothes.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: What's up with that?
• 25:11
  Speaker 8: So that was actually one of the stereotypes of black people.
• 25:15
  Speaker 8: It was called like a swell, that was called So
• 25:17
  Speaker 8: that was part of the one of one of the
• 25:21
  Speaker 8: images that these racist characters would create around black people.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: But it was almost meant to be laughable because they're
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: like dressing way.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Above their station. I guess again with the air quotes,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: you can't see them.
• 25:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, there's an irony in them wearing this kind of
• 25:35
  Speaker 8: fancy clothing, but you also have to remember that this
• 25:37
  Speaker 8: is clothing.
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: This is like clothing of the enslaver's class.
• 25:43
  Speaker 8: So it's still like a matter of servitude, you know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 8: for them, it's like I'm placing you in this clothes.
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: It's very patriot paternalizing.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, patriotizing as well.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, wouldn't you say too that maybe that was
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: kind of co opted and owned like in like maybe
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: pimp culture is the wrong term, but like there is
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: sort of a vibe of this type of dress that
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: was sort of taken back in a way by a
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: certain segment of black culture.
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: I've never thought about it that way.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: It sort of feels sort of like like I'm taking
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: this back for me, you know, and I'm not even
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: going to allow this to be what it was. I'm
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: going to like sort of co opt it and own
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: it and take it back and way.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: That's interesting.
• 26:19
  Speaker 8: No, I've never thought about it, but I think that's
• 26:21
  Speaker 8: one way to think about it. Yeah, and then and
• 26:25
  Speaker 8: then I think there are a lot of things like
• 26:27
  Speaker 8: this that have been co opted back and turned around.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: That's always interesting.
• 26:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it is always interesting. And I will say too
• 26:35
  Speaker 8: that you know, it is very complex. But even back then,
• 26:41
  Speaker 8: the people, the black people who were creating coon songs,
• 26:44
  Speaker 8: they were self aware.
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: They knew what they were doing.
• 26:49
  Speaker 8: So I can't speak for every individual and how woke
• 26:53
  Speaker 8: quote unquote woke they may have been in the songs
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: that they were creating, but a lot of the times
• 26:57
  Speaker 8: their songs were satires.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Say little just dden in there.
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there were.
• 27:03
  Speaker 8: And one of the people who were was writing coon
• 27:06
  Speaker 8: songs at the time. His name was Irving Jones. People
• 27:16
  Speaker 8: can go and look at his sheet music and see
• 27:18
  Speaker 8: some of the covers that Irvin Jones had, but he
• 27:23
  Speaker 8: included a lot of that kind of criticism and satire
• 27:26
  Speaker 8: in his work, so he was class conscious, he was
• 27:29
  Speaker 8: raised conscious. One of his songs he had it was
• 27:33
  Speaker 8: called Saint Patrick's Day is a bad day for coons,
• 27:36
  Speaker 8: So you can go.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: You can go, bad day for everybody, just putting that
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: out there.
• 27:41
  Speaker 8: Yeah, but in this story, he specifically tells the story.
• 27:45
  Speaker 8: In the song, he specifically tells the story of black
• 27:49
  Speaker 8: people who are being violently harmed by white people on
• 27:52
  Speaker 8: Saint Patrick's Day. And that's something that we can still
• 27:56
  Speaker 8: talk about today. I mean we so I think in
• 27:58
  Speaker 8: the United States, even broader than black culture, so ignorantly,
• 28:02
  Speaker 8: willfully ignorantly celebrate other people's cultures through a commercial perspective.
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: Like yeah, so.
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: He was just giving us the rock hands, Okay, he
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: was agreeing with you as someone who bartended for seven years.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: I hate Sinko, Tomayo, Sam Patrick's Day, New Year's Eve,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: all them. Yeah, we like to collectively refer to those
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: as amateur hour bring Back Arbor Day celebrations.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: Right, sit under a tree, touch graw, we go, don't
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: bring it back and go to bars though, That's what
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: I'm saying, bring back Arbor Day at bars, have a picnic, No,
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: don't listen.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: So we're we're seeing something here that I think, I
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: think you hit on something crucial That is a theme
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: we continually return to in our exploration this week and today,
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: which is that history is way closer than it looks
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: in the rear view mirror. Right, I'm thinking of not
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: to keep referencing films, but I'm also thinking of Mark Fiction,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: an amazing film I love that I thought, very much,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: very much, very much shows modern examples of what we're
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: describing happening with menstrual songs? Right, Like, am I as
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: a creator, as an artist and an entertainer? What agency
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: do I have?
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: You know? And what like the bills versus the soul?
• 29:26
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Have you all seen American fiction? Yeah?
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I just think that the perfect example because it's
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: about like a more literary minded black writer who as
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: a joke writes something that he considers trash or representative
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: of this culture of like the perspective that you guys
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: are describing, the masculine kind of thug perspective that sells
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: because it's.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: What white people.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: I guess they are able to enjoy it in some
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: way because it absolves them or something.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: I don't know. That's what they talking about.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Complicated but I think it's a really interesting modern example
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: of what must have been going through Hogan's mind, you know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: or sorry, that's not the right what must have been
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: going for through the writer's mind when he was writing
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: these things for money but also thinking about how it
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: might be affecting his culture negatively.
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: And I think similarly to in American fiction during this
• 30:12
  Speaker 6: time where Coon songs were being written, there was a
• 30:14
  Speaker 6: contingency of black people saying like, Hey, you shouldn't be
• 30:17
  Speaker 6: making this, this is making us look bad. So it
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: wasn't like everyone was just like kind of going along
• 30:22
  Speaker 6: with it. So as you said, like history is kind
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: of like right at our doorstep, like we're having a
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: lot of the same conversations over and over again. Like
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: the medium might change a little bit, but at the core,
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: it's kind of the same.
• 30:34
  Speaker 8: Yes, there's one I can't remember what article I was
• 30:37
  Speaker 8: reading about, but not just coon songs, but also the
• 30:40
  Speaker 8: word coon. So, like Noel was saying earlier, you know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 8: this work coon is morphed a lot over the year
• 30:47
  Speaker 8: since this time period that we're talking about now, and
• 30:49
  Speaker 8: it has different connotations. But in this original derogatory form,
• 30:54
  Speaker 8: all black people weren't here for the word coon either.
• 30:56
  Speaker 8: So I was reading this one article that was talking
• 30:58
  Speaker 8: about a theater in Savannah that was like, oh, oh,
• 31:01
  Speaker 8: I think it was a black mac. I think it
• 31:03
  Speaker 8: was a black newspaper if I'm remembering correctly. That was like, yeah,
• 31:07
  Speaker 8: this is a show for coons. All coons comes through.
• 31:11
  Speaker 8: And people were like so welcoming. I mean it was Savannah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 8: I mean speaking of Saint Patti's Day.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: And it's it's still the thing.
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I lived there for a second, so I've been
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: steeped in.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: That this is so unrelated.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: I thought you would enjoy this though one time, because
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: one time in days when I was even more pretentious
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: than I am now, I was like, I'm gonna drive
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: down to a city I've never visited. I'm going to
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: get a little hotel room, I'm gonna lock myself in
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: and i'm gonna write.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm gonna.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Take take just the days off. I'll make it happen.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: I chose Savannah and Georgia, and I got down there
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: and everybody assumed that I had gotten to Saint Patrick's
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Day a week early because I wanted to party that hard,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: and other people showed up up for that reason it
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: was insane.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you were.
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: There, but I flee Savannah. If I'm ever going to
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: know I'm going to be there.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I should the worst, just the worst.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: But back to the word koon, I was just looking
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: up the origins because I was curious as well. Apparently
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: it was originally used to describe the Whig political party
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: in the eighteen forties, and then it was also used
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: before it was a slur for black people, as a
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: slur for Native American people, and I was unaware of that.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: I think this is like in the early eighteen or
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: like mid eighteen hundreds, but then obviously once it starts
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: to be used as that in that way, that's kind
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: of where your story picks up, right.
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it seems like they were like, oh, this
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: thing works really well.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Great hate word here.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Racism has never been especially created.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: But with this.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, so we know we know that our protagonist in
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: the story here, Ernest, is part of a larger context, right.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: And there are other authors, other musicians who are as
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: we said, including social observation, right, including Barbes writing writing
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: things that acknowledge the truth of this situation in a
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: way that some casual listeners might miss or be wilfully
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: ignorant of how did how did people react to Hogan
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: when he was writing these did he achieve, you know,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: like a celebrity status?
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Was he was? He considered famous, His.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: Name is on the sheet music real big. I mean,
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: I can tell you that. But I do wonder, like
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: because a lot of times writers that aren't really the
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: singers per se, they sort of take a back seat
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: and they don't necessarily have name recognition or like publicity
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: kind of vibes.
• 33:44
  Speaker 8: So in Ernest Hogan's case, he was a touring entertainer
• 33:48
  Speaker 8: as well, so he had he had celebrity and during
• 33:51
  Speaker 8: contemporary times got it. It wasn't one of those situations
• 33:54
  Speaker 8: where they were like, oh, we just realized after he
• 33:56
  Speaker 8: died posthumously that Ernest Hogan was the one who wrote
• 33:59
  Speaker 8: this huge.
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: And I think that played into his regret because people
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: knew him so much and associated him so much with it.
• 34:08
  Speaker 7: If he tried to move on.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: It's hard to move on from something when that's your
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: big hit.
• 34:11
  Speaker 7: That's what everybody they want you to keep doing it.
• 34:14
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and there were a lot of going back to minstrelsy,
• 34:19
  Speaker 8: there are a lot of black minstrel troops, So it
• 34:21
  Speaker 8: wasn't like this minstrel troops were just a white thing.
• 34:24
  Speaker 8: It's particularly in the South, there were black minstrel troops
• 34:27
  Speaker 8: who were traveling and doing shows.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: And they did the black face too.
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: There were black people who did black face.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know that was in Bamboozo.
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: But I thought in a way they were almost just
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: being extreme and sash satirizing the idea of black people
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: wearing black face.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: But I guess that absolutely happens.
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it happened.
• 34:43
  Speaker 8: And I would also argue that I think maybe anytime
• 34:46
  Speaker 8: a black person shows up in black face, it's hard
• 34:48
  Speaker 8: for it not to be satire because as soon as
• 34:51
  Speaker 8: you show up in blackface, you are not only not
• 34:55
  Speaker 8: only mimicking this derogatory character of a black black men usually,
• 35:01
  Speaker 8: but you're also mimicking the white man, mimicking.
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah black men.
• 35:10
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Hold the phone, folks, we have officially got some breaking news.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: This is going to be a two parter. We're just
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: having too much fun and there's still too much to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: get to for one episode.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, this is a topic that spans many
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: subtopics and historical touch points, and we couldn't be joined
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: with better guests to go through what I know can
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: be a little bit a difficult topic to traverse, and
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: we are guided by two experts in the field.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: So big big thanks, of course to Eves and Katie.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Do check out their show on theme and also join
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: us for part two of our special episode on the
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: history of music and racism and minstrel shows, and we
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: promise it's not complete downer for sure.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams his brother Alex Williams,
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: who composed our theme. Eaves Jeff Coats here in person,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: no longer in spirit, but you know future spiritual occurrences
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: are likely.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Big big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the quizter AJ
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: Jacobs or I should say AJ Bahamas Jacobs. And speaking
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: of breaking news, we just heard back from doctor Rachel Lance,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: who looks forward to returning and teaching us more about
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: underwater explosions, still one of my favorite areas of expertise
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: we've run into in the course of this show.
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: One of our favorite collective flexes to mention that we
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: know someone is expert in this seemingly beyond niche field,
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: but I can't wait to Yeah, we talked about the
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: sinking of the Hunley, a Confederate submarine that's been years
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: at this point, so man I can't wait to see
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: what she's been up to.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, and she has a new book that is on
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the way. She'll tell us all about it. In the meantime.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Do check out on Theme and join us for a
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: future episode.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.