The White Stripes - Party of Special Things to Do

And this was just the beginning. By the end of 1955, rock and roll, as performed and consumed by both blacks and whites, had emerged as a distinct musical style, rather than simply a euphemism for the black r&b which spawned it and with which it continued to overlap. In late 1956, Billboard reported that 25 of 125 pop chart entries during the first 50 weeks of the year had been black r&b/rock and roll records. Many others were either white cover versions of black songs or by white artists performing in styles obviously derived from black music. In 1957, the independent record companies responsible for recording much of this material accounted for an astonishing 76 per cent of the year’s hit singles. In 1958 more than 90 per cent of the 155 records appearing on the national Rhythm and Blues charts during the year also appeared on the pop charts.

Taken together, the rise of these Independents and the unprecedented popularity of black and black-derived styles with young white audiences threatened the traditional distribution of power and influence within the music industry. According to Charles Hamm, “At no other point in the two- hundred year history of popular song in America had there been such a drastic and dramatic change in such a brief period of time”. The powerful alliance of Tin Pan Alley music publishing houses, professional songwriters, network radio stations and major recording labels, which had long dominated the popular music business, was challenged and for a while bested by a new breed of song publishers, black-oriented radio stations, distributors, and record labels.

Most of the Independents involved in the production of r&b had emerged in the mid 1940s, after the Majors, responding to the enforced economies of the Depression and then war, had curtailed minority ranges like black music and concentrated on the more lucrative mass market for white popular music. After the Second World War, however, a disparate group of entrepreneurs moved into the market niches created by these cutbacks, encouraged by the fact that the cost of entry into the business of record production remained relatively low. A thousand dollars was enough to hire a studio (typically at $50 an hour), book musicians, pay American Federation of Musicians (AFM) dues, have a master tape prepared, and press 500 singles at 11 cents a shot.
Source: Just my soul responding Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness and race relations by Brian Ward

The White Stripes - Party of Special Things to Do

• Released December 2000
• Genre Garage rock
• Cover of a song by Captain Beefheart

"Between the releases of their seminal albums De Stilj and White Blood Cells, the iconic duo released a 7-inch for Sub Pop’s Singles Club series taking on a hero of their own: Captain Beefhear."


Gorillaz - Baby Queen

• Released by: Parlophone UK
• Release date: November 2022
• Genres Synthpop, Trip Hop, Alternative

"Previously the best-known '"cartoon bands" were animated versions of The Monkees and The Beatles that kids could watch on Saturday mornings. But Gorillaz (initially called just "Gorilla") was to be an ambitious musical project with eclectic, genre-bending tunes, unique visuals, and a detailed backstory for how the virtual band came to be."

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