This is how your children behave when they swarm Black people
And you think Karmelo Anthony was WRONG for FEARING FOR HIS LIFE
around that mob of racist troglodytes?
GTEFOHYBACs
This rare, unedited footage of an archival outtake from the landmark 1995 PBS/BBC ten-part documentary series Rock & Roll (produced by WGBH and filmed by Elizabeth Deane). In this incredible raw interview clip, legendary songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie pulls back the curtain on the true history of American Rock and Roll music.
While recounting how she cleaned up Little Richard's raw, underground roadhouse lyrics in just fifteen minutes to write "Tutti Frutti" at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio, LaBostrie strips away the commercialized myth of the genre. She firmly re-anchors the birth of Rock and Roll in its true origin: the resilience, survival, and creative genius of Black Americans navigating the hardships of the mid-century South.
When asked by the interviewer how Rock and Roll and the Blues truly began, LaBostrie bypassed the standard talk of record labels and studio equipment. Instead, she spoke directly to the socioeconomic realities and systemic oppression faced by Black communities in Mississippi and Alabama, explaining how systematic struggle was transmuted into a global musical revolution:
“Where I would go to Jackson, Mississippi, down in Meridian, Mississippi, those places where people had such a hard time as I said, and they would give out their event in song. You couldn't fight what was going on down there, so you get in the corner and make up a song, get a rub board or whatever it may be. And it was sad, but beautiful.” —Dorothy LaBostrie