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Tell us about the label's
early days. What did Alligator start out knowing that other labels
didn't?
Well, I knew that if I was going to make records
I had to be a good businessman, and so I started with the concept
that I was going to be more aggressive than other labels I saw
around me at that time.
I started out knowing, for example, that progressive-rock radio
stations existed and that they would be open at that moment in
1971 to playing blues records. That wasn't true by 1975, when
most of them become AOR stations. Blues had been eliminated from
the playlists.
I was prepared to give away a lot more LPs to radio than my competitors
were, and to follow up with lots of phone calls and mailings.
I remember sitting on the floor of my one-room apartment with
my portable typewriter, typing labels to send "Thank you,
Hound Dog Taylor" posters to everyone who had played the
album, each with an individual note.
Still, 30 years is nearly
unheard of in this business. What's enabled Alligator to survive
for so long?
The first reason we've survived is that we've
made some really great records, and the second reason is that
we've been aggressive about marketing those records. We've always
felt that we're not just selling the records, we're selling the
artists. We want people to feel as though they're not just buying
a piece of vinyl or a round piece of metal or plastic, but that
they're getting a slice of human being in their living room.
Did you find that you not
only had to market your artists, but that you in fact had to
market "blues" - as a genre - to the public?
I feel like I've tried to be a crusader for
the blues. I wanted to bring the blues community together and
get the artists in front of a larger audience. I feel like I've
been a proselytizer; I wanted to convert people to the "religion"
of the blues. As a businessman, I hope they'll grow to like my
artists. But if they come to blues festivals and blues clubs
and never buy an Alligator record, it's still a good thing. Because
ultimately we need a larger fan base for this music.
It's frustrating, because 48 percent of people
in the U.S. who buy records say that they "like" or
"very much like" blues. Yet according to the Recording
Industry Association of America, only about one and a half percent
of all the records sold in the U.S. are blues records. And that's
using a pretty loose definition of blues. It's frustrating that
half of the people in the U.S. say blues is part of what they
like, and yet a tiny percentage are actually buying the records.
So we need to get those people more excited.
Any theories on why blues
doesn't have a larger audience?
Blues is a music of grown-up emotions, and
not necessarily a music of easy emotions. I like to say
that listening to the blues is kind of like ... if you imagine
yourself a wet sponge getting wrung out, your wringing-out process
is kind of painful, but at the end you'll feel a lot better.
Blues is more emotional and more adult music than a lot of pop
music, and that's one reason radio is afraid of blues. It's a
little too strong a statement for the radio.
And there's the problem that blues is perceived as "black
music," and we live in a majority white country, and the
fact is that the majority of white people listen to white musicians.
There are plenty of black blues fans, and there are plenty of
white blues fans who are comfortable listening to black artists,
but there are also plenty of white people in the U.S. who never
listen to black musicians because they don't think black musicians
have anything to say to them. And unfortunately, there are plenty
of radio programmers who think that if they want to reach a primarily
white audience, the best way to do so is to play primarily white
musicians. They think their audience wants to listen to people
who look just like them, so they perpetuate racial stereotypes
of "black music for black people" and "white music
for white people."
I don't think they're sitting around being racist. I am not suggesting
that they are sitting there saying, "Keep those black people
off the radio." I think they think, "If we want 30-year-old
white men to listen to this radio station, we will play records
by 30-year-old white men, because that's what our potential audience
will relate to." I think its very subconscious, but true.
It's interesting that a vast majority of black artists you hear
on rock 'n' roll radio stations are dead. Why? Because a vast
majority of black artists you hear on rock 'n' roll radio stations
are Jimi Hendrix. He's the only one. If we're dead, we can't
move into your neighborhood and marry your sister now.
The one blues artist who's had acceptance
at triple-A radio is Keb' Mo'. And as much as I like Keb' Mo',
he's made his blues a little less edgy. He's the black guy you
want to move into your neighborhood and marry your sister,
because you know he'll mow his yard and paint his house and lend
you his garden tools. To ignore racism issues in blues is to
be unrealistic.
(continue
to part 2)
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