We all know about the black groups that has crossover appeal to white audiences during the 70s. You know, Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire.. What about the white groups that had crossover appeal over to black audiences?
This is going to be hard but I'm going to try it, a semi-scientific aggregation of the top 70s crossover & rock songs that did well in the 'hood. I'm going back into my memory banks and digging up what I remember from highschool that appealed to brothers back in the day and I'm ranking them on three scales.
1. How generally alien they were to R&B and funk.
2. How much I gauge that I (and other brothers liked them)
3. How broad was that liking.
For example. Take Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way'. On the alien scale, that scores high. It ain't a white group trying to be funky, that's a straight out rock anthem. On the excitement scale, it was pretty high. If you liked it, you really liked it, and brothers who liked it really did. On the broad scale it scores low. Brothers did not admit that they liked it openly and black radio didn't really play it.
So let's take some nominations. I'll publish a spreadsheet with the results on Thursday. On a scale of 1-5, 5 being most, give me your guesses. Song, Artist, Year (if you can), Alien, Excitement, Broad.
Here's my guess. The top groups are going to be The Eagles, Journey, Toto, Foreigner, Pat Benatar and Rod Stewart. In the second tier will be Steely Dan, Chicago, Doobie Brothers, ELO, Fleetwood Mac, and ACDC. Then in the third tier, Aerosmith, Foghat, Gino Vanelli, Boz Scaggs, Hall & Oates, J Geils, David Bowie, Elton John.. At least that will give you something to think of. Fire away.
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