GWSS Blog Post #1

Sarah Hizami

Through the readings for this week, I was able to see the different ways people are remembered, and how remembrance can be socially constructed.    People leave different impacts and legacies in the world. However, sometimes these personas of people are not always interpreted as they were meant to be. 

In Gaye Wald’s Rosetta Tharpe and Feminist “Un-Forgetting,” Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s musical impact on the world is merely erased.  In this piece, we are able to observe how gender and race are socially construed and how people only remember what they want.  For example, Elvis Presley is said to have been highly influenced by Tharpe and have even auditioned with one of her songs, “Strange Things Happening Every Day.”  One of the observers, “had gone on to write that Rosetta Tharpe looked and sounded like a ‘blacked-up Elvis drag’” (158 Wald).  To this observer it seems that Tharpe is trying to portray Presley, when in fact it is the opposite.  People assume it is the white male that everyone is trying to imitate, when in fact it is the white male that is emulating the black female. This was disheartening, because this trend is constantly repeated.  The white male steals something from the minority and gets all the fame and credit (similar to Big Mama Thorton’s story).  Tharpe’s legacy is incorrectly perceived, and it up to us, the educated, to change the way the world is looked at.

A similar situation is seen with Alice Bag in the Hollywood Punk scene.  She participated in an East LA exhibit called Vexing, which highlighted Bag in a new post-Hollywood punk scene in the Mexican American LA community.  To fans, this appeared as her being a part of a different community that they did not identify themselves with.  When in actuality, Bag makes the claim in the LA Times, “the East L.A punk scene developed once the Hollywood scene became closed and unwelcoming, making it necessary for some punk performers to create a new punk community” (262 Habell-Pallan).  Bag’s presence in the exhibit is not understood for its authenticity, but incorrectly interpreted by others. Comparable to Tharpe, her actions are not correctly interpreted by her audience / the media.

The songs I would like to share are the two renditions of “Last Kiss.”  I originally knew this song from Pearl Jam, and the distinct voice from Eddie Vedder.  However, once looking up this song, I realized that they have revived it from Wayne Cochran in 1961.  Similar to Alice Bag and Rosette Tharpe, I am able to see how a popular song has an alternate history than what I expected.  Through looking up the history to the song Last Kiss, I can become more aware and inform others on the history and true writers of the song.

Last Kiss by Pearl Jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_sEtNrYlC4
Last Kiss by Wayne Cochran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTxGCoQgdOM