created by president jimmy carter in 1979 african-american music appreciation month celebrates african-american music in our society typically celebrated in june we are discussing it tonight because a friend of our show has recently released a book recognizing four decades of r b music that's right our favorite r b historian is back to tell us about his best-selling book i'm so happy you're joining us [Music] welcome to everybody with angela williamson a public affairs program produced in partnership with pbsla this program is made possible by viewers like you thank you [Music] my name is tyrone dubois i am america's premier r b historian [Music] hey everybody what's going on what's going on we're here because this is where i redefined my calling and my passion of being a r b historian here at pax stereo in los angeles and mario hemsley as well as victor allen were a big part of that and i wanted to make sure that i had an opportunity to come by and visit and get a chance to chat with him about my book [Music] the book is my top 10 picks of r b history of the top acts and singers from the 60s 70s and 80s and 90s some of the artists that i feature in my book include the king and queens of soul of james brown and aretha franklin but there are also artists that many people haven't heard of or haven't heard enough of some of these people people wouldn't have realized that were actually that big but in the decades that i speak of they were actually relatively big in their in their genre because each genre was a sense of a revolution of music music changed in each decade [Music] i picked the r b genre because i thought that the r b aspect of music is one of the most important aspects of music there is it's one of the most copied of of any genre hip-hop jazz every type of music genre always leads you back to r b music my hope is that when people see this book is that it brings them back to a time of a time in their life when music charted memories for them of you know whether they're artists that was so important to them was as big to them as it was to america [Music] our favorite r b historian and what a phenomenal video i love that video and i had a great time filming it with your crew and we just made a great day out of it which was which was really nice of course the drone had a whole lot to do with that as well i know those drones just keep making it all over the show oh wow well you know this is so amazing because when we talked the last time we talked last season you were mentioning i'm working on this book and i said you know i think i put you on the spot on air and said yes when the book is done you'll have to come back so you finished this best-selling book i did okay so tell us a little bit about the process we'll talk about the contents of the book in a minute but tell us a little bit about that process well part of the process for me was trying to decide what i wanted to do in a content of a book to begin with because many people i had spoken to a publicist once before and she said tyrone you are legitimized as an r b historian she said but a book would solidify you as someone who you know knew their their craft of the r b charts and what i wanted to do was make sure that it was all based upon an opinion more than it was the actual facts and that helped me a great deal because when you're going into facts what happens is people's whole goal at that point is to find out everything that's wrong about what you're doing so i just covered myself saying i'm just going to make this based on my opinion and that made it a whole lot easier well and i love the way you tell it you you are telling a story but i can't hear your voice when i'm reading this so it is all about tyrone so my question to you is how were you able to decide on because this book most people think when you are charting music it's just billboard but you pulled in other categories as well like with cashbox correct me if i'm wrong because you are the historian so i want to know how you decided to do that process because that was really interesting too because i never knew that there was another source and most people don't yeah what generally happens is billboard is generally the standard of all uh charts including r b and although r b specifically belongs to billboard the top ten of other charts involved record world and cash box and so what i decided to do was rather than to dispute or wonder whether they had a number one song or made it to the top ten of the other charts i decided to combine them all together and it made it much interesting in fact where we thought that perhaps for example one particular group had just you know five singles the actual total was six because i counted in the one that was on the other chart i didn't think it was fair to just simply say that the standard was actually the only one all of the charts mattered so i decided to combine them all into one and i know you said it was tough to choose you know the four decades that you you chose for this book and um before you came on set we were talking about what is r and b music today and we don't see it today like it was in the 60s 70s 80s and 90s are we wrong or well to some degree it's never going to be what it was because i think that was the reason why i gave each chapter a different title like i said in the 60s it was you know an evolution of r b and then in the 70s it was a revolution and in the 80s i said a reinvention because what happens is is that we think somehow another r b stays the same but it didn't and then in the 90s i said was this the conclusion because what happens is ultimately right okay and one of the reasons i did that is because music as far as the r b aspect was concerned has never been the same again wow now the 80s that's really familiar because the 80s with mtv do you think that that's what impacted and that's why they had to like rethink i think to some degree mtv and music videos in general in particularly then in the 80s we all raced home because we all wanted to see the top music videos all the time and absolutely videos revolutionized music which was one of the reasons why i called it a reinvention a lot of times people who were doing music were actually doing the music based upon the video itself so the music and the video both told the story and a lot of people did that so give me an example of one person that had the the music fitting the video that that we we all know the first person that came to mind for me was lionel [Music] richie you think about the song hello yes he put a story my dreams i've kissed your lips a thousand times been a long time since i've been on a date i sometimes [Music] a lot of them were storytelling type videos and we all remembered them with michael jackson with some of his videos it told stories as well so i think what we started looking for in videos was the story of what it was all about and then you know there was also the fashion aspect of videos as well where we looked at the fashion if you look at uh wham you know everybody had the the shirts that you know had exactly i know nothing about that but yes so you're so right about that because as you are telling the story you're talking about lionel richie and you're talking about michael jackson i can i can see those videos i can see the story but i can also see the fashion behind it as well but do you think that when i think of lionel richie and i think of michael jackson and they are just these incredible artists and songwriters do you think that because of who they were it was easy for them to make that transition well to some degree yes but the other aspect was that they knew when to roll with their music remember both of them were in the 70s and both moved on to the 80s and that was really difficult particularly in the the face of disco um the aretha franklin for example it took her almost the mid 80s to catch her dr you know drive again because her last album with atlantic was called you know ladiva and what happened was it bombed and then she moved on to arista where she caught her stride again after i read the first chapter then i got excited and i would think i'm going to start thinking about who he's going to include in the next chapter and and so when you get to the 70s you're with the flow and then you get to the 80s you're like i know exactly who will be in the 80s but i was so shocked because who you had in the 80s i didn't see until the 90s so even though you mentioned before those artists are around how come it takes them maybe a decade for them to start seeing that kind of chart success well part of the problem is not just the chart success it's the music success there are other songs and other music that's in front of them you know that takes precedence for example earlier we were talking about the barge they only had like a three-year window remember and they were usually on a tour with luther vandross at that time so what happened is generally you know they they catch their win usually based upon not only who they're touring with but the sign of the times then you know their music was a different genre you know at that time you know the falsetto voice of el debarge you know versus luther vandross and there were a lot of groups and a lot of single r b artists that played a big part in the 1980s and you mentioned one and all i can think about is the song it's like you are my lady uh jackson freddie jackson yes yes jackson many people one of the biggest i remember the biggest debates in the 80s on the radio in la people used to say who was bigger was it freddie jackson or luther vandross and the truth is as far as number ones were concerned freddie jackson was bigger than luther vandross but who was bigger overall it was luther vandross because he crossed over to the pop charts and when you cross over to the pop charts that means both you're accepted by all audiences not just african american but the pop charts are based upon white audiences as well and so when you mix the flow together that's what makes you bigger remember um michael jackson was the king of pop not rnb and that's what they used to play that's what they used to say before we go to our break because when we come back we're going to get into detail with some of these artists i already brought up freddie jackson because you started talking about that and when you talked about el debarge i'm like freddie jackson but before we move over there can you just give us one big insight that you took away while you were researching this and you probably even had the artist in your mind oh this artist for sure should be here but you you found out oh no they're actually they're an honorable mention they're not too high on the chart yes in the 70s i would have thought it would have been stevie wonder as on an earth wind and fire both as you know bigger but the problem became that they caught their wind in the earl in the late 70s now stevie wonder was mainstream but remember he came in the time of disco and one of the biggest surprises for me that was in that top 10 was joe simon never gave him any thought at all but he was bigger wow okay so when we come back i want to start the conversation with some honorable mentions because even though they're an honorable mention i remember the songs and i was so shocked i didn't remember the artist so i would love for you to tell us why that happens because even today a lot of those songs are being played we know the song but not the artist so when we come back we want to talk about that looking forward to some other other fun stuff absolutely okay and we'll be right back with tyrone [Music] dancer singer dreamer the world knows her as a barrier breaking actress but behind the cameras are the memories of an impoverished farm girl from puerto rico named rosita marcano the discrimination she faced in hollywood forced her to cover her skin color with makeup and changed her name to prita moreno the role of a lifetime was playing anita in west side story which won her an oscar ironically her career came to a standstill for the next seven years as she declined one dimini role after another she returned in 1973 to win a grammy for children's music they wanted tony for broadway and emmy for tv and a peabody for career achievement making her one of only three people to earn pgot status rita proved that with patience resilience and a lot of faith the stars can be reached and shine brightly for all of us welcome back we are now doing r b history 101 with our friend we when we went to break i wanted you to talk a little bit about the honorable mention because one of the things i noticed and then i also realized too even with the one-hit wonders i can remember the songs even as you're you are mentioning them but the artist i didn't realize that that was the artist so tell us how was that thought process and how did you come up with well i came up first with the honorable mentions one of the reasons why i did the honorable mentions is because i wanted it to be a bit of an extension of the top ten because i recognize that a lot of people would go well what about this person what about that person so what it allowed me to do was to extend it a little bit in a paragraph so i felt like okay it's actually a top 15 but they didn't get more scrutiny than the ones that i believed were the top ten and with the one-hit wonders one of the reasons why they are um hard to remember although the song is because it's just that a one-hit wonder and so we don't generally remember the one-hit wonders name we just remember their music that is so incredible and one of the things that i wanted to talk about we we started talking about it before the break but i really want to delve into it now when i was looking over the 70s and when i was looking over the 80s and you mentioned that with with stevie wonder i i thought i would have i would have saw him in the 70s but i saw him in the 80s but i was really shocked about some groups that i thought would have been in the 80s and i didn't see them at all so did you i mean did you also get that kind of thought process idea like this person should be here but it's not but it's not one of the things that i did was i made sure i took my emotions and feelings out of the equation because i felt like if i put my feelings in it then there would have been a whole different topic so what i wanted to do was make sure that i did it based upon what i perceived just to simply be what was best based on the facts and its chart history not just with billboards r b chart but their pop chart history on record world and cash box so i wanted to make sure that i was inclusive with everything a lot of those groups had runs in certain aspects of the decade like you may have seen for example the queen of soul for example was aretha franklin in the 70s but what many people didn't know is that aretha franklin was actually the queen of soul in the 80s above whitney houston above anita baker above patti labelle but not by much the person who actually was a snail's whisker away from her was none other than stephanie mills and part of the reason was because of her her run on the r b charts at the end of the of the decade of the 80s and i thought that was really interesting as well and you also talked about and i'm trying to to remember oh new kids on the block not new kids on the block new addition new audition right but new and we know where you're we know where your music is well new kids on the block because there was new addition but but new addition was only in one decade right well they were actually in the early part of the 90s but i mean a part of it when bobby brown left but their biggest run was the 80s and you know it was in the early 84 85 mr telephone man and they moved on and they had a number one with can you stand the rain as well but the problem becomes when bobby brown leaves then they roll back in um and then they kind of had a reunion of sorts in the mid 90s and so that's part of the problem so when it's inclusive with all of them well they had a number one song but i'm still in love with you and hit it off some of these records were big but their biggest run was the 80s that is really interesting and i noticed there was one decade where i didn't see any groups at all was that the 90s yeah a lot of that was because in the decade of the 90s a lot of although you saw your boys demanding some of the other groups it was actually a big r b 80s explosion of the 90s but someone consistently that was doing it it was generally only boys to men now there were a couple but if you think about your groups in the 90s or yours artist in the 90s they were r b singers like your tevin campbell you know johnny gill these were all r b singers at that point that were big at that point and so that's the reason why you don't see a lot of groups then not that they weren't big but they just weren't big enough to make it into the top ten i know you can't say any names but have you heard from any uh any musicians where i mean because your book is a bestseller so when it's a bestseller everyone gets their hands on it so did you hear from someone that said i should have been here but i wasn't i heard from a major artist a major artist and he said i'll say it's a he he said that there's no way in the world i could have known what i was talking about because he was a gigantic artist in the 90s and he was absolutely right the problem he was a big artist on the pop charts not the r b charts and my book is based on the top r b and this artist had a number one song for weeks not once not twice not three but four different times but it was all on the pop chart not on the r b chart now it took me a little time for you know to get that person understand it but once they did they seem to be okay for now for now i know it's almost i mean you are put you putting yourself in the hot seat when you do something like this but you also bring up a really great point is that do you think sometimes um as consumers of this wonderful music and at the beginning we talked about african-american music african-american appreciation month and do you think that sometimes that there's those lines get blurred people don't really realize that they're thinking it's an r b artist but really they are a pop artist does that happen as i mentioned on unsung you know a lot of times we as people who love music we get caught up in the music and the time that it makes us feel good where we are in our lives and that's the reason why music gets you know we never forget music because it puts us in a different place of where we were in our lives the problem becomes though is that when it crosses over to the pop chart it makes it bigger and it makes you bigger than you were in the in the 90s that makes you bigger i'm sorry on the pop chart than you were on the r b chart for example frankie beverly was big on the r b charts but on the pop charts he never even cracked the top 20. so doesn't mean that he was bad it just simply means it's a niche type of music that people listen to in the 90s for example i said that you know one artist was bigger than another but not by much and that's the whole decade of the 90s a lot of solo artists your whitney houstons and some of these other bigger artists the 80s were bigger for groups the 90s were bigger for solo acts we always associate music to it's a personal it's personal for us and it's emotional for us as well so it has to be emotional for the artists too yeah absolutely and it's hard for me because i love all genres of music but i know one thing that never changes and that's if you are a r b artist and you cross over to the pop charts that separates you from being a r b star to a superstar and that it really tells all the difference and one of the biggest examples was that was what i said in the book about um artists in the 50s i want a decade back while fats domino you know was actually one of the bigger artists but the biggest artist was elvis presley because he crossed over from the pop chart basically to the r b charts and and african americans were buying his music and i was shocked about that i did not know that he was considered r and b he had crossed over the r b well frank sinatra and some of the other artists crossed over to the r b charts as well but it wasn't that they crossed over to the r b chart it was generally almost all the music that you had that you were able to buy in the case of some artists i when i was thinking about when i was younger um like with james brown and and with aretha franklin they had to constantly learn to reinvent themselves for that audience could you tell that could you see that when you were charting them for each of the decades part of the problem particularly with james brown one of the very smaller facts that people don't know is that he was doing well on the pop charts until he made the song i'm black and i'm proud and once he did that he never crossed over to the pop chart again until he made the song living in america and that's when he crossed over the problem isn't just his music so that's the reason why he was the king of the r b charts and he did enough as well as aretha franklin to do the same thing and aretha franklin for example until you come back to me was big in 1974 but she didn't ever hit the pop chart again until 25 years later yeah and all of a sudden it's like a re-emergence of who she is and also too what i was shocked about as well too is we had had a lot of women that i saw in the 90s and we talked about whitney houston but janet jackson i remember her coming out in the 80s and so when she first came out was she considered pop or is it the same thing it just took her a while to sort of get her groove and that's why we're seeing her a decade later eventually they ramp themselves up you know particularly it's all about you know where you fit in there was one artist in the 70s a group that would wait until they would release their songs on the pop chart or release their music on the r b chart just to see how far it would get on the r b charts as well as crossing over to the pop charts and the other problem with janet jackson wasn't her music it was her brother and so you know with being a jackson it just made it that hard remember you know you're trying to out top the king of pop so can you only imagine being the little sister to that not not not too hard no i love your perspective with that well as we conclude our conversation tonight what's next for you you have this book another book on the horizon i know i put you on the spot the last show another book are you doing different things life is going really good for me right now i feel like i know it sounds crazy but i think the pandemic gave me an opportunity to reinvent my own life not just with television of course and working with cheryl underwood radio which has been probably one of the biggest dreams i've ever had but doing the voiceovers and now i've been doing some acting but more importantly i'm staying true to what i like the most and that's being you know a part of r b music and being recognized as someone who recognizes and understands the charge have you know made this a dream of a lifetime for me so i'm i'm forever and eternally grateful for that wow well again thank you so much for being on the show before we close tonight let our audience know how they can get this book because i mean i'm sure they're thinking i need to get this book right now well yeah you know what's interesting is when it became on number one and i was really shocked and this guy said wait a second you're bigger than prince this week use a bad man but you can go to amazon music right now i mean amazon i'm sorry who has the book there as well or you can go to my website which is rmbhistorian.com wonderful thank you so much for joining i'm honored once again thank you my pleasure and thank you for joining us on everybody with angela williamson viewers like you make this show possible join us on social media to continue this conversation good night and stay well [Music] you