I was listening to National Public Radio this morning when I heard a most fascinating story. I thought I would share it here. It was about singer-songwriter Janis Ian and a song she released in 1966 (charted as high as 14). The song is about an interracial relationship, and she wrote it when she was only 13 years old! I've included a link where you can see her actually perform the song on the TV show The Smothers Brothers, which was an extremely popular TV show at the time.
I consider the song and her performance of it for a national television audience to be a rare, vintage find, and a ballad/statement about the perils of interracial relationships in the 1960's, a time when more and more black boys and white girls were going together and having sex. I wanted to include far more interesting background information about Janis and the song (she got death threats!), but this STUPID site keeps changing the name of the song to "Society's Baby", causing any link with the real name of the song in it to not work
!!! It's why I'm not using the name of the song now as I write this, since auto-editor would change it!
The NPR story:
"Society's baby," made the singer-songwriter a star at 15. A year later, the same pop song about interracial romance won her a Grammy nomination, but it also resulted in death threats. Ian says the impact of "Society's baby" has remained with her; it's also the title of her recently released...
www.npr.org
The controversial lyrics:
Come to my door, baby
Face is clean and shining black as night
My mama went to answer
You know that you looked so fine
Now I could understand the tears and the shame
She called you "Boy", instead of your name
When she wouldn't let you inside
When she turned and said
"But honey, he's not our kind"
She says I can't see you any more, baby
Can't see you any more
Walk me down to school, baby
Everybody's acting deaf and blind
Until they turn and say
"Why don't you stick to your own kind?"
My teachers all laugh, their smirking stares
Cutting deep down in our affairs
Preachers of equality
Think they believe it?
Then why won't they just let us be?
They say I can't see you any more, baby
Can't see you any more
One of these days I'm gonna stop my listening
Gonna raise my head up high
One of these days I'm gonna raise up
My glistening wings and fly
But that day will have to wait for a while
Baby, I'm only society's baby
When we're older, things may change
But for now this is the way they must remain
I say -- I can't see you any more, baby
Can't see you any more
No, I don't want to see you any more, baby
Performance on The Smothers Brothers:
As a side note, Janis Ian is considered to be a "one hit wonder" as she only had one truly smash hit . . . called At Seventeen (reached no. 3 on the pop chart) . . . .