![]() The lyrics that Sly wrote for The Beau Brummel’s version of “Underdog,” with their repeated “ I know how it feels,” lyrical hook, are similarly influenced by “Like A Rolling Stone,” but the blatant racial signifiers are ambiguous or even edited out. Even when Hendrix became an international superstar less than two years later, he had to cover Dylan’s song rather than the Curtis Knight song. Sure enough, the specific protest, palpable in Curtis Knight’s “How Would You Feel,” ensured it wasn’t a success in 1965. Black people’s songs have carried the fire and struggle of their lives since they first opened their mouths in this part of the world.”With secular music, integration (meaning the harnessing of Black energy for dollars by white folks, in this case the music business) spilled the content open to a generalizing that took the bite of specific protest out (“You know you cain’t sell that to white folks).” ![]() To many African-Americans, the “socially conscious” lyrics of much of the “folk-rock” now fashionable among the “more adventurous bohemian white groups” came off as just “white kids playing around.The ‘protest’ is not new. The Two Underdogs: Sly Stone & The Great Fillmore Whitewash
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