I’m picturing those old photos of Hall and Oates, and I’m laughing out loud here!
By the mid 70s, the damndest people were wearing afro-like hair.
A lot of people never really found out that Cat Stevens was of Cypriot descent, Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar in a Persian minority, etc. … their hair helped obscure or reinvent their original selves.
I have no idea what Hall’s or Oates’s ethnic backgrounds might contain, but Oates was from NYC and you never know. The real reinvention came from their passion for the Philadelphia soul sound when (or even before) they met there as students at Temple U. around late 1967.
If a “blue-eyed soul” musician can come across as authentically black or even semi-black out of such a milieu, that’s decent enough. Just not an “Achievement in Black History”, of course. Brilliant strip here.
avonsalis over 14 years ago
I’m picturing those old photos of Hall and Oates, and I’m laughing out loud here!
By the mid 70s, the damndest people were wearing afro-like hair.
A lot of people never really found out that Cat Stevens was of Cypriot descent, Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar in a Persian minority, etc. … their hair helped obscure or reinvent their original selves.
I have no idea what Hall’s or Oates’s ethnic backgrounds might contain, but Oates was from NYC and you never know. The real reinvention came from their passion for the Philadelphia soul sound when (or even before) they met there as students at Temple U. around late 1967.
If a “blue-eyed soul” musician can come across as authentically black or even semi-black out of such a milieu, that’s decent enough. Just not an “Achievement in Black History”, of course. Brilliant strip here.