Switched on Pop - Rosie: Investigating a Crime at the Heart of the Music Industry

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Listen closely to the start of the 2015 hit "Hey Mama" by David Guetta, Nicki Minaj, Afrojack, and Bebe Rexha and you'll hear voices intoning a chant: "Be my woman, girl, I'll be your man." It's sample from a 1948 recording called "Rosie," and it's the propulsive hook of "Hey Mama," driving the song to over a billion views on YouTube. The voices in the sample belong to CB Cook and ten other unidentified prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka Parchman Farm. These men never got credit for their work, even though it's been reused by everyone from Guetta to the Animals to Nina Simone. We investigate the story of "Rosie" to understand an inequity that lies at the heart of the music business and our national consciousness. Songs Discussed David Guetta ft Nicki Minaj, Bebe Rexha, and Afrojack - Hey Mama CB Cook and Axe Gang - Rosie The Animals - Inside Looking Out Grand Funk Railroad - Inside Looking OUt KRS-One - Sound of Da Police Jay Z - Takeover Nina Simone - Be My Husband Check out Kembrew McLeod's and Peter DiCola's book Creative License to learn more about the law and culture of digital sampling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, today we are going to investigate a crime. Oh, okay. A theft, one that lies at the heart of the music industry. It's about to get CSI up in here. Sintillating. I'm going to take you to the scene of the crime now. It's the 2015 hit by David Geta featuring Nick Mickey Minaj, Afrojack, and BB Rexa. Hey Mama. Charlie, are you familiar with this track, Hey Mama? Yeah, I feel like this was David Getta at the sort of pivotal moment at which EDM takes over pop music right in the middle of the 2010s. How many views do you think this song has on YouTube?

I bet it was pretty popular. Hundreds of millions. Try 1,300 million views. Oh my gosh. So this is a massively successful track. Yeah. And it's worth talking about for a second. It's got these EDM elements like these rising builds.

And drops. And it might be worth zooming in on some of the lyrics. like those in the second verse. Yes, I do the cooking. Yes, I do the cleaning. Plus I keep the none real sweet for your eating. Yes, you be the bow. Yes, I do the cleaning.

Wow, some rather regressive gender politics here that I might not have even noticed the first time I listened. This is 2015 or like 1955. Okay, so there's a weird power dynamic at play here. And actually, now that I think about it, The co-writer and singer of the chorus here, Bibi Rexa, she wasn't even originally credited on this track. She had to fight for that credit. And she's not in the music video if you watch it.

And this is David Gedda, who's a producer, DJ, putting his name in front of the much bigger stars that are the featured guests. So there are weird power dynamics happening here, as you pointed out. Okay, so now we've sort of set the scene. Let's get back to our investigation. In order to detect the crime here, we have to do something. I've always wanted to do my favorite part of any detective movie is when they have an image and they zoom in. What do they say? I don't know.

Enhance. We have to enhance. Let's go to the very beginning of this track and let's enhance. We need to find out what this sample is, where it came from, and how it got there. Well, I guess there's a pretty obvious clue because when I heard the David Gutter piece, what I'd heard is what was like some kind of strange sampled snare, I realize here is like stomping or clapping or maybe like someone hitting like a stick on the ground. This sounds like a work song. Yeah, this is a work song.

Your forensic musicology skills are coming into focus. This is a recording from 1948. It's called Rosie. And it was recorded at Harchman Farm, aka the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. And in order to find out how this sample got into this David Getta song, we need to take a closer look at the list of songwriters behind this track.

Okay. We've got Esther Dean. Oh, yeah, one of the judges on Songland. Yeah. We've got David Getta. We've got Onika Mirage. Don't know. That's Nikki Minaj.

Oh. We've got BB Rexa. Okay, yeah. We've got Nick Van Deval. That's Afrojack. Okay. We've got Sean Douglas and Giorgio Tunfort. They're two veteran songwriters.

Okay. Nothing unusual yet. And then we have Alan Lomax. Oh, that's curious. Who is Alan Lomax? And what is he doing on the list of songwriters here? Alan Lomax. I feel like I learned something about Alan Lomax

in an ethnomusicology class. And he went around the American South doing field recordings, something like that. Yes, he is a folklorist whose mission was to preserve the ethnic and the regional sounds of America in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s. I'm guessing his credit has to do with this sample then. Yes. He is now our chief suspect here. And in order to continue our investigation, we need to go back in time. Okay, it's 1948, and Alan Lomax shows up with his portable tape recorder at the notorious

parchment farm. He's recording a group of prisoners who he only names as C.B. Cook and Ten Men with Axes. This song, Rosie, refers to a character who is kind of an imaginary mascot or totem of this brutal prison system. And this song would be used to make the agonizing labor of tamping down railroad ties or chopping wood or building structures. It would be used to make the time pass. In fact, here's one of the prisoners describing to Lomax the function of these songs

in this prison environment. What makes it go so better when you're singing, you don't have you forget you see in the time that's passed on the way. But if you just get your mind to vote it on one something, it looks like it'd be hard for you to make it. They'd be long to look like. So you get his mind, keep his mind from being devoted on just one thing while he just practically picked up singing.

He's saying these songs helped them focus, helped keep them from being distracted by the back-breaking labor. And even some of the lyrics of Rosie kind of reflect this. At one point, the men sing, stick to the promise that you made me won't get married till I go free. This music emerged from a very specific and very particular set of circumstances.

But at the same time, you cannot deny the musical power when you listen to these excerpts. I'm kind of taken aback, though, because this song which fantasizes about a world outside of prison as a way to create hope through this incredibly difficult work has been totally appropriated and mistranslated into this song

that takes the desires of these working men and turns it into this like regressive female character in Hey Mama. That's certainly a kind of aesthetic crime. There's also an economic crime here. Because when we're listening to this song, we're hearing it performed by C.B. Cook and 10 anonymous figures. But the person who gets the writing credit is Alan Lomax. Just to be clear here, so this song makes money every time someone listens to it. Those billion plus plays on YouTube. Some portion of it is likely

going to like Alan Lomax's estate. Yes, it's going to the foundation established by Lomax. And to be clear, this foundation does a lot of really good work. But this song is not his. Right. And in order to find out who wrote Rosie, we need to go back even earlier. Because these work songs that he was recording in prisons in 1948, they have their roots much earlier in the plantations of the slavery era. Okay, so now we're back in the 1800s. When the enslaved people on America's plantations would sing songs both to communicate with one another and to make this fieldwork they're doing endurable. The prison system that will emerge is in many respects really replicating the system of the plantation. I mean, this prison is called parchment farm after all. Yes, and even Lomax

himself acknowledges this. He understands when he's recording these songs that they stretch back to a deep history of injustice. Cultural equity should join all the other important principles of human dignity, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom to work and live and enjoy yourself, and freedom for your culture to express itself. Because that's all we've got you know, we're just culture. Now, Alan Lomax is a really complex figure who did a lot of good. I mean, the only reason we have these recordings in the first place is that Lomax had the presence of mind and the wherewithal and the determination to go out and record these essential aspects of the American

experience. And his daughter, Anna Lomax Wood, has done amazing work through the Association for Cultural Equity to repatriate these recordings and return them to the places they were made. and the whole foundation has done some really incredible stuff. But should Alan Lomax's name be listed as the writer of this song? That's what we're talking about. I think the answer to that is no. All of which brings us back to the 21st century and Hey Mama. Which means if we're trying to find the original author of the song, we're out of luck.

We hear C.B. Cook and these unidentified men, and we know they're singing a song that was likely passed down through generations. In that way, the song really belongs to the culture and the black enslaved people who sang it. Because of the institution of slavery and racism, we can't find one person who created it. They've been erased from the narrative. So where do we go? This isn't the end of the case, though, Charlie, because Rosie hasn't just been sampled by David Gedda. This song has a whole separate afterlife that takes us to some very surprising places.

Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready?

Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue.

President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deets. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. when it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border.

They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. This song, Rosie, is so powerful. The call and response vocals, the harmonies. The vocal timbers at the very edge of human expression. Yeah, it was musically powerful because it needed to be powerful to help people through the most impossible situation.

David Getta is not the only artist to latch on to the power of this sample, the power of this slice of American history. The British group The Animals cover this song in the 1960s. It sounds like this. Then my woman, galah, be your main. Every Sunday take you by the hand girl, by the hand girl, by the hand, yeah. Then, in 1966, they rewrite the lyrics, rearrange the music, and release Inside Looking Out. It becomes a really big song for them, and you can hear it's still clearly based on Rosie.

And so my time and don't know the best I can. And Alan Lomax, he's still listed as the songwriter. Okay, so those axes are replaced by stabbing guitars and a drum hit. Yeah, it's turned into this kind of British invasion rock song. What was the impression of this kind of a song in that moment? Because it feels like, yeah, like a real kind of taking. You know, to retitle it, put under, yeah, another name. Do we know anything about how this was received?

Well, I don't think audiences were aware of where the song came from. The only clue would be the same one we have in David Gettah, the presence of Alan Lomax as a co-writer. Otherwise, you might not know from whence Eric Burden and the Animals got this track. Right. They probably had heard it on some very esoteric record that they owned. Well, particularly a collection issued by Smithsonian Folkways of Alan Lomax's recordings in the 1950s. So the Animals version, Inside Looking Out, 10 years later in the 1970s, is covered again, this time by the Michigan rock tree. Grand Funk Railroad.

I'm sitting here lonely like a broken man. I serve my time doing the best I can. Walls and bars they surround me. But I don't want no sympathy. Wow. It's even more powerful. So at this point, to all ones, white ensembles have covered this song.

Yeah. But when we fast forward another decade, something really shocking happens. This Grand Funk Railroad cover of the animal's cover of Rosie is sampled in a song by KRS1 called Sound of the Police. That's the sound of the police. I'm not hearing the sample. Right, okay, so it's very subtle, but when you hear that kind of crunchy, distorted, electric bass that comes in and hits on the downbeat of each measure in the KRS 1 song, that's taken from the Grand Funk Railroad recording. That was the thing that I thought felt more powerful. Yes. Wait a minute, this is so bizarre.

In a anti-peace brutality song by KRS 1, they're sampling a song which has been appropriated by a whole history of artists. And yet the moment that's taken is a sampled moment of an instrumental bit rather than the lyric which might even have more potent commentary. Yeah, you said that very well. I'm really, I mean, I'm kind of baffled. Yes, there is only the smallest hint of the musical material we're drawing on here. And as you say, it's really fascinating because this KRS 1 track makes explicit the connection between the plantation system and the modern day policing system. KRS 1 at one point in this song just starts saying officer, overseer, officer, overseer to the point where these two words almost bleed together. And you can't see or hear the difference between the system of slavery and the criminal justice system of the 20th century.

Wow. Perhaps there's something almost reclaiming in this subtle use of that sample which had been appropriated. You know, like rather than being on the nose and borrowing the lyric, it's like actually writing out the white singer of the song that has been appropriated makes it that much more powerful of a sample. I love that interpretation, but the reality is that Alan Lomax's name is still on this KRS1 song. Wait, are you serious? He's still getting paid. Wait, that doesn't make any sense at all. It's a sample of an instrumental moment that isn't at all tied to the original composition. Like, I don't feel like this would pass contemporary copyright.

Well, as the scholars Kembrough McLeod and Peter DeCola point out in their book, Creative License, this is actually exactly how the copyright system works. And because Lomax's name is on that original song, he's on the Grandfunk Railroad recording, he's on the Animals recording. He's on the KRS 1 recording. He's even cited as a songwriter on Jay-Z's 2001 track Takeover because it samples sound of the police. Every time that animal's arrangement of Rosie gets used,

the artists have to pay all of those copyrighted writers. Oh my gosh. This is such a deep crime. I mean, this raises the stakes of what I had originally taken as like a kind of gross power dynamic. and regressive gender politics. The use of this sample feels totally misguided. Yes, as you say, this is a deep theft,

one that reaches back to the kind of original sin of our country. And other artists have tried to reclaim this song. For instance, Nina Simone records a version in 1965 on her album, pastel blues, and it's called Be My Husband. Be my husband. Wow. She even sort of flips the lyric around here to change the possessive.

Yes. It's like, you're going to be my husband and I'll be your wife. And an incredible vocal performance. I mean, one that retains so much of the sparseness of that original recording and finds Nina Simone pushing her voice to the limit, just like those prisoners did when they sang in in 1948. Unfortunately, we have not escaped this cycle of exploitation because who was the songwriter here? Alan Lomax.

No, it's Andrew Stroud. It's Nina Simone's abusive husband. Oh, Lord. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, and if you want more about that history, I can't recommend enough the documentary. What Happened Miss Simone. Oh, my goodness. There's so much more in the liner notes than we ever pay attention to.

Yes. Is Alan Lomax credited on this one as well? No. Oh, interesting. I mean, it really raises this question of why he would need to be. And I think this establishes that he doesn't need to be. Like, why are these other songs giving credit to him? I get why there is a connection to David Gettah using a sample that Alan Lomax had recorded.

I don't like it, but he's the person that gets credit. I don't really understand why on these covers of the song by the animals and Grand Funk Railroad and then the KRS one sample that don't even use the original recording why Alan Lomax is getting a credit when he doesn't need one on Nina Simone. Like, I think that there's some incongruency here that's really bothering me. Yeah, Charlie, I can't totally explain that. And I think it points to issues in the history of the music industry, in the history of copyright, in the legacy of racism that undergirds the choices we make today

when we sample something, whether we know it or not. So as we step back from this crime, this crime that really spans centuries, that is really much bigger than a 2015 David Gedda track, I think it's a moment for us to reflect on not just what is maybe the legal obligation we have when we sample music, when we cover music, but the moral one, because clearly this legal system, this system of copyright and publishing has failed in some fundamental way. Oh, yeah, absolutely. In the end, I think this whodunit points to the responsibility that we all have as musicians

today to think about musical reparations. When we use this music that has no author because that author has been erased, how are we going to make up for that crime? Even if we weren't a part of it, we're still benefiting from it. Yeah, whether it's through passive enjoyment of a song or are listening then enriches people who are continuing to appropriate this work. Yes. It may be too late to pay the authors of Rosie, but it's not too late for pop audiences to grapple with this history and for musicians to think about how to pay back the debt that they've incurred before they ever picked up an instrument. Switched on Pop is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Charlie Harding, Nate Sloan, executive producers are Nashak Kerwa and Liz Kelly Nelson. Brandon McFarlane edits, mixes, and masters the show, Abby Barge's social media and Iris Gottlieb creates our beautiful illustrations.

We're proud members of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We've made a Spotify playlist of all the songs that referenced this 1948 recording of Rosie. We'll put a link to it in our show notes. Go check it out. also find that on our website switchdownpop.com and we'll be sharing on a social media at switchdun pop at all the places we'll catch you again next tuesday until then thanks for listening thanks for listening. Convierte your passion in a new business with shopify and batter records of

with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard of the best. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify, facilita facilita the website on your site web, in the networks,

and in whatever place. That is music for your ears. No, you'll

do you make this your business. Your time.