The rendition is bad enough that it even becomes borderline offensive: almost the very minstrelization of black experience that Gershwin, through a kind of miracle, managed to avoid. In comparison, Joplin’s hoarse bombastic reading sounds strained and clueless. My favorite take on the song is probably Sarah Vaughn’s effortlessly heartbreaking rendition. Though its lyrics evoke the happy darky stereotype (“Summertime, and the living is easy…”) its mournful, heartfelt tune suggests a barely suppressed sadness - a weight of hardship hidden for the sake of love beneath a lullaby. The racist image in question is an illustration of Joplin’s cover version of the famous Gershwin tune from “Porgy and Bess.” The song itself, written by a Jew to capture the sound of African-American spirituals using elements from Ukrainian folk tunes, is one of America’s great cultural mish-mashes. In the upper right of the Cheap Thrills drawing, though, he seems to use blackface simply because (a) that’s how Crumb draws black people when he’s drawing cartoons, and (b) racist iconography = funny! Sometimes, (as in his Angel McSpade strips) he seems to be trying, at least to some extent, to critique or mock the imagery. Plus, cute turtle! The only thing is….Ĭrumb’s oeuvre not infrequently delves into reprehensible blackface iconography. On the contrary, the inventive layout, with images radiating out from a central circle is pleasingly energetic, and the drawing, as always with Crumb, is great. It’s somewhat unfortunate that this is one of Crumb’s defining images. Which is to say that for all his notoriety and the cultural currency of “Keep on Truckin'”, the Crumb image that has been seen by most people is probably still his iconic 1968 Cheap Thrills album cover for Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin. Still, there’s cartoonist famous and then there’s rock star famous. I think it’s one of Jeet Heer’s least favorite things I’ve written, if that’s any incentive.Īs cartoonists go, Robert Crumb is quite, quite famous. We’ve had several posts on race this week, so I figured I’d finish up by reprinting this piece from Comixology.
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