SOUND OF SILENCE ON ROCK RADIO

Something’s wrong.

Item No. 1: The first 10 inductees in the new, record industry-sponsored Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been announced in New York and six are black: Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino and Little Richard. (Other inductees are the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley).

Item 2. New Musical Express, a respected British rock journal, has just published a list of its all-time 100 LPs. Seventeen of the Top 50 are by black artists or by integrated bands led by black artists.

Yet black music continues to be so persona non grata on rock radio that blacks were featured last week on only two of the 50 most-played records by mainstream rock stations, according to Billboard magazine.

To make the situation worse, you need to put an asterisk by those two records. Clarence Clemons, the black saxophonist in the E Street Band, is accepted by rock programmers in large part because he’s tied to white rock star Bruce Springsteen and because white rock singer Jackson Browne duets with Clemons on the record.

The other record in the Top 50 is “Sun City,” whose “black,” street-oriented sound has caused many rock stations to resist playing it even though it features such white rock radio favorites as Browne, U2’s Bono Hewson and Pat Benatar.

The argument here isn’t discrimination; given the sales of Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Prince, it’s hard to argue that blacks don’t have opportunity in the record business and aren’t exposed on pop stations. This disheartening absence of black music on rock stations is caused by--and, in turn, adds to--cultural and musical ignorance.

You are reminded of this ignorance if you see “Gospel at Colonus” at the James A. Doolittle Theatre. You can’t listen to Clarence Fountain (see Fountain story below) and other gospel singers in the stage production without recalling the essential role such black, gospel-tinged artists as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke played in the development of rock.

Similarly, Atlantic Records’ marvelous new seven-album retrospective of the label’s black music achievements is, in part, a blueprint of the role blacks played in defining rock.

The songs and styles in this 186-track collection influenced virtually every white rock artist of note: from Elvis Presley and the Beatles through John Fogerty and Talking Heads. It’s music all rock fans should hear.

Rock was built by mixing the energy and emotion of black music and country music, two outcast sounds in the formal pop world of the 1950s. Because black music has been avoided by rock stations for years, a whole generation of rock fans has been taught the two styles are mutually exclusive. This results in a cultural and musical isolation that weakens rock.

No one expects rock stations to play every black artist any more than they now play every white artist. The challenge is to play black artists whose styles reflect the activist attitude of rock.

An encouraging sign is that many of the young bands who are contributing to the current renaissance in American rock (R.E.M. and the Blasters to Lone Justice) are drawing upon rock’s early black and country roots.

Even these musicians, however, would probably learn a lot from “Gospel at Colonus” and, more notably, the Atlantic series. The series, which can be purchased in seven individual two-record packages or a single boxed set, is called merely “Atlantic Rhythm and Blues,” but it could just as easily have been titled, “The Real Soul of Rock.”

Several small, independent labels, including Chess and Imperial, played crucial roles in the promotion of black music in the ‘50s, but Atlantic was by far the most prominent.

When the fledgling company released Joe Morris’ “Lowe Groovin”’ in 1948, the pop establishment didn’t know what to do with the single. Like many of the releases of the period, the saxophone-driven instrumental didn’t fit “jazz,” “bop,” “race” or other categories associated with black artists.

It was part of the new synthesis that became known as “rhythm and blues,” the catch phrase for the variety of styles--from blues shouters to do-wop vocal groups--that indeed formed rock.

“Lowe Groovin’ ,” fittingly, opens the Atlantic series. This single and five others on Side 1 of the first album sound like an after-hours band in a smoky dance hall, flexing its muscles as it waits for a dynamic singer to step to the microphone and excite the crowd. That singer arrives in the final number on Side 1 of the album.

He’s Stick McGhee, whose version of the upbeat “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” was so electrifying in the timid pop world of the time that you can just imagine the excitement a young Jerry Lee Lewis hearing the song for the first time. (Lewis later recorded the song and still includes it in his concerts).

Moving through volumes two (1952-1955) and three (1955-58), we hear other artists who mixed gospel, blues, pop and jazz with the freedom and vitality of musicians working outside the constraint of formal pop rules. Some of these singers--Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, the Drifters, Joe Turner--are recognized as early giants of rock, while others--Chuck Willis, the Clovers--are best known to rock historians or fans who grew up in the ‘50s. But these recordings offer a fascinating glimpse of the evolution of the artists’ styles and, on a larger scale, early rock itself.

By the early ‘60s, black music’s heart had splintered into more polished R & B of Motown records and the fervent, gospel-accented “soul” music of such figures as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. Atlantic’s role in the latter is documented nicely in volumes five and six. Less interesting for rock fans is volume seven (1969-1974), which leans toward such straight-forward pop fare as Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song”

Mostly, however, the Atlantic series is a valuable look at rock’s heritage. Too bad we won’t hear any of it on rock radio.

LIVE ACTION: Pat Benatar will be at the Forum on Feb. 3. Tickets go on sale Monday. . . . the Universal Amphitheatre has added a fifth Patti LaBelle show--Dec. 30. . . . The Cruzados will be at the Palace on Dec. 27, while the Divinyls will be there on Dec. 29. The latter will also be at Fender’s on Dec. 27. . . . England’s Jesus And Mary Chain will be at Safari Sam’s on Thursday and at the Roxy on Dec. 22.