Word: coonely
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...problem in writing to suit the fashion is that fashions go out of fashion. In 1910 and beyond, there was a rage for "coon songs," which were to be sung as if by black performers - often by whites in blackface. "Alexander's Ragtime Band" is such a song, the name of the bandleader tipping listeners of the day to his race. Berlin wrote numbers popularized in blackface by Eddie Canton ("Mandy"), Al Jolson ("To My Mammy") and Bing Crosby ("Abraham" in "Holiday Inn"). Some of Berlin's coon songs offered what now seems like subversive social commentary. Beneath its jarring...
...Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911), by Ray Charles (1959), on "The Genius of Ray Charles." A coon song can be a black song, as Charles transforms Berlin's antique march into a big-band raver. The band (Ralph Burns did the brassy, bluesy charts) plays the melody and Charles comes in an antiphonal bar later, bleating "Come on an' hear!" By the end of the chorus he's quoting his own "This Little Girl of Mine" and has the Raelets chirping a descending, exultant "Zander ragtime band!" Great music...
Then again, Rock may be one of this project's more controversial selections. Just last month, The New Republic devoted 4,000 words to explain why he and fellow African-American comic Chris Tucker were "reactionary" and to decry Rock's "reliance upon minstrelsy and coon comedy." The criticism echoes a frequent complaint that Rock's politically incorrect humor gives cover to racists--most infamously his "Niggas vs. Black People" routine from the Bring the Pain HBO special that helped revive his career in 1996 after three years in the wilderness that followed his underutilized tenure on Saturday Night Live...
Hiding assets may cost Thai-coon the prime ministership as court agrees...
...some scrawled in hasty penmanship, others typed and stacked in neat piles for the taking, promise shelter and home cooking. On a bulletin board near the secretary of state's office, in between the notice about an upcoming Promise Keepers meeting and "Shoot for a Cure 2000" at the Coon Bottom Gun Club, a sign offers a two-bedroom townhouse...