Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode contains explicit language. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: smooth stylings of Patrick Charles Eugene pat Boone, pop star
Speaker 1: of the nineteen fifties, host of the Pat Boon Chevy Showroom,
Speaker 1: maybe the whitest, squarest rock musician of all time. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Pat Boone put out an album covering,
Speaker 1: among others, Judas Priest, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin, and
Speaker 1: Deep Purple. Well we all came down to montro. On
Speaker 1: the front of the album, Pat Boone looks out maniacally,
Speaker 1: or at least as maniacally as he can, wearing only
Speaker 1: a black leather vest exact. I and the mother. You
Speaker 1: can find the whole thing on YouTube. In a metal mood,
Speaker 1: no more, mister nice guy, I mean all great songs,
Speaker 1: said He's chosen impeccable fire. Pat Boon performed an act
Speaker 1: of cultural appropriation, outrageous cultural appropriation. A square white guy,
Speaker 1: a middle aged crooner, walked in and shamelessly appropriated the
Speaker 1: heavy metal cannon. Here's my question, what should we make
Speaker 1: of that fact? How should we feel about in a
Speaker 1: metal mood? So I asked my friend Dave Hill, Dave
Speaker 1: is a metal efficionado lead guitarist for Valley Lodge and
Speaker 1: which Taint maybe the most metal band name ever. If
Speaker 1: you root around the internet, you can find some videos
Speaker 1: we've done together over the years, which have literally hundreds
Speaker 1: of likes. We go to the same coffee shop, say
Speaker 1: hello to Dave. Well. The Devil's Interval is the beginning
Speaker 1: of mental Basically, it's the flatted fibrine. I assigned Dave
Speaker 1: in a metal mood as homework. Listen to it, break
Speaker 1: it down, report back to me. That's how this whole
Speaker 1: thing began. At the time he puts this out, he's
Speaker 1: sixty three. He's been a crooner. He's an evangelical Christian.
Speaker 1: He's been a crooner for forty years. He's best known
Speaker 1: for sporting like v Nex sweaters and khakis and topsiders yeah,
Speaker 1: or not even upsiders. Those shoes, those those white box Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what he does. I like a nice white can you.
Speaker 1: You couldn't have imagined a less metal pedigree than pat. No,
Speaker 1: he's pretty not metal, but it depends how you define metal.
Speaker 1: I mean musically, no, but very metal in many other ways.
Speaker 1: Tell me what you mean by just like as far
Speaker 1: as like committing to being a coroner? Pretty metal? Did
Speaker 1: you catch that, Pat Boone? Pretty metal? My name is
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about
Speaker 1: things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is the official launch
Speaker 1: of my campaign to get Pat Boon into the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame. We're climbing aboard the Pat
Speaker 1: Boon train. Why because if there is ever a cultural
Speaker 1: figure who has been misunderstood and overlooked who fits the
Speaker 1: literal definition of the revisionist History mandate, it is Pat Boon.
Speaker 1: You think I'm joking, I'm so not joking. What follows
Speaker 1: is an argument in two parts. Part one, Pat Boon
Speaker 1: no longer mister nice guy. Part two, Taco Bell. It's
Speaker 1: very secure, top secret. Taco Bell is so important to
Speaker 1: my defense of Pat Boon that I traveled clear across
Speaker 1: the country to Irvine, California, to the intern National headquarters
Speaker 1: of Taco Bell and talk my way into their inner
Speaker 1: sanctum through double sets of security doors, all sorts of
Speaker 1: scanning of ideas. I feel like I'm in the CIA exactly.
Speaker 1: Taco They sit me down, They ply me with one
Speaker 1: delicious bit of fast food after another, including most memorably
Speaker 1: one of Taco Bell's top selling concoctions. Then they could
Speaker 1: chicken cholloopa. So I have not nobody was asking for
Speaker 1: this because it wasn't even people don't even comprehend this idea.
Speaker 1: That's really good good, Yeah, but it is one of
Speaker 1: those things I could never sit with consumers and they
Speaker 1: would say, you know what I would like, I'd like
Speaker 1: you to make me this right where do we know where?
Speaker 1: So do we know the idea for this came from?
Speaker 1: I mean it's the Banana's idea. That Banana's idea came
Speaker 1: from Talk Go Bell. Oh, and it was good. Hold
Speaker 1: that thought. We're coming back to Taco Bell. But first,
Speaker 1: Dave Hill and I have some work to do. I
Speaker 1: skipped right ahead to Holy Diver by Dio, and I
Speaker 1: was really impressed with it because that that song, the
Speaker 1: original version, there's a minute in twenty seconds of just
Speaker 1: kind of ominous like Middle Earth sounds. Holy Diver might
Speaker 1: be the quintessential metal song. Dave Hill considers it Ronnie
Speaker 1: James Dio's masterpiece Dive You've been down too in the middle.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but even just the pure balls to be
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna make everyone wait a minute and twenty
Speaker 1: seconds before I even smack you around with one of
Speaker 1: the greatest metal songs of all time. And then I
Speaker 1: was like, well, Pat Boone doesn't have the balls to
Speaker 1: commit to that, but sure enough he did. He did
Speaker 1: so right there, huge fan track number eight on in
Speaker 1: a metal mood, right after Pat Boone's cover of Enter
Speaker 1: Sandman by Metallica. Holy Diver, You've been down too long
Speaker 1: in the midden, night Seed. What's becomeing of Me? By
Speaker 1: the Tiger? You can see it strikes with your no
Speaker 1: rest me who don't you know what I mean? Gotta
Speaker 1: get away? Epic, simply epic. Guns. This concern with Pat
Speaker 1: Boone's legacy did not start with me or Dave Hill.
Speaker 1: It started with another friend of mine, Bruce Hedlum, my
Speaker 1: oldest friend in the world, that on the first day
Speaker 1: of first grade. Bruce, the producer Rick Rubin, and I
Speaker 1: are now partners on the Broken Record Music podcast, another
Speaker 1: epic Pushkin Industry's production, which you should be listening to anyway.
Speaker 1: Bruce always had to be in his bonnet about Pat Boone.
Speaker 1: I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: in Cleveland which I'd never been to. And I went
Speaker 1: downstairs where it all kind of starts, and you see
Speaker 1: these you see exhibits like the precursors to rock and roll,
Speaker 1: and then you walk into what is probably the biggest
Speaker 1: part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in
Speaker 1: the most famous part, which is the Elvis section how
Speaker 1: Elvis basically founded rock and roll. And I was kind
Speaker 1: of amazed. I went through it. I looked at all
Speaker 1: these exhibits. All I could think of is where is
Speaker 1: Pat Boom? Now? Why would I be why would I
Speaker 1: think where is Pat Boon? Well? Pat Boone had an
Speaker 1: amazing career before Elvis, and in fact, Pat Boone did
Speaker 1: a lot of the things Elvis did before Elvis did it.
Speaker 1: I mean, just by raw numbers alone, he was Pat
Speaker 1: Boone was on the top one hundred chart, the hot
Speaker 1: one hundred. I guess it's called four I think two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty consecutive weeks. That record stood for I
Speaker 1: think close to fifty years. Like the only people who've
Speaker 1: been on longer were Little Wayne and Drake. Little Wayne
Speaker 1: Drake and that's your that's our top three. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: nominating Committee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: is made up of rock music insiders, serious music people.
Speaker 1: They meet every September and have a day long debate
Speaker 1: about the ten or twenty names that should be on
Speaker 1: the ballot for the upcoming year. The whole thing is secret, intense.
Speaker 1: There's lobbying, campaigning. I asked Terry Stewart about the process.
Speaker 1: He ran the Hall of Fame for fourteen years. You know,
Speaker 1: I had some people that weren't very nice. People would
Speaker 1: back you against the wall in a corner and you motherfucker,
Speaker 1: you know the sort of all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it would go a lot, It would go it
Speaker 1: could go dark, but you know it's I understand that
Speaker 1: it meant a lot to these artists, and I try
Speaker 1: to explain that there was a very methodical process. So
Speaker 1: then I asked him, did things ever get dark over
Speaker 1: Pat Boone? There wasn't a lot of discussion about Pat Boone?
Speaker 1: Has we say it? Has he never even made the ballot. No,
Speaker 1: he's never made it out of that ballot that comes
Speaker 1: out of the room. Yeah. Now, if you know anything
Speaker 1: about popular music, you'll know why Pat Boone is perissana
Speaker 1: on grata in Cleveland. It's because he made his name
Speaker 1: during the nineteen fifties, covering black R and B songs.
Speaker 1: A handsome young white guy just graduated from Columbia University
Speaker 1: and his record company has him doing these whitewashed versions
Speaker 1: of songs by people like Little Richard and Fats Domino.
Speaker 1: For music aficionados, the idea of Pat Boone as a
Speaker 1: serious musician is offensive. But it took a lot of
Speaker 1: hutzpooter really even bring it up because of that feeling that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, he had stolen this music. The majority of
Speaker 1: the people involved always felt fairly strongly that it wasn't
Speaker 1: appropriate to have Pat Boone in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: But that's the way at all. That's why he never
Speaker 1: made the ballot. It was discussed, but never made the ballot.
Speaker 1: And that's that's just the nature of the beast. In
Speaker 1: other words, Pat Boone's album in a Metal Mood is
Speaker 1: not some weird one off. It's what he does. He
Speaker 1: wanders into someone else's world and he takes their music
Speaker 1: and that does not pass the smell test at the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But are they right?
Speaker 1: That's what Dave Hill and I were trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: which is why we sat in the studio together deconstructing
Speaker 1: Pat Boone's cover of Holy Diver. You could see no
Speaker 1: reason see right away when deals things about the tiger,
Speaker 1: You're like, that's a scary tiger, Pat Boone. They're like,
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid of that tiger. Get get over here, tighter.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, what's he doing here with this song?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like immediately you're like you're here and
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, did you has anyone seen the guy
Speaker 1: with the chicken skewers? I wanted to get some of those,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Like it's it's like
Speaker 1: it's sort of an early cocktail party, corporate fundraiser scenario.
Speaker 1: Pat Boone is the poster child for cultural appropriation. Now,
Speaker 1: why does this make me think of Taco bell? Because
Speaker 1: taco bell is the same thing for food. The bell
Speaker 1: in Taco Bell is not some reference to the classic
Speaker 1: bell towers in Spanish colonial architecture El Campanario. No. The
Speaker 1: bell in Taco Bell refers to Glenn Bell of the
Speaker 1: Iowa Bells, a white guy who in the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties decided to open a fast food restaurant in San
Speaker 1: Bernardino California, Glen Bell's tacos Taco Bell. It became a chain.
Speaker 1: Whenever he opened a new restaurant, Glen Bell would hire
Speaker 1: a mariachi band. On the cover of his biography, Taco Titan,
Speaker 1: Glen Bell of the Iowa Bells is wearing a sombrero.
Speaker 1: Glen Bell is Pat Boone, two white guys in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties appropriating someone else's culture. So if we
Speaker 1: have a Pat Boon problem, we should also have a
Speaker 1: Taco Bell problem, which I'm not happy about, by the way,
Speaker 1: because I love Taco Bell. That was my moral quandary. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Laverne, We're gonna start with Laverne Baker. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: around my dining room table with Bruce, Jacob Smith, my producer,
Speaker 1: and Justin Richmond, the producer of Broken Record. We decided
Speaker 1: to convene a cultural appropriation summit to figure out who
Speaker 1: is the appropriate appropriator. Bruce a wasp from rural southwestern Ontario.
Speaker 1: Jacob a half Jewish, half Catholic millennial from Long Island,
Speaker 1: Justin a mixed race hipster from Long Beach, California. And
Speaker 1: Me Jamaica, Canada, England. Whatever I felt, we needed to
Speaker 1: cover as many basses as we could. We're listening to
Speaker 1: Laverne Baker, an early R and B legend, performed Tweedledee
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five. Happy, all right, what's the other one?
Speaker 1: Georgia Gibbs, which, by the way, and if you do
Speaker 1: the search comes up right underneath it. She gives the
Speaker 1: way Georgia gives. His real name is Frieda lipshits something
Speaker 1: like that from I'm assuming Brook. Several years after, Laverne
Speaker 1: Baker does the black version of tweetled Georgia slash Frieda
Speaker 1: does the white version tweet happily asking be jeminy Jack,
Speaker 1: you make my heart, don't clay clash tweet tweet tweet
Speaker 1: All right? What's the compare those two versions? Do I
Speaker 1: like the first one better? Yes? Are they almost identical? Yes?
Speaker 1: Did she lift the arrangements? Yeah? Of course. Second one
Speaker 1: was not so bad. Actually I can't you know, no,
Speaker 1: but it's precisely like the first one. It is. Laverne
Speaker 1: Baker actually famously had to take out flight insurance once
Speaker 1: she was on tour, and she named Georgia Gives as
Speaker 1: her beneficiary because she said, if the plane goes down,
Speaker 1: her career is over too amazing. That is okay, so
Speaker 1: oh we agreed though. That is if you want a
Speaker 1: definition of cultural appropriation, that's it. Next we turn to Elvis.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves Elvis, right, Remember the last episode of season
Speaker 1: three or Revisionist History where I put Elvis on the
Speaker 1: couch and everything ended in tears. I love Elvis well.
Speaker 1: In his early years, a lot of Elvis's songs were
Speaker 1: written by a man named Otis Blackwell. He was black,
Speaker 1: He was a songwriter. He wrote probably his most famous
Speaker 1: song is Fever, which was a Peggy Lee song, later
Speaker 1: Madonna's song. But he wrote don't be cruel. All shook up, paralyzed,
Speaker 1: returned to Sander. Here we are, yeah yeah, great balls
Speaker 1: of fire he wrote, wrote great balls of fights? Did
Speaker 1: yeah yep? Oh my god, guys, genius. Otis Blackwell writes
Speaker 1: the songs, then records a demo, gives the demo to Elvis. Ready,
Speaker 1: this is Elvis doing his version of don't be cruel.
Speaker 1: You know what can be sit alone? If you can't
Speaker 1: come around, police, please tell la, but don't be cruel.
Speaker 1: True heart, it's true. Okay, that's Elvis. Now, this is
Speaker 1: Blackwell doing his version the version that came first. He's
Speaker 1: performing it on an old episode of Late Night with
Speaker 1: David Letterman. Are you working? You can't? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's the same song. As we're listening, Justin puts his
Speaker 1: head in his hands. I'm sorry, that's brutal. I forget
Speaker 1: how I forget? How about it is a time I
Speaker 1: heard him? This is just Elvis Well. This is the
Speaker 1: king of rock and roll, the singer with his own vast,
Speaker 1: dedicated room at the Hall of Fame. Now imagine how
Speaker 1: Otis Blackwell or any of the other black songwriters of
Speaker 1: that era felt about what Elvis did. They'd been asked
Speaker 1: to write a song for someone much more famous than
Speaker 1: they were. Fine. What hurts is when a so called
Speaker 1: genius takes the song that you wrote and that came
Speaker 1: out of your cultural community and doesn't change a lick
Speaker 1: of it. One Broken Heart for Sale, a hit song
Speaker 1: written by Otis Blackwell for Elvis in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: Is that obis done? Might be Elvis demo in and
Speaker 1: the Otis demo? Yeah, that's Otis Blackwell. Did you guys
Speaker 1: think it was Elvis? Yeah? I think that's Elvis demo indo.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's a wait. This perfect illustration of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. We're listening to a song on
Speaker 1: YouTube that's supposed to be by Altis Blackwell, and we
Speaker 1: have no idea whether it's Oltis Blackwell or Elvis, because
Speaker 1: Elvis has completely yeah, he's completely stolen the sky sound.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is why not everyone out there likes Elvis
Speaker 1: as much as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does.
Speaker 1: People like Justin a purist on some level, he feels
Speaker 1: like it's his music that's being violated here. And immediately
Speaker 1: Justin brings up Public Enemy and their front man, Chuck D.
Speaker 1: Because I feel like Chuck D is the reason Elvis
Speaker 1: is so hated. Yeah in black because Elvis was a
Speaker 1: hero the most, but he never meant it to me
Speaker 1: because he straight out a racist. The suckle was simple
Speaker 1: and playing motherfucking man John Way, Elvis wasn't hear the
Speaker 1: Elvis was heard the most but never mentioned the proud
Speaker 1: Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp. Oh Elvis,
Speaker 1: Let's take a break and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to eat some more. Taco Bell Glenn Bell was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen twenty three grew up in the Depression.
Speaker 1: It was a hobo for a while, riding the rails,
Speaker 1: living by his wits. During the war, he was a
Speaker 1: steward for a Marine Corps general, and when the war
Speaker 1: was over, he came back to San Bernardino, California and
Speaker 1: decided to open a hamburger stand. At first, tacos were
Speaker 1: just something that he added to the menu. He'd eaten
Speaker 1: them in the Mexican restaurants of southern California and thought
Speaker 1: they were a perfect fast food, easy to make an eat,
Speaker 1: super cheap. Then he added refried beans. Then he dropped
Speaker 1: the burghers and fries all together, and after a decade
Speaker 1: of stops and starts, he opened Taco bell Tacos, tostadas, frijoles, burritos,
Speaker 1: all for nineteen cents each. By the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: taco bells are everywhere with a standardized look, slump stone
Speaker 1: brick which looks a bit like adobe red clay tiles
Speaker 1: on the roof bell tower, Mexican food in a building
Speaker 1: straight out of Mexico. Taco bell is as bad as Elvis,
Speaker 1: except have you ever been to a taco bell? Where
Speaker 1: are the carnatas? They don't have carnatas don't spill the
Speaker 1: bell Yeah, way way way off the menu. So if
Speaker 1: you're peekin, this is our. When I was in the
Speaker 1: test kitchen at Taco Bell's headquarters, the question of carnadis
Speaker 1: came up and they said that for whatever reason, shredded
Speaker 1: meat doesn't work for them. Or molea. If you were
Speaker 1: ripping off Mexican food, if you wanted to be Elvis
Speaker 1: of Mexican food, you would have molae. But there's no
Speaker 1: moleae at Taco Bells or Razbasca inspired and it's just
Speaker 1: not familiar enough. And it's not familiar enough. Again in
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, we can't make it familiar to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Rene Pischati. We just we just can't. As
Speaker 1: much as we loved what's hard about mole sauce, for example,
Speaker 1: mole sauce. So first off, I think there's so many
Speaker 1: different types. And this is Liz Matthew's head chef. I
Speaker 1: think mole in general, especially a red molee, it's rich
Speaker 1: and earthy, and I don't think that's something that people
Speaker 1: are familiar with already. Another thing, we're the soft contotias.
Speaker 1: Nothing is more quintessentially in Mexican than the traditional soft countotilla.
Speaker 1: There are no soft corntutias at Taco Bell. They tried
Speaker 1: it once Mexican street tacos. What happened. We were getting
Speaker 1: a lot of calls from customers that they got a
Speaker 1: taco but the shell was raw, the shell was uncooked.
Speaker 1: They had no reference for corint or tia that wasn't
Speaker 1: deep fried, like, they had no idea what a soft
Speaker 1: fresh count or tia was all about. It was a crisis.
Speaker 1: These were calls from Indiana. I mean, I just remember
Speaker 1: they started streaming in. I'm like, oh my god, people
Speaker 1: are worried that we're serving them uncooked food. There was
Speaker 1: no reference for it whatsoever. Now, the Taco Bell guys
Speaker 1: weren't upset by that reaction. Their attitude isn't oh, our
Speaker 1: customers have to get more sophisticated. No, to them, it's
Speaker 1: just a reminder that they aren't in the business of
Speaker 1: making real Mexican food. That's not why people go to
Speaker 1: Taco Bell. I don't think people want to see authentic
Speaker 1: from Yeah, they want the variations and different I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's just not us, That's not who we are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're inspired by it, but we're not. That's not what
Speaker 1: we're driven by. Taco Bell is an interpretation of Mexican food,
Speaker 1: a riff on Mexican food for people who don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think of themselves as people who eat Mexican food. That's
Speaker 1: a very different game, and a harder game, by the way,
Speaker 1: because you have to find the familiar part of the
Speaker 1: unfamiliar and somehow make it seem new. If you were
Speaker 1: the Elvis of Mexican food, you wouldn't need a test kitchen,
Speaker 1: would you. If you're stealing something, why would you need
Speaker 1: to test it? You test what you invent. Case in point,
Speaker 1: the naked chicken chiloopa. The inspiration came from Taco Bell's
Speaker 1: Heather motor Shaw, one of the food signists I was
Speaker 1: meeting with. I remember Heather said something like, Steve, what
Speaker 1: do you think if we made, you know, a taco
Speaker 1: shell out of chicken something? And I'm like, well, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? And it was sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, like chicken milonnaise. But so in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking like literally like chicken milonnaise, pound it out,
Speaker 1: you know, chicken brass in that flavor profile, thinking like
Speaker 1: you're crazy heather, But what really comes out is, you know,
Speaker 1: she's probably onto something. We probably They ended up with
Speaker 1: a white meat chicken breast, deep fried in batter, molded
Speaker 1: into the shape of a taco and filled with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes,
Speaker 1: and avocado ranch sauce. Did you have difficulty kind of
Speaker 1: convincing people? We couldn't even describe it to each other
Speaker 1: at first, So how do you actually get that message
Speaker 1: across to consumers so they're like, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: go in and try that. I mean, that was at
Speaker 1: a pretty big feat But that was part of the
Speaker 1: conundrum because we originally we're talking about this as a
Speaker 1: Crispy Chicken taco, and when you called it a Crispy
Speaker 1: Chicken taco, people are expecting a taco shell, regular taco
Speaker 1: shell with a piece of crispy chicken inside. This is
Speaker 1: heather of naked chicken chaloopa fame. So it wasn't until
Speaker 1: we then converted and started to call it a choloopa,
Speaker 1: which is our more premium taco, were consumers like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I gat it. But even here they're making things up.
Speaker 1: In Mexican cuisine, a chalupa is a deep fried masa
Speaker 1: dough pancake shape to resemble a flat fishing boat. That's
Speaker 1: why it's called a chalupa. Chalupa's are basque whaling boats, small,
Speaker 1: wide bottom, shallow sided. But in the Taco Bell universe,
Speaker 1: a chalupa is not a shallow boat anymore. It's a taco,
Speaker 1: a high sided boat. And it's naked. You're calling it
Speaker 1: a naked what's the meaning of the word naked in
Speaker 1: that context? But it didn't, it didn't have the shell,
Speaker 1: it didn't write, so it's okay. So I was wondering, like,
Speaker 1: where are you guys going with this? So what's interesting
Speaker 1: about this is that it's it's really conceptually a step
Speaker 1: outside of the traditional Mexican food. This is this is
Speaker 1: We're no longer it looks like a taco. It's not
Speaker 1: a taco. It's something else. This is not the same
Speaker 1: as Elvis and Otis Blackwell? Is it? Elvas appropriated the
Speaker 1: song Don't Be Cruel and also everything else otis Blackwell
Speaker 1: style vocal ticks. Elvis stole the song soul. Taco Bell
Speaker 1: appropriated the taco, but not the tacos soul. They turned
Speaker 1: it into something that is about as far from a
Speaker 1: taco as humanly possible. By the way, I haven't even
Speaker 1: mentioned the craziest thing in the Taco Bell lab. It's
Speaker 1: for the Indian market, but they cooked one up for us.
Speaker 1: It's an Indian spice potato latka in the shape of
Speaker 1: a taco, filled with all kinds of delicious flavors. Yeah, spicy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this spice is a little bit of a delay,
Speaker 1: so you might take a few bikes bites, be like
Speaker 1: it's not spicy, and then it's want to talk. I
Speaker 1: have many questions. Good spice? Yeah, Justin? You do want
Speaker 1: me to feature Justin? Justin Richmond from the Cultural Oropriation Summit.
Speaker 1: Alvis doesn't mean shit to me. I brought him along
Speaker 1: as my sound tech. But he was holding microphones with
Speaker 1: both hands so he couldn't eat, and all this food
Speaker 1: was passing right under his nose, and we were getting
Speaker 1: concerned about his state of mind, especially the Taco Bell people.
Speaker 1: This was their professional responsibility and they felt they were
Speaker 1: failing him. So you want us to cut things up
Speaker 1: for you, So you want me to hold the microphone?
Speaker 1: And now I kind of have to take a foray
Speaker 1: into the Doritos Locos Taco Taco bells taco where the
Speaker 1: shell is made out of a dorito, which turns out
Speaker 1: to be this fantastically complicated engineering feat because you have
Speaker 1: to simultaneously please the universe of hardcore Doritos fans and
Speaker 1: the universe of hardcoret Taco Bell lovers. Did the lawyers
Speaker 1: have to get involved? It's like all this ip going
Speaker 1: on between Taco Bell and I think I can tell
Speaker 1: the story, but I mean the story really is. There
Speaker 1: was a handshake. Yeah, the CEO of Frido Lay and
Speaker 1: the CEO of Taco Bell worked it out one on one.
Speaker 1: Taco Bell, born of San Bernardino meets Doritos, inspired by
Speaker 1: authentic Mexican tortilla chips, but actually created in its current
Speaker 1: form as you may know, at a restaurant in Disneyland.
Speaker 1: They did a handshake because they knew if we got
Speaker 1: everybody involved, we would never get this idea out the door.
Speaker 1: And we knew we had this magical thing, and we
Speaker 1: knew that that would not have It was like a summit.
Speaker 1: Did they like meet in some secret location. All the
Speaker 1: lawyers were like, what did you guys do? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably got a golf course. Let's be honest, maybe Taco
Speaker 1: bell is not Elvis. Elvis could never have pulled off
Speaker 1: the Doritos Locos taco. I can't go on without one
Speaker 1: more moment from our cultural appropriation summit when we finally
Speaker 1: got to the matter at hand. What's the best Pat
Speaker 1: Boone tutti fruitie? Let's do the two tutti fruities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we'll start with Little Richard's tutti fruti. But the
Speaker 1: best tutti fruttie fact I learned recently was that it's
Speaker 1: originally twotty fruity, good booty booty asshole wa bab bloom
Speaker 1: blam bum. Pat Boon comes along the boy wonder and
Speaker 1: should we should we do the lot? We have a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a live version of him. Let's go the live
Speaker 1: version just for fun. It's an old performance on Canadian
Speaker 1: television from the nineteen fifties. Pat Boon looks like he
Speaker 1: flew in straight from a boy Scout jamboree. The video
Speaker 1: begins with a title card. So the caption like pouring
Speaker 1: cream into coffee. Oh, this is so good. Pat Boone
Speaker 1: lightened and sweetened R and B. And he made a
Speaker 1: smoothie out of tooty fruity about all right, here's the
Speaker 1: gal that I love. Here's a gal that I love best,
Speaker 1: which I tuti which Fruity's completely he doesn't go, he
Speaker 1: doesn't go behind me even that. That's really the thing.
Speaker 1: That's what all of them have done. By the way,
Speaker 1: all the white versions have simplified the beat like the
Speaker 1: beat is. It feels a little more dense, a little
Speaker 1: more complex in the black versions and the white version
Speaker 1: it's like this is the one two, three four that
Speaker 1: you can't miss it. You know, Pat Boond not copy
Speaker 1: Tutti Fruitie. He made a smoothie out of Tutti Fruitie.
Speaker 1: Years later, Little Richard did an interview with the music
Speaker 1: journalist Joe Smith. He wasn't happy what he would do.
Speaker 1: He would take over the pop stations and it would
Speaker 1: kill me, costing over and see, it would kill me
Speaker 1: casting over. He would kill me because the white station
Speaker 1: would clean him and he wouldn't lame me. And so
Speaker 1: when you go in the record stop, you can find
Speaker 1: he is, you can find mine. But Little Richard says
Speaker 1: that later he changed his mind. But really be true,
Speaker 1: when I look back over, it was a blessing. Ella
Speaker 1: Lesson because he opened doors for us. He made the
Speaker 1: white kids more aware of me because they will want
Speaker 1: my version. That's what he says. I opened some doors,
Speaker 1: he opened a whole out of doors, and oh he's
Speaker 1: a beautiful person. When it works, cultural appropriation serves as
Speaker 1: the basis for something new, but it also widens the
Speaker 1: audience for the real thing. It's the way the original,
Speaker 1: authentic idea moves into the mainstream. That's what my friend
Speaker 1: Bruce has been trying to tell us. The contrast chairs
Speaker 1: with Elvis. I'm not blaming Elvis directly, but he did
Speaker 1: a version of hound Dog, Big Mama Thornton didn't then
Speaker 1: crash the pop charts afterwards with her version of hound
Speaker 1: Dog or or because there was no room for it,
Speaker 1: because he'd already he did it so well, there was
Speaker 1: no reason to go back and do the original. Yes,
Speaker 1: And that's what I think. That's essentially the distinction I'm making,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, if if Elvis Presley is the Columbus,
Speaker 1: you know, Pat Boon is the guy who landed in
Speaker 1: the New World and then went back to Europe and said,
Speaker 1: we should make friends with these guys. They've got great tobacco.
Speaker 1: He didn't show up and saying I'm taking over the
Speaker 1: con He's John the Baptist, whereas Alvis pretends to be Jesus.
Speaker 1: Alvis says I'm the risen Lord. Pat Boon's not pretending
Speaker 1: to be the risen Lord. He's like, I'm just the
Speaker 1: guy preparing the way for the risen Lord. He is
Speaker 1: John the Baptist, John the Baptist and Taco Bell same time.
Speaker 1: Pat Boone, John the Baptist is handsome, wholesome. He's really handsome.
Speaker 1: He's a wholesome. He's a really nice guy. There he
Speaker 1: is running to his mark right now. I think he's
Speaker 1: a nice guy, ladies, a gentleman Pat Boone. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, at the height of his metal period, Pat
Speaker 1: Boone went on the Easter Seal telephone. I got a
Speaker 1: bad reputation, and I don't know why I brushed my hair.
Speaker 1: I'll brushed my teeth. I go to church. I'm a
Speaker 1: really sweet, nice guy. You're trying to tell me he
Speaker 1: doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. I used to
Speaker 1: be such a sweet, sweet thing until they got a
Speaker 1: Let's make this happen, people, Let's get Pat Boone on
Speaker 1: the ballot info at rockhall dot org. That's info at
Speaker 1: rockhall dot org. Then crank up a little in a
Speaker 1: metal mood on your phone, order a naked chicken Chloopa
Speaker 1: at the nearest Taco Bell, and ask yourself if the
Speaker 1: world is in a better place with the right kind
Speaker 1: of cultural appropriation, mister nic. Provisionist History is produced by
Speaker 1: Meila Bell and Jacob Smith with Camille Baptista. Our editor
Speaker 1: is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Guerra. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Carlin Mgliori, headed Fane, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. Oh and Justin Richmond, who turned down
Speaker 1: Taco Bell in the service of his duty, and Bruce
Speaker 1: Hadlum the brains behind this particular operation. Revisionist History is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gogo. Yeah
Speaker 1: what I So? I'm coming back to Pat Boone. So
Speaker 1: he takes an absolutely iconic song and he does this
Speaker 1: jazz lounge? Yeah, can you give us a Can you
Speaker 1: try a little bit of a jazz lounge? E hola diver,
Speaker 1: you've been down to see now? You know, where as
Speaker 1: I attempt to do it, I'm also showing you what's
Speaker 1: great about Pat Boone because I can't emulate just the swagger,
Speaker 1: and you know that you can tell like he's got
Speaker 1: a bit of a tan. You can hear it in
Speaker 1: his voice. Yeahla diver, you've been down too long and
Speaker 1: the mint see oh what's comeing of me? And to
Speaker 1: see I've just got taken it? You know. Now we're
Speaker 1: at a coffee house on some se fun So what
Speaker 1: this is interesting? What he's done is not. It's not
Speaker 1: a trivial accomplishment. No, there's some there's there's a there's
Speaker 1: a degree of difficulty in what he's done here. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: one can You can't walk in off the street and
Speaker 1: do Patpoon. No, No, you'd be a fool, you know,
Speaker 1: as as much as you'd be a fool to think
Speaker 1: you could do Ado, you'd be as as maybe as
Speaker 1: much a fool to think you can do patpoone.