Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: This episode contains explicit language.
Speaker 3: You're listening to the smooth stylings of Patrick Charles Eugene
Speaker 3: pat Boone, pop star of the nineteen fifties, host of
Speaker 3: the Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, maybe the whitest, squarest rock
Speaker 3: musician of all time. In nineteen ninety seven, Pat Boone
Speaker 3: put out an album covering, among others, Judas Priest, Metallica,
Speaker 3: Ozzy Osbourne, led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple.
Speaker 4: Well, we all came down.
Speaker 5: To the true.
Speaker 1: On the lad.
Speaker 3: On the front of the album, Pat Boone looks out maniacally,
Speaker 3: or at least as maniacally as he can, wearing only
Speaker 3: a black leather vest.
Speaker 1: Exam, I am the mother.
Speaker 6: Place.
Speaker 3: You can find the whole thing on YouTube. In a
Speaker 3: metal mood, no more.
Speaker 7: Mister nice guy, I mean all great songs that he
Speaker 7: was chosen and peckahol.
Speaker 3: Fires, Pat Boone performed an act of cultural appropriation, outrageous
Speaker 3: cultural appropriation. A square white guy, a middle aged crooner,
Speaker 3: walked in and shamelessly appropriated the heavy metal cannon. Here's
Speaker 3: my question, what should we make of that fact? How
Speaker 3: should we feel about? In a metal mood? Yes, so,
Speaker 3: I asked my friend Dave Hill. Dave is a metal
Speaker 3: aficionado lead guitarist for Valley Lodge and Witch Taint, maybe
Speaker 3: the most metal band name ever. If you root around
Speaker 3: the internet, you can find some videos we've done together
Speaker 3: over the years, which have literally hundreds of likes. We
Speaker 3: go to the same coffee shop, say hello to Dave.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 7: The Devil's Interval is the beginning of metal. Basically, it's
Speaker 7: the flat at fifth.
Speaker 3: I assigned Dave in a metal mood as homework. Listen
Speaker 3: to it, break it down, report back to me. That's
Speaker 3: how this whole thing began. At the time he puts
Speaker 3: this out, he's sixty three. He's been a krooner. He's
Speaker 3: an evangelical Christian. He's been a crooner for forty years.
Speaker 3: He's best known for sporting like v Nex sweaters and
Speaker 3: khakis and topsiders yeah, or not even top upsiders. Those shoes,
Speaker 3: those those white box Yeah, that's what he does.
Speaker 1: I like a nice white can you.
Speaker 3: You couldn't have imagined a less metal pedigree than Pat.
Speaker 7: Boonth No, he's pretty not metal, but it depends how
Speaker 7: you define metal.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 7: Musically, no, but very metal in many other ways.
Speaker 3: Tell me what you mean by just like.
Speaker 7: As far as like committing to being a crooner? Pretty metal?
Speaker 3: Did you catch that, Pat Boone? Pretty Metal? My name
Speaker 3: is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast
Speaker 3: about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is the official
Speaker 3: launch of my campaign to get Boon into the Rock
Speaker 3: and Roll Hall of Fame. We're climbing aboard the Pat
Speaker 3: Boone train. Why because if there is ever a cultural
Speaker 3: figure who has been misunderstood and overlooked who fits the
Speaker 3: literal definition of the Revisionist History mandate, it is Pat Boone.
Speaker 3: You think I'm joking, I'm so not joking. What follows
Speaker 3: is an argument in two parts. Part one, Pat Boone
Speaker 3: no longer mister nice guy. Part two, Taco Bell.
Speaker 6: It's very secure.
Speaker 8: Got a wait for this top secret.
Speaker 3: Taco Bell is so important to my defense of Pat
Speaker 3: Boon that I traveled clear across the country to Irvine, California,
Speaker 3: to the INTERN national headquarters of Taco Bell and talk
Speaker 3: my way into their inner sanctum through double sets of
Speaker 3: security doors, all sorts of scanning of ideas. I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm in the CIA retinal scan exactly. They sit
Speaker 3: me down. They ply me with one delicious bit of
Speaker 3: fast food after another, including most memorably one of Taco
Speaker 3: Bell's top selling concoctions. Then ny could chicken chilloupa. I
Speaker 3: have not.
Speaker 9: Nobody was asking for this because it wasn't even people
Speaker 9: don't even comprehend this idea.
Speaker 1: That's really what.
Speaker 6: It's really good.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 8: One of those things you could never sit with consumers
Speaker 8: and they would say, you know what I would like,
Speaker 8: I'd like you to make me this right?
Speaker 3: Where do we know where?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 3: Do we know the idea where this came from? I
Speaker 3: mean it's the Banana's idea. That Banana's idea came from
Speaker 3: Talk Bell. Oh and it was good. Hold that thought.
Speaker 3: We're coming back to Taco Bell, but first, Dave Hill
Speaker 3: and I have some work to do.
Speaker 7: I skipped right ahead to Holy Diver by Dio, and
Speaker 7: I was really impressed with it because that song, the
Speaker 7: original version, there's a minute in twenty seconds of just
Speaker 7: kind of ominous like Middle Earth sounds.
Speaker 3: Holy Diver might be the quintessential metal song. Dave Hill
Speaker 3: considers it Ronnie James Dio's masterpiece.
Speaker 10: Dive You've been.
Speaker 7: Down Young in the Middes, so yeah, but even just
Speaker 7: the pure balls to be like, I'm gonna make everyone
Speaker 7: wait a minute and twenty seconds before I even smack
Speaker 7: you around with one of the greatest metal songs of
Speaker 7: all time. And then I was like, well, Pat Boone
Speaker 7: doesn't have the balls to commit to that, but sure
Speaker 7: enough he did. He did so right there, Huge fan.
Speaker 3: Track number eight on in a metal mood, right after
Speaker 3: Pat Boone's cover of Enter Sandman by Metallica.
Speaker 10: Holy Diver, You've been down too long in the mid
Speaker 10: and I see, Oh, let's become of me.
Speaker 1: By the time you can see his strikes. But you
Speaker 1: know where he's me.
Speaker 3: Oh, don't you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You gotta get away.
Speaker 3: Epic, simply epic. This concern with Pat Boone's legacy did
Speaker 3: not start with me or Dave Hill. It started with
Speaker 3: another friend of mine, Bruce Hedlin, my oldest friend in
Speaker 3: the world, and that on the first day of first grade. Bruce,
Speaker 3: the producer Rick Rubin, and I are now partners on
Speaker 3: the Broken Record Music podcast, another epic Pushkin Industry's production,
Speaker 3: which you should be listening to anyway. Bruce always had
Speaker 3: a b in his bonnet about Pat Boone.
Speaker 4: I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 4: in Cleveland, which I'd never been to, and I went
Speaker 4: downstairs where it all kind of starts, and you see
Speaker 4: these you see exhibits like the precursors to rock and roll,
Speaker 4: and then you walk into what is probably the biggest
Speaker 4: part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in
Speaker 4: the most famous part, which is the Elvis section, how
Speaker 4: Elvis basically founded rock and roll. And I was kind
Speaker 4: of amazed. I went through it. I looked at all
Speaker 4: these exhibits. All I could think of was, where is
Speaker 4: Pat Boon? Now? Why would I be Why would I think?
Speaker 4: Where is Pat Boone?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 4: Pat Boone had an amazing career before Elvis, and in fact,
Speaker 4: Pat Boone did a lot of the things Elvis did
Speaker 4: before Elvis did it. I mean, just by raw numbers alone,
Speaker 4: he was Pat Boone was on the top one hundred
Speaker 4: charge the hot one hundred. I guess it's called for
Speaker 4: I think two hundred and twenty consecutive weeks. That record
Speaker 4: stood for I think close to fifty years. I think
Speaker 4: the only people who've been on longer were Lil Wayne
Speaker 4: and Drake. Lil Wayne Drake.
Speaker 1: And Pat Poot and Pat Pat. That's your that's our
Speaker 1: top three.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The nominating Committee for the Rock and Roll Hall of
Speaker 3: Fame is made up of rock music insiders, serious music people.
Speaker 3: They meet every September and have a day long debate
Speaker 3: about the ten or twenty names that should be on
Speaker 3: the ballot for the upcoming year. The whole thing is secret, intense.
Speaker 3: There's lobbying, campaigning. I asked Terry Stewart about the process.
Speaker 3: He ran the Hall of Fame for fourteen years.
Speaker 5: You know, I had some people that weren't very nice.
Speaker 5: People would back you against the wall in the corner
Speaker 5: and motherfucker. You know, there's sort of all that sort
Speaker 5: of stuff. So it would go a lot, it would
Speaker 5: go it could go dark, but you know it's I
Speaker 5: understand that it meant a lot to these artists, and
Speaker 5: I try to explain that there was a very methodical process.
Speaker 3: So then I asked him did things ever get dark
Speaker 3: over Pat Boone?
Speaker 5: There wasn't a lot of discussion about Pat Boone.
Speaker 3: Has he never even made the ballot? No, he's never
Speaker 3: made it out of that ballot that comes out of
Speaker 3: the room.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, if you know anything about popular music, you'll know
Speaker 3: why Pat Boone is persona non grata in Cleveland. It's
Speaker 3: because he made his name during the nineteen fifties covering
Speaker 3: black R and B songs. A handsome young white guy
Speaker 3: just graduated from Columbia University, and his record company has
Speaker 3: him doing these whitewashed versions of songs by people like
Speaker 3: Little Richard and Fats Domino. For music officionados, the idea
Speaker 3: of Pat Boone as a serious musician is offensive.
Speaker 5: But it took a lot of hutz futter really even
Speaker 5: bring it up, because of that feeling that you know,
Speaker 5: he had stolen this music. The majority of the people
Speaker 5: involved always felt fairly strongly that it wasn't appropriate to
Speaker 5: have Pat Boone in the Hall of Fame. But that's
Speaker 5: the way it all. X Y's he never made the ballot.
Speaker 5: It was discussed, but never made the ballot. And that's
Speaker 5: that's just the nature of the beast.
Speaker 3: In other words, Pat Boone's album in a Metal Mood
Speaker 3: is not some weird one off. It's what he does.
Speaker 3: He wanders into someone else's world and he takes their music,
Speaker 3: and that does not pass the smell test at the
Speaker 3: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But are they right.
Speaker 3: That's what Dave Hill and I were trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: which is why we sat in the studio together deconstructing
Speaker 3: Pat Boone's cover of Holy Diver.
Speaker 1: You can see his fights.
Speaker 7: There's no reason see right away when deals things about
Speaker 7: the tiger, You're like, that's a scary tiger, Pat Boone.
Speaker 7: They're like, I'm not afraid of that tiger. Get over here, tighter.
Speaker 3: I mean, so, what's he doing here with this song?
Speaker 7: I don't know, like I immediately or like you hear
Speaker 7: and you're like, hey, did you Has anyone seen the
Speaker 7: guy with the chicken skewers? I wanted to get some
Speaker 7: of those, do you know what I mean? Like it's
Speaker 7: it's like it's sort of an early cocktail party, corporate
Speaker 7: fundraiser scenario.
Speaker 3: Pat Boone is the poster child for cultural appropriation. Now,
Speaker 3: why does this make me think of taco bell? Because
Speaker 3: taco bell is the same thing for food. The bell
Speaker 3: in taco bell is not some reference to the classic
Speaker 3: bell towers in Spanish colonial architecture Elle Campanario. No, the
Speaker 3: bell in Taco Bell refers to Glen Bell of the
Speaker 3: Iowa Bells, a white guy who in the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: decided to open a fast food restaurant in San Bernardino, California,
Speaker 3: Glen Bell's Tacos Taco Bell. It became a chain. Whenever
Speaker 3: he opened a new restaurant, Glen Bell would hire a
Speaker 3: mariachi band. On the cover of his biography, Taco Titan,
Speaker 3: Glen Bell of the Iowa Bells is wearing a sombrero.
Speaker 3: Glen Bell is Pat Boone, two white guys in the
Speaker 3: mid nineteen fifties appropriating someone else's culture. So if we
Speaker 3: have a Pat Boone problem, we should also have a
Speaker 3: Taco Bell problem, which I'm not happy about, by the way,
Speaker 3: because I love Taco Bell. That was my moral quandary. Okay,
Speaker 3: So Laverne, We're going to start with Laverne Baker. I'm
Speaker 3: sitting around my dining room table with Bruce Jacob Smith,
Speaker 3: my producer, and Justin Richmond, the producer of Broken Record.
Speaker 3: We decided to convene a cultural appropriation summit to figure
Speaker 3: out who is the appropriate appropriator. Bruce o'was from rural
Speaker 3: southwestern Ontario. Jacob a half Jewish, half Catholic millennial from
Speaker 3: Long Island. Justin, a mixed race hipster from Long Beach,
Speaker 3: California and me Jamaica, Canada, England whatever. I felt we
Speaker 3: needed to cover as many bases as we could. We're
Speaker 3: listening to Laverne Baker, an early R and B legend,
Speaker 3: perform Tweedledee in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: Lady, all right, what's the other one?
Speaker 3: Georgia Gibbs, which, by the way, if you do the search,
Speaker 3: comes up right underneath it she Gibs. By the way,
Speaker 3: Georgia gives his real name is FRIEDA.
Speaker 4: Lipshitz, something like that Lipschitz.
Speaker 3: From I'm assuming. Several years after, Laverne Baker does the
Speaker 3: black version of Tweedledee, Georgia slash Frieda does the white version.
Speaker 6: Tweet tweet D happy asking Ben is it's Jim many Jack?
Speaker 6: You make my heart? Don't clay class.
Speaker 7: Tweet tweet D.
Speaker 3: All right, what's to compare those two versions?
Speaker 4: Do I like the first one better? Yes? Are they
Speaker 4: almost identical?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 4: Did she lift the arrangements? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Of course second was not so bad. Actually I can't
Speaker 1: you know, no, but.
Speaker 4: It's precisely like the first one.
Speaker 7: It is.
Speaker 4: Laverne Baker actually famously had to take out flight insurance
Speaker 4: once she was on tour, and she named Georgia Gibbs
Speaker 4: as her beneficiary because she said, if the plane goes down,
Speaker 4: her career is over.
Speaker 1: Too amazing.
Speaker 3: That is okay, so oh we agreed though. That is
Speaker 3: if you want a definition of cultural appropriation, that's it.
Speaker 3: Next we turn to Elvis. Everyone loves Elvis, right. Remember
Speaker 3: the last episode of season three of Revisionist History where
Speaker 3: I put Elvis on the couch and everything ended in tears.
Speaker 3: I love Elvis well. In his early years, a lot
Speaker 3: of Elvis' songs were written by a man named Otis Blackwell.
Speaker 4: He is black He was a songwriter. He wrote probably
Speaker 4: his most famous song is Fever, which was a Peggy
Speaker 4: Lee song later Madonna song. But he wrote don't be cruel.
Speaker 4: All shook up, paralyzed, returned to sender.
Speaker 3: Here we are, Yeah, yeah, great ball's a fire he wrote, Yes,
Speaker 3: wrote great balls fla he did, yeh, yep, Oh my god,
Speaker 3: guys genius. Otis Blackwell writes the songs, then records a demo,
Speaker 3: gives the demo to Elvis. Ready, this is Elvis doing
Speaker 3: his version of don't be cruel.
Speaker 7: You know I can't be sitting all alone if you
Speaker 7: can't come.
Speaker 3: Please, please tell the phone, don't be cruel.
Speaker 1: Hard It's true.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's Elvis. Now, this is Blackwell doing his version,
Speaker 3: the version that came first. He's performing it on an
Speaker 3: old episode of Late Night with David Letterman.
Speaker 5: Alone.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's the same song. As we're listening,
Speaker 3: Justin puts his head in his hands. I'm sorry, that's brutal.
Speaker 1: I forget how I forget how bad it is A
Speaker 1: This is just Elvis Well.
Speaker 3: This is the king of rock and roll, the singer
Speaker 3: with his own vast, dedicated room at the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: Now imagine how Otis Blackwell or any of the other
Speaker 3: black songwriters of that era felt about what Elvis did.
Speaker 3: They'd been asked to write a song for someone much
Speaker 3: more famous than they were. Fine. What hurts is when
Speaker 3: a so called genius takes the song that you wrote
Speaker 3: and that came out of your cultural community and doesn't
Speaker 3: change a lick of it. One Broken Heart for Sale,
Speaker 3: a hit song written by Otis Blackwell for Elvis in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: Excud is that Otis It's done might be Elvis demo
Speaker 1: in and the Otis demo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Otis Blackwell. Did you guys think it was Elvis?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's Elvis Demoinda, Oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: Alas black Wait.
Speaker 3: This is a perfect illustration of what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: We're listening to a song on YouTube that's supposed to
Speaker 3: be by Otis Blackwell, and we have no idea whether
Speaker 3: it's Otis Blackwell or Elvis, because Elvis is completely Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's completely stolen the sky's sound. Maybe this is why
Speaker 3: not everyone out there likes Elvis as much as the
Speaker 3: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does. People like Justin
Speaker 3: a purist on some level. He feels like it's his
Speaker 3: music that's being violated here. And immediately Justin brings up
Speaker 3: Public Enemy and their frontman, Chuck D.
Speaker 10: Because I feel like Chuck D is the reason Elvis
Speaker 10: is so hated.
Speaker 1: Yeah in black because.
Speaker 10: Elvis was a here at the most, but it never
Speaker 10: meant shit to me because he strayed our racist to
Speaker 10: Suckle was simple and playing motherfucker men, John Wayne.
Speaker 1: Elvis wasn't here. Elvis was here the most, but he
Speaker 1: never meant shit. I'm proud most of my heroes don
Speaker 1: a peeral, no stamp.
Speaker 3: Oh hell, this let's take a break, and when we
Speaker 3: come back, we're going to eat some more. Taco Bell
Speaker 3: Glen Bell was born in nineteen twenty three grew up
Speaker 3: in the Depression. It was a hobo for a while,
Speaker 3: riding the rails, living by his wits. During the war
Speaker 3: he was a steward for a Marine Corps general, and
Speaker 3: when the war was over, he came back to San Bernardino,
Speaker 3: California and decided to open a hamburger stand. At first,
Speaker 3: tacos were just something that he added to the menu.
Speaker 3: He'd eaten them in the Mexican restaurants of southern California
Speaker 3: and thought they were the perfect fast food, easy to
Speaker 3: make and eat, super cheap. Then he added refried beans.
Speaker 3: Then he dropped the burghers and fries altogether, and after
Speaker 3: a decade of stops and starts, he opened Taco Bell Tacos, tostadas,
Speaker 3: Frijulaz burritos, all for nineteen cents each. By the late
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, Taco Bells are everywhere with a standardized look,
Speaker 3: slumpstone brick which looks a bit like adobe red clay
Speaker 3: tiles on the roof Bell Tower, Mexican food in a
Speaker 3: building straight out of Mexico. Taco Bell is as bad
Speaker 3: as Elvis, except have you ever been to a Taco Bell?
Speaker 3: Where are the carnadas? They don't have carnadas, don't spill
Speaker 3: the beer. Oh yeah yeah, way way way off the menu.
Speaker 3: So you pekin, this is our. When I was in
Speaker 3: the test kitchen at Taco Bell's headquarters, the question of
Speaker 3: carnadas came up, and they said that, for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: shredded me meat doesn't work for them. Or Molay. If
Speaker 3: you were ripping off Mexican food, if you wanted to
Speaker 3: be Elvis of Mexican food, you would have Molay. But
Speaker 3: there's no mole at Taco Bells.
Speaker 11: Or ras Basket Inspired and it's just not familiar enough.
Speaker 11: And if it's not familiar enough, again in thirty seconds,
Speaker 11: we can't make it familiar to you.
Speaker 3: This is Renee Peshati.
Speaker 11: We just can't, as much as we'd love to.
Speaker 3: What's hard about moley sauce, for example?
Speaker 6: Mole sauce, So first off, I think there's so many different.
Speaker 3: Types, and this is Liz Matthews, head chef.
Speaker 8: I think Molay in general, especially a red moley, it's
Speaker 8: rich and earthy, and I don't think that's something that
Speaker 8: people are familiar with.
Speaker 3: Are ready another thing. We're the soft corn tortillas. Nothing
Speaker 3: is more quintessentially Mexican than the traditional soft corn tortilla.
Speaker 3: There are no soft corn toutias at Taco Bell. They
Speaker 3: tried it once Mexican street tacos.
Speaker 11: What happened we had we We're getting a lot of
Speaker 11: calls from customers that they got a taco but the
Speaker 11: shell was raw, the shell was uncooked. They had no
Speaker 11: reference for a cornth or tilla that wasn't deep fried, like,
Speaker 11: they had no idea what a soft fresh.
Speaker 3: Corn or tia was all about. It was a crisis.
Speaker 11: These were calls from Indiana. I mean, I just remember
Speaker 11: they started streaming in. I'm like, oh my god. People
Speaker 11: are worried that we're serving them uncooked food. There was
Speaker 11: no reference for it whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Now, the Taco Bell guys weren't upset by that reaction.
Speaker 3: Their attitude isn't, oh, our customers have to get more sophisticated. No,
Speaker 3: to them, it's just a reminder that they aren't in
Speaker 3: the business of making real Mexican food. That's not why
Speaker 3: people go to Taco Bell.
Speaker 2: I don't think people want to see authentic for they.
Speaker 6: Want the variations and different. I don't know that that's
Speaker 6: just not us. That's not who we are. We're inspired
Speaker 6: by it, but that's not what we're driven by.
Speaker 3: Taco Bell is an interpretation of Mexican food, a riff
Speaker 3: on Mexican food for people who don't necessarily think of
Speaker 3: themselves as people who eat Mexican food. That's a very
Speaker 3: different game, and a harder game, by the way, because
Speaker 3: you have to find the familiar part of the unfamiliar
Speaker 3: and somehow make it seem new. If you were the
Speaker 3: Elvis of Mexican food, you wouldn't need a test kitchen,
Speaker 3: would you. If you're stealing something, why would you need
Speaker 3: to test it? You test what you invent. Case in point,
Speaker 3: the naked chicken chiloopa. The inspiration came from Taco Bell's
Speaker 3: Heather Motorshaw, one of the foods signed tots I was
Speaker 3: meeting with.
Speaker 9: I remember Heather said something like, Steve, what do you
Speaker 9: think if we made you know, a taco shell out
Speaker 9: of chicken something? And I'm like, well, what are you
Speaker 9: talking about? It was sort of like, well, you know,
Speaker 9: like chicken milonaise. So in my mind I'm thinking like
Speaker 9: literally like chicken milonaise, pound it out, you know, chicken
Speaker 9: breast and that flavor profile, thinking like you're Heather, But
Speaker 9: what really comes out is, you know, she's probably onto something.
Speaker 3: We probably they ended up with a white meat chicken breast,
Speaker 3: deep fried in batter, molded into the shape of a
Speaker 3: taco and filled with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and avocado ranch sauce.
Speaker 3: Did you have difficulty kind of convincing people?
Speaker 2: We couldn't even describe it to each other at first,
Speaker 2: So how do you actually get that message across to
Speaker 2: consumers so they're like, oh, I want to go in
Speaker 2: and try that. I mean, that was a pretty a
Speaker 2: pretty big feat.
Speaker 12: But that was part of the conundrum because we originally
Speaker 12: were talking about this as a Crispy Chicken taco, and
Speaker 12: when you called it a Crispy Chicken taco, people were
Speaker 12: expecting a taco shell, regular taco shell with a piece
Speaker 12: of crispy chicken inside.
Speaker 3: This is Heather of naked chicken chilupa fame.
Speaker 12: So it wasn't until we then converted and started to
Speaker 12: call it a chiloopa, which is on more premium taco
Speaker 12: where consumers like, oh, Okay, I got it.
Speaker 3: But even here they're making things up. In Mexican cuisine,
Speaker 3: a chiloopa is a deep fried masa dough pancake shaped
Speaker 3: to resemble a flat fishing boat. That's why it's called
Speaker 3: a chiloopa. Chiluopas are basque whaling boats, small, wide bottom,
Speaker 3: shallow sided. But in the Taco Bell universe, a chiloopa
Speaker 3: is not a shallow boat anymore. It's a taco, a
Speaker 3: high sided boat. And it's naked. You're calling it a
Speaker 3: naked what's the meaning of the word naked in that context?
Speaker 6: It didn't it didn't have the shell, So it's.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: So I was wondering, like, where are you guys going
Speaker 3: with this? So what's interesting about this is that it's
Speaker 3: it's really conceptually a step outside of the traditional Mexican food.
Speaker 3: This is this is We're no longer it looks like
Speaker 3: a taco. It's not a taco. It's something else. This
Speaker 3: is not the same as Elvis and Otis Blackwell? Is it?
Speaker 3: Elvis appropriated the song Don't Be Cruel and also everything
Speaker 3: else otis Blackwell style vocal tics. Elvis stole the song
Speaker 3: Soul Taco Bell appropriated the taco, but not the tacos soul.
Speaker 3: They turned it into something that is about as far
Speaker 3: from a taco as humanly possible. By the way, I
Speaker 3: haven't even mentioned the craziest thing in the Taco Bell lab.
Speaker 3: It's for the Indian market, but they cooked one up
Speaker 3: for us. It's an Indian spiced potato latka in the
Speaker 3: shape of a taco, filled with all kinds of delicious flavors.
Speaker 9: Y spicy, it's yeah, this spice is a little bit
Speaker 9: of a delay, so you might take a few bikes bites.
Speaker 9: It's not spicy, and then it's.
Speaker 1: I want to talk.
Speaker 3: I have many questions about spice.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Bluey, Justin and I.
Speaker 3: You do you want me to feed you? Justin Justin
Speaker 3: Richmond from the Cultural a Creation Summit. Alvis doesn't mean
Speaker 3: shit to me. I brought him along as my soundtech,
Speaker 3: but he was holding microphones with both hands so he
Speaker 3: couldn't eat, and all this food was passing right under
Speaker 3: his nose, and we were getting concerned about his state
Speaker 3: of mind, especially the Taco Bell people. This was their
Speaker 3: professional responsibility and they felt they were failing him.
Speaker 6: So you want us to cut things up for you,
Speaker 6: so you want me to hold the microphones in India?
Speaker 3: And now I kind of have to take a foray
Speaker 3: into the Dorritos locus Taco Taco Bell's taco where the
Speaker 3: shell is made out of a dorrito, which turns out
Speaker 3: to be this fantastically complicated engineering feet because you have
Speaker 3: to simultaneously please the universe of hardcore Dorito's fans and
Speaker 3: the universe of hard core Taco Bell lovers. Did the
Speaker 3: lawyers have to get involved? There's like all this ip
Speaker 3: going on between and Taco Bell, and I.
Speaker 2: Think I can tell story, but I mean the story
Speaker 2: really is.
Speaker 6: There was a handshake.
Speaker 3: The CEO of Frido Le and the CEO of Taco
Speaker 3: Bell worked it out one on one. Taco Bell, born
Speaker 3: of San Bernardino meets Doritos inspired by authentic Mexican tortilla chips,
Speaker 3: but actually created in its current form as you may know,
Speaker 3: at a restaurant in Disneyland.
Speaker 8: They did a handshake because they knew if we got
Speaker 8: everybody involved, we would.
Speaker 6: Never get this idea out the door. And knew we
Speaker 6: had this magical thing, and we knew that that would
Speaker 6: not happen.
Speaker 3: It was like a summit, did they like meet in
Speaker 3: some secret location.
Speaker 6: All the lawyers were like, what did you guys do?
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, probably got a golf course. Let's be honest.
Speaker 6: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3: Taco Bell is not Elvis. Elvis could never have pulled
Speaker 3: off the Doritos Locos Taco. I can't go on without
Speaker 3: one more moment from our cultural appropriation summit when we
Speaker 3: finally got to the matter at hand, what's the best Pat.
Speaker 4: Boon touty fruity?
Speaker 3: Just do the two touty fruity. So we'll start with
Speaker 3: Little Richard's tooty fruity. But the best tooty fruity fact
Speaker 3: I learned recently was that it's originally tooty fruity. Good
Speaker 3: booty boy Blah, Pat Boom comes along the boy wonder
Speaker 3: and should we should we do the lot?
Speaker 1: We have a lot.
Speaker 3: It's a live version of him. Let's go the live
Speaker 3: version just for fun. It's an old performance on Canadian
Speaker 3: television from the nineteen fifties. Pat Boom looks like he
Speaker 3: flew in straight from a boy Scout jamboree. The video
Speaker 3: begins with a title card, so the caption like pouring
Speaker 3: cream into coffee.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is so good.
Speaker 3: Pat Boon lightened and sweetened R and B, and he
Speaker 3: made a smoothie out of tooty fruity.
Speaker 7: Calf. All right, here's the gal that I love.
Speaker 3: Here's a gal that I love best, which fruity completely.
Speaker 4: He doesn't he doesn't go behind the men.
Speaker 1: That's that's really the that's what all of them have done.
Speaker 10: By the way, all the white versions have simplified the beat,
Speaker 10: like the beat is feels a little more dense, a
Speaker 10: little more complex in the black versions and the white version.
Speaker 10: It's like this is the one, two three four that
Speaker 10: you can't miss it.
Speaker 3: You know, Pat Boon not copy Touty Fruity. He made
Speaker 3: a smoothiet of Touty Fruity. Years later, Little Richard did
Speaker 3: an interview with the music journalist Joe Smith. He wasn't
Speaker 3: happy what he would do.
Speaker 4: He would take over the pop stations and it would
Speaker 4: kill me costing over.
Speaker 10: And see, it would kill me costing overcause he would
Speaker 10: kill me because the white station will play him.
Speaker 12: He wouldn't blame me. And so when you go in
Speaker 12: the record stop, you could find his, you can find mine.
Speaker 3: But Little Richard says that later he changed his mind.
Speaker 8: But really be true.
Speaker 5: When I look back over, it was a blessing and
Speaker 5: a lesson because he opened doors for us. He made
Speaker 5: the white kids more aware of me, and because they
Speaker 5: won't my version of it. That's what he says, I've
Speaker 5: been He says I opened some doors.
Speaker 4: He opened a whole out of doors.
Speaker 1: Yes, and oh he's a beautiful person.
Speaker 3: When it works, cultural appropriation serves as the basis for
Speaker 3: something new, but it also widens the audience for the
Speaker 3: real thing. It's the way the original, authentic idea moves
Speaker 3: into the mainstream. That's what my friend Bruce has been
Speaker 3: trying to tell us.
Speaker 4: The contrast chairs with Elvis. I'm not blaming Elvis directly,
Speaker 4: but he did a version of hound Dog. Big Mama
Speaker 4: Thornton didn't then crash the pop charts afterwards with her
Speaker 4: version of hound.
Speaker 3: Dog or because there was no room for it, because
Speaker 3: he'd already he did it so well, there was no
Speaker 3: reason to go back and do the original.
Speaker 4: Yes, And that's what I th That's essentially the distinction
Speaker 4: I'm making, which is, you know, if if Elvis Presley
Speaker 4: is the Columbus, you know Pat Boone is the guy
Speaker 4: who landed in the New World and then went back
Speaker 4: to Europe and said we should make friends with these guys.
Speaker 4: They've got great tobacco. He didn't show up and saying
Speaker 4: I'm taking over the content.
Speaker 3: He's John the Baptist, whereas Elvis pretends to be Jesus.
Speaker 3: Alvis says I'm the risen Lord. Pat Boon's not pretending
Speaker 3: to be the risen Lord. He's like, I'm just the
Speaker 3: guy preparing the way for the risen Lord.
Speaker 4: He is John the Baptist, John the Baptist and Taco
Speaker 4: Bell same time.
Speaker 3: Pat Boone, John the Baptist.
Speaker 4: Is handsome, wholesome. He's really handsome.
Speaker 1: He's a wholesome.
Speaker 4: He's a really nice guy. There he is running to
Speaker 4: his mark right now.
Speaker 3: I think he's a nice guy, Ladies.
Speaker 7: And gentleman, Pat Boone.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety seven, at the height of his metal period,
Speaker 3: Pat Boone went on the Easter Seal telephone.
Speaker 1: I got a bad reputation. You want and I don't
Speaker 1: know why.
Speaker 3: I rushed my hair, I rushed my teeth.
Speaker 1: I go to church.
Speaker 10: I'm a really.
Speaker 3: Sweet, nice guy. You're trying to tell me he doesn't
Speaker 3: belong in the Hall of Fame. I used to be
Speaker 3: such a sweet, sweet thing till they got a Let's
Speaker 3: make this happen, people, Let's get Pat Boone on the ballot.
Speaker 3: Info at rockhall dot org. That's info at rockhall dot org.
Speaker 3: Then crank up a little in a metal mood on
Speaker 3: your phone, order a naked chicken jaloopa at the nearest
Speaker 3: Taco Bell, and ask yourself if the world is in
Speaker 3: a better place with the right kind of cultural appropriation.
Speaker 1: Lou waw, mister nice guy, they say, day you would see.
Speaker 3: Revisionist History is produced by Mila Bell and Jacob Smith
Speaker 3: with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flon Williams
Speaker 3: is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music
Speaker 3: by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Carlene Migliori, Head Fein,
Speaker 3: Maggie Taylor, Maya Knigg, Jason Gambrel, and Jacob Weisberg. Oh
Speaker 3: and Justin Richmond, who turned down Taco Bell in the
Speaker 3: service of his duty, and Bruce Hadlam, the brains behind
Speaker 3: this particular operation. Revisionist History is brought to you by
Speaker 3: Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Godlong, what I'm coming back to
Speaker 3: Pat Boone? So he takes an absolutely iconic song.
Speaker 1: And he does this.
Speaker 3: Jazz lounge. Yeah, can you give us a can you
Speaker 3: try a little bit of a jazz loungee?
Speaker 1: Holy dive?
Speaker 7: You've been down to see now?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 7: Where as I attempt to do it, I'm also showing
Speaker 7: you what's great about Pat Boone because I can't emulate
Speaker 7: just the swagger and you know that you can tell
Speaker 7: you like, he's got a bit of a tan.
Speaker 1: You can hear it in his voice.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you've been down too long in the men not see. Oh,
Speaker 7: come in with me and see I've just got taken it,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 13: Now we're at a coffeehouse on some sp fun So
Speaker 13: what this is interesting, what he's done is not it's
Speaker 13: not a trivial accomplishment.
Speaker 3: No, there's some there, there's a there's a degree of
Speaker 3: difficulty in what he's done here. Oh yeah, no, one can.
Speaker 3: You can't walk in off the street and do Pat Boon.
Speaker 7: No, No, you'd be a fool. You know, as as
Speaker 7: much as you'd be a fool to think you could
Speaker 7: do a d o, you'd be as as maybe as
Speaker 7: much a fool to think you can do Pat phone