Hong Kong Blues offensive?

Swampy Steve

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Hoagy Carmichael song he sang in "To Have & To Have Not" Im wondering if this tune is considered "offensive" . I was working up the chords to it, {its just a fun old song to me} but I didnt want to waste my time ,,, if it was going to be offensive to people.
I cant always tell whats offensive, and some things down here that arent ,, are someplace else.
what you think?
Steve
 
As you've suggested, I think it depends on who and where your audience is. I've loved Hoagy since I was a little kid and thought about suggesting HK Blues for one of the groups I play in, but decided against it because it's sure to offend someone, either by the use of the word "colored" or the stereotype of drug use in Asia. I'm in Los Angeles, the people I play music with are mainly in their 30s and 40s, and we've all grown up knowing that "colored" is an offensive word. I doubt that everyone who heard it could just let it go as a convention that was once acceptable but has become less so over time. But if my audience was, say, my 85-year-old mother and her friends in a far less multicultural city, I wouldn't worry since much of that demographic still uses the word "colored" conversationally.

Then again - George Harrison covered HK Blues in the 1980s, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott did so as recently as the 1990s, and I don't think either one concerned themselves with political correctness. They just knew a good song when they heard one!
 
I say do it. I did Camptown Races on my YT channel and put up big disclaimers pointing out its racist beginnings and left out the potentially offensive lyrics. Acknowledging such things isn't always necessary, especially with a song nobody thinks of as offensive, but it helps sometimes. These days people do seem a bit more aware of such things, so I put up the disclaimer anyway.
 
Go for it! It's only offensive if you mean it to be. Ol' Hoagy came from a different time, and the stereotypes and style just paint a colorful picture of folks perception back then.
 
Thanks for the replys, I was just checking, I have put my foot in my mouth too many times,,, and am trying to learn to avoid that. It wont be exact, but hopefully good enough to be fun
Steve
 
Some people are very easily offended, even if you warn them beforehand that they might find a song offensive. Just saying...
 
and we've all grown up knowing that "colored" is an offensive word.

Well... to be fair... the word in and of itself isn't offensive. What is offensive is the context and the racist idiot using it. The same can be said for every other 'racist' word, some of which can have very interesting and literally sound etymologies (e.g. South African K bomb). Others can have a rather boring explanation when you get down to it (e.g. N bomb)

Anyway, to paraphrase the late, great, George Carlin: There's no such thing as bad words, there are only bad thoughts and bad intentions.
 
I was just thinkin'... (always a dangerous pursuit...) that Hong Kong Blues Offensive is an outstanding name for a band...

R.I.P. Mr. Carlin.
 
Got to agree with many of the responses here. So much of our musical library consists of historical notes that many of us would rather forget...but there is a certain reward in hearing them and remembering where we have been, and enjoying them for what they are- entertainment. Play them and you are not a racist, you are a historian.
Because I am a bones player as well, this haunts me as all the bad from minstrel shows seems to have had some staying power, and yet the music has all but vanished.
 
For anyone who feels inclined to believe that the use of "colored" is automatically rascist please research the meaning of the NAACP. I do agree that the use of the word in conversation in 2010 is anachronistic at best, absurd, and yes, potentially rascist and offensive...

What gets lost in these discussions is what "rascism" really is...it goes far beyond prejudice...into the demonic heart of someone like Hitler (or small town versions of him)...or into the more palatable (forgotten? buried?) teachings (for some people) on eugenics in someone like Margaret Sanger.
 
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Come to think of it... I haven't heard Lou Reed's "Take A Walk On The Wild Side" much lately... You, know... the part right before, "Do do do, do do, do do do, do, do do, do do, do do do... dooooooooooo..."
 
Play it.

There's "offensive" because you performed the wrong tune in front of the wrong audience, probably with the knowledge and, perhaps, the intent of being offensive. If people get offended then (whether you offended on purpose or because of a bad repertoire choice for the situation), then they have a right to feel that way.

But then there is "offensive" as in some idiot chose to be offended because they are just one of those super entitled people who will, because they can, feel and express how you wrecked their lives and the lives of their vulnerable, precious children because your art contained a word or an innuendo that they associated meaning to.

When I perform (read: respect) a classic song, if "Little brown gal" offends someone; if a reference to a "monkey-faced woman" in a blues song offends them; if "...your biscuits is plenty tall enough for me" offends them...if someone chooses to jump on an opportunity to get offended by me because of their own interpretation/interjection of "offensiveness" into the art I perform, then they can kiss my old caboose, go away, and get their own dad-gummed gig and perform what THEY like.:eek:ld:

I say stay true to the art you're performing. It respects the creator and it makes you an honest fan, and a respectful--and respectable--artist.
 
this thread reminds me of the disney movey "song of the south". it still saddens me that disney has decided not to release it anymore. i remember it being on the tv many times when i was young and it really did have a great story. disney doesn't want to release it on dvd (or ever again) because they think it is antiquated and may be offensive to people nowadays.
 
I just took a look at the lyrics. I wouldn't call them offensive. It's understood that song is from a different time.
 
Just playing this now. What a great song! Hoagy's performance in "To Have and Have Not" was pure liquid honey.

http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/r/ramblin_jack_elliott/hong_kong_blues_crd.htm



Anybody who is offended by the word "Coloured" (from an era when it was considered a polite term) needs to get a life (and get bent).

Incidentally, anybody know what instrument is the guy behind the banjo playing?
 
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I used to automatically think that doing this kind of thing was retrograde and should be avoided. This was 20 years ago at the advent of our PC era.

Now, I feel we're all rather much more sensitized to the issue, and that we really CAN, from an historian's point of view, perform these kinds of songs. . . in a setting in which we're all reasonable, mature individuals who recognize that this is a look at history. . . and NOT a present attempt to be offensive.

Another part of me rejects the intentional intellectual lobotomizing that is caused by NOT doing such things as reading Huckleberry Finn. Or Shakespeare.
 
Some people are very easily offended, even if you warn them beforehand that they might find a song offensive. Just saying...

Especially if warned ...they get their "Offend Me Drives" all warmed up......

I think the true and honest reaction to someone who says "You have offended me " should be , "Sorry , It was not my intent ".
But then ,hey ho....in todays "liberal and free speaking" world it is it would seem only the "liberals"who are allowed to be free to say what they think .....:eek:
 
If you have to ask? You probably shouldn't.
 
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