Even socially distanced in the time of coronavirus, the inauguration of Joe Biden proved a star-studded affair. Donald Trump suffered the indignity of a late withdrawal by Elton John, one of his favourite performers, and had to make do on the eve of his inauguration with Toby Keith and 3 Doors Down.
Sam Moore of the soul duo Sam & Dave served as a late replacement for Jennifer Holliday, singing ‘America the Beautiful’ at the onset of the ‘Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration’ as Trump arrived in the capital. But on inauguration day itself the now former president had to settle for Jackie Evancho, who sang the national anthem, and Republican Party staples the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
What a difference four years make. During his inauguration ceremony, Joe Biden and the incoming vice president Kamala Harris were serenaded by Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, and Garth Brooks, although National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman stole the show with a reading of her panoramic poem ‘The Hill We Climb’. Hours later on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Bruce Springsteen opened the Celebrating America television special with a trenchant rendition of ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’. Hosted by Tom Hanks, the special reached a sparkling climax when Katy Perry provided the soundtrack to a fireworks display as Biden and Harris looked on.
Jon Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, and Demi Lovato also performed during the special, chart-toppers one and all. Yet if the sprinkling of stardust was meant to encompass all of America, on a day which brought the first black and first female president of the United States, despite the relative diversity of the entertainment on offer, one question remained. Where were the rappers?
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The history of black musicians at presidential inaugurations stretches back to the inauguration of Harry Truman in 1949. Dorothy Maynor, a talented soprano who would later found the Harlem School of the Arts, whose race precluded her from many of the most esteemed opera houses of the era, performed the spiritual ‘Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)’ to an audience of 5,000 at the presidential inaugural gala, in the company of such Hollywood luminaries as Gene Kelly, Jane Powell, and Alice Faye.
Dwight Eisenhower turned that breakthrough into something of a custom, as Maynor performed the national anthem during his first inauguration ceremony in 1953. Four years later ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was sung by the renowned contralto Marian Anderson, who had made headlines in 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from performing in front of a segregated audience at Constitution Hall.
Amid a wave of protests organised by civil rights groups with the support of organised labour, the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt took up the cause. She resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution, then helped to arrange a concert for Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which took place on the Easter Sunday of 1939 before a mixed crowd of 75,000 people, with millions more listening from home.
By the time of the second Eisenhower inauguration in 1957, Anderson had become the first black soloist to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Following her rendition of the national anthem for Eisenhower, the president appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Serving as a goodwill ambassador, Anderson represented the best of America in concert recitals across the globe.
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Marian Anderson performed once more upon the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, which heralded a new era of celebrity endorsement in the political life of the United States. Kennedy’s inaugural ball, hosted by his brother-in-law Peter Lawford and pack master Frank Sinatra, was unprecedented for its diversity as well as its glamour and glitz.
Sidney Poitier, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Kelly, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Jimmy Durante, and Harry Belafonte were among the assorted performers, but there was one notable absentee. Sammy Davis Jr. had recently married the Swedish actress May Britt, and the swarm of publicity at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in thirty-one states encouraged the domineering Joseph P. Kennedy to withdraw his invite.
Not even Sinatra could save him. In his autobiography Why Me? The Sammy Davis Jr. Story, Davis wrote that on hearing the news from Kennedy’s personal secretary, he felt ‘a torrent of words bubbling up in my throat’ but didn’t say anything, because he understood that ‘hatred got noticed and had to be neutralized, whereas love could be put on hold’. Recalling the festivities years later, Harry Belafonte said ‘Sammy not being there was a loss’.
By 1969, Kennedy’s erstwhile opponent Richard Nixon had returned from the political wilderness to secure the presidency. Up against middlebrow fare such as Tony Bennett, Dinah Shore, and Connie Francis, the highlight of the All-American Gala which took place a couple of days before the inauguration was James Brown. The Godfather of Soul performed the racially-charged funk classic ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud’, although security concerns kept Nixon tied up back in New York.
Brown had actually supported Nixon’s challenger Hubert Humphrey during the election campaign of 1968. A victorious Nixon subsequently wooed Brown and the once-vanquished Sammy Davis Jr. to the Republican side through White House visits and council appointments, but the pushback from Democrats and members of the black community was so severe that both artists pulled out of the Nixon inaugural celebrations in 1973.
The jazz singer Ethel Ennis, reportedly at the behest of Spiro Agnew, performed the national anthem a capella. But the musical centrepiece of the second Nixon inauguration came in the form of competing classical concerts conducted by Eugene Ormandy and Leonard Bernstein. Ormandy led the Philadelphia Orchestra in a performance of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky as Republican grandees packed the Kennedy Center. Meanwhile across town at the National Cathedral, Bernstein put on a free ‘Concert for Peace’. Culminating with Joseph Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, the concert served as a self-styled ‘Inauguration of Conscience’, a clear rebuttal of Nixon-era policies.
Aretha Franklin made her inauguration debut in 1977, with a rendition of ‘God Bless America’ at a gala for the incoming Jimmy Carter. When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, his All Star Inaugural Gala featured a musical performance in two parts by the Roots actor and Tony Award-winner Ben Vereen. Framed as a tribute to the groundbreaking vaudeville star Bert Williams, Vereen sang ‘Waiting for the Robert E. Lee’ and ‘Nobody’, wearing blackface which he gradually removed as a commentary on vestigial racism. When ABC aired the gala, it cut the second part of Vereen’s act, leaving only the hammy show tune.
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Hip hop arrived on the inaugural stage in 1985 upon the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan. With Frank Sinatra occupying his now customary role as impresario and master of ceremonies, the venerable crooner invited the New York City Breakers along to the inaugural gala, with The Washington Post describing the dance group as ‘among the freshest acts on the program’.
The New York City Breakers had been founded in 1981 by the artist and subcultural pioneer Michael Holman, later coming under the auspices of his company Hip Hop International Inc. Prior to the inauguration, they had appeared on The Merv Griffin Show, Good Morning America, Soul Train, Graffiti Rock, and at the awarding of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1984, performed in an acclaimed music video by Gladys Knight & the Pips, and appeared on stage alongside fledgling rap artists including Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Dr. Dre, KRS-One, and MC Shan.
On inauguration day, they were introduced to Ronald and Nancy Reagan and the assorted crowd of Republican faithfuls by Jimmy Stewart, at the conclusion of a speech in which he celebrated the virtues of ‘old Hollywood’ to rapturous applause. Other presenters and musical guests on hand during the gala stretched from Mr. T and The Beach Boys to Don Rickles and Ray Charles.
In 1989, cultural events around the inauguration of George H. W. Bush included a night of soul and blues organised by his controversial campaign manager Lee Atwater. Atwater was notorious for his attacks on political opponents, casting aspersions on their patriotism and aspects of their mental health, with critics accusing him of barely concealed efforts to stir up racial animus.
Atwater was nevertheless an ardent devotee of blues music, who had recently opened a blues-themed barbecue restaurant in Virginia and would subsequently record a promotional album alongside B. B. King. The inaugural concert in 1989 featured Bo Diddley, Willy Dixon, Sam Moore, Carla Thomas, Percy Sledge, Koko Taylor, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, with the faintly incongruous sight of Bush and Atwater rocking out on stage guitars in hand alongside a gathering of blues legends. Atwater called the occasion ‘a dream come true’.
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The inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993 seemed to herald a new dawn for America, which was now on the other side of the Cold War and Gulf War. Campaigning on the economy and issues of social mobility, the young and charismatic Clinton had managed to break a Republican stranglehold on the presidency, sweeping the Northeast and West Coast and making gains in the Midwest and parts of the South.
Clinton was and would remain popular among black voters. Conjuring his Arkansas upbringing and his treatment in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison would later describe him as the ‘first black president’. Culturally and geographically at home in the South, Clinton had helped to consolidate his appeal with an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show in the summer of 1992, where he performed ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on the saxophone, prompting Hall to retort ‘It’s good to see a Democrat blowing something other than the election’.
Yet Clinton could have it both ways. On Arsenio Hall, the Democratic candidate had opened an hour-long interview with an appeal for racial equality couched in the language of the ‘American Dream’, discussing some of the causes of the recent Los Angeles riots. Little more than a week later, he responded to remarks made by the rapper Sister Souljah by comparing her to David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Souljah had said, ‘If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?’
Clinton’s robust response was an attempt to break free from his base and win the support of moderate and independent voters. The gesture became part of the political lexicon, referred to thereafter as a ‘Sister Souljah moment’.
The line between progressive causes and conservative totems like ‘family values’ was not always so easy to tread. When Clinton attended an inaugural ball sponsored by MTV, he told the youthful crowd ‘Everybody here knows that MTV had a lot to do with the Clinton-Gore victory’, as the crowd swelled and chanted ‘Chelsea! Chelsea!’ in an ode to the new president’s twelve-year-old daughter. But when Tipper Gore grabbed hold of the microphone, audible boos cut through the revelry.
In 1985, Gore had co-founded the Parents Music Resource Center after she caught her then eleven-year-old daughter listening to the Prince song ‘Darling Nikki’. The committee compiled a list of fifteen popular songs which they deemed objectionable for their lyrical content, variously construed as glorifying sex, drugs, the occult, and violence.
The Parents Music Resource Center managed to convince the recording industry to place ‘Parental Advisory’ labels on offending releases, with the stickers soon becoming ubiquitous. As they continued to condemn the lyrics of popular rap and rock and roll, Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center found themselves singularly at odds with a generation brought up on MTV.
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In 1993, Bill Clinton attended fourteen inaugural balls in total, with a slew of celebratory events leading up to inauguration day. Besides bell-ringing ceremonies and visits to Arlington National Cemetery, a star-studded presidential gala on the eve of the inauguration featured musical performances by Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Thelonious Monk, and Elton John, with commentary courtesy of Jack Lemmon, Bill Cosby, and Macauley Culkin.
The climax of the night saw a specially reunited Fleetwood Mac perform ‘Don’t Stop’, which had served as the Clinton campaign theme. Stevie Nicks called the occasion ‘One of those experiences that you never forget’, offering backstage anecdotes including one about the King of Pop Michael Jackson. According to Nicks, ‘Michael sent somebody to find out if I had any foundation makeup he could borrow. I was using some light Chanel foundation at that time, and Michael sent back a note to say thanks, but the foundation wasn’t quite light enough for him’.
If the presidential gala flaunted its glitz, more grandiose was the ‘Reunion on the Mall’ which took place over the weekend prior to inauguration day. The two-day event featured a host of blues and roots music, stretched out across multiple stages and tents on the National Mall between Capitol Hill and the Washington Monument. Approximately one million people attended over the course of the two days, which were capped by ‘An American Reunion: The People’s Inaugural Celebration’.
Quincy Jones produced the two-hour concert, which was televised on Sunday night as the Clinton family descended on the capital. Diana Ross, Luther Vandross, Ray Charles, Ben E. King, Yo-Yo Ma, Tony Bennett, and Bob Dylan joined Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson among the performers. 440,138 passengers used the Washington Metrorail on the day of the concert, setting a new Sunday record. And among other assorted firsts, the ‘American Reunion’ celebration saw the first ever inaugural performance by a rap artist.
LL Cool J arrived on the Lincoln Memorial stage on the evening of 17 January 1993, clad in denim and black and accompanied by the beat from ‘Diggy Down’. Produced by his frequent collaborator DJ Bobcat, the song was set to be released at the end of March as the penultimate track on 14 Shots to the Dome, LL’s fifth studio album.
14 Shots to the Dome proved a hit in the charts, peaking at number five on the Billboard 200. The record rode a wave of success following the critical and commercial triumph of the 1990 album Mama Said Knock You Out, while in December LL had completed publicity for Toys, the American fantasy comedy in which he starred alongside Robin Williams.
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LL Cool J wrote an original set of lyrics for the occasion of the inauguration of the 42nd president. After compelling the crowd to throw their hands in the air from side to side – an instruction met with enthusiasm albeit a lack of coordination, as Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea offered cheerful one-handed waves from the right of the stage – LL launched into a rabble-rousing celebration of Democratic triumph.
On inauguration day, Bill Clinton shook hands with his predecessor George H. W. Bush and offered a ‘salute’ on behalf of the nation for his ‘half-century of service to America’. LL was less conciliatory. Gesturing towards ‘unity’ and a ‘time to party with big Bill and Hillary’, he nevertheless boasts about the Democratic landslide and offers Bush a solitary sip of the cheap wine MD 20/20. More than ready to flip the script, he urges the hundreds of thousands of gathered spectators to ‘Tell George and Barbara Bush bye’, eager to hasten their departure from the White House.
LL wasn’t afraid of the odd joke at the expense of the incoming president. Towards the end of the song he raps, ‘My man Bill he won’t slip / Get a good grip / and let your Grecian Formula Forty-Four drip’, combining references to the over-the-counter cough syrup and the iconic men’s hair colouring product.
Presidential hair has long been a pop-cultural obsession. In a New York Times profile published back in March, the nascent Democratic candidate had been described as ‘6 foot 2 and 230 pounds, with a full head of newly styled graying hair, intense blue eyes and a square jaw’, though the piece also called him ‘red-nosed’, ‘baggy-eyed’, ‘puffy-faced’, and ‘forever popping Sudafeds and Tums’, concluding ‘up close, there’s not much bionic about him’.
Clinton’s good looks sometimes played second-fiddle to his smooth charisma, but his hair was nevertheless subject to routine speculation. Specialists in the field wondered whether he had darkened his hair at various times during the election campaign, or whether he was instead hastening the onset of gray in an attempt to portray gravitas. Either way, Bill Clinton stood accused of dying his hair, with Grecian Formula purportedly the choice of former presidents.
Clinton seemed to revel in the accusation tossed his way by LL Cool J. Upon the mention of Grecian Formula, the inbound president launched into a spontaneous round of applause and rolled back his head in easy laughter. Bill Clinton and LL Cool J evidently forged a connection. In 2012, the rapper-turned-actor and entrepreneur co-hosted with Bill and Chelsea an event sponsored by the Clinton Foundation. In 2017, LL was commended in the home of Clinton’s idol, as he became the first hip hop artist to receive a Kennedy Center Honor.
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There is a crisp and carefree charm to LL’s performance on the Lincoln Memorial stage, but the ‘American Reunion’ concert did not inaugurate a golden period of presidentially-approved rap music. For the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, Destiny’s Child, ZZ Top, Jessica Simpson, and Ricky Martin were among the headline acts, alongside a host of country singers including Lee Greenwood, Tanya Tucker, and Mark Chesnutt. Beyoncé was back in 2009, as the former Destiny’s Child star topped the bill at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball, where she swooned ‘At Last’ in tribute to Barack Obama.
The Neighborhood Ball was the first stop for the Obamas on the evening of inauguration day. Broadcast on ABC, the programme also featured Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, and Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z, who had campaigned to get out the vote prior to the election. Obama subsequently declared himself a Jay-Z fan, even paraphrasing his lyrics in a speech to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Selma.
In an echo of the ‘Reunion on the Mall’, a ‘We Are One’ celebration took place at the Lincoln Memorial two days prior to the Obama inauguration. The public event boasted an all-star lineup including Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and Marisa Tomei, with Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Bruce Springsteen, U2, John Mellencamp, Herbie Hancock, and will.i.am among the musical performers. During the inauguration ceremony itself, Aretha Franklin commanded the stage with a sterling rendition of ‘America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee)’. A windy day and prerecorded music put classical music on the backburner come the second Obama inauguration in 2013.
Although rappers like Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar would in time become routine visitors to the White House during the Obama administration, still there was uproar in 2011 when Michelle Obama invited Common for an evening of poetry and spoken word. One of several initiatives which welcomed a diverse array of artists to the White House, the educational event for schoolchildren also included avant-garde poets and the banjo-picking comedian Steve Martin. But Common’s invite was blasted on Fox News and by bastions of conservative family values like Sarah Palin, who objected to some of the rapper’s lyrics on the subject of police brutality, branding him ‘vile’ and a ‘cop killer’.
That left Big Sean to take on the mantle as the first rapper to actually rap within the fenced-off gardens, columned porticoes, and sandstone walls of the White House. He was followed in the Obama years by Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, J. Cole, and De La Soul.
The love for Obama among hip hop artists was not unanimous. At an unofficial inaugural party in 2013, the rapper Lupe Fiasco was rushed off stage after condemning the sitting president in a thirty-minute recital of his song ‘Words I Never Said’. Yet hip hop was less a way of life and once more a product of convenience when it came to the administration of Donald Trump. After Kanye West’s infamous meeting with the president-elect in December of 2016, a spokesman confirmed that Yeezy would not be invited to perform at the inauguration, suggesting his music was not ‘fitting’ for the ‘typically and traditionally American’ event.
