I’m more interested in singers than speakers. bubstatis mentioned Mick Hucknall in a thread in the Pit, and I often heard people say, “He sounds like a Black guy.” I never found this to be the case. Here is my list of people who are not Black, but sound like a Black guy/gal:
Paul Young
Christina Aguilera
When talking:
Ralphie Something-or-other (big boned guy, was on Celebrity Fit Club
Now, for the people who do the worst job imaginable of sounding like a Black guy/gal:
For me, the biggest surprise along these lines was The Big Bopper. To this day, when I hear his “Chantilly Lace,” I picture a large, cool black dude as the singer.
Once upon a time, I thought G Love and Sophie B Hawkins were black (the latter based on hearing “damn I wish I was your lover” before her other stuff.) And Ben Harper white.
When I first heard Britney Spears doing “Hit Me Baby One More Time” I thought she was a black woman. And I thought Nora Jones was white. That’s gotta mean something, but I don’t know what.
I thought Joss Stone was a black, middle-aged woman, and probably American to boot.
My husband was home one day while I was at work, and I got this in an E-mail from him, nearly verbatim, after he saw some phone/long distance commercial, “I didn’t know that Michael McDonald was white!!” The funniest part was that he’d been a big Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers fan years ago - he’d just never seen the guy until that commercial.
In all seriousness, TRB were put together by my now-dead pastor. (See John Wimber).
Wikipedia: Medley sang the low parts with his deep, soulful baritone, with Hatfield taking the higher register vocals with his soaring tenor. They gained their name when an African-American Marine shouted out “That was righteous, brothers” at the end of a show. John Wimber, one of the founding leaders of the Vineyard Movement, played the keyboard in the band.
IIRC, according to John’s widow’s memoir book, John put the group together from Orange County, CA musicians so they could have a steady working act. He was able to play numerous instuments, 19 according to one of his books, but primarily keys and saxaphone.
A few years ago, my mom found a Bee-Gees cassette tape in the back of her closet and pulled it out for Hallkids and I to listen to. While listening to the tape, Hallgirl 1 picks up the case of the cassette, which features the brothers Gibb on the front and exclaims, “They’re white guys?!?!?”
My band has a girl singer (it’s just a phrase we use - she’s a mid-life crisis mom, just like the rest of us in the band are mid-life crisis dad’s…) who a lot of folks think sounds like an African-American woman. One ever-politically-correct guy at work heard an mp3 of the band and said “who’s the black chick?”
She’s Irish Catholic and whitish blonde - blonde as blonde can be…
Pretty funny how we use certain “signals” that we associate with certain races or stereotypes.
Whenever I hear former baseball batting legend Tony Gwynn talk - who is black - I think “wow, he sounds like a white guy…”
