Obscure? Only if you didn't grow up in the eighties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Kcmoiy…

Jesus this whole LP from '82 is fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZo20_sE…

Good morning Larry,

"The big old baritone voices are nowhere to be found, either—contemporary male singers tend to exist in a perpetual man-child mode, where falsetto is king. Some would chalk it up to a literal conspiracy to infantilize and emasculate black men in America."

A conspiracy? Perhaps, but I wouldn't put it past 'em. Dollars diluting the art/brand (whatever you want to call it, depending on whether you had a mic or an office)? Unmistakably.

This had happened just a generation or two before. When jump blues was starting to get traction with on white charts in the 50's, and attracted more white ticketholders to gigs, you'll notice big, powerful, unmistakably black voices -- Wynonie Harris, Bull Moose Jackson, Big Joe Turner -- ebb away in favor of higher, whiter sounding vocals - Sam Cooke for example. By the end of the 50's, only a select few like Ray Charles were able to bring it unbleached. Even back in the 40's, Roy Brown was often praised for is melismatic singing and as a "Negro who sang like a white man". Ain't much surprise Elvis ripped off "Good Rockin' Tonight", no?

You'll also notice the subject matter of popular songs go from ribald to sanitized in a matter of several years. Just can't sell those dirty puns on the radio...