Hit Parade: A Little Love and Some Tenderness Edition Part 2

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the most improbable blockbuster successes of the ’90s was Hootie and the Blowfish: a South Carolina bar band fronted by a Black lead singer that played jangly alt-pop. That singer, Darius Rucker, built a career that’s one of a kind. Rucker’s tastes growing up were eclectic, as were the influences on his young bandmates. Their Cracked Rear View album took a year to catch on, but then it dominated the charts. The story gets more interesting after Hootie fell off: Darius Rucker’s career is a prime example of how chart success is a product of musical trend. First, Rucker tried to become a neo-soul star. Then he tried his hand at country music, even though Nashville had not produced a major Black solo star since Charley Pride. Join Chris Molanphy as he traces this improbable journey—the role Rucker’s band played in mainstreaming alt-rock, Rucker’s effort to find a genre to call home, and how he finally became a chart-conqueror again.. Podcast production by Kevin Bendis. Make an impact this Black History Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to fund UNCF scholarships for HBCU students. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about
0:15.0	the hits from Coast to Coast.
0:17.0	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's Why is this song number
0:22.6	one series.
0:24.3	On our last episode, we talked about the South Carolina band, Hoodie and the Blowfish,
0:31.2	and their exceptional lead singer, Darius Rucker.
0:35.3	His potent baritone was key to the band's sound, and their arrival as the top selling band
0:42.4	of 1995, at a moment when alternative rock was turning into jangly pop.
0:50.7	Their selling more than 12 million copies of their debut album, Cracked Rear View, Hoodie
0:57.2	now had the awesome challenge of following it up.
1:03.5	Just how big were Hoodie and the Blowfish in the closing months of 1995?
1:09.5	How about a whole episode of the top new sitcom on television revolving around them?
1:16.3	The thing was we were going to go see Hoodie and the Blowfish.
1:19.7	I can catch them on the radio.
1:23.5	In its second season, NBC's Friends, already one of the three biggest shows on TV, devoted
1:32.2	large stretches of the plot of The One With Five Stakes and an Eggplant, to three of the
1:39.4	Friends yearning to see Hoodie in concert, and what happened when they went backstage.
1:47.3	You guys want to meet the crew?
1:56.7	Yeah, we do.
1:58.1	Come on.
1:59.1	Is that a hiki?
2:00.1	Where'd you get the hiki?
	...

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