On July 19, 1954, Sun Records released the Elvis Presley record "That's All Right."
During an uneventful recording session at Sun Studios on the evening of July 5, 1954, Presley, [Scotty] Moore, and [Bill] Black were taking a break between recordings when Presley started fooling around with an up-tempo version of Arthur Crudup's song "That's All Right, Mama." Black began joining in on his upright bass, and soon they were joined by Moore on guitar. Producer Sam Phillips, taken aback by this sudden upbeat atmosphere, asked the three of them to start again so he could record it.If you're inclined to cry "cultural appropriation": 1. Take note that Elvis innovated by playing Crudup's song very fast, and 2. Read John McWhorter's piece "You Can’t ‘Steal’ a Culture: In Defense of Cultural Appropriation."
Black's bass and guitars from Presley and Moore provided the instrumentation. The recording contains no drums or additional instruments. The song was produced in the style of a "live" recording (all parts performed at once and recorded on a single track)...
Upon finishing the recording session, according to Scotty Moore, Bill Black remarked, "Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town."
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52 comments:
Remember when "The Melting Pot" was a good thing?
If you're inclined to cry "cultural appropriation":
I think it's A-OK that they "appropriated" the guitar (from Europe; electric guitar US), upright bass (Europe) and electronic recording equipment (Europe and US).
Two things:
1) The white's awareness of rock 'n' roll began today - blacks were already doing it, without 'em, because of white's imposition of segregation and racism in our lives.
2) "Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town." indicates even the whites didn't know what they'd had (as blacks did) so "meh".
3) Fuck John McWhorter - without whites to romance, with his bullshit breakfast, he'd have no career,...
Damn, Elvis's voice sounds like it was before his balls dropped.
Shows how much people know about rock n roll. The first real rock record was "Rocket 88" recorded in 1951 by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats. Guys like Elvis and Bill Haley made the uptempo blues roots music palatable because they were White. The musical style had been around for quite a while in clubs and roadhouses.
Culture is a classic public good. It's both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. It can't be "stolen." I love Scotty's guitar. Long live rockabilly.
Three chords (I IV V) rules!
Death to counterpoint.
Missing in Bach: drum solos.
Elvis is still the King.
John McWhorter: The debate over what we call cultural appropriation has roots in the justifiable resentment of white pop musicians imitating black genres for monetary gain.
That's still very much real in the minds of blacks. Record labels aren't blocking black musicians, but white America is unfairly rewarding inferior white artists. We want black music, but not black musicians.
Exhibit A: Macklemore winning a Grammy instead of Kendrick Lamar.
Acting white is stealing.
The Crack Emcee said...
Two things:
1) The white's awareness of rock 'n' roll began today - blacks were already doing it, without 'em, because of white's imposition of segregation and racism in our lives.
You were doing it first, but without the White Man's technology, you would only be playing to those within unamplified earshot.
You need to be appreciative of the guitars and amps and entire Recording Industry that Whites created, that gave your music a world-wide audience. Jesus, you're an ungrateful SOB.
2) "Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town." indicates even the whites didn't know what they'd had (as blacks did) so "meh".
3) Fuck John McWhorter - without whites to romance, with his bullshit breakfast, he'd have no career,...
Again, you are insufficiently grateful to the culture that created the infrastructure that gives you a platform to spew your hatred.
Exhibit A: Macklemore winning a Grammy instead of Kendrick Lamar.
Not a good example. Award voters, especially music ones, are just weird. Witness Jethro Tull being in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.
Who's next..the Statrland Vocal Band?
Cultural Appropriation must stop!
Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats was a great rock song. One of the cats was Ike Turner. Ike was very young but he had already been doing that stuff for a while. That song is one of the many candidates for the True Beginning. Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley were out there too, and not all that obscure. But Bo and Chuck were not going to get on the Ed Sulllivan show.
In Pittburgh if you listened to WAMO you knew that Rock and Roll did not begin with Elvis. It's not clear where it began but not with Elvis, great as he was.
Elvis knew that. I doubt that it bothered him. He knew what his roots were. Listen to Elvis sing gospel someday. He was great at it.
The arguments are silly. Jerome Kern exploited ragtime and Gerswin exploited jazz to the same extent that Ella Fitzgerald exploited Gershwin and Kern.....Basketball was invented by a white man. To see the game played in its purest, most authentic form it is necessary to go to small towns in Indiana and watch white, high school teams play the game as it is meant to be played.....That's what's known as sarcasm, Crack.
I don't to hear too many people making the cultural appropriation argument when Yo Yo ma plays classical music written by non Asians. I'm perfectly willing a non German play Mozart, so why would
There be an issue with whites doing rock or blacks doing heavy metal. Once something makes it into the public it will be emulated if it's popular.
If a black director makes a movie should we say he is appropriating culture because blacks didn't invent the art form?
glenn,
"Shows how much people know about rock n roll. The first real rock record was "Rocket 88" recorded in 1951 by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats."
That was Ike Turner.
With due respect, and I know it's subject to debate, but the first rock song was recorded in 1951. Rocket 88: Don't see the cultural mixing, though. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=rocket+88&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=BC120ABC24E716BEC398BC120ABC24E716BEC398
131 years ago, rock and barcarolle.
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"You were doing it first, but without the White Man's technology, you would only be playing to those within unamplified earshot."
Because we were segregated - there's no glory there. Plus, Elvis was "within earshot" anyway, so what you say wasn't even true in practice:
Blacks would be heard.
"You need to be appreciative of the guitars and amps and entire Recording Industry that Whites created, that gave your music a world-wide audience. Jesus, you're an ungrateful SOB."
Your insecurity in this regard is obvious, and leads me to try an interesting experiment with you:
If we were to change the subject to another art blacks dominate- say, to "dance" - would you still be insisting whites get credit for things like wall-sized mirrors and hardwood flooring? You sound desperate.
Are you really that small inside? Can't you let blacks have our thing? Here, where OUR THING has been so long denied as even being a thing? (Rap's not music, and Disco sucks, riiiight?) Must you insist on inserting whites in our story?
"You are insufficiently grateful to the culture that created the infrastructure that gives you a platform to spew your hatred."
Sir, atheists don't worship, and, as a black man, this society was pushed to include me - it was always being "created" by me and mine - so I'm under no obligation to give an inch, to the country that refused to do different, while stealing my people's wealth and taking credit for our contributions.
YMMV,...
David,
"Rock and Roll did not begin with Elvis. It's not clear where it began but not with Elvis, great as he was.
Elvis knew that. I doubt that it bothered him. He knew what his roots were. Listen to Elvis sing gospel someday. He was great at it."
Agreed. Same goes for The Beatles and The Stones and many more.
Why the rest of whites keep shoving their insecurity into it - by trying to insert whites into the story where, and how, they don't belong or claiming black's achievements aren't ours or are of a lesser caliber - isn't a topic that's pretty to dissect,...
William,
"Basketball was invented by a white man. To see the game played in its purest, most authentic form it is necessary to go to small towns in Indiana and watch white, high school teams play the game as it is meant to be played.....That's what's known as sarcasm, Crack."
Good, because, if not, I was going to pull out my hockey schtick on ya,...
Blacks dominate dance? What type of dance are you referring to, or do you mean just in a general sense, blacks can dance?
The Crack Emcee said...
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"You were doing it first, but without the White Man's technology, you would only be playing to those within unamplified earshot."
Crack: Because we were segregated - there's no glory there. Plus, Elvis was "within earshot" anyway, so what you say wasn't even true in practice:
Blacks would be heard.
You miss the point entirely. You (and I) need to be respectful of the giants on whose shoulders we stand. Other peoples, other cultures created the entire world we were born into, including the entire infrastructure of the world as it existed in the time of the birth of rock n roll.
You and I can make our contributions, but we must ever be mindful of those who gave us the platform on which to stand.
Providing 'labor' to an infrastructure, forced or otherwise, is insignificant to the 'idea' and 'inventor' people who created the things we are laboring on. A laborer can be replaced easily with any other laborer. Cut and paste. Geniuses, not so much.
The White culture you so despise has had many many geniuses. Your culture, not so much.
I have a morning ritual that I perform everyday before getting out of bed. I lie there for a few minutes, thinking of all the things and people, past and present, that I am grateful for. "I didn't build that", is real, for me. And I am grateful. And I vow to make a small contribution to keeping it going, if I can.
You ought to try that, instead of being so bitter and disrespectful and always tearing other things down.
SHISI: "You need to be appreciative of the guitars and amps and entire Recording Industry that Whites created, that gave your music a world-wide audience. Jesus, you're an ungrateful SOB."
Crack: Your insecurity in this regard is obvious, and leads me to try an interesting experiment with you:
If we were to change the subject to another art blacks dominate- say, to "dance" - would you still be insisting whites get credit for things like wall-sized mirrors and hardwood flooring?
No. One can dance on the ground.
And I do give credit where due. As far as dance, . . .
It Simply Doesn't Get Any Better Than This
You sound desperate.
Are you really that small inside? Can't you let blacks have our thing? Here, where OUR THING has been so long denied as even being a thing? (Rap's not music, and Disco sucks, riiiight?) Must you insist on inserting whites in our story?
No, but you need to be more appreciative of other cultures, included Whites.
SHTSI: "You are insufficiently grateful to the culture that created the infrastructure that gives you a platform to spew your hatred."
Crack: Sir, atheists don't worship, and, as a black man, this society was pushed to include me - it was always being "created" by me and mine - so I'm under no obligation to give an inch, to the country that refused to do different, while stealing my people's wealth and taking credit for our contributions.
YMMV,...
As I said above, you put too high a value on labor. ANyone can do labor. It's necessary, and welcome, to be sure, but eternal gratitude should go to those to create the things we all labor upon.
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"The White culture you so despise has had many many geniuses. Your culture, not so much."
Interesting - but, unfortunately, I know where that sad, racist, and and pathetically illogical, line of thinking comes from. By definition, blacks from Africa HAD to have started civilization - basically the whole kit and caboodle of our existence - yet, your reading of accomplishment starts with whites, who were still in caves at the time.
You'd better take that up with Angry Bill Cosby.
"You ought to try [being grateful], instead of being so bitter and disrespectful and always tearing other things down."
Dude, I just lost my Godmother and her best friend, Maya Angelou, who was by babysitter. They were the children of sharecroppers who got ripped off by whites every day of their lives until they got away. They were both despised by this country and saw it kill their friends - Malcolm X and Martin Luther KIng. They both were accomplished anyway and I am so deeply grateful they all have been a part of my life. They are my heroes. And I don't need you to tell me how to feel about them. They told me how to feel about you.
"You need to be more appreciative of other cultures, included Whites."
Whites need to get their own House Of Horror in order, before thinking they're in any position to be the arbiters of other's behavior.
"As I said above, you put too high a value on labor. ANyone can do labor. It's necessary, and welcome, to be sure, but eternal gratitude should go to those to create the things we all labor upon."
Being generous, American whites have created an industry out of blacks, murder, violence, and theft - with a nice healthy dose of their lust thrown in for their own exclusive amusement - and you want me to be in awe that Ben Franklin made a Rocking Chair.
I said it before and I'll say it again, because whites don't seem to comprehend the human dimension - the sheer magnitude of what they've collectively done - when they speak:
Whites - for lack of a better term - are high-functioning sociopaths.
You have no idea of the pain you've caused. All you can sense is a desire to get out of it - you have no intention of being Americans and accepting it, and sharing the burden, as those of us who lose family and friends to your ancestor's legacy of white supremacy must.
You just want to party and don't want this serious shit - stop it!
The Civil Rights Movement would've achieved nothing with you,...
I would be tickled....er mocha...if I woke up one morning and discovered that I was a fat black man named Oscar Peterson, Jr. I wouldn't hesitate to appropriate his life and talent. Art Tatum would be a close second choice.
If I had to wake up as a Frenchman, Maurice Duruflé (significantly pre 1975)would be an excellent choice.
-Krumhorn
Crack said:
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"The White culture you so despise has had many many geniuses. Your culture, not so much."
Interesting - but, unfortunately, I know where that sad, racist, and and pathetically illogical, line of thinking comes from. By definition, blacks from Africa HAD to have started civilization - basically the whole kit and caboodle of our existence - yet, your reading of accomplishment starts with whites, who were still in caves at the time.
Wow, that is quite ignorant. It is beyond question that the group of Africans that LEFT Africa at least 100,000 years ago, are the people that, under forces of Natural Selection, evolved into the other Races of Man.
You'd better take that up with Angry Bill Cosby.
Here is more honest portrait of the same subject matter.
The Truth About Slavery
"You ought to try [being grateful], instead of being so bitter and disrespectful and always tearing other things down."
Dude, I just lost my Godmother and her best friend, Maya Angelou, who was by babysitter. They were the children of sharecroppers who got ripped off by whites every day of their lives until they got away. They were both despised by this country and saw it kill their friends - Malcolm X and Martin Luther KIng. They both were accomplished anyway and I am so deeply grateful they all have been a part of my life. They are my heroes. And I don't need you to tell me how to feel about them. They told me how to feel about you.
Nice name dropping. Not sure they would be that proud of your behavior on this site.
My fairly recent ancestors were starved out of Ireland by the English. One of them refused to pay taxes to the English king, and was exiled (kicked out) to America, where he sharecropped.
"You need to be more appreciative of other cultures, included Whites."
Whites need to get their own House Of Horror in order, before thinking they're in any position to be the arbiters of other's behavior.
"As I said above, you put too high a value on labor. Anyone can do labor. It's necessary, and welcome, to be sure, but eternal gratitude should go to those to create the things we all labor upon."
Being generous, American whites have created an industry out of blacks, murder, violence, and theft - with a nice healthy dose of their lust thrown in for their own exclusive amusement - and you want me to be in awe that Ben Franklin made a Rocking Chair.
But you should be of awe of Ben Franklin. What's the matter with you?
I said it before and I'll say it again, because whites don't seem to comprehend the human dimension - the sheer magnitude of what they've collectively done - when they speak:
Whites - for lack of a better term - are high-functioning sociopaths.
You have no idea of the pain you've caused. All you can sense is a desire to get out of it - you have no intention of being Americans and accepting it, and sharing the burden, as those of us who lose family and friends to your ancestor's legacy of white supremacy must.
You just want to party and don't want this serious shit - stop it!
The Civil Rights Movement would've achieved nothing with you,...
You really need to stop the pity party you're milking fro all it's worth, and just get over yourself.
As I advised before, start with a daily gratitude meditation.
The fact that you live in America means you already won the Lotto. You should act like it.
That "whites stealing black music" argument is rubbish and racist liberal bullshit. Muddy Waters himself said his greatest musical influence was Jimmy Rodgers. So was the blues just "stolen" country music? As far as Gershwin, Kern and the rest of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters, their influence was just as much opera, classical, and Jewish as the jazz, which they did much to create, not the other way around.
Levon Helm had it correct:
Hillbilly music slid down from the Appalachians and the Blues slid up from the Delta. They met in Memphis and called it Rock & Roll.
Strange, but true:
The Beatles Twist & Shout is superior to the Isley Brothers version.
I guess it was good in it's day, but come on these days everyone is listening to Flo Rida and Beyonce.
I wonder if Crack thinks Sia is appropriating/stealing the "black female vocal" and making it palatable to the white masses. Forgetting the fact that she writes songs for Beyonce.
Crack, buddy...you've passed over the edge. The angry black man thing isn't working. White Americans didn't create slavery in the world, but white Americans ended it in North America.
Slavery was a worldwide institution in virtually every organized society for thousands of years. Africans enslaved other Africans long before the Europeans intruded. Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs were viciously brutal slave-masters.
The early American Puritans in the 1600's actively worked with great energy to abolish the institution and evangelical Christians were the at the leadership tip of the movement. Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner whom you routinely deride, included a particularly bitter denunciation of slavery in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, but was later forced, at the last minute, to remove it in order to get the unanimous vote of the southern delegates to the Continental Congress. Professor Gates reports that maybe 450,000 slaves ultimately arrived in the US which were owned by less than 20% of the southern population. 360,000 Union Soldiers died in the Civil War leading to the adoption of the 13th Amendment and the two other Reconstruction Amendments. However, the importation of slaves had been abolished 50 years earlier.
Certainly, that didn't end the oppression of the Jim Crow laws that took another century to abolish. I did my own small part in the civil rights movement in the mid 60's in Mississippi.
The problems in the black community today are principally caused by the black community and their leftie enablers who have been brutally determined to keep black Americans chained to the big state plantation of woe and dependency and victimhood. A prime example is churches such as Dear Leader's Trinity Church that preach the destructive and self-defeating gospel of black liberation theology that, among other things, "eschews middle classedness".
You need to read some of Thomas Sowell's books. It might give you some valuable perspective. In the meantime, your virulent racial antagonism is so over-the-top, it's mildly comical.
-Krumhorn
SomeoneHasToSayIt,
"The fact that you live in America means you already won the Lotto. You should act like it."
WOW - I get to live with my family's historical oppressors, and watch them spend our money, while they daily harass and kill us - I'M SO GRATEFUL!!!!
Crack the hopelessly ignorant: "..and you want me to be in awe that Ben Franklin made a Rocking Chair."
LOL
Franklin inventions:
- Bi-focals
- Electricity-Franklins work formed the basis for single fluid theory
- Lightning Rods
- The Franklin Stove
- First to map the Gulf Stream ocean current
- Swim fins (Franklin was inducted into the swim hall of fame in 1968)
- The Glass Armonica (a mechanized version of playing wine goblets)
- A flexible urinary catheter
- His own version of an odometer
So, yeah dumbshit, Franklin only built a rocking chair.
Meanwhile, Crack knows some white guy who lets crack visit his radio show and AA (some white gal from Wisconsin) gives crack free rein to offer up new and improved lunacies each and every day.
So, you know, WINNING!
I searched this comment section for "Unlocking" and found nothing.
Zip.
So you all are fools with no knowledge of nothing.
This is a link showing you what is happening, no thanks to any of you.
Crack said...Dude, I just lost my Godmother and her best friend, Maya Angelou, who was by babysitter. They were the children of sharecroppers who got ripped off by whites every day of their lives until they got away. They were both despised by this country and saw it kill their friends - Malcolm X and Martin Luther KIng. They both were accomplished anyway and I am so deeply grateful they all have been a part of my life. They are my heroes. And I don't need you to tell me how to feel about them. They told me how to feel about you.
Here's what Crack wanted to say but lacks the cajones to say:
Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Mother fuck him and John Wayne
Cause I'm Black and I'm proud
I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps
Sample a look back you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check
Don't worry be happy
Was a number one jam
Damn if I say it you can slap me right here
(Get it) lets get this party started right
Right on, c'mon
What we got to say
Power to the people no delay
To make everybody see
In order to fight the powers that be
__________________
Fight The Glower!
Crack: "...and watch them spend our money..."
Just today I spent some of cracks money on groceries.
Good times, good times.
Black folks created The Blues. Blues isn't rock. Rock is a mix of Appalachian white country music, some pop, and rhythim and blues. Theres a whole lot of appropriation going on, back and forth.
Even if you say so and so was the first to come up with the chord sequence, so what. as soon as it goes out into the public other musicians incorporate it into their play books.
Chuck Berry said he came up with his style by listening to his piano player and appropriating some of the licks on guitar. Well, where did he get his licks?
All musicians basically learn at the feet of other musicians. It's all appropriated culture and musical ideas.
Because there are only 12 notes and only so many chord sequences. Trying to say one group should take credit for it all is pointless.
Look at the early Beatles records. They have some Motown, some show tunes, some, country western. all covers. And then they have their own mish mash where they bring in some jazzy chords and more sophisticated chord sequences and try to create their own version of rock. And then musicians respond to their music.
They say of of the Velvet Underground that they only sold a handful of albums (before they had their resurgence in the 90's and all the college kids got in on liking them) but everyone who bought their albums went out and formed a band.
That's how music works. People hear it, like it and then try to create their own version of it tht will sell. It's all derivative to a certain degree, since you are always going to be dealing with the same 12 notes. But because of this, the idea of you being unable to appropriate peoples culture when it comes to musical sounds is ludicrous.
Just today I spent some of cracks money on groceries
Electricity, the internal combustion engine, orbital satellites, the personal computer, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, nanotechnology - none of them would have been possible without forced manual labor in early 19th century agriculture.
I get to live with my family's historical oppressors
No, they're all dead. You get to live among the descendants of those who oppressed and freed your ancestors, plus millions more whose ancestors had nothing to do with yours. Another way of looking at it is maybe all of the white people live with the descendants of those who oppressed our ancestors by driving them out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago.
Anyway, you get to live in a majority white country. If you find that intolerable, you're free to leave.
16 years ago, an Australian barcarolle, though she wouldn't recognize the classical form.
(Real audio, modern players might ask to download the old SIPR9 codec that's been replaced with a Cooke codec now)
"The soul grammatically" is not only rhetoric.
Tell me which black musicians King Crimson ripped off.
Mark O:
Nope, not Elvis.
It don't matter who's in Austin, Bob Wills is still the king.
I was in Memphis a few years back on 60th birthday(?) 30 years after his death(?) some big date in Elvisania anyway.
SO I was in a schlock shop downtown buying some trinkets for the grandkids. The woman standing in line next to me asked me if I was there to celebrate whatever it was and was I an Elvis fan. I made some comment about he was OK but I wasn't that into him.
Wrong answer. It was like calling the Pope spawn of Satan in the College of Cardinals. She read me the riot act up one side and down the other. Loudly.
Extremely weird.
Yes, of course I did the Graceland tour. I never knew Elvis lived in a gift shop. Every time I turned around I was in another one.
John Henry
After Graceland I had gone downtown and wandered around. At a park near the Peabody there was a gospel festival being put on by a local radio station. Choirs and bands from a dozen or so churches.
Now THAT was rock and roll. Amen brother and Hallelujah. I stayed about 3 hours in the sun and got a miserable sunburn but I wasn't leaving til I heard the last band.
Wonderful music. A lot of it it inspired by rock and roll but you could also see where rock and roll got its inspiration.
A good time was had by all. (Especially me)
John Henry
And before you ask, Crack, yes they were mostly from black churches.
John Henry
Anyone here read Nick Tosches' book "The twisted roots of rock and roll"?
He does the history of how rock and roll got to where it was in the 90s(?) when he wrote the book. He goes all the way back to 17th century England.
A lot of the book is dedicated to black musicians including gospel and minstrel tent sows in 19th century America, "race records" of the 20th, Memphis with Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry lee and much more.
Great book.
John Henry
Someone has to say it you beat me to it.
I love the Nicholas Brothers was going to mention them. They may be the greatest dancers, of all types, ever.
I also have a soft spot for Cab Calloway. His daughter, Camay Calloway, was my first grade teacher in the early 50's. Cab came and performed at the school for us once.
John Henry
I saw Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in concert tonight. Now that was cultural appropriation. But really well done cultural appropriation. Nine white musicians getting a completely white (completely--this is northern Wisconsin summer resort country. Where White People Go to Be White) to do the chorus in Minnie the Moocher.
BBVD once did a whole album of Cab Calloway songs and arrangements. They too know where their roots are. They acknowledged it on stage tonight .very clearly
That's a fine song indeed.
"All musicians basically learn at the feet of other musicians. It's all appropriated culture and musical ideas.
Because there are only 12 notes and only so many chord sequences. Trying to say one group should take credit for it all is pointless"
Great comment, jr565 along with the rest of your remarks.
Crack, great post about Black hockey players. Hockey was Irish hurley and Scottish shinty played on ice. But who cares.
Anyway, thanks Anne for the video. We all owe a debt to Elvis, Bill Haley, the Beatles, and the Stones for bringing us into hearing distance of Chuck Berry, Bo Didley, Willie Dixon, and the incomparable Robert Johnson. Bless them all, even if the devil made them do it.
I wish Kanye West would stop ripping off Daft Punk.
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