>
> > CB: I think Black people are accepting that some
> > white individuals can
> > become fluent in aspects of Black culture, become
> > Black , become
> > bi-cultural to some extent, especially within one
> > art form. Bix B
> > essentially became Black in terms of music.
That's the way Mezz Mezzrow and Johnny Otis described what they did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezz_Mezzrow ] In his autobiography Really The Blues, Mezzrow writes that from the moment he heard jazz he "was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can."
Mezzrow married a black woman, Mae (also known as Johnnie Mae), moved to Harlem, and declared himself a "voluntary Negro." In 1940 he was caught by the police to be in possession of sixty joints trying to enter a jazz club at the New York World's Fair, with intent to distribute. When he was sent to jail, he insisted to the guards that he was black and was transferred to the segregated prison's black section. He wrote (in Really the Blues):
"Just as we were having our pictures taken for the rogues' gallery, along came Mr. Slattery the deputy and I nailed him and began to talk fast. 'Mr. Slattery,' I said, 'I'm colored, even if I don't look it, and I don't think I'd get along in the white blocks, and besides, there might be some friends of mine in Block Six and they'd keep me out of trouble'. Mr. Slattery jumped back, astounded, and studied my features real hard. He seemed a little relieved when he saw my nappy head. 'I guess we can arrange that,' he said. 'Well, well, so you're Mezzrow. I read about you in the papers long ago and I've been wondering when you'd get here. We need a good leader for our band and I think you're just the man for the job'. He slipped me a card with 'Block Six' written on it. I felt like I'd got a reprieve."
http://home.bluemarble.net/~jjperry/features/otis.html
Born in 1921, the son of Greek immigrants, [Johnny] Otis grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Berkeley, Calif. But he embraced African-American culture as his own. "As a kid I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white, I would be black," goes his famous quote.