I just purchased The Connells' 1990 album "One Simple Word" off the dollar rack. Not a bad pickup at all. Although the cover and title make it sound suspicously like Christian rock, the album is a workmanlike record of countryish pop rock songs. And the song "Get a Gun" is one of the catchier tunes I picked up in my recent dollar bin raid.
The first thing I noticed from the band photo on the back was that they look like a group of camp counselors. But the second thing I noticed was that the gentleman on the far left of the group shot is distinctly not a honky.
It led me to consider... the best racially integrated bands of all-time:
The Doobie Brothers (and for all the lineup changes, they stayed integrated)
The Steve Miller Band (the black guy even got to sing, and a kick-ass track, at that- "My Saving Grace")
Guns N Roses (Slash's racially mixed background includes a Nigerian mother, making Axl's hate-filled rant in "One in a Million" even more interesting)
Thin Lizzy (Phil Lynott was a black Irishman, a rare bird indeed)
The Allman Brothers Band (huge bonus points for finding racial harmony through blues-driven rock in Macon, GA in the 1960s)
An honorable mention in the "some of my best friends are black" category:
The Rolling Stones (Darryl Jones replaced Bill Wyman on bass, but curiously, he still does not appear in band promo shots)
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (featuring the Average White Band's Steve Ferrone on the drum kit since 1995)
Hootie and the Blowfish (I heard a rumor that Darius Rucker is black, but I have seen no evidence to back this up)
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