Sputnik Dance

In the early 1950s Sci-Fi novels, movies and comic books about Martians, space exploration and planet colonization, were really popular in America and (of course) a lot of musicians were totally fascinated with that stuff too, so naturally, they started to record songs inspired by this new craze. Black Americans were some kind of "invisible people" in segregated America but even if you would not see a black astronaut anywhere in a movie or in a comic book etcetera, Afro Americans also loved that stuff and embraced the craze, especially young and teenage African Americans. This albums feature a selection of great black R&B and R&R novelty songs from that era inspired by Sputniks, Rocketships, satellites, trips to the Moon, people from other planets, UFOs, etcetera. The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. NASA actually changed things for a lot of African Americans -or maybe was the other way around