Talk:The Ballad of Curtis Loew

Lowe / Loew[edit]

Can somebody with the power to do so please change the title of this article to "The Ballad of Curtis Lowe". Thank you. "151.200.178.97 03:19, 6 May 2007 (UTC)"[reply]

Ah, perhaps someone should not have listened to this and should change it back to "The Ballad of Curtis Loew," as this is the name of the song, not Lowe. User:Ant1238 22:03, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

True. I'll see if I can do a move to rename this article. -Fnlayson 19:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The song is spelled with Loew in the band's albums. There's a [sic] in the first sentence to note this. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why? Is not a [sic]; it is spelled correctly; its spelled "Loew". We need to remove the [sic] —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertGary1 (talk • contribs) 20:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is there because editors keep changing the spelling to the more common "Lowe", incorrectly. And I've been fixing it back. The sic tag has prevented a lot of back and forth edits. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:14, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"[Sic]" is written to denote that a word that may be strange or incorrect: "Loew" is a valid surname, so this is more like ONE person's confusion (that confusion being that Loew is NOT a name, so it must be spelled Lowe) and doesn't warrant the [sic]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.215.248 (talk) 13:48, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, multiple IP editors' confusion and their efforts to 'fix' it. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Racial Stereotyping[edit]

Someone tagged citation need for the the line "The song can also be seen as the perpetuation of black racial stereotypes that were prevalent from the nineteenth century." While there is not any scholarship at current that would argue such a point it is not a stretch. There is ample scholarship that argues the themes from the song, namely that Curtis was useless, drunk, but musically talented, as racially stereotypical. Specifically I am referring to minstrel shows and other racial imagery of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since this is just a conjecture should a citation be used or should minstrel show literature be cited? I only included the sentence because there was the previous "The song can be seen as a tribute to African American bluesmen and their influence on rock music," sentence. If the song can be viewed as a tribute then it can also be viewed as racist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmo420 (talk • contribs) 19:25, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the line in the synopsis about racism. Despite looking, I've been unable to find anything from a reliable source to suggest racial stereotyping. In fact, it appears the Loew character is an amalgamation of real people. While I appreciate that some hold the view Skynyrd were/are racist, this isn't really the place for conjecture. If indeed there is ample scholarship to specifically tie this song to racial stereotyping, please feel free to revert that part of my edit and support the line with relevant citations... but if you do so, please keep the citation needed tag in place for the "influence" part, as that's needed either way. If the racism point is to return, I believe more detail is needed (its own section), especially if the citations only support the point that some of the themes also exist as racial stereotypes.

As a side note, the main argument that they were/are racist seems to hang on a pretty poor reading of the lyrics to Sweet Home Alabama and ignoring some rather key points therein... but I digress.

Please note that I'm being even handed here and asking for a citation for the "influence" line. If one isn't forthcoming I will remove that line from the synopsis too.

The line "if it could be viewed as a tribute it could be viewed as racist" is a non sequitur, I feel.

I suggest that if any editors feel there is merit to the issue of racial stereotyping and can provide citations to support it, they create a section to deal with it directly rather than it being a single line in the synopsis. Jack of Many (talk) 07:56, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]