‘Storybook Children’: the first interracial love song in US history
By May 1968, the people of America still hadn’t seen an interracial duet performed live. That all changed when, just a few weeks after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, Billy Vera and soul diva Judy Clay entered Harlem’s Apollo Theater to perform their song ‘Storybook Children’.
Billy Vera’s music career began in 1962. The singer won a regional hit with ‘My Heart Cries/’All My Love’ as Billy Vera & the Contrasts before going on to pen songs for the likes of Fats Domino, The Shirelles, Ricky Nelson and Barbara Lewis. In 1967, he met with fellow songwriter Chip Taylor (who struck gold some while later with his song ‘Wild Thing‘) to write ‘Storybook Children’, a cosy ballad about two lovers realising they’ll never be together: “You’ve got your world/ And I’ve got mine,” Vera sings in the opening verse. “And it’s a shame/ Two grown up worlds/ That will never be the same.”
Vera and Taylor took the song to Atlantic Records, at which point it was decided that former gospel singer Judy Clay should sing with Vera in a white-Black duet. When the pair arrived at the Apollo Theater to perform the single live for the first time, some of the staff were a little taken aback. Honi Coles, the venue’s announcer, saw the couple walk through the door and turned to Billy Vera: “The Apollo hasn’t seen you before,” he whispered.
Coles had the couple stand at opposite ends of the Apollos’ storied stage. The plan was that Judy would come out first from the right, a single spotlight illuminating her cream-coloured gown. A second spotlight would then fix on Vera in his olive-green suit. When the “skinny little white boy” stepped from the wings, the audience gave a sharp intake of breath, having had no idea that the male singer on ‘Storybook Children’ was white.
The couple’s on-stage chemistry was, according to blues singer Mabel John, “electric”. John was on the same bill as Vera and Clay that night and, during a conversation with the BBC, described the audience’s reaction once the pair started singing. “This being the first black woman and white guy teaming up together and singing at the Apollo – and they’re not just making noise, they are making music,” he said. “And the people stood to their feet.”
Such a response was nothing short of remarkable. Across the Hudson River in Newark, New Jersey, the rioting that had started following Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination was still raging. By this time, the song was already a hit on the Billboard charts, and Clay and Vera were playing five shows a day, such was the demand. “It was groundbreaking,” Vera later said of ‘Storybook Children’. “America was just on the verge of being ready for an interracial duo singing love songs – but they weren’t quite there yet.”
Vera and Clay released ‘Storybook Children’ and its accompanying album just three months after Loving v Virginia, the 1967 US Supreme Court case which legalised interracial marriage. America needed a song to give cultural life to this monumental legislature, and that’s precisely what they provided. While there’s some debate around whether ‘Storybook Children’ is, in fact, the first interracial duet – Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Red Foley recorded ‘Have A Little Talk with Jesus’ in 1952 – it’s certainly the most powerful.
You can revisit the groundbreaking single below.
