Even in the prescriptive world of ’60s pop, where teen rebellion was anticipated and pre-packaged, there were artists like Lesley Gore and Dusty Springfield. Jazz can’t be imagined without the contributions of giants like Billy Strayhorn (of Duke Ellington’s band), who was openly gay, and, later, Cecil Taylor, who found that three-letter word was too limiting. This didn’t stop LGBTQ+ musicians from shaping American pop culture. The closet door, which hadn’t even existed as we know it now, slammed shut. In the mid-’30s, at the edge of the Great Depression, moral backlash-sometimes disguised as economic conservatism but usually explicit in its bigotry-shut down many of these clubs and formally criminalized gay sex at a scale that had never before been seen. In the 1920s and early ’30s, Prohibition’s end gave way to the “Pansy Craze”: cabaret drag performances that brought gay nightlife to the masses and carried their aesthetics into mainstream musical theater. Blues originators like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, both openly bisexual, helped form the foundation of what would become R&B and rock‘n’roll.
LGBTQ+ people have always been at pop’s vanguard, as performers and audiences the history of pop music is queer history. The Rainbow Is a Prism: The Many Facets of LGBTQ+ Pop Music History By Jes Skolnik
