In Western Europe it was very much wanted and played a very important role in the cultural life. There were artists that were icons the way a singer like Dylan was in the states...
not saying that Dylan was just 'crap and garbage', but as a cultural icon, people like him replaced people like Nat King Cole, which simultaneously dumbed down and further 'whitened' our music.
I'll have to disagree here. I don't think Dylan "dumbed down" American music compared to Nat King Cole.
I mean, there's not much high-brow about Cole's music, whereas Dylan has tons of academic studies on his "poetry" (whether one consider it actual poetry compared to people like e.g. Wallace Stevens and e.e. cummings or not). With Cole (and whites like Bing Crobsy, or band leaders like Glenn Miller etc) it's mostly entertainment, not really culturally significant. Sinatra goes a little further, but again, not that much. Compared to them Dylan is like a literary titan, and more adventurous musically too.
I'm not sure about whitening it out either. Before Dylan there was Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly etc who have already whitened the scene. And of course whites do have a right to have their own music (like the folk/irish/country/rock etc thing Dylan combined) heard.
Is Cole really "blacker" than Bing Crosby?
Does Cole really represent black culture as a singer, or more what the while mass audiences wanted to here at the time? How many of his songs are written by white songwriting teams?
Now, if Dylan had replaced Mingus, Billie Halliday, Robert Johnson, et co, then, yeah, that could have a basis to speak of "whitening" and "dumping down". But not for Cole et co.
the difference in quality would be only the music itself, and nothing to do with lyrics/literature, about which I'd bet you are correct (I wouldn't know). Cole was a great jazz pianist that was raised and trained and in the African American Jazz tradition before he 'crossed over', much like George Benson did decades later. It would be a mistake to think either were limited to 'light' entertainment.
So while Cole may or not have played with Mingus or Billy Holiday, he certainly could have. Not so with Dylan.
Even the most seemingly inane songs from that era were more sophisticated - musically - than anything from Dylan, et al. I think this applies : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394176
p.s. sorry, don't mean to rip on Dylan. If you like it, enjoy!
>the difference in quality would be only the music itself
That's the technical side of music though -- not so the much the music as cultural significance / art, in which one could argue Dylan might be not just on par with Cole but probably much ahead.
Even if he could play with Mingus, many did, but only the very best of them we count as significant in general (Powell, Byard). I mean we wouldn't count Cole as among the top, but rather players like Tatum, Peterson, Monk etc.
If we judged only sophistication in the sense of chord changes, complex harmony, orchestration and such, then any half-decent conservatory graduate could be said to be better than lots of titans of song, not just Dylan but people like Lead Belly and co.
I, for example, would still consider Robert Johnson a better artist (more artistically significant) than, say, Steve Vai or Al Di Meola, even if those two can obviously play circles around him. And I think they'd might agree too.
Can't speak for the original parent poster who brought it up, but it depends on the context.
The whitening of rock and roll, jazz, hip hop etc often meant watering down those forms in their original form, to fit more conventional, domesticated and commercial white audiences. That is, making the music more formulaic, the lyrics less explicit, the delivery less frenetic and/or urgent, the topics under discussion more tame, etc.
That is not merely some neutral stylistic change, but something like betraying their original "soul" and depth of the songs for cheap sales. In pure white terms, something analogous would be The Beatles -> The Monkeys, or Elvis -> Perry Como.
