I really enjoyed reading yesterday's diary about hippies. It brought to mind my favorite era.
It was a time unlike any other in my lifetime, a freedom of spirit we experienced that was an important element to the creativity it spawned. It was because of that freedom of spirit that enabled so many young minds to produce some of the most beautiful art in my lifetime.
I traveled to many parts of the world in those days, Paris, London, Spain, Antibes, Cannes, New York and San Francisco were hubs of a counter-culture that should go down in history as not a drug oriented culture, but a creative culture.
Bob Dylan accurately characterized the '60s when he wrote The Times They Are A-Changin'. Those who were making the changes were young people who believed in more freedom of the mind and the spirit. When a youthful mind has room to grow, it sprouts ideas and produces results that other cultures that instill rigid dogma could never nurture. Questioning the authority of government officials, police, parents, teachers and the church were the key manifestations as we experimented with drugs, redefined standards of sexual relationships, questioned university academic policies, supported racial equality, and protested the war in Vietnam.
The literature of the time consisted of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's. Cat's Cradle and Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice.
I recall Art Nouveau and Pop Art quickly took on an identity of its own during the 1960s. Young minds inspired the exploration and the evolution of the psychedelic style that epitomized the 60s. The shades consisted of early black-and-white sketches to the obtuse lettering, exotic imagery and vibrant use of color that came to define the style of the era. I can recall the Peter Max style, which he called "up art" that was very much a part of the psychadelic movment in graphic design.
However, the 60s was most defined by the music it endowed to the world. Rock and roll was not created then, nor was the cool jazz that provided much of the mysticism of the era. Rock and roll was black euphemism for sexual intercourse. If the white censors who controlled the minds of the populace understood that back in the early and mid 50s, I don't think black music would have been as influential, nor would the style be called rock and roll (rockin' and rollin'). I think we owe those purveyers of morality a modicum of thanks for their stupidity and naivete.
The music of the 60s had its roots in early ragtime jazz and blues. Jellyroll Morton, Kid Ory and Louis Armstrong would have to be considered the godfathers of a musical style that would eventually sprout so many changes in music. It was the first American music to allow this spirit of the soul to flourish. Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet are still considered the very best musicians of their instruments (the trumpet and the saxophone). Along with King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, and Artie Shaw, they used their great musical talents to perpetuate a style of music the establishment of America rejected and thought of as devil music. Again, the word jazz had a sexual connotation rooted in African American culture.
According to jazz musician Wynton Marsalis:
"Jazz is something Negroes invented, and it said the most profound things -- not only about us and the way we look at things, but about what modern democratic life is really about. It is the nobility of the race put into sound ... jazz has all the elements, from the spare and penetrating to the complex and enveloping. It is the hardest music to play that I know of, and it is the highest rendition of individual emotion in the history of Western music."
In the 1930s, the blues began to become popular as well. It used the "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure." Robert Johnson, a Delta blues singer, is generally considered responsible for the standardization of the 12-bar blues (basic twelve-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of twelve bars, in 4/4 or (rarely) 2/4 time). Slow blues are often played in 12/8 (4 beats per measure with 3 subdivisions per beat). The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a twelve-bar scheme.
From the frameworks of jazz and the blues, the late 1940s and early 1950s began to instill a more upbeat and lyrical expression personified by the Five Keys, Bill Ward and the Dominos and the Cardinals. Many of the serious jazz musicians of the era rebelled against this new form of music. They believed it bastardized their free-flowing rhythms and beats that were part of a spriritual self expression. The new music became a canned sound that was meant to sell more records and was not art at all. However,the new music was selling in cities like Chicago, Philly and New York. A bright and ambitious Turkish record producer envisioned a mass popular revolution that he could add to his stable of jazz oriented musicians. His name was Ahmet Ertegun and he co-founded Atlantic Records in 1947 with partner Herb Abramson. Atlantic became the nation's premier rhythm & blues label in a few short years. Its stable of artists in the Fifties included Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles, LaVern Baker, the Drifters, the Coasters, the Clovers, and many more.
In 1953, a white group based out of Chester, PA (just south of the Philly airport) came out with a song called Crazy, Man, Crazy that became the first rock and roll song to hit the American charts. A year later, they would become even more famous for their movie musical score in the Blackboard Jungle. The song was called Rock Around the Clock, and that group's name was Bill Haley and the Comets. During the 1920s and 1930s, many white Americans enjoyed seeing and listening to African-American jazz and blues performed by white musicians. They often objected to experiencing the music as performed by the original black artists, but found it acceptable when the music was performed by whites.
In 1951, a Cleveland based disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this type of music for a multi-racial audience. He is credited with coining the phrase rock and roll to define the R&B he had the courage to play on his station. On March 21, 1952, Freed organized the first rock and roll concert called "The Moondog Coronation Ball". It is very difficult, as it is for jazz or blues to know exactly when real rock and roll started. Some claim Sister Rosetta Tharpe's stomping blues started it all back in 1940s with such gems as "Rock, Daniel," "Up Above My Head", "Down By The Riverside", and "Rock Me". Others claim it was Big Joe Turner, whose 1938 recording, "Roll 'em Pete," was the true beginning of the rhythm and beat that became rock and roll of the 50s. Some claim it was "60 Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the Dominos in the early 1950s started it all, while Rolling Stone Magazine credits Elvis Presley's "That's Alright" in 1954 as the true beginning of rock and roll. Even Little Richard is seen by other artists as starting a new form of music with his boogie-woogie piano with a heavy back beat that influenced future sounds coming from New York, Philly, Chicago and especially Detroit.
Personally, I think rock and roll did bastardize jazz expressions and blues motiffs, however, it did become a truly beautiful art form that became part of the lexicon of American culture on its own. It combined so much of what musicians created from the late 19th century to the end of the 1950s. However, four men took it to a level in the late 1950s that inspired the following generations like no others. The first 2 were R&B geniuses. Ray Charles was Ahmet Ertegun's star. He brought R&B to a realm never envisioned by even the most optimistic of critics. We all know his songs, however, he made it acceptable for white people to enjoy listening and dancing to a black musician. The other genius we owe more to than we will ever know was Sam Cooke. He is the godfather of soul music. He has no peer in terms of his voice, or his music when it comes to soul music. He was the first to write, produce and sing his own music. Unfortunately, he is a talent many of the younger generation born after the 60s do not know much about. There are no movies about him, and I hear so few of his songs even on oldies stations. He did much more than You Send Me.
The third lived only a short time. In fact, he was only on the charts for a couple of years before tragedy struck him and it was the day the "MUSIC DIED". His name was Buddy Holly. He was a genius who could have moved music to a realm we could not even dream of if he had lived a longer life. In the mid and late 50s, he inspired rock and roll like no other. Yes, there was Elvis and his pulsating hips, however, Elvis was a product of the southern black experience. He used that music and the knowledge that black music was not acceptable to white audiences to his advantage. Since he was white, he was the vehicle white people could use to transcend their own limits and experience the rhythms and beat of the soul music blacks had been experiencing for generations. Buddy Holly innovated new sounds and rhythms for rock and roll.
Then the last musician of the 1950s that inspired the generations to come later was inspired himself by the legends of the 50s like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Frankie Lymon and Clyde McPhatter. He was also influenced by the older standards sung by the likes of Sarah Vaughn, Joe Williams, Billy Ekstine and Billy Holiday. I first heard a record of his in 1958. I didn't think much about it then. It was about a year or so later I heard another song from him and I actually mistook him for Little Anthony and the Imperials. The song was called Bad Girl. A short time later, a new record label out of Detroit released a song called "Shop Around", and American musical history was about to take root. From that time, thousands upon thousands of songs were written for his group and for so many other artists of the next decade, the 60s. From the songs he wrote with and for the Miracles, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye among others, William Smokey Robinson has become, what Bob Dylan once said of him, the greatest living American poet. His songs are still covered by the latest generation of artists today. He still performs, and should be remembered as the Beethoven of our time. The Beatles thought so much of him that their earliest records featured John and Paul trying to redo "You Can Depend on Me" and "What's So Good About Goodbye". Here's another thought. Tunes like "My Girl", "Tracks of My Tears", and "Ain't That Peculiar"? How many babies were conceived while making love to those songs? All those 30something to 40 year olds who have the guts, ask your parents. Motown was a vision that Berry Gordy Jr. and Smokey Robinson actually produced in reality. It is the one American institution that brought all the experiences of the Civil Rights movement to the larger white crossover audience. The talent alone is worth the accolades the world bestows on them. The Temptations, The Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Supremes, The Contours, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, just to name a few. Add the Funk Brothers, the songwriters like Holland, Dozier, Holland, Micky Stevenson, Ashford and Simpson, Sylvia Moy and the stage choreography, and art was never at a higher form.
In Chicago, my sentimental favorites, the Impressions became a mainstay on the record charts. Such inspirational songs like Amen, Movin on Up, People Get Ready kept the gospel style close to our core. However, songs like "Your Precious Love", "Gypsy Woman", "I'm So Proud" and "Minstrel and Queen" still tugs at the strings of my heart and soul. To keefer55, I say thank you for that google link to Curtis Mayfield's video. I had a lump in my throat watching it.
The jazz that was happening in the 60s was an evolution of the free form expressions bee bop inspired in the 40s and 50s. So much of that era owes its soul to Bird (Charlie Parker), Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk and Art Blakey. No one could have imagined there would be musicians that took it to an even higher level. However, Gil Evans, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery, Eric Dolphy and Don Cherry elevated their art to a musical quality that transcended music itself. Then, to add to the spiritual intensity of the era, the great saxman John Coltrane transcended them all with A Love Supreme. No other sound before or since could capture the absolute spirituality and tonal modality that the rapture of his art produced. When I first heard that album, I knew it would take me more than one time of playing to understand the totality of it. It has been over 40 years, and I still can not grasp the totality of that album. I believe the Trane was imbued with a spirit during that session that only he and his musicians could understand. I am sure McCoy Tyner is asked about that recording session many times.
In New York City, the Brill Building was home to some of this country's greatest musical talents. Here is just some of the songwriters who graced that building: Lieber and Stoller, Hal David and Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Neil Sedaka, Paul Simon, just to name a few.
In my hometown of Philly, the 60s was the Sound of Philadelphia, personified by songwriters like Tommy Bell, Leon Huff, Kenny Gamble and the late and great lady Linda Creed. The list of 60s artists who came out of our city can compete with any other city, such as Lee Andrews and the Hearts, The Dreamlovers, The Intruders, The Delphonics, The Stylistics, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Thomasina Montgomery (better know as Tammi Terrell), Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, just to name a few. Sorry Cos, you were a comedian.
Almost 4 years to the day the MUSIC DIED, The Beatles first made their American debut on February 9, 1963 on the Ed Sullivan Show. The rest is history. I remember there was a battle among loyal Americans whether the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys were a better group than the Beatles. The competition wasn't even close. Besides the money and backing of the Beatles, they also had tremendous songwriting talent. They were influenced by the greats of rock and roll like Buddy Holly, Smokey, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, but they also had a more European freedom that was not in the American music yet. It was this British use of strings as the lead instrument rather than saxophone that dominated their sound. The guitar was really an accompaniment to the lyrical voices that was the mainstay of the song. The sax was its own lead aside from the voice. Most middle of songs that had the instrumental portion of the songs used the sax to enforce the strength of the lead instrument as a chord change to the voices. Now it was the guitar that provided the lead, even over that of the voices. Cream (Eric Clapton) and Jimi Hendrix used their guitars to become the lyrical centerpiece of the music. Add to that the psychodelic modalities from San Francisco based groups like Jefferson Airplane, Carlos Santana, the Grateful Dead and you have the basis for free spirituality that formed the artistic foundation for the hippie generation.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that musicians of an earlier generation were just as inspirational and in fine form during the 60s. Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald still commanded the respect and love from their perfectly tuned voices. My two favorite voices of all time were in perfect harmony as well, Sarah Vaughn and Tony Bennett. The 60s found the pop singers producing some of their finest works of art.
In the early 60s, another form of art was taking root in America. It employed folk art, politics, social commentary, philosophy and literary influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the counterculture of the time. From folk and country/blues to rock 'n' roll and rockabilly, to Gaelic balladry, jazz, and swing, Bob Dylan is America's story-teller, an informal documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American protest. It is now easy to trace our 60s culture, our hippie spiritual expressions to the songs Dylan wrote like "Blowin' in the Wind" and the "The Times They Are A-Changin'". Dylan personified the 60s intelligensia. Someone who could metaphorically use music to codify his generation of misfits, rebels, and tortured souls.
The freedom of expression this culture spawned, encapsulated all of the emotions of the 60s that were always stifled and censored before it. The emotions it brought out so vividly ran the gamut from war and violence, protest and rebellion to the most perfect of human expression LOVE. If there is one aspect of the 60s that should have lived on to the following generations was the concept of LOVE. Unfortunately, even those who participated in the 60s have forgotten that important element they were a part of. They forgot the word LOVE.