The 1960s Music and Pop Culture US History Synopsis
The 1960s was a unique revolutionary time in American history. Revolutionary in that many WASP Puritan taboos and social structures were torn asunder, by the affluent, educated and rebellious middle class Baby Boomer generation in particular.
Foremost were the Civil Rights movement for Black people who had been living as second class citizens in a segregated Jim Crow society since the Civil War. Additionally, was the Cold War with Nuclear armed Communist Russia (USSR) in full swing with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam War, and Women’s rights via sexual liberation (invention of the pill/birth control) eventually culminating in the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) demanding equal pay for equal work (that was never passed).
Fueling this revolutionary time was music. In the West it was predominantly UK and American Popular Music that was also very influential around the world.
However, the 1960s, like every decade and new generation was an aggregation of previous generations and influences of Pop culture. Popular Rock and Roll music from the late 1950s had died down by 1960 with some of its architects vanishing from the world stage along with a general push back from the then dominant conservative elements in the country. The King of Rock and Roll Elvis had been drafted into the army, Chuck Berry had been arrested and sent to jail for dating minors and Little Richard had religious concerns that sent him into seclusion.
Thus, a spate of mediocre and vapid Pop Music dominated the Music Industry and radio airwaves for the first few years of the 1960s. Singers like Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon from the all-American Mickey Mouse Club TV show (Disney) fame became the more innocent alternatives to the rebellious and morally questionable Rhythm and Blues based Rock and Roll music.
Yet simultaneously there were also less mainstream alternate music scenes happening in the US and abroad. Namely the Jazz realm had reached its zenith in the late 1950s and early 1960s with musical geniuses like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane producing what would later be referred to as America’s Classical music. And in the Coffee shops in some of the big and small cities around America, a Folk Music Revival was emerging, influenced by previous generations of folk musicians like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger (Weavers), Blues legend Lead Belly and Celtic traditional singers like the Clancy Brothers from Ireland, to name just a few.
Folk music that had lyrics that dealt with social issues such as worker’s rights, inequality and police brutality spoke to the young, most educated generation in American history in the post-World War Two. This desire for a more equitable, fair society by these educated and aware, mostly young white folk musicians overlapped with the beginning of the Black Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s. Stars such as its early leader Joan Baez (cover of Time), helped a fledgling poet genius Bob Dylan launch his career and others like Peter, Paul and Mary, Phil Ochs and Judy Collins were part of the successful core of this Folk Revival scene in NYC’s Greenwich Village.
Another Black Music scene in the early 1960s was cooking in Detroit lead by Berry Gordy’s Motown Music label. Mr. Gordy was an amateur song writer himself and insisted that all his in-house mega talented singers and musicians gear their songs toward being simple, dance-able, sing along Pop hits about innocent subjects like boy meets girl and fashionable trends of the day. The Motown formula produced years of number 1’s and top 10 hits and launched many big careers such as Dianna Ross and The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and later The Jackson Five.
The early 1960s also saw the resurgent explosion of Rock and Roll Pop music via the British Invasion lead by The Beatles, a working-class group of four extremely talented, good-looking lads with funny haircuts from Liverpool, England, an industrial seaport city. They were followed by some of the biggest bands of the next few decades including The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and a little later Cream w/Eric Clapton and the first incarnation of Pink Floyd just to name a few of many dozens of successful UK artists in the USA.
All these UK groups were influenced by earlier 1950s American Blues and Rock and Roll music. They basically reintroduced once popular Black Blues artists like BB King, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf back to the American teen youth who in turn incorporated it into their own Rock Roll pop music. UK bands like The Beatles and The Stones and US groups like the Beach Boys and later Jimi Hendrix took ideas, structures and direct guitar licks from these earlier Blues and Rock and Roll artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Rock and Roll however has always been an American melting pot music. An old saying was the Blues and Country had a baby and called it Rock and Roll.
As Rock and Roll Popular music evolved in the 1960s from simple 2–3-minute, 3 chord structures with basic bridges, other influences including drug use (legal and illegal) and other US sub-cultures influenced its evolution. Whether it be Classical, Jazz, Funk, Slavic Polka or Mariachi, if you listen hard enough – you will hear it all in the Rock Roll, Rhythm and Blues infused golden age of Popular music of the 1960s.
There were 3 major iconic cities of 1960s Popular Music. NYC, San Francisco, and LA. In NYC you had Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rascals. In LA you had the Beach Boys, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell, Mamas and Papas, Santana, and The Doors. In San Francisco you had Janis Joplin, The Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Grateful Dead. Just to name a few of the most successful artists of the time. Nashville and Memphis were also big yet smaller music cities, but Country Music was not as big as it later became, and Soul music has always been a niche music.
Popular music evolved during the 1960s. A great example are The Beatles whose multiple world music influences fed their creativity and song writing. Compare the simple bubblegum Pop of I Wanna Hold Your Hand, one of their first number one hits in 1963 to the musical sophistication of Yesterday a couple years later or In my Life on Rubber Soul in 1966, or A Day in the Life from Sgt Pepper’s in 1967 or Something from the White Album in 1968 or finally Because as the last track of their Swan Song masterpiece album Abbey Road in 1969. This musical evolution from simple basic structures to more textured and complex harmonies and song melodies/themes/lyrics sums up the golden age of Pop Music in the 1960s/70s. Song writers and musicians got better and better and later peaked out in the 1980s.
The USA in the early 1960s was still a very conservative, Puritan, mostly White, divided up country. Rural folks did not know or trust City folks and vice versa. But the birth of the educated middle class Baby Boomer generation post WW2, who lived in the in between suburbs, changed American history for better and worse with a cultural revolution. They broke down many of the old Puritan taboos on social behaviors and raised citizens consciousness levels about important issues of race, war, religion, equality, the environment and freedom of thought. They also however overindulged in casual sex and drug use, which have had negative lasting effects on our society ever since. Nonetheless, we have this generation’s great artists to thank for all the amazing music that fueled this social revolution - that we still get to enjoy half a century later!
(Thank goodness they recorded all that great music then because even though many of the stubborn social issues still remain – Pop Music has been mostly horrible since the 1990s)
Zen Guitar Painting by Yours Truly
I was there and still there, I love electric guitar, I grew up with the British Invasion, ruined me for life, I’m a survivor and a peace, love and music Earth Muffin, babe G, giggles all around!
Your art is fantastic!