Most of us who lived through “the 60s” actually missed “the 60s”--which weren’t really the 60s at all, but more like the late 60s and early 70s. Or, kind of starting in the 50s. Depending, I suppose, on whether you’re talking about politics or culture. The two don’t always intersect exactly.
I was definitely impacted by both the music and politics of what we loosely refer to as “the 60s” but in a backwards kind of way.
Born in 1956 to a family where both my parents might have described themselves as Goldwater republicans, my parents were never involved in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, at least they didn’t ever talk about it. Ours was not a family where the nightly news issues made it to the dinner table.
On the other hand, my dad seemed very conscious that his mother was quite a bigot, bless her. And from an early age we had black folk, hispanic folk, asians and even a Mormon or two as intimate family friends. As a child, I didn’t have any idea how unusual this was.
Somehow, without ever talking much about politics my parents instilled a strong sense of justice and fair play in both my sister and I. I think it was confusing for them that we both went on to have strong political opinions about justice and equality for people of color, women and gay folks that took us pretty far away from their politics.
But, as I got out of college and into graduate school, I had a nagging sense that something important had happened that I had just barely missed. The country seemed to have turned some kind of a corner, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Of course, the JFK assassination was powerful, even for a 6-year-old in a Republican household. I knew about the Vietnam war, but never knew anybody who had protested it, only a couple of friends who had older brothers who had served there. I watched President Nixon give his resignation speech on the television, but, at age XX, could not have comprehended the depth and breadth of what had happened.
Perhaps living on the Pacific slope, mostly in California, meant that the impact of the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement wasn’t as striking to me. I had never been around people who hated others because of their color (at least not in my hearing) Certainly, I was told from an early age that I should aim high academically and professionally. In fact, my parents’ biggest stumbling block with my choice of profession wasn’t that I was a woman going into what had been until then strictly a man’s profession (still is in some churches, as we know), it was more that they doubted my ability to support myself in this job. (They were mostly right about that.) I can remember my fury when a high-school friend with straight As said she wasn’t going to college because her parents didn’t think women needed a college education and they were going to spend the money on sending her druggie younger brother.
Anyway, in recent years I’ve been attracted to books that reveal this period of our country’s and culture’s history. I’m not an academic historian, so my reading has not been systematic, except to try to research what I plan to read so I don’t waste my time on poor scholarship or excessively biased accounts.
Last year I began tackling Taylor Branch’s daunting, Pulitzer-prize winning trilogy about America in the King years: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan’s Edge. I say daunting because the three volumes are 1062 pages, 746 pages and 1039 pages respectively. Too big to take on a plane, my best opportunities for undistracted reading time.
I’ve plowed through the first volume and found Branch’s account to be fascinating and more than thorough. His work isn’t just a biography of King, it’s a biography set in the context of America’s history. It’s got an enormous cast of characters. It was especially fascinating to read about the part James Lawson played in this. Rev. Lawson is a retired member of our Annual Conference and I have been acquainted with him for all of my ministry and listened often to his impassioned preaching at Annual Conference and other places. While not a personal friend or mentor, his ministry heavily influenced mine and I had never really never known his part in the civil rights movement.
I was neither surprised nor disturbed to learn of King’s marital indiscretions. These are neither played down in Branch’s account, nor are they given tabloid-type attention. What was hard for a life-long Kennedy admirer to discover was the extent to which John Kennedy, and, to a lesser extent his brother Robert, were brought kicking and screaming into the civil rights movement as players for justice. Having read [Manchester’s??] biography of Bobby Kennedy many years ago, I wasn’t shocked over his slowly awakening social conscience. It was the resistance, the arrogant resistance, of Jack Kennedy to doing the right thing that was uncomfortable for one who wished to believe that if only JFK hadn’t been assassinated all would be well with America.
It’s not news that music played a big part in the civil rights movement--folk music mostly. As an early (I mean EARLY) fan of Joan Baez (I sang along to my first Joan Baez album in 1959, when my parents brought it home and have been mad for Joan and everything she does, musically and politically, ever since) I knew about the connection and my musical journey inevitably because intertwined with issues of social justice.
More able folks than I have attempted to make the connections between the civil rights movement, the musical revolution brought by the rock and roll of Elvis and the Beatles and the influence on post 1968 rock/popular music of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin King, Jr. But, those connections have provided a kind of free-associative track for other reading.
Some years ago, David Hadju wrote Positively 4th Street (Press, Year) a history of the interwoven relationships of Joan Baez, her sister Mimi Farina, Mimi’s late husband Richard Farina and, notoriously, Bob Dylan. It was just the sort of stuff that I had missed by spending my time in school, church and Girl Scouts instead of reading gossip magazines and tabloids in Junior High School. I knew a good bit of it from tracking Joan’s career (and, by extension Bob Dylan’s) in Rolling Stone magazine. I confess, my interest in the acclaimed Mr. Dylan stemmed strictly from his connection to Joan Baez. I eventually learned to appreciate his music greatly, especially if someone else was singing it. This book expanded my appreciation for Dylan and for the much-lesser known, but not lesser talented Mimi Farina and Richard Farina, whose early death impacted all the remaining three and their music.
In the last couple of years I have also read Girls Like Us (Who, PRess, Year), a biography of Carole King, Carly Simon and [Joni Mitchell?] and their under-appreciated influence on the music of the 60s and the 70s. This expanded my understanding of what was happening to American music and culture while I listened to the radio and sang along. The career of Carole King, especially, was revelatory to me as I began to understand how rock and roll transitioned from its initial influences in Elvis, Buddy Holly and Chuck Barry to incorporate country and folk into the powerful influence of the music of the later 60s and 70s.
Long believing that little good music was made in the 80s (and not much more in the 90s, either) I found myself looking backward--reading and learning more about American roots music--stemming from my love of folk music.
In college I did a senior seminar on American Southern Literature and discovered country music (before Nashville became NashVegas). About that time, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm and The Band produced a documentary of their final concert in the Martin Scorscese film The Last Waltz. From that followed reading that never quit. And music listening habits that took a sharp turn south and into the black church.
Most recently, I ran across the coffee table book that was published as a companion piece to the PBS 4-part special called American Roots Music. A lavishly illustrated book, with infinitely more information than the television special, I found myself swimming again in the wonders of all kinds of American music and the interplay between our cultural products and the politics of the same era.
Finally, XX’s book Laurel Canyon tells of the Los Angeles contribution to the music that most shaped me, that produced by the “California Sound” that dominated the popular music of America following the Kennedy assassinations and the liberation movements that were born from the civil rights movement. Such people/groups as Crosby, Stills, Nash, the Byrds, the Mamas and Papas, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Zappa. It’s a slightly gossipy account historically, but great musicologically in explaining both the ethos and the business practices that created an industry from a musical movement and produced some of the richest, most creative, most densely intertwined music in American history.
As one long-time music industry friend of mine (closely associated with Crosby, Still and Nash for many years) like to say, “It was an amazing time. People are still playing our music and still playing with our music as we move ahead.”
Most who have survived the eras pharmaceutical excesses are now in recovery and making better music than ever before (Eric Clapton, Steve Earle come to mind). And, the reading I’ve done has helped me look with more open eyes and ears into what’s been a-brewing in the last decade or so, with the (welcome) passing of 80s disco into the authentic sounds of Amy Winehouse and Ashley Cleveland, a mainstream appreciation for country music as a source for some of the most finely crafted song-writing and extraordinary session musicians, a fascination with how Woody Guthrie’s “talking blues” has become rap music and how folks are still crossing over from the church to the pubic arena (Jennifer Hudson). Even 80s music isn’t sounding so bad as Glee reminds us of the joys of vocal co-operation and reigniting enthusiasm for choral music.
This reading has sent me back for more music and more books. I’m doing my part to keep that part of the economy thriving. And, if you want to borrow my DVD of PBS’ documentary of Joan Baez’ life, “How Sweet the Sound”, just let me know!
One of the finest albums ever is Carole King's Tapestry. I still find her lyrics, "you're so far away, doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore . . ." as haunting as ever. There was a sadness in so much of the music or, at least in remembering the music I recall the sadness of that time. As a student getting my teaching credential at Cal State Northridge in the late 60s I watched the Black Panthers walk arm in arm across campus blocking the width of the sidewalk forcing everyone to step aside or be knocked down. I watched police in riot gear remove arrest students staging a sit in in front of the cafeteria bookstore peacefully demonstrating against the Vietnam war. I lost a cousin to that war. The music certainly reflected the dissent and questioning that was so much a part of the culture at that time.
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