Music

At Folsom Prison: Johnny Cash (of course) but also the legendary Carl Perkins

Thursday is the anniversary of one of the greatest live recordings in the popular music canon. On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash took his band, his father, and a couple of opening acts to California’s Folsom State Prison to record two shows.  They had rehearsed for two solid days in a Sacramento motel, where–astoundingly–they were visited by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, who offered his encouragement and good wishes.

Few people realize that Carl Perkins added his wicked guitar licks to the standard sound of the Tennessee Three backing Cash that day. Even fewer know that the both the morning and afternoon shows actually began with Perkins performing his own songs.

Picture it:

Six minutes before the Man in Black walked out for the first show with his trademark opening “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” and the definitive take on “Folsom Prison Blues,” Perkins got the prisoners into gear with a rocking “Blue Suede Shoes.” The Statler Brothers then took one song (“This Ole House”) before the emcee, radio newsman Hugh Cherry, introduced Cash.

The resulting album—edited down from the two shows (though mostly from the first)—is a respected piece of art in its own right, but as this post makes clear, it is not the full artistic creation– rock concert– that the prisoners heard that day. If this intrigues you, check out the 2008 2 CD / 1 DVD Legacy Edition of At Folsom Prison, which contains both shows in full. Unfortunately, the DVD doesn’t contain much original footage, but it fills in the backstory quite well.

For a video of Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” check out this YouTube video (taken from Johnny Cash’s 1971 TV show, where everybody looks a little overdressed, certainly not in prison-concert wear).

For a music link, check out music historian John Vanek’s blog post. Thanks again, John!

No Comments »

“An Introduction to Indian Music” by Ravi Shankar [1968]

1968 was unquestionably a crucial year in the spread of Indian classical music to the West. In February, George Harrison—who had experimented with Indian instruments and composition techniques as early as 1965 with “Norwegian Wood”—and the rest of The Beatles traveled to India to study under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Their presence in India shone the spotlight directly on Indian culture and music. It is no coincidence that Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Brij Bhusan Kabra’s LP Call of the Valley, a “concept album” about a shepherd from Kashmir, began to infiltrate markets worldwide in ‘68, eventually attaining platinum status.

The same year, sitar master Ravi Shankar, whose music David Crosby had introduced to Harrison three years earlier, took advantage of rising Western interest in all things Indian by releasing an album, The Sounds of India, targeted at speakers of English. As the opening track makes plain, Shankar interspersed explanations of Indian classical music to provide basic context to otherwise lost Western listeners. The rest of the album contains more playing and less talking, but still introduces the unique rhythms and instruments effectively. Highly recommended, whether you are obsessed with 1968 or not.

Listen to the track and read other entries by music historian John Vanek on his blog, from which the above entry has been shamelessly lifted.  Thanks for the post, John!

No Comments »

“Purpose”:   What is it All About?

The cover of Purpose, “a contemporary musical for youth,” flaunts a 1960s vibe, from the big bubble letters that make up the title, to the dull yellows and bright red-orange colors that make it pop. Printed in Nashville in 1968, this musical score seems to fit right in with the hippie culture of 1968. That is, until you open it. The purpose of Purpose, the Preface Notes explain, is “To guide youth in discovering a meaningful life in Christ.” Purpose does anything but embrace the carefree, anti-establishment mentality that is so often associated with the era.  Here are the titles of some of the numbers: “What is it all About?”  ”Peace on Earth”;  ”Trouble Me, Lord;” “What Does It Mean to be a Christian?”  ”To Someone the Savior’s Love.”  And so on.   (By the way, Purpose the Christian musical is not to be confused with “Purpose,” one of the numbers from the famously profane “puppet musical,” Avenue Q.)

So what purpose does Purpose serve today? It reminds us that, while our memories of the year may be dominated by sex, drugs, draft evaders, and mainstream society drop-outs, there were many other sides to the 1968 American prism.  Although Evangelical Christians were no more representative of American culture as a whole than hippies or Monkees fans or segregationists, they help us understand how complex the events and reactions of 1968 were for Americans.  It’s also a useful reminder that the roots of the born-again Christian movement–so dominant and headline-grabbing in the 1970s–were firmly planted in the “hedonistic” 1960s.

I’m sure that Christian schools and church groups mounted productions of Purpose in 1968, but if they did, there are no remnants preserved on the Internet, that great attic of memory.  (One song, “Just As I Am,”  the last in the show’s lineup, seems to have outlasted the others, at least to judge by the number of covers by Christian groups and singers visible on YouTube.)

It’s hard to look at any 1968 musical without thinking of Hair, and Purpose contrasts especially well. Take their approaches to religion, for example. Purpose is an overtly religious score intended to be performed by church youth groups. With lyrics such as “For the Christian way must be walked every day,” the music emphasizes the importance of structured, institutional religion. Hair, on the other hand, relies on subtle references that emphasize spirituality outside the church. The song “Looking for My Donna” is a prime example of this approach. Even though their answers are different, both musicals are asking the same kind of questions. Purpose asks, “What shall I do with my life?” Hair implores, “Where is the something/where is the someone/that tells me why I live and die?”

Together, these musicals show how multitudinous the opinions and practices of Americans were in 1968 and yet how they were connected by similar threads of a search for meaning, relevance, and… purpose in their lives.

THANKS to 1968 Exhibit Intern Katie Bates

No Comments »

2 Comments »

Petulia is one of those archetypal 1960s films that had completely passed me by for more than 40 years.  In contemporary roundups of 1968’s films and trends, it was invariably included with the most distinctive and “with-it” movies of the moment, along with Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary’s Baby, The Graduate, and Bullitt.  Petulia recently showed up on Turner Classic Movies on a Julie Christie night, and I’m happy to say I’ve now caught up with it, if only (or mostly) for historical reasons.

Petulia was directed by Richard Lester, whose calling cards by 1968 were impressive:  the two great, wacky movies with the Beatles–A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Though American by birth, Lester had British credentials (and citizenship)–a bonus in the U.S. film world of the 1960s and early 1970s, so dominated by British talent, especially when it came to collecting Oscar nominations.   After some years of America looking to England for countercultural inspiration (you know:  Beatles, Stones, Carnaby Street, Twiggy and all that), by the late 1960s, America– especially San Francisco and California– was providing global benchmarks for hipness.  And to dispel any doubts about Petulia’s countercultural bona fides, Lester threw in micro-performances by Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead, and even some groovy colored-oil-and-light show effects.

Petulia was based on a 1966 novel, Me and the Arch Kook Petulia, by John Haase, a fulltime Los Angeles dentist and parttime novelist.  ”Kook” and “kooky” are words that show up a lot in the movie.  ”Kook” –Beatnik slang from the 1950s, meaning an eccentric or strange character– may have already been sliding out of popular usage by 1968,  another reason that Petulia seems a little dated.   Petulia, played by ravishingly beautiful, 26-year-old Julie Christie, is hardly a flower-waving hippie–she’s an exceptionally rich San Francisco socialite.  As the movie opens, she’s recently married to a “naval architect” (read:  sailboat enthusiast and playboy) played by Richard Chamberlain, a little older than Christie but almost as beautiful, cast against type as a spoiled and violently abusive husband.  Petulia decides early on to have an affair with George C. Scott’s character, Dr. Archie Bollen, after seeing his heroic action in saving the life of a Mexican boy who had somehow become part of Petulia’s family.  That part of the plot is told in flashbacks and flash-forwards, and it’s all a little confusing.

Of special note is the score by John Barry, which reminded me of Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant work for Alfred Hitchcock, and the cinematography by Nicholas Roeg, who would later direct such memorable movies as Don’t Look Now and Walkabout.  There’s a bright, jangly texture to Petulia, and a wonderful use of colorful locations in the San Francisco Bay Area (the requisite cable cars, swanky apartments, Alcatraz, and glamorous parties).

Film critic Jay Carr has an excellent article on this quirky (kooky?) movie on the TCM website, where he concludes:

“Petulia was a brave film for Lester to have made, and braver still for its matching of a jagged style to a jagged story. True to its essential melancholy, it never succumbed to popular and clichéd takes on the ‘60s. The result is that it’s one of the few films about the ‘60s still worth seeing.”

1 Comment »

As a teenager in 1968, I fancied myself a big-time music fan, and wanted to amass a big record collection.  All those cool albums lined up on your dorm-room shelf:  it was conspicuous consumption and a way of telegraphing (or finding) identity.  I remember being seduced by ads like this one– although I think I joined the Columbia Record Club instead.  (Same difference, as we used to say.)  ”Wow!  Four records for just 99 cents? Can’t pass up that deal.”   Sucked in by that come-on, I overlooked the fine print about “merely agreeing to buy as few as four more records” during the year, and so got stuck with returning some unwanted monthly selections.

There is something quintessentially 1960s about an ad like this.  That mosaic-tile look, with dozens of identically sized squares of color, was a graphic-design style that was popular at the time, especially towards the end of the decade.  This look (which probably owes something to the designs of Charles and Ray Eames) immediately conveys a number of related messages:  multiplicity (”we are selling LOTS of records here”); equality (”we have everything under the sun”); and affordability (”there are lots of them, they are small, and they are cheap”).  An ad like this also says something about material abundance– the mounting tidal waves of consumer goods that were washing over Americans in this “age of affluence.”

Most interesting, however, is the staggering variety of music being offered up here.  I don’t think this diverse “package” would have been possible ten, or even five years earlier.  By 1968, when this ad appeared as a tear-out in a LIFE magazine, things were changing in the musical scene (and everywhere else, too).  Artists who had been confined to distinct market categories–rhythm and blues, for example, or Country/western–were crossing over and reaching wider audiences.  Weird amalgams were being tested, as in the Lennon Sisters’ (longtime stars of Lawrence Welk’s TV show, though they left the show in 1968) attempt to “get groovy” with their album “Somethin’ Stupid,” available here.

Click on the picture here to pull up a larger image and check out the wild, almost perversely entertaining juxtapositions:

• Those floating heads of The Monkees (looking like the early Beatles), flanked by an album by operatic tenor Mario Lanza (still popular though he had been dead for 9 years) on one side, and “Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin’” by country star Loretta Lynn on the other;
• A recording of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite by fabled long-hair conductor Leopold Stokowski, next to “Whispers” by R&B star Jackie Wilson;
• “The Best of Floyd Cramer” (country & western crooner) next to the soundtrack from The Sound of Music;
• An album by teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson next to  a collection of hits by 1940s patriotic belter Kate Smith;
• The Young Rascals’ “Groovin’” album, next to an album by smooth TV crooner Perry Como;
• and my personal favorite, way down in the lower right:  a surreal juxtaposition of Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” next to “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” an album built around the staunchly pro-military, anti-protester, best-selling single by Barry Sadler.

4 Comments »

A new production of the 1980s Broadway show Dreamgirls just opened at New York’s Apollo Theater, which reminded me of the great “girl group” whose story inspired the musical:  Diana Ross and the Supremes.  (See the Times review here: http://bit.ly/6KIrcw)

Exactly 41 years ago, on November 24, 1968, the single “Love Child” hit the top of the Billboard 100 pop chart, knocking off the year’s biggest hit, the Beatles’ “Hey, Jude.”  ”Love Child,” which the Supremes had debuted on the Ed Sullivan show at the end of September, was at the top for two weeks.  The album Love Child was released November 13, 1968, and topped out at Number 3 on the R&B chart.

The Supremes had hit something of a slump the year before, right around the time Florence Ballard was fired, Cindy Birdsong was hired, and the group was re-christened “Diana Ross and the Supremes,” to capitalize on the increasingly starry status of their lead singer. (Ironically, on “Love Child” and several other cuts on this album, neither Mary Wilson nor Cindy Birdsong is heard; the backup vocals were provided by a studio group.)  Well into 1968, the “new” Supremes were looking like they had lost that Motown magic that had brought them such a spectacular string of hits in the early 1960s.

“Love Child” was a concerted effort to turn things around with new producers (including Smokey Robinson), new writers, new orchestration, and an urgent, socially relevant message, seemingly torn from the very Detroit projects the Supremes had grown up in.  In the lyrics, a girl is begging her boyfriend not to pressure her to have sex, to avoid bringing another “love child” into the cruel world.  The girl (vocalized, of course, by Ross at her passionate best) was herself an illegitimate love-child, and grew up poor, wearing rags in an “old, cold, rundown tenement slum” (”Tenement slum!” echoes the back-up chorus).

The cover art also appears to be trying to signal a new, more serious message for the Supremes, once the epitome of sequined and sparkled show-biz glamour.  If the ladies don’t look entirely convincing as poor ghetto girls–even though Mary is barefoot and Diana is wearing torn blue-jean shorts–well, you can’t fault the art director from trying, at least.

2 Comments »

Billboard:  We’ve been here before on “Covering 1968,” but it was the December issue of 1968, and on the cover was Jimi Hendrix, who was named “Artist of the Year.” Billboard is the magazine of the recording industry, and its charts and listings were (and are) religiously followed by everyone.   This “World of Country Music” was a special issue that Billboard published annually, beginning in the 1960s.  This 1968 issue can serve as a reminder that the “soundtrack” of the Sixties has to go beyond the Usual Suspects– the Beatles, Jimi, Janis, the Doors and Dylan, and “Somethin’s happ’ning here, what it is ain’t exactly clear….”

1968 as the Year of Country Music

The foldout cover here makes it pretty clear that, as the lead article says, “Nashville is the hub of the wheel,” but the “spokes radiate to all sections of the nation.”  Country and Western music (or just “Country,” as was increasingly preferred) may not show up much in any those nostalgic “Sixties” specials and documentaries, but this was an amazing year for the genre (and, no, probably nobody ever called it a “genre” in Nashville).  Crossover artists–performers who registered hits on both Country charts and Pop charts, whose records were played on both Country and Top-40 or Pop stations–were abundant.  Glen Campbell was the Top Country Singles Artist of 1968 (the first 8 months, at least), and was the Top Male Vocalist, with 4 records on the charts.  Over on the Pop charts, Glen was also doing very well, with “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and other hits.  Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” charted on the Country side (6th on the Singles list for the year), and was also #2 on the Pop side, just after “Hey, Jude.”  Something of a throwback to 1950s teen-death songs (”Tell Laura I Love Her,” “Last Kiss,” “Patches,” etc.), “Honey” was a syrupy ballad (lots of strings, a celestial choir), something one might have thought would be totally forgettable– but it was a huge hit.  1968 was also the year of Johnny Cash and his landmark live concert at Folsom Prison in California (”Hello. I’m Johnny Cash”), which resuscitated a somewhat dicey career.  And the women:  this was the year for both of Tammy Wynette’s signature anthems, “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “Stand By Your Man,” and for great work from both Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton (still with Porter Wagoner, but not for long).

It’s a big world for the “new country revival”

Most Country musicians did not have crossover appeal, and that was just fine with them: Buck Owens (near the top of every Country chart–Singles, Artist, Albums), Lynn Anderson, Porter and Dolly, Ferlin Husky.  But the times they were a’changing.  This issue of Billboard called attention to the “new country revival,” with two groups “pouring earthy wine into the mainstream of pop.”  The two groups were “folksters” (mainly Bob Dylan) and the “rockers” (Byrds, Country Joe and the Fish, Lovin’ Spoonful).  Another article declared that “Country Music is World Wide,” and called attention to Nashville publishing offices in European capitals, including Czechoslovakia (at the moment occupied by thousands of Soviet troops).  ”It is the rare artist with a chart record who does not make at least one overseas trip a year.”  ”It’s a big world,” the editors declared, “and the horizons for country music are unlimited.”

2 Comments »

The music that people bought:  Billboard magazine at the end of 1968

Billboard is the perfect porthole through which to view the recorded music scene of the 1960s.  It is the magazine of the business of recording music, and thus most of the time they stayed focused on the business: the sales, the buzz, the bookings.  This, in short, is an industry rag–this is THE industry rag; like Variety for Broadway and theater, or Publisher’s Weekly for the book industry, critical discernment and historical distance are just not what they do.    There are no lengthy, reflective articles in Billboard, and no in-house critics.   “Reviews” are less than a paragraph and are always positive.   There is only this refreshing, single-minded focus on What People Are Buying.

“Lasting values”

Once a year, Billboard departed for a moment from this focus, with their “Artist of the Year” designation.  It’s worth quoting the whole statement:  ”Each year the editors of Billboard honor an artist who in their opinion has made the most significant contribution to popular music during the year.  The decision is not based solely on chart performances or record sales.  It also takes into account much more lasting values.”    Lasting values: portentous words from a magazine focused on immediate sales and airplay.

Jimi Hendrix: Artist of the Year

So it is with great interest, 1968-watchers,  that we turn our attention today to Billboard’s year-end issue, and its choice of the JHE as Artist of the Year:  ”1968 was the year of underground,the year of progressive rock, the year of blues rock, the year of Jimi Hendrix and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.  While Hendrix’s group first hit the U.S. in late 1967, it was 1968 before they became one of the most sought after acts in the business.”  This (unsigned) column continues: “Hendrix, 23, is a dynamic stage personality, and an exceptional blues singer and guitarist,” and his tour showed “he was second to none in appeal and excitement.”

“The black Elvis?”

Clearly, one does not turn to Billboard for incisive critical writing.  This one-page citation for Artist of the Year is virtually the only editorial content in the magazine.  But 1968 did belong to Hendrix.  His first U.S. tour in 1967 included the legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival– but also included a tour as an opening act for the Monkees, the fabricated teeny-pop TV band (about whom we’ll have more to say in future posts.)  By 1968, the mainstream media was also riding the wave.  TIME wrote about the JHE on April 5th: “Their music . . . is a whirlpool where currents of Negro blues and psychedelic rock meet, and it churns with all but overwhelming power from their nine amplifiers and 18 speakers.”  Michael Lydon wrote a piece headlined “The Black Elvis?” for the New York Times on Feb. 25, 1968, and here, at least, we get some critical idea of the JHE power, although the notion that Hendrix could have been thought of as  ”the black Elvis” seems oddly off-base.  But Lydon writes that that was already the way Hendrix was seen in England, noting, however that: “In America, James Brown is, but only for Negroes; could Hendrix become that for American whites? The title, rich in potential imagery, is a mantle waiting to be bestowed.”  He writes about the Hendrix performance style, in language that probably barely made it past Times censors: “He played flicking his gleaming white Gibson between his legs and propelling it out of his groin with a nimble grind of his hips.  Bending his head over the strings, he plucked with his teeth as if eating them, occasionally pulling away to take deep breaths.  Falling back and lying almost prone, he pumped the guitar neck as it stood high on his belly.”

But who sold more records?

Strictly in terms of sales, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was nowhere near the top of the heap in 1968.  Known for their albums (four were hot-sellers in 1968) and their explosive live performances, the JHE was not even among the Top 100 Singles Artists for the year– a list that included the Troggs (84), Big Brother and the Holding Company (99), Vanilla Fudge (67), Elvis Presley (56), Bobby Vinton (46), the Cowsills (20th), and Archie Bell and the Drells (”from Houston, Texas,” number 11).  Number One was Aretha Franklin, who had eight singles in the charts that year.  (Why was Aretha passed over for “artist of the year”?  The sales of her albums and singles, in both the overall categories and the R&B category, were astounding.)  Jimi wasn’t even on the list for “Top Male Artists,” a list topped by James Brown, Otis Redding, and Bobby Goldsboro (1, 2, and 3).  The only “best-seller” list that Jimi Hendrix appeared on, in fact, was “Top Album Artists,” where they were 10th, right behind the Beatles (7th), the Doors (8th), and the Monkees (9th).  Who was at the top of that list, in 1968, that “revolutionary” year?  Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, followed hard by comedian Bill Cosby, folkies Simon & Garfunkel, and country-crossover artist Glen Campbell.

1968 had an amazing “soundtrack.”    Any memories of performances or “transformational” moments?  Did you actually SEE the legendary Hendrix, or do we all just THINK we saw him perform?

1 Comment »