The full audio of the intro is here.
Let’s take a trip way back, back into time…
As I start each decade I will give my perceptions of the decade. This is not based on research or fact so it is based on my own memories, and information acquired over the years. And serves as an intro to how I perceive each decade. Obviously, being born and raised in the US my knowledge of UK history is far less expansive but I will still put down what little perception I may have of the times.
Now in the very early 60s while rock ‘n’ roll was cool, jazz was also still swinging hard and so people Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole were still having hits and Bobby Darin was putting a more big band flavored sound in some of his hits. Because what came before this era of rock ‘n’ roll? Jazz, blues, country, and folk music in the US until Sister Rosetta Tharpe brought rock ‘n’ roll and Ruth Brown built Atlantic Records with hit after R’n’B hit.
After those two arrived on the scene and set the tone THEN Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Wanda Jackson, Elvis, and Roy Orbison launched the teen rock ‘n’ roll music revolution. Operas, classical music, and Broadway musicals were still a major draw in musical circles and often produced big selling albums. An albums by in large were seen as product for adults with money to buy them. The 45 singles were marketed to teens with little income and were seen as disposable items. Oh how the tables turned on that setiment.
There were sub-genres throughout this time but those were the main genres. The US was involved in the Korean War and The McCarthy blacklist with the US in general being FAR more conservative than the roaring 20s party had been pushing for and we were headed into the cold war and Cuban Missile Crisis.
While both the US and UK were involved in WWII of the two it was only England that got bombed out and directly physically ravaged by the war. And since the war had ended not that long ago the repercussions of that were still being felt across Europe. I know skiffle was a popular style and I know that some UK hits were US rock ‘n’ roll hits covered by UK idols and rock and roll stars. The UK also did not have the same connection to our issues around race in society or in music.
And closing out 1959 the biggest movie of the year was… Ben Hur.
My perceptions of the 1960s specifically are informed in part by history classes in school but mainly by entertainment that was played in reruns on TV in the 90s and the music itself referencing events of the period. And all the stereotypes and tropes that history has whittled down the decade to, mainly hippies vs squares. You would think that my parents being youth of the 1960s would have informed me of more of the history but they never much talked about that time at all. They just generally did not talk about the past.
Musically, I know the decade was shaped by the civil rights movement, protests, peace and love, the British invasion & Motown plus LSD and Woodstock towards the end. The early sixties was still heavy on the girl groups, r ‘n’ b, and rock ‘n’ roll as constructed by the Brill Building in New York and Motown in Detroit. Also dominant was folk music from Greenwich Village and later Laurel Canyon in CA. There was the occasional, jazz or instrumental hit called, “adult contemporary”. Starting in the early mid sixties surf rock would would also start logging the occasional instrumental hit.
The main production sounds were; The L.A. “Wrecking Crew” along with Phil Spector’s “wall Of Sound”, and the assembly line sound of the Funk Brothers, a sound so singular it is known by the record label name Motown. There was also the soul sounds of Stax record label out of Memphis and Muscle Shoals, and the production and song-writing team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
The main musical hotbed cities were, New York, L.A., San Francisco, Detroit, and Memphis. But again, country music while popular was not as dominating a force as it had been in the 50s and prior. Rock ‘n roll and the teen market changed all that changed all that. Even so the Nashville sound was still strong with the upstarts Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in Bakersfield CA with the Bakersfield sound.
The center of all the action in the UK was swinging London with the ladies wearing all that smashing Mary Quant fashion, and the guys donning more mod and dandy attire than what the hippies were wearing in the US.. In early sixties, skiffle and Dixieland jazz was still very popular along with teen idols like Cliff Richard & Adam Faith bringing the rock ‘n’ roll energy of the US to the UK. But it wasn’t long before the British beat took over and you saw the rise of girls singers like Petula Clark, Sandy Shaw, And Dusty Springfield, and well as the entire freakbeat scene that dominated the rising rock ‘n’ roll clubs. And The British Invasion with acts like Herman’s Hermits, The Rolling Stones, Dave Clark Five, The Hollies and of course The Beatles having hits on both side of the water. Later sounds of blues rock and psychedelic rock would come to dominate the rock scene in the UK with acts like Cream, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin steering music in a heavier direction.
Again, some of the most influential acts of the era didn’t have major hits. And some of the biggest hit makers were not as influential as one might think. And so here it what my own memories and perceptions of the 1960s tell me were the biggest hit makers and the most influential artists, and albums. It end with a selection of my favorite music acts of the decade some of whom were working long before the 1960s.
And now to paraphrase Carrie Fisher in The Blues Brothers (one of our countries greatest musicals ever by the way), “For me, you, my grandfather the accordionist, music history and for the common good, I must now listen to every top 40 hit from 1960-2016 in the US and the UK.”
