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Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

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Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Introduced their synthesizer on October 12, 1964.
Herbert Deutsch speaking about its development:
“The Minotaur” from Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman
Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Sound effects

special effects when radio was theater of the mind | Old time radio, Radio play, Vintage radio

Born in 1950, I just missed the excitement of radio shows and how their sound effects made the stories “real.”  Early TV shows and movies occasionally showed those radio station sets and revealed how clever sound technicians recreated the real world with “fake” noise. Need the sound of a door closing? Close a door. Need the sound of thunder?  Move a large, thin sheet of copper suspended from a frame by wires.

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Electronic Music

 

The mixture of electricity and sound effects created new possibilities.  Around 1896, Thaddeus Cahill developed the Telharmonium. Much like later electric organs, it used wire to transmit sound to horn speakers.

Leon Theremin developed a much simpler instrument. Below you can watch him demonstrate it. He used it much like a violin. Unfortunately for him, I suppose, most Boomers hear a Theremin (aka, the aetherphone) and think of space invasion movies.

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Laurens Hammond

Laurens Hammond established his company in 1929 for the manufacture of electronic instruments. His Hammond organ used the same principals that the Telharmonium had used.

As electronics got more sophisticated, so did technicians’ ability to create more sophisticated instruments.

“Moeg“

In 1963 Robert Moog (pronounced “Moeg” like Moe of the Three Stooges not “Moooog” like Daisy the Cow) and Herbert Deutsch met. Deutsch was a musician; Moog a technician. Together they came up with the idea of making a user-friendly electronic keyboard that had a huge range of sound. Much wider than even a Hammond organ.

And on October 12,  1964, Moog and Deutsch introduced and demonstrated their music synthesizer at the convention of the Audio Engineering Society in NYC.

Beatles and Moog

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

While the instrument and its later refinements did not catch on immediately, it gradually became a huge part of rock music. The Beatles (of course) via George Harrison (of course) used a Moog on their last recordings together:

  • the wind at the end of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”? Moog.
  • that lovely counterpoint to the acoustic guitar that gently slides in at the beginning of “Here Comes the Sun” ? Moog.
  • “Because” uses the Moog as well.

Reaction

What was the reaction to the Moog? Ed Ward of Rolling Stone magazine reviewed Abbey Road and though that the Moog “disembodies and artificializes” the band’s sound. He added that they “create a sound that could not possibly exist outside the studio.”

Since the Beatles weren’t touring or performing live, that wasn’t a problem. Having said that, if anyone has ever experienced the Fab Faux in concert and their eerie ability to play Beatles music of any era, then Ward’s comment is untrue.

What do you think?

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

EDM

In any case, it was was nice that Mr Moog and Mr Deutsche met and gave us a whole world of sound to add to our library.

A reader of this blog added an interesting comment: …and don’t forget Dick Hyman’s album of Moog music, which included the song, The Minitaur, which found its way into the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer playlist.

That album is: Moog – The Electric Eclectics Of Dick Hyman

Herbert Deutsch is a Professor Emeritus of Music at Hofstra University and is a visiting professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

Bob Moog died in 2005, but his legacy lives on.

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch
Peace Love Art and Activism, Religion, Today in history

Pope John XXIII Vatican II

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Pope John XXIII Vatican II

October 11, 1962

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli

Pope John XXIII Vatican II Ecumenical Council

Pope John XXIII Vatican II

The Times They Are a-Changin‘

When any long-established institution announces that it will convene to discuss its present and future, it is news. If there has not been such a meeting for nearly a century, the news is bigger. And if the long-established institution is nearly 2000 years old and has had only one of these convocations before, the news is huge.

Such is what happened on January 25, 1959 when Pope John XXIII announced that there would be a Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum, or what is commonly known as Vatican II.

The Church’s College of Cardinals had only elected John three months earlier on October 28, 1958 and deliberately elected an older person (76) more as a “caretaker” leader than one who would set the stage for change.

John

When Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli selected the name John for himself, a name, while common to previous popes, had not been selected for over 500 years, few realized the signal he sent. And when the “caretaker” of a 2000-year-old household announces that he will allow the discussion of major renovations, many within the Church’s leadership worried.

Keep in mind that Americans elected John F Kennedy president just shortly after and both these Johns, while very different in ages, presented a vision of innovation. JFK had his “New Frontier” and John Vatican II.

The Pope opened the Council on October 11, 1962 with the following words, “What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation ...” (NYT article)

Catholic Boomers

When we think of the United States in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, black nationalism, drug use, hippies, assassinations, feminism, LGBTQ awareness, and other cultural changes dominate that historic landscape.

For Catholic Americans, those changes included what Vatican II brought about. In 1965, there were 46 million Catholics in the United States–23% of the total population and 71% of them attended Mass every week. When a part of any nation’s population is told that there will be changes in what they grew up thinking was unchangeable, the impact is great.

Pope John XXIII Vatican II

Ecumenical Council

In other words, for young Catholics, for those Catholic baby boomers, the notion that “the times they are ‘a changin'” was not unusual but normal, expected and acceptable.

  • Sing during the Mass? Why not.
  • Accept the Eucharist in one’s hand (after being told NEVER to touch it)?  Fine.
  • Receive wine as well during Communion? Better.
  • The priest will face the congregation at a much simpler alter?  Nice.
  • The Mass will be in English, no more Latin?  Great.
  • Face the priest during confession? Scary.
  • Extreme Unction is now called the Sacrament of the Sick.
  • Nuns not wear such extreme habits? They have hair?

The changes and discussion that the Council created and Church members continued after its close on December 8, 1965 continue to echo. Neither John XXIII nor JFK lived to see the effects of their visions. Pope John died on June 3, 1963 and President John 173 days later.

Legacy

Writer Michael Novak wrote what he sees of the genie that Vatican II let out of the bottle, much to the chagrin of many Church leaders since: … sometimes soared far beyond the actual, hard-won documents and decisions of Vatican II. … It was as though the world (or at least the history of the Church) were now to be divided into only two periods, pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II. Everything ‘pre’ was then pretty much dismissed, so far as its authority mattered. For the most extreme, to be a Catholic now meant to believe more or less anything one wished to believe, or at least in the sense in which one personally interpreted it. One could be a Catholic ‘in spirit’. One could take Catholic to mean the ‘culture’ in which one was born, rather than to mean a creed making objective and rigorous demands. One could imagine Rome as a distant and irrelevant anachronism, embarrassment, even adversary. Rome as ‘them.’ “

Pope John XXIII Vatican II
Black history

Autherine J Lucy Foster

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Autherine J Lucy Foster

October 5, 1929 – March 2, 2022

Autherine Lucy was born in Shiloh, Alabama and She  began classes at the University of Alabama on…

February 3, 1956
She was the first Black person to ever do so.
Autherine J Lucy Foster
Autherine J Lucy

The name Autherine Lucy was not in my childhood  history books. I hope her name is in them today, but am not sure about that. Rosa Parks, deservedly so, is and is perhaps the main Black female name in those books. Sojourner Truth, too.

Just as Claudette Colvin refusal to give up her seat on a bus had preceded Rosa Parks,  Autherine Lucy’s struggle to attend a “White” university preceded James Meredith’s.

Autherine J Lucy Foster

Selma University

In 1947 Autherine Lucy attended Selma University for two years, then she studied at the all-black Miles College. She graduated from Miles with a BA in English in 1952.

In September 1952, Lucy and a friend, Pollie Myers applied to the University of Alabama. Both were accepted. Then school authorities discovered they were not white and their acceptances were rescinded.

Autherine J Lucy Foster

Lucy et al. v. ADAMS

Backed by the NAACP, Lucy and Myers charged the University of Alabama with racial discrimination in a court case that took almost three years to resolve. 

On June 29, 1955, the NAACP secured a court order preventing the University from rejecting the admissions.  The Dean of Admissions of the University of Alabama fought the court order.

On August 25, 1955, the United States District Court N. D. Alabama, W. D. decided for Lucy. In their decision they stated that, “Plaintiffs are entitled to a decree enjoining the defendant, William F. Adams, his servants, agents, assistants and employees, and those who might aid, abet, and act in concert with him, from denying the plaintiffs and others similarly situated the right to enroll in the University of Alabama and pursue courses of study thereat, solely on account of their race and color.”

The University appealed to the US Supreme Court, but on October 10, 1955, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision to admit Autherine Lucy and Pollie Ann Meyers.

Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the majority, The injunction which the District Court issued in this case, but suspended pending appeal to the Court of Appeals, is reinstated to the extent that it enjoins and restrains the respondent and others designated from denying these petitioners, solely on account of their race or color, the right to enroll in the University of Alabama and pursue courses of study there. The motion is denied.

Autherine J Lucy Foster

Attempts to begin school

February 2, 1956 the University of Alabama Board of Trustees rejected the now-married Polly Myers Hudson on the grounds of her “conduct and marital record” (Hudson had had a child before marrying). The Trustees likely hoped Lucy would not attend without a friend to be with.

Finally on February 3, 1956 26-year-old  Lucy enrolled as a graduate student in library science. She was the first African American ever admitted to a white public school or university in Alabama.

But on February 4, 1956 New York Times article reported: Resentment over the first Negro student at the University of Alabama exploded today in a shouting demonstration of 1,000 man students. A car occupied by Negroes was damaged.

Autherine J Lucy Foster
Roy Wilkins in press conference with Autherine Lucy and Thurgood Marshall, director and special counsel for NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund].” 1956 March 2. Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
Autherine J Lucy Foster

Mob

A mob had assembled to prevent Autherine Lucy from attending classes. She was struck by eggs while being escorted across the campus and windows of the car in which she rode were smashed. Highway patrol officers slipped her away at the height of the demonstration when more than 3,000 students and others were on the campus.

Autherine J Lucy Foster

Editorial supports States Rights

That same day, the Augusta Chronicle ran an editorial, saying that the tragedy was not that Lucy was being denied her rights, but rather that the courts were usurping states’ rights by interfering with the University of Alabama’s admittance policy. The editorial concluded:

It is nothing less than tragic that the Supreme Court has furnished both the dynamite and the match by usurping the power of the various states to operate their schools, and other public facilities, in a manner best fitted to the needs and the welfare of all of their people. For this the court must bear the onus for ushering in an unhappy and tragic era in our history whereas before its decision, all was going well.

The next day, February 7, “The University of Alabama’s first Negro student was ordered excluded until further notice late last night for the “safety” of herself and other students and faculty members.” 

And on January 18, 1957 Federal Judge Hobart H. Grooms ruled that University of Alabama officials were justified in expelling Autherine Lucy Foster and in March she stopped her struggle to attend.

Lucy became a high school English teacher.

Autherine J Lucy Foster

Justice delayed …

In April 1988, the university board overturned her expulsion. She re-enrolled in 1989 and in 1992 received her Masters in Elementary Education.  The same day, her daughter, Grazia Foster received a bachelor’s degree in corporate finance. Grazi was one of 1,755 blacks among the 18,096 students on campus. (NYT article)

Marker

On September 15, 2017, the University of Alabama unveiled an historic marker honoring Autherine Lucy Foster. (Wall St Journal article).

She began her speech by saying, ““To the student body and to all of you standing around, I want you to know that the last time I saw a crowd like this at the University of Alabama . . .”

Irony Defined

February 3, 2022: in an amazingly ironic declaration, the University of Alabama renamed its Graves Hall to Lucy-Graves Hall. Bibb Graves was a former Alabama governor and an officer of the Ku Klux Klan. [Crimson White article]

According to a CBS42 article, a University of Alabama board member Judge John England said, ““On the one hand, Gov. Graves is regarded by historians as one of, if not the most, progressive and effective governors in the history of the state of Alabama, Some say he did more to directly benefit African American Alabamians than any other governor through his many reforms. Unfortunately, that same Gov. Graves was associated with the Ku Klux Klan. Not just associated with the Ku Klux Klan, but a Grand Cyclops. It’s hard for me to even say those words.”

Emulating the view that “When they go low, we go high,”  Autherine Lucy Foster said she doesn’t mind having her name next to Graves’.

“Everybody can change,” she said. “Maybe he changed before he left this world.”

Irony Recognized

February 11, 2022: the University of Alabama reversed course and decided to remove Klansman’s Gov. Graves name and honor only Autherine Lucy on what was Graves Hall. [AL.com article]

Less than a month later, Ms Lucy died on March 2, 2022. [NYT article]

Autherine J Lucy Foster