The following lists and examples show how popular music evolved during the 1960s. More artists began to write and sing their own songs and, of course, the style and content of popular music changed.
Having said that, notice the lack of Grammy awards for the new voices, the new perspectives, particularly of those who would go on to play at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. They are seldom seen on top lists and rarely recognized with a Grammy.
To view a list, click the green link and a new page will appear. An asterisk (*) next to a song writer indicates the performer wrote the song as well.
1960
List of 1960 #1 songs: 3 of 20 [15%] were written/co-written by the artist.
Grammy Record of the Year and top selling single of the year.
The Theme From A Summer Place
Percy Faith
Grammy Song of the Year
Theme From Exodus
Ernest Gold, songwriter.
Grammy Album of the Year
The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart
Bob Newhart
Billboard #1 album of 1960: Original Cast, The Sound of Music
September 26, 1908: the first production Ford Model T left the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Mich. It was the first car ever manufactured on an assembly line, with interchangeable parts. The auto industry was to become a major U.S. employer, accounting for as many as one of every eight to 10 jobs in the country (see December 19, 1910)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Mother Earth magazine
September 26, 1917: the U.S. Post Office directed Mother Earth, the magazine founded and edited by Emma Goldman, the famous anarchist and opponent of U.S. involvement in World War I, to show cause on this day why it should not be barred from the mails because of its opposition to the war.
Goldman had already been arrested for opposing the draft, in violation of the Espionage Act, passed on June 15, 1917. The Post Office subsequently denied Mother Earth 2nd Class mailing privilege (a device that was widely used during World War I, and effectively denied use of the mails for publications), and Mother Earth suspended publication.
Goldman would be deported from the U.S. to the Soviet Union on the so-called “Red Ark” on December 21, 1919, along with 249 other alleged alien radicals. (see Goldman for expanded story)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
BLACK HISTORY
School Desegregation
September 26, 1927: Gary, Indiana School Superintendent Dr. William A Wirt faced a dilemma in the 1910 – 20′s as the city’s black population greatly increased. The East Pulaski and Virginia Street School served the black population, but were segregated and in deplorable condition. The spillover caused nominal numbers of black students to receive education in predominately white schools throughout the city, but they were limited in which facilities they could use.
In the 1926 – 27 school year six black students had attended classes at Emerson High School. To help ameliorate the student overpopulation at Virginia Street School the district transferred 18 black students to Emerson in 1927.
White students outraged at the presence of more black students in their took to the streets. On Monday, September 26 some 600 students walked out of class. Those who remained inside were heckled incessantly until they joined the throngs of protesters. As the demonstration gained momentum signs saying, “WE WON’T GO BACK UNTIL EMERSON IS WHITE. . . . NO NIGGERS FOR EMERSON. . . . EMERSON IS A WHITE MAN’S SCHOOL”. (see Sept 27)
James H Meredith
September 26, 1962: the chief US Marshal and Mississippi Lieut. Governor scuffled repeatedly as State officials prevented the registration of Meredith for the third time. (see September 27, 1962)
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing
September 26, 1977: reported in the NYT: A 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was indicted today on four counts of first-degree murder in the bombing of a Birmingham church 14 years ago that killed four young black girls attending Sunday school. Robert Chambliss of Birmingham was being held without bond in Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham. (see November 16)
SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID
September 26, 1986: President Reagan vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. The law would have imposed sanctions against South Africa and stated five preconditions for lifting the sanctions that would essentially end the system of apartheid. [Politico article] (see Sept 29)
Stop and Frisk Policy
September 26, 2012: Ligon v. City of New York — a lawsuit brought on behalf of people who say they were illegally stopped, ticketed or arrested for trespassing, some in their own buildings — showed that the Bronx district attorney’s office had serious concerns about such arrests as far back as three years ago.
These arrests were made in public housing developments or under the Clean Halls program, which allows police to patrol the hallways of private buildings to prevent crime. [ACLU article] (BH, see Oct 2; Stop and Frisk, see December 20)
Stephon Clark
September 26, 2019: the Sacramento Police Department cleared Officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet, who fatally shot Stephon Clark on March 18, 2018, saying they did not violate department policy or training.
“This incident has been thoroughly investigated by law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal levels,” Chief Daniel Hahn said in a prepared statement. “Every one of these independent examinations has reached the same finding – the use of deadly force in this case was lawful. Our internal investigation concluded that there were no violations of department policy or training.” [Sacramento Bee article] (next B & S, see Oct 1; next SC, see Oct 8)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
Lt. Col. Peter Dewey
September 26, 1945: Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Vietnam and trying to help arrange negotiations between the Viet Minh and France, was unintentionally shot and killed in Saigon by the Viet Minh.
Dewey was the head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese. Dewey is not listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. because the United States Department of Defense has ruled that the war officially started, from a U.S. perspective, on November 1, 1955, after the U.S. took over following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. (Blog article) (Oct 4)
Scranton Commission
September 26, 1970: the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (the Scranton Commission) appealed to President Nixon to lead Americans back from the brink of what it described as a chasm in society so dangerous that it threatened the survival of the nation. The Commission concluded that the shootings at Kent State were unjustified. The report said: Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators. [text of report] (see Sept 29)
Henry A. Kissinger
September 26 – 27, 1972: for the 18th time since August, 1969, Henry A. Kissinger, President Nixon’s adviser on national security, met privately in Paris with Le Duc Tho, a Hanoi Politburo member, and Xuan Thuy, North Vietnam’s chief delegate to the Paris peace talks. (see Oct 9)
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Politics
September 26, 1960: Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, participate in the first (of four) televised presidential election debates. [Mary Ferrell Foundation article]
September 26 – October 9, 1960: “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own” by Connie Francis #1 Billboard Hot 100
Kingston Trio
September 26 – October 30, 1960: the Kingston Trio’s String Along is their 3rd Billboard #1 album in 1960.
Bob Dylan
September 26, 1961: Dylan started as opening act for the Greenbriar Boys. He stayed two weeks. (see Sept 29)
Oh Pretty Woman
September 26 – October 16, 1964: “Oh Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The title was inspired by Orbison’s wife Claudette interrupting a conversation to announce she was going out; when Orbison asked if she was okay for cash, his co-writer Bill Dees interjected “A pretty woman never needs any money.
Brian Epstein
September 26, 1966: Brian Epstein, hospitalized in a London clinic. The official given reason was that it was a check-up, although it later transpired that he had overdosed on prescribed drugs.
Epstein had been suffering from depression and anxiety for some time, a condition exacerbated by his use of drugs – both prescribed and illegal. His anxiety had heightened following The Beatles decision to stop touring, which left Epstein with less involvement in their careers. Each member was undertaking individual projects in the late summer of 1966 and he had intended to join John Lennon in Spain on the set of How I Won The War.
However, as a result of the hospitalization, he was forced to cancel his visit to Spain. Although Epstein is known to have made later suicide attempts, it is believed that this overdose was accidental. (see Oct 3)
Abbey Road
September 26, 1969: UK release of Abbey Road album. Though recorded after material for the Let It Be lp had already been recorded, it is released before Let It Be. (see Oct 1)
Walls and Bridges
September 26, 1974: US release of John Lennon’s fifth album, Walls and Bridges (UK release will be 4 October)
Written, recorded and released during his 18-month separation from Yoko Ono (June 1973–January 1975), the album captured Lennon in the midst of his “Lost Weekend”.
Walls and Bridges became an American Billboard number 1 album. (see Nov 16)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
ADA
1973 Rehabilitation Act
September 26, 1973: the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, passed by Congress and signed into law on this day, was an important milestone in federal programs for disabled persons. It replaced previous laws in 1954 and 1965. Section 504 of the law was particularly important, expanding the rights of persons with disabilities, greatly expanded grants to the states for vocational rehabilitation, and also expanding federal research and training related to persons with disabilities.
When the Department of Health, Education & Welfare (HEW) failed to issue regulations implementing Section 504, disability rights activists protested with a sit-in on April 5, 1977. HEW issued the regulations three weeks later.
The campaign for the rights of the disabled culminated in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990. The ADA served as the model for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was signed on March 30, 2007. The U.S. Senate has still not ratified the Convention, however, because of conservative opposition. [US Access Board article]
“Ugly Law”
In 1974, Chicago repealed last “Ugly Law” . These laws had allowed police to arrest and jail people with “apparent” disabilities for no reason other than being disfigured or demonstrating some type of disability. (see January 8, 1974)
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LGBTQ
September 26, 1975: President Ford sent a letter to Oliver W Sipple expressing his “heartfelt appreciation” for the former marine’s help during an attack on the President in San Francisco. (see Sipple for expanded story)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Nuclear/Chemical News
False alarm
September 26, 1983: in the early hours of the morning, the Soviet Union’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.
But duty officer Stanislav Petrov – whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches – decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.
This was a breach of his instructions, a dereliction of duty. The safe thing to do would have been to pass the responsibility on, to refer up. His decision may have saved the world. The detection was false. [BBC article on “The Man Who Saved the World”] (next N/C N, see April 4, 1984; next Iran, see Oct 13)
Trump/Iran
September 26, 2017: President Donald Trump had been declaring that Iran was in violation of the Iran nuclear pact, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but his criticism of the deal was contradicted by Marine Gen. James Dunford, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dunford’s comments came in a written Q&A submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee in advance of a hearing on threats to the US. When asked by the committee whether Iran was complying with JCPOA, Dunford unequivocally said yes.
“The briefings I have received indicate that Iran is adhering to its JCPOA obligations,” he said.
Dunford went even further. Asked if the deal was working as intended — making it harder for Iran to get nuclear weapons — he said that it had. “The JCPOA has delayed Iran’s development of nuclear weapons,” Dunford wrote. [PBS article] (next N/C N, see Oct 6; next Iran, see Oct 13)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Jack Kevorkian
September 26, 1992: Lois Hawes, 52, a Warren, Michigan, woman with lung and brain cancer, died from carbon monoxide poisoning at the home of Kevorkian’s assistant Neal Nicol in Waterford Township, Michigan. (see JK for expanded story)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Sexual Abuse of Children
September 26, 1996: the last Magdalene asylum, in Waterford, Ireland, closed. Magdalene asylums were institutions from the 18th to the late-20th centuries ostensibly for “fallen women”, a term used to imply sexual promiscuity. The first asylum in Ireland opened in Dublin in 1765. In Belfast there was a Church of Ireland run Ulster Magdalene Asylum (founded in 1839) Initially the mission of the asylums was often to rehabilitate women back into society, but by the early 20th century the homes had become increasingly punitive and prison-like. In most of these asylums, the inmates were required to undertake hard physical labor, including laundry and needle work. They also endured a daily regime that included long periods of prayer and enforced silence. In Ireland, such asylums were known as Magdalene laundries. It has been estimated that up to 30,000 women passed through such laundries in Ireland. (see Magdalene for more; next Sexual Abuse date, see Dec 3, 1996)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Immigration History
September 26, 2011: Pastor Manuel Hernández was pulled over by an undercover detective in a rural area near Warrior, Alabama, and became the first person arrested under Alabama’s new anti-immigration law, just hours after a federal judge upheld the law’s key passages.
Pastor Hernández, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, worked at the Prayer Center for All Nations in Anniston, Alabama. When the detective asked to see his identification, Hernàndez provided his Mexican passport and Mexican Consular ID card, as well as a card issued by the American Association of Chaplains. The detective questioned the validity of these documents and accused Hernàndez of committing a felony by carrying the chaplain card because it had the state seal on it but was an unofficial form of identification.
Though the detective claimed to have pulled Pastor Hernández over for excessive speeding, he never issued a ticket. Hernández was arrested under suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant and spent several days in jail, where he felt discriminated against as a Latino. Hernández said officials refused to give him a Spanish language Bible and, thinking he could not speak English, said in his presence, “He is an illegal and should be treated as an illegal.” After a few days of incarceration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials released Pastor Hernández with orders to return to immigration court at a later date. (see June 15, 2012)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Occupy Wall Street
September 26, 2012: the University of California agreed to pay about $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by UC-Davis students who were pepper-sprayed by campus police during an Occupy-style protest on campus last November. The settlement also calls for a personal written apology from UC-Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to each person hit with the spray. [CBS News article] (see July 21, 2015)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Affordable Care Act
September 26, 2017: Senator Mitch McConnell officially pulled the plug on the latest plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, telling senators they would not vote on the measure and effectively admitted defeat in the last-gasp drive to fulfill a core promise of President Trump and Republican lawmakers.
McConnell’s announcement came less than 24 hours after a pivotal Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, declared firm opposition to the repeal proposal, all but ensuring that Republican leaders would be short of the votes they needed. [Politico article] (see Oct 12)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
DEATH PENALTY
September 26, 2017: the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the execution of Keith Leroy Tharp, a Georgia inmate who had been on death row for a quarter-century, halting the lethal injection after his attorneys raised questions of racial bias in the case.
Georgia sentenced Tharpe to death in 1991 for killing Jaquelin Freeman, his sister-in-law. Tharpe’s wife left him in August 1990 and moved in with her mother, and he made violent threats against them before fatally shooting Freeman and raping his wife, according to a summary of the case from the Georgia Supreme Court. He was sentenced to death the following January.
Attorneys for Tharpe sought to stop his execution which had been set for that night, writing in a Supreme Court filing that “racism played [a] pivotal role in his death sentence.” [US News article] (see Nov 6)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Trump Inquiry
September 26, 2019: according to a whistle-blower complaint, President Trump used the power of his office to try to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election to investigate a political rival “for personal gain,” Attorney General William P. Barr and the president’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani were central to the effort, the complaint said.
In addition, the complaint said that whistle-blower, an unidentified intelligence officer, learned from multiple American officials that “senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced as is customary by the White House Situation Room.” [NYT article]
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
Environmental Issues
September 26, 2021: the New York Times reported that when Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast with near 150 mile-per-hour winds on Aug. 30, it left a trail of destruction. The storm also triggered the most oil spills detected from space after a weather event in the Gulf of Mexico since the federal government started using satellites to track spills and leaks a decade ago. (next EI, see Sept 29)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History/Crime and Punishment
September 26, 2022: thousands of Alabama inmate workers began a labor strike to protest poor prison conditions across the state, where facilities were overcrowded, understaffed and notoriously dangerous.
The protest also called for broader criminal justice reforms. Diyawn Caldwell, the president of Both Sides of the Wall, an advocacy group, said the organization was coordinating the strike with inmates across the state and predicted that about 80 percent of the roughly 25,000 people in prison would participate in the strike, forgoing their usual jobs as cooks and cleaners. [NYT article] (next C & P, see July 21, 2023; next LH, see April 10, 2023)
US Labor History
September 26, 2023: President Biden traveled to Michigan to join a group of striking autoworkers on the picket line, the first time a sitting President had done such gesture of support to a labor union. [NYT article] (next LH, see Oct 4; auto strike, see Oct 30)
September 26 Peace Love Art Activism
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
