Monthly Archives: June 2016

#1 Song, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Rhythm and Blues

Aretha Franklin Respect

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Aretha Franklin Respect

Billboard #1 June 3 – June 30, 1967
Aretha Franklin Respect

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

Those of you who have visited the Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts know that the Main Gallery is not a Woodstock museum–as in a museum that recalls the “greatest festival of all time.”

The Main Gallery sets up that momentous 1969 event by walking visitors through the turbulent 60s: the civil rights movement, the space race, technological innovations, the Vietnam War, Beatlemania, the counterculture, assassinations, fashion, politics, the change in family, nationalism, and the many other of that era’s crucial hallmarks.

As guests get about halfway through, album covers appear. Of course until then the little records with big holes dominated sales. By the end of the decade, the big records with the little holes began to outsell singles.

Aretha Franklin Respect
I Never Loved A Man the Way That I Love You

Among the first half-dozen albums that are displayed is Aretha Franklin’s  breakthrough Atlantic Records debut album, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.  It is the featured image atop this post. The single by the same name was a hit for Franklin and Atlantic Records selected “Respect” (can anyone write that title thinking of the song without mentally singing the letters like Aretha?) as her next single.

It was #1 song from June 7 to June 17, 1967.

Aretha Franklin’s career never looked back after that.

Aretha Franklin Respect

Otis Redding

Otis Redding had written the song and released it as a single in the summer of 1965. The song did well commercially and helped establish his presence on radio waves’ white side.

He continued to sing his version of the song and included it in his amazing performance at the Monterey International Jazz and Pop Festival on June 17, 1967. It was during his introduction (listen above) that he says, “that a girl took away from me, a friend of mine, this girl she just took this song.”

Aretha Franklin Respect

Muscle Shoals

Columbia Records had recognized Aretha Franklin’s potential, but had not been able to translate it.  Ahmet Ertegun and his Atlantic Records found a way. He brought her to  Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Rick Hall’s FAME Studios.

Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin produced the record and Tom Dowd engineered it. The musicians were the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, aka, the Swampers: Cornell Dupree (guitar), Willie Bridges (sax), Charles Chalmers (sax), Roger Hawkins (drummer),Tommy Cogbill (bass), Dewey ‘Spooner’ Oldham (keyboards), and King Curtis (sax). Franklin’s sisters Carolyn and Erma were the backing vocals.

That group lighted the fuse that launched Franklin. The song went from Redding’s covert plea for sex when he got home to Franklin’s proclamation of freedom, demand for R E S P E C T.

Aretha Franklin Respect

Anthem

Not only did the song establish Franklin as a star, it became an anthem of the times for civil rights and women’s liberation. As an NPR story said, ” ‘Respect’ Wasn’t A Feminist Anthem Until Aretha Franklin Made It One.”

That is why that album cover display is so appropriate for the Main Gallery.

Thank you Aretha.

Aretha Franklin Respect
Fear of Rock, Music et al, Today in history

Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

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Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

Moma said, “Don’t go looking for trouble, or you’ll find it.”

And if you go looking for poltergeists you’ll find them, too.

By June 2, 1956 Fats Domino, Sam Phillips, Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88,” Alan Freed, Elvis, Bill Haley, the Blackboard Jungle, Little Richard, and other early R & B people were well on to inventing this new thing: Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

Fear of Rock

And like any new youth music craze (see the “godless” 16th century forbidden waltz), many adults looked to find a menace. It was easy to cast 1950s’ fears onto Rock. Conspiracy theorists could say Communists brought the music into America to weaken us. Other irrational and racist commentators claimed that the lazy promiscuous (both at the same time?!) Negro was the fault.

Or in California, Mexican-Americans.

And 1950 adults tried to stomp out the music and its suggestive dancing and lyrics.

Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

Zoot suit  

Pachuko (or pachuco) refers to a style of dressing that might be better known as the zoot suit.

Chuck Higgins

Chuck Higgins was born in Gary, Indiana on April 17, 1924. According to a Black Cat Rockabilly article, “His first choice of instrument was the trumpet, which he took up at he age of ten and at which he became considerably more proficient than he ever did at playing the tenor saxophone.”

He and his family moved to California in 1940 where he eventually became the leader and saxophonist of  Chuck Higgins & His Mellotones.

In 1952 he wrote “Pachuko Hop.” The song became a local hit.

Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

Santa Cruz dance show

Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

As was happening throughout the US, on June 2, 1956 there was a dance in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium featuring Chuck Higgins and his Orchestra. Police entered the auditorium just to check on the event, and what they found, according to Lieutenant Richard Overton, was a crowd “engaged in suggestive, stimulating and tantalizing motions induced by the provocative rhythms of an all-negro band.”

Lt. Overton shut down the dance.

The next day, June 3, 1956, Santa Cruz city authorities announced a total ban on rock and roll at public gatherings, calling the music “Detrimental to both the health and morals of our youth and community.”

Chuck Higgins Pachuko Hop

Woodstock


 4822 days later, 500,000 young people gathered on a Bethel, NY hay field to enjoy three days of music. On the second day Country Joe led them in a cheer.

Woodstock Music and Art Fair (photo by J Shelley)
Anniversary, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Dino Valenti Gets Together

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Dino Valenti Gets Together

“Let’s Get Together” is one of the 1960s’ most recognizable songs, particularly the version done by the Youngbloods.  We should also recognize the name Dino Valenti since it was he who penned the song.

Valenti may or may not have written another staple of the era, “Hey Joe.” There seems to be some fuzziness surrounding that. It may be a reworked traditional song or a song written by Billy Roberts and Len Partridge who “gave” the song to Valenti while Valenti was in jail (marijuana charges) to help Valenti financially.

To add to a bit of the confusion that can surround Valenti, one should also know that he was born Chester William “Chet” Powers, Jr.  on October 7, 1937 and was also known as a songwriter as Jesse Oris Farrow.

He was the lead singer of the outstanding Quicksilver Messenger Service.

dino valenti

Dino Valenti Gets Together

Kingston Trio

It was on this date, June 1, 1964 that the Kingston Trio released “Let’s Get Together” on their Back to Town album. If you were a Kingston Trio fan and bought the album, then you would have become familiar with the song.

The album reached #22 on Billboard Pop Album charts.

Kingston Trio singing “Let’s Get Together” from their Back in Town album.

Dino Valenti Gets Together

Dino Valenti 

Here is Dino Valenti singing the song himself:

Dino Valenti Gets Together

We Five

The We Five (of “You Were On My Mind” fame) covered the song in 1965, but it still didn’t catch on.

Dino Valenti Gets Together

Youngbloods

Even in 1967 when Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods did what became the definitive version, it did not do that well commercially– reaching #62 on the charts.

Fortuitously for the song and them, the song became part of a Public Service Announcement and re-energized their version which was re-released in 1969 and finally established deep roots in American music.

Dino Valenti died on November 16, 1994. He was 51.

Dino Valenti Gets Together