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Beat generation, Cold War, Today in history

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

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Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

April 2, 1958
Bosheviks Sputniks Beatniks
Cartoon about the Bolsheviks

 

Jack Kerouac Reads from “On The Road”
Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Bolshevik Revolution

When the Bolshevik Revolution began in 1917, the western economies viewed the uprising as a threat to their capitalistic systems. The Bolsheviks challenged the notion of private property, private business, and personal self-determination.

When the nuclear arms race began after World War II, exemplified in particular between the United State and the Soviet Union, propaganda on both sides successfully demonized their enemy.

We Americans associated the suffix “-ik” with Communism and thus with evil intentions. When Senator Joseph McCarthy announced that he had incontrovertible evidence of Communist infiltration into the government and the arts, he launched hearings through the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Committees hearings and accusations damaged the careers of dozens of American citizens.

A corollary of the US-Soviet arms race was the space race. While on paper it looked like a race to get humans into space, the unspoken government goal was to design a nuclear weapon delivery system. 

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Sputnik

On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and Americans had  another Communist -ick to hate (NYT article).

replica of Spunik 1 at US Air and Space Museum
Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

The Beats

In reaction to the horrors of World War II and the increasing emphasis of the American Dream equaling American Consumerism (the antithesis of Soviet Communism), some young Americans like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady (future hippie and driver of Furthur), and many others developed a literary view and philosophy that de-emphasized conspicuous consumerism.

They deliberately did not fit in.  According to the Wikipedia entry, “Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase “Beat Generation” in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York.” Oxford Dictionaries site.

Bosheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Beatnik

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks
Herb Caen

Traditionalists already viewed the Beats with suspicion when Herb Caen, a well-known and popular San Francisco Examiner journalist, published a column on April 2, 1958 in which he wrote, “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s beat generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!) hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only beat, y’know, when it comes to work.”

The term took hold immediately and the San Francisco Beats, already discriminated against, now carried the additionally negative Communist association.

Bosheviks Sputniks BeatniksEver ready to take advantage of a popular coinage, the media was able to convert the negative image of the beatnik into one to ridicule and have fun with. The Halloween costume.  The TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in which Bob Denver played Maynard G Krebs, the lazy air-head beatnik. Denver’s acting career, as successful as it was, never recovered as his even more successful character on Gilligan’s Island  is simply the same beatnik without the costume.Beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Music et al, Roots of rock, Today in history

Chuck Berry Johnny B Goode

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Chuck Berry Johnny B Goode

released March 31, 1958
Chuck Berry Johnny B Goode
45 rpm of Johnny B Goode

“Johnny B Goode was not Chuck Berry’s first hit. He had topped the R & B charts with his first single, “Maybellene”  in 1955.  “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956) hit #2; “Too Much Monkey Business” (1956) #4; “School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes the Bell)” #1 in 1957.

And in 1957 he’d already had a R & B #1 with “Sweet Little Sixteen.”

Chuck Berry Johnny B Goode

Johnny B Goode

Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” was mostly autobiographical, though he was actually born in St Louis, not deep down in Louisiana close to New New Orleans way back up in the woods among the evergreens. But his St Louis street address was 2520 Goode Avenue. Love that trivia.

It is a song about the American Dream. It is about hope. That talent will prove out.

His mother told him “Someday you will be a man,
And you will be the leader of a big old band.
Many people coming from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun go down
Maybe someday your name will be in lights
Saying “Johnny B. Goode tonight.”

The song has become American icon covered by dozens of performers and with Chuck’s sad death on March 18, 2017 we must carry his torch.

The song is ranked as number seven on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Many write of the similarity of Johnny B Goode’s opening to Louis Jordan’s “Ain’t That Just Like a Woman.” You can decide.

Berry’s recording of the song was included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft.

Keith Richards inducted Chuck Berry into the first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 23, 1986.

His bio from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sums up Chuck Berry’s contributions: 

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Berry arguably did more than anyone else to put the pieces together. As rock journalist Dave Marsh wrote, “Chuck Berry is to rock and roll what Louis Armstrong is to jazz.” On “Maybellene” – Berry’s first single, released in 1955 – he played country & western guitar licks over a base of rhythm & blues. The distorted sound of Berry’s guitar captured the rough, untamed spirit of rock and roll. The song included a brief but scorching solo built around his trademark double-string guitar licks. It kicked off Berry’s career in style and paved the way for a steady stream of classics over the next decade.

Berry died on March 18, 2017. (NYT obit)

Chuck Berry Johnny B Goode
Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Road From Woodstock To Bethel

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Road From Woodstock To Bethel

Road From Woodstock To Bethel
photo by J Shelley

Woodstock Haze

Many people visit the town of Woodstock, NY to find Max and Miriam Yasgur’s farm because of the oft told, but inaccurate, story:  that is where the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was.

Another inaccuracy is that the town of Woodstock denied Woodstock Venture’s request to hold it  in the town itself.

Keep in mind that Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld‘s original idea (one that Kornfeld has said was actually his wife’s idea) was to create a recording studio in Woodstock. Many musicians lived in, near, the often visited the town.

Though Bob Dylan was the most notable among those musicians, Bob’s band, The Band, was there of course and others included Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, John Sebastian, and even Jimi Hendrix.

(As an aside, it continues to confuse me why Lang and Kornfeld thought of studio would be a good idea when Albert Grossman was already doing just that and his Bearsville Studios would open in 1970.)

Lang and Kornfeld had proposed the studio idea to John Roberts and Joel Rosenman (already involved in Media Sound) in early February.

Road From Woodstock To Bethel

Woodstock Ventures

Their company, Woodstock Ventures, formed on February 28, 1969 (legally minus Kornfeld who was under contract to Capitol Records). Their general goals were to:

  1. a recording studio in Woodstock
  2. a music festival in nearby Saugerties (~ 10 miles away)
Road From Woodstock To Bethel

Rapid plans

In a month, things happened quickly regarding the festival’s site.

  1. March 29, 1969, Michael Lang had found a suitable site in Saugerties, NY right off the NY Thruway. On this date, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman met with a Mr Holmes, the lawyer for the site’s owner, Mr Shaler. The lawyer emphatically told Roberts and Rosenman that the site was not for rent for such a purpose.
  2. March 30, 1969, after the Saugerties refusal, Roberts and Rosenman spoke to Howard Mills about a piece of land in Wallkill, NY that Mills was going to develop. Mills agreed to rent the site for the festival.

You will notice that the town of Woodstock was not part of the festival’s picture. It did not “refuse” or “kick out” Woodstock Ventures. And the owner of the proposed Saugerties site simply refused.

In other words. The…

Road to Woodstock

was actually the…

Road to Wallkill

which actually led to the…

Road to White Lake

but really to...

Bethel

Road From Woodstock To Bethel
photo by J Shelley
Road From Woodstock To Bethel