Category Archives: Today in history

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

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

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Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

After the Beatles and Beatlemania arrived in the US in 1964, American TV producers realized that prime time musical variety shows aimed at the Boomer youth market would be a good investment.

Shindig!

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives
photo from: http://ctva.biz/Music/US/Shindig.htm

Of course, Dick Clark already had his afternoon American Bandstand. The folk craze was fading and in September 1964, ABC TV entered with it’s Shindig! It succeeded. At least for awhile.

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

Hullabaloo

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives
photo from: http://www.klru.org/program/60s-pop-flashback-hullabaloo-my-music/

On January 8, 1965,  in response to Shindig!, NBC TV premiered Hullabaloo. The first show included performances by The New Christy Minstrels, comedian Woody Allen, actress Joey Heatherton and a segment from London in which Brian Epstein introduced The Zombies and Gerry & the Pacemakers.

Here’s a retrospective on Shindig!

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

Mamas and Papas

Here’s a recording of the Mamas and Papas appearance on Hullabaloo. Is the scenery of  those several bath tubs trying to tell us something?

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

Joey Heatherton

And on August 29, 1966, Hullabaloo ended. While the hunk Robert Goulet may have been OK for viewers,  the far too sexy for prime time Joey Heatherton might be sending the wrong message–for some. For others, they couldn’t get enough of her message for some!

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

Where the Action Is

Linda Scott and Steve Alaimo

Shindig! and Hullabaloo were both evening shows, but kids coming home from school also had a show: Where the Action Is.

Dick Clark created the show which premiered on June 28, 1965 (close on the heels of Shindig! and Hullabaloo).

Linda Scott and Steve Alaimo, hosted the show and sang numbers between guest performances. A typical show featured two or three performers lip-synching their recent hits with the teenage audience clapping along.  There was usually a segment that featured the Action dancers, too.

 

Ratings and opinions

But prime time TV is a difficult place for rock and roll.  Even in the mid-60s, rock’s unwashed rough image was still seen as vulgar. Ironically, exactly a year later on January 8, 1966, ABC aired Shindig!’s last show.

Afternoons aren’t any easier. Lasting a bit longer than Shindig! and Hullabaloo, ABC cancelled Where the Action Is on March 31, 1967.

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives

Hullabaloo Departs Monkees Arrive

What replaced Hullabaloo? On September 12, 1966, enter the Monkees.

Why such short-lived runs for a shows that seemed to have such guaranteed success? It is part of TV culture to keep shows only as long as they are very successful. Mediocre ratings are rarely tolerated, particularly if someone thinks they have a better idea.

Also those pesky Beatles were changing the rules.

  1. On the same day that Shindig! ended, the Beatles latest album, Rubber Soul, became the Billboard #1 album.
  2. Also on the same day, those same Beatles had another #1 single with We Can Work It Out.
  3. And on the day that Where the Action Is ended, The Jimi Hendrix Experience played at the London Astoria.  At the end his set, Hendrix, for the first time, lit his Fender Stratocaster on fire.

Link with a bit more info about Hullabaloo >>> KLRU article

Beatlemania Arrives Hullabaloo Arrives
Today in history, Vietnam

Draft Resistance Indicted

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Draft Resistance Indicted

Indictments

On January 5, 1968 Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced the indictment five men: author and pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, the chaplain of Yale University Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., 23-year-old Harvard University graduate student Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, 44, of New York and Temple, Me., and Marcus Raskin, 33, of Washington, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a private research organization on charges of conspiring to counsel young men to violate the draft laws. (NYT article)

Draft Resistance Indicted
l – r: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber

According to the indictment, Dr. Spock, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Raskin, and Mr. Goodman agreed to sponsor a nationwide draft-resistance program that would include disrupting the induction processes at various induction centers, making public appeals for young men to resist the draft and to refuse to serve in the military services and issuing calls for registrants to turn in their draft cards.

The government accused the men of having violated Title 50, Section 462(A) of the United States Code Appendix, a section of the Universal Military Training and Service Act that dates to World War I. It declared that any person was guilty of violating the law if he “knowingly counsels, aids, or abets another to refuse or evade registration or service in the armed forces” or if he “shall knowingly hinder or interfere or attempt to do so in any way, by force or violence or otherwise,” with the administration of the draft. It also makes it a crime to conspire to commit these acts.

Draft Resistance Indicted

Draft resistance increases

On January 12, 1968, the New York Times reported that,  The Government disclosed…that more young men were prosecuted and convicted last year for draft violations than in any year since World War II. (Draft convictions)

On May 12, 1968 a jury was selected. It was an all-male jury (Jury selected).

Draft Resistance Indicted

Four guilty

On June 14, 1968, the jury found the four men guilty.

On July 10, 1968, Judge Francis J W Fort sentenced the four men to two years in prison

On July 11, 1969, because of insufficient evidence of a conspiracy, “The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed today the convictions of Dr. Benjamin Spock and three other men who were found guilty in 1968 of conspiring to counsel evasion of the draft.”

Draft Resistance Indicted
Music et al, Today in history

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

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Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

Sam Phillips

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

There are many dates offered for the birth of rock and roll, but certain dates unarguably made rock possible.

One: Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service on January 3, 1950.

Two: in April 1951, Phillips recorded “Rocket 88″ by  Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, a song considered by many to be the first Rock and Roll song.

Three: on January 4, 1954 while still working as a truck driver, Elvis Presley went to the Sam Phillips to record a song for his mother’s birthday which was many months away. He recorded “It Wouldn’t Be The Same Without You” and “I’ll Never Stand In Your Way.” It was this recording that would lead Phillips to call Presley back to record for his Sun Records label. The receipt is dated Jan. 6, but the date of the recording was Jan. 4.

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service
Receipt (found at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/497858933781499894/)
Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

Alabama kid

When growing up in Alabama, Sam Phillips had been exposed to all types of music, but he loved the blues sound he’d heard traveling through Memphis, Tennessee’ Beale Street. When he opened the Memphis Recording Service he followed that lead and recorded such Black performers as B.B. King, Junior Parker, and Howlin’ Wolf. Phillips then would sell their performances to larger record labels.

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

MRS

According to the  the Kitchen Sisters, “Before Elvis walked through the door, before Sun Studios put Memphis on the map—Sam Phillips, a young man with a tape recorder, lived by the motto, “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” Weddings, funerals, marching bands, the Miss Memphis Pageant—Sam recorded them all—anything to keep his fledgling Memphis Recording Service open to record Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Little Junior, Ike Turner, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley. The raw and rocking, unrecorded music of the 1950s South. (to listen to the Kitchen Sisters’ excellent podcast on Phillips >>> Kitchen Sisters)

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

Sun Records

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service

In 1952 Phillips started Sun Records. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame site his company released 226 singles during its 16 years and “…That figure doesn’t include the 71 singles released on Sun’s sister label, Phillips International!) Those 45s and 78s with the familiar Sun logo amount to a treasure of music whose greatest moments mark the spot where rock and roll originated and thrived in all its frantic, wild-eyed abandon. “We’re all crazy,” Phillips has said of himself and his charges at Sun. “But it’s a type of insanity that borders on genius. I really feel that. To be as free as you have to be for any kind of music, you almost have to be in another dimension. And to do the broad expanse of rock and roll takes an element of mind expansion that people less creative would term insanity.” (form more >>> Rock and Roll Hall of Fame site)

So important was Sam Phillips’s impact on the history or Rock and Roll, he was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

For more about Phillips, the Memphis Recording Service, and Sun records, watch this excellent video history:

Sam Phillips Memphis Recording Service