• Conservative society of the 1950s gave way to open social and political upheaval in the 1960s
• Musically, the decade was marked by the
Beatles (British Invasion).
• Movements: civil rights, antiwar, black power, student power, counterculture, & women’s rights
• New President – John F. Kennedy

• Civil rights activists avoided R&R music at first because its commercial side didn’t fit with their goals.
• Regional struggles for equity (mainly in the
South)

The Shirelles
• From Passaic, NJ
• Combined gospel with uptown r&b
• Will You Still Love Me
Tomorrow
• Dedicated to the One I Love
Phil Spector
• Producer at the lead of the
“girl group” phenomenon
• Controlled every aspect of the production process
• Righteous Brothers: You’ve
Lost That Lovin’ Feeling
• Blue-eyed Soul
George “Shadow” Morton
• Songwriter
• Wrote Leader of the Pack

• Primary task of African Americans during civil rights mvmt was to integrate into mainstream American life. This was how Motown developed and defined itself.
• Motown was the largest black-owned corporation in US, until 1988.
• Berry Gordy – founder of Motown
• All of Motown’s creative personnel were African American’s groomed for long careers.
• Musical formula = upbeat black pop that was irresistibly danceable and threatening to no one in tone or content
• 1961-1971, 100 singles in the pop Top 10
• Motown’s understanding of Top 40 radio format permitted it to produce so many hits.

Signed to Motown in 1964
Turned out five #1 singles in a row
Had a sleek, elegant image
Stop in the Name of Love

• Woodie Guthrie
– Wrote some of the country’s most enduring folk songs, This Land is Your Land
• Pete Seeger
• College educated, New York radical who saw music as a means for helping to mobilize a mass movement
• “Authentic” vs. “Commercial” in folk music

Bob Dylan
Openly challenged authentic vs. commercial
Born Robert Zimmerman, son of a Jewish middle-class family
Grew up in Hibbing, Michigan listening to a
1950s mixture of r&b, c&w, R&R, and pop
Signed to Columbia Records in 1962
Leader in the civil rights movement
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Performed at ‘March on Washington’
Transformed the lyric content of popular music
The Times They Are A-Changin’

• JFK assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. National mood of defeat and depression.
British Invasion started in 1964.
• The Beatles upbeat sound revitalized the nation’s mood.

The Beatles
• Charted 30 songs and released 6 best-selling albums in 1964 alone.
• From 1963-1968, they sold an estimated $154 million worth of records worldwide!
• Obscured all other talent.
• Covered many AA hits, but did so to pay tribute to those who influenced them.
• Brian Epstein – Manager of the Beatles
• “Fab Four” arrived in NYC on Feb. 7, 1964.
• I Want to Hold Your Hand
• A Hard Day’s Night
• Can’t Buy Me Love
• Beatlemania!

• 3 Cities
• Liverpool
– Beatles home town
– Created “skiffle”
• Manchester
– Herman’s Hermits
• London
– Manfred Man to Dusty Springfield
– The Kinks

The Animals The Rolling Stones
• House of the Rising Sun • Satisfaction
Lead to debate over white people singing the blues.
Only Motown acts survived the British Invasion.

• Beatles were made into middle-class family entertainment by their manager. Even parents liked them – they were “cute.”
• The Rolling Stones had the opposite image as menacing, street-toughened alternatives to the playful mop-tops.
• Both images were based on strategic career choices.

• Folk Rock
– The Byrds
• turned folk rock into a genre
• Recognized that rock could revitalize folk
• Mr. Tambourine Man
– Simon and Garfunkel
• Sounds of Silence
• Mrs. Robinson
• Bridge Over Troubled Water

• The Lovin’ Spoonful
– Do You Believe in Magic
– Summer in the City
• The Mamas and the Papas
– California Dreamin’
– Monday Monday
• Folk rock sounded very lighthearted.

• Challenged Motown’s power over black pop, recorded in Memphis
• Stax-Volt (Memphis, TN)
– Motown’s chief competitor founded c. 1960
• Wilson Pickett
– Signed to Atlantic in early 1960s
– In the Midnight Hour
– Land of 1000 Dances
– Hits were straight-ahead dance tunes

Aretha Franklin
• Signed to Atlantic in 1967
• Respect
• Crowned “Lady Soul” because she took the fusion of gospel and r&b to new heights
• Confirmed the slogan “Black is Beautiful”
James Brown
• Was called “Soul Brother
No. 1”
• His music was the ideal first sound of “funk” and significant for black pride
• (I Got You) I Feel Good

• The making of the counterculture was based on a rejection of the competitive, achievement-oriented culture surrounding them in favor of free-living, free-loving lifestyles and shared communities of choice.
• These citizens of counterculture were called
“hippies”
• San Francisco was the center of the hippie movement

Jefferson Airplane
• First group to get a major label contract and the first to get national exposure
• Somebody to Love
• White Rabbit
The Grateful Dead
• Never registered a Top 10 album or single until 1987
• Represented the counterculture to the rest of
America
• Jerry Garcia (band leader)
• Lived with their fans in the heart of the hippie scene
• Performed more free concerts than any band in the history of music

• The sense of community led bands to start naming themselves in the singular, instead of the plural.
• The music that emerged from Psychedelic
Rock came to be known as Acid Rock
– Swirling concert posters
– Art and light shows
– Colorful moving images

Cream
British Group
One of the first
Supergroups (groups that were comprised of top musicians from previously existing groups)
Eric Clapton – guitar
Sunshine of Your Love

Janis Joplin
Prominent as one of the few white female blues singers in San Francisco
Lived for the moment
A symbol of rebellion for millions of white middleclass teens
Died of a heroine overdose in 1970
Me and Bobby McGee
Mercedes Benz

• Peaked during the 1967 “Summer of Love”
• Scott McKenzie advised young people heading to San
Francisco to “wear some flowers in your hair”
• “Flower Power” became the hippie’s slogan
• Showed the gentler, perhaps more female, side of resistance

• Held June 16-18, 1967 at the
Monterey Fairgrounds in CA
• The perfect opening event of the
Summer of Love
• The first huge rock festival (30,000 fans in attendance)
• Launched the careers of the Who,
Jimi Hendrix, and Otis Redding
• Got Janis Joplin a contract with
Clive Davis of CBS Records

• A platform for the politics of its supporters
– The Byrd’s, He Was A Friend of Mine
– The Animals, We Gotta Get Out of This Place

Jimi Hendrix
Left-handed African American virtuoso guitar player from
Seattle
Made it big in England first, then came over with his trio (The Jimi
Hendrix Experience)
After performing at Monterey Pop
Festival, he toured as the opening act for The Monkees
Died unexpectedly in 1970
Songwriter and pioneered adding distortion and feedback into popular music
His version of Bob Dylan’s All
Along the Watchtower

• Took 8 months to make the album
• It epitomized all the creativity and excess of the counterculture
• Was the first concept album
– An album designed as a coherent whole with each song moving seamlessly into the next

The Doors
Avatars of the darker side (exact opposite of the Beatles)
Signed to Elektra in 1967
First hit single was Break on
Through (To the Other Side)
Became the #1 teenybopper band in the country with Light My Fire
Performed on the Ed Sullivan
Show
Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, most probably from a druginduced heart attack
Riders on the Storm

• 1968 – Tet Offensive in Vietnam
• MLK Assassinated (April 4, 1968) just after the Kerner
Commission on Civil Disorders
– Provoked violent reactions in over 100 American cities
– James Brown joins gov. as “Ambassador to the Streets”
• Robert Kennedy murdered
• Aretha Franklin’s version of Young, Gifted, and Black
• NOW (National Organization for Women) was founded in 1966
• Counterculture split into two groups
– Revolution by the Beatles in 1968
– Imagine by John Lennon

• Woodstock Music and Art Fair
– August 1969 on Max Yasgur’s
600-acre farm in Bethel, NY
– Expected 50,000 people, but got 7-8 times that number
– Road blocked; not enough food, water, medical facilities, bathrooms…then it began to rain!
– The counterculture’s finest hour
• No violence and spirit of cooperation

• Jimi Hendrix – version of the Star Spangled
Banner
• Santana
– Guitar
• Sly and the Family Stone
– Dance Hits

Crosby, Stills, and
Nash
Supergroup who started in
1968
Song Ohio
Members had freedom to work on solo projects

• Held at Altamont Speedway just outside San
Francisco, CA in 1969
• Many problems…a lot of violence…