Why our music has endured
As a musician and recovering lawyer, I’m taking a dive into why I hardly play any songs younger than 35 years old.
It’s not just that this old fart kinda stopped listening to pop music some years ago; it relates to the wonderfulness of the music of the ‘50s/’60s/’70s. I’d be the last to argue that that music was somehow superior to today’s. But its border-crossing had lasting effects.
White kids started listening to R&B/soul, thanks in no small part to the legendary DJ Alan Freed. Before you knew it, that music was affecting the young genre called rock ‘n’ roll, in the U.S. and across the pond. (See, for example, some Liverpudlian band which thought it cute to use a punny name that linked music and insects.)
Al Green
And the black music we Caucasoids were exposed to? Amazing. See Motown, Memphis, Philly, Chicago, Sam Cooke and more. The likes of Al Green, The Impressions, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Jimmy Ruffin, The Four Tops, The Miracles, The Isley Brothers, The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Sam Cooke..
What a mashup it inspired! Add to that the wonderful folk music that entered listeners ears after said genre was declared safe and non-Commie post-McCarthy (and we ain’t talkin’ bout Eugene). Suddenly folks were swaying to the likes of that guy who changed his handle from Zimmerman to that of some Welsh poet, and Peter, Paul and Mary, who stole their name from vaunted early Christians, Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs.
Try listening, for instance, to The Times They Are A-Changin’, If I Had a Hammer, High Sheriff of Hazard and I Ain’t Marching Anymore.
Grateful Dead, 1970
Then came the drugs that caused the music of the Grateful Dead and others to mesmerize Gen Whatever. Maybe it was an unprecedented music moment!
That doesn’t mean musicians stopped creating great music post-the-hippie era. It just means there are, given the post-WW II birth explosion, enough of us boomers left to make our bragging loud re: “our” music.
I’m sure growing up in Philly the son of lefty lib ‘rents who loved folk music, including the topical variety, had much to do with folk/Americana/bluegrass/old time/early country on the one hand, and soul/R&B on the other, being at the top of my charts. There’s something about the soulfulness of those genres that grabbed me and never let me go.
Here’s to good tunes!