'50 Freakout!

Writing over at The Gray Flannel Suit--er, The Weekly Standard--Brian Murray reviews David Castronovo's new literary history of the 1950s and realizes that you couldn't swing a dead cat with hitting a beatnik, a gentleman junkie, or a something cooler than ice:

Change was in the air, on a thousand fronts. Network television, air conditioning, computers, jet travel, a national highway system, chain hotels, franchised fast food: The country shrank as business boomed. Cultural and intellectual life was no less dynamic, as Eero Saarinen designed buildings, Elia Kazan made movies, Arthur Miller wrote plays, and John Coltrane blew his horn. Political journals thrived in a Cold War climate where much was at stake: Commentary, Politics, Partisan Review, National Review. From our current perspective, American culture of the fifties looks both daring and substantial, assured and adult. No wonder it excited the world.

Whole story here.

Fifties' revisionism isn't new: I reviewed a book about it called Seeds of the Sixties a decade ago (so old the review isn't even online!) and writers such as Thomas Doherty have created complex pictures of the decade simply by paying attention to its cultural artifacts.

But the revisionism is always welcome (and important), as it enriches the understanding of the current moment.

Comments

[D Anghelone]

But the revisionism is always welcome...

Good. It's worth noting that the luminaries of the sixties era near all came of age in the fifties. Those coming of age in the sixties era carried forward the sterility of a sterile era.

Take the whiter-than-white music, for instance. Black artists were disproportionately represented in fifties music and near absent in the pale-'n-frail sixties. As devastated as the inner-city neighborhoods they inhabited.

[aaron]

Black artists were near absent in the sixties? You're kidding, right? James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Sam Cooke...

[D Anghelone]

James Brown? Aretha Franklin? Sam Cooke?

How old are you, aaron?

[D Anghelone]

Furthermore...

Hendrix was called a sellout, an oreo and so on. Redding and Gaye were not that prominent. Redding is still going for being a senior on the lefty circuit.

Do you know of any black people who go ga-ga over the sixties as do some simpering white boys? For anything other than Great Society legislation or Black Nationalism, that is.

[dhex]

it's also an indicator of aging. everyone who came before thinks the new stuff is either old hat or terribly wicked.

[aaron]

Do you know of any black people who go ga-ga over the sixties as do some simpering white boys?
What does that have to do with anything? You wrote black artists were near-absent in the sixties. I disagree, and listed some prominent black artists from the sixties. Does my age somehow affect the existence of James Brown and Aretha Franklin? And what the hell does "Redding is still going for being a senior on the lefty circuit" mean?

[D Anghelone]

You wrote black artists were near-absent in the sixties. I disagree, and listed some prominent black artists from the sixties.

Look up the age of those people and when they came along. If you'd mentioned someone like James Brown or Aretha Franklin to the sixties heads you'd have been laughed out of the room. Either you weren't there or you were oblivious to what was going on.

[gaius marius]

everyone who came before thinks the new stuff is either old hat or terribly wicked.

that's too simple, mr dhex. recall that a concept fundamental to the intelletuals of the renaissance was that of progress -- that things could and would improve over time -- and massively different from the platonic/catholic idea that time was a steady decline from the ideal form (which took hold in the declining roman age).

that idea has been victorious -- to the point where the new as wicked is largely confined to the corners of society now -- technology has brought most educated people to believe that what is new is best. that is a deep change from most of western history, in which change was profoundly opposed by the majority of the educated and critical. antitraditionalism is epidemic these days; effective exclusionary criticism is all but dead; plebiscitarian ideology and perpetual revolution is what sells.

the growing sentiment in the late 19th/20th c among the intellectuals that everything is done -- that the new is strained and fraudulent -- has a voice at all times (as does traditionalism). it's when it becomes the widespread viewpoint among the intellectuals that change has occurred -- and that has been the last century.

no one really thought of decadence as an idea in the modern era until voltaire. it didn't become a philosophical conception until the mid-19th c. it took nietzsche in the late 19th to finally conflate western morality and tradition with the negation of life. world war one drove it home. all since has been decline for the west, i would argue.

[Jim Walsh]

(Sung doo-wop style)

If the Fifties were so great
Why did the Sixties have to set the world straight?
If Elvis and Buddy and Jerry Lee were really so cool then/
Why is just one out of three still livin'?
(If that's livin')
With fins on cars as big as tanks
We saved the world and got no thanks
It's easy to foget just how it was
I'm glad it's not the Fifties now because...

The Fifties sucked
The Fifties sucked
They really sucked the big one
You would t-o-o-o-o-o-o...

(Pinkard and Bowden)

[Franklin Harris]

The '70s school you all.

[aaron]

Aretha Franklin put out 1 album in the 50s. In 1960 she was 18. James Brown put out 2 albums in the late 50s. Or were you just talking about the late 60s?
And no, I wasn't there, but again, I don't how that has any relevance to a)the undeniable fact that James Brown, Aretha Franklin, etc. are black b)the undeniable fact that they are artists and c)the undeniable fact that their first major bodies of work came in the 60s.

[D Anghelone]

Jim Walsh,

It's not a matter of fifties versus sixties but of reality versus myth.

[D Anghelone]

aaron,

The "Sixties Era" is best said to have been from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies. Believe as you will but you clearly have no feel for what was the intolerance of the sixties heads. Singers like Brown and Franklin were disparaged.

[aaron]

My bad, I didn't realize we were defining the 60s as 1965-1975.

[joe]

So now Danglehorn has gone from the time period of the 1960s, to a subcultural movement whose arc included some years in the 1960s, to a definition of "the sixties" that excludes part of the 60s while encompassing part of the 70s.

I think the problem is the authors are all talking about a chronological period, while Dangle is talking about a boogeyman. "You remember the 60s, right dude? When John Kerry betrayed his country and no one listened to soul music?"

[J1]

D Anghelone

We probably know very different 60's heads. Of all the 60's heads I know (And I know a lot, and they still go out wearing chelsea boots, skinny ties, and 3 button suits, riding vespas in their 30's) about half are into the garage/psych rock, and the other half are into 60's soul and ska. I don't see the disdain for soul and african-american artists that you do.

[dhex]

gaius, you gotta be kidding. set up a coin jar and drop a quarter in it every time you hear a variation on "goddamn kids these days, with their baggy pants and their rap music" etc. you can buy me a bouquet at the end of the week.

or perhaps i have far more eavesdropping hours than you do per week due to public transportation?

much less arguments about stem cells, sci-fi laden fearmongerings about cloning, etc.

[D Anghelone]

So now Danglehorn has gone from the time period of the 1960s, to a subcultural movement whose arc included some years in the 1960s, to a definition of "the sixties" that excludes part of the 60s while encompassing part of the 70s.

Why shoehorn a cultural phenomenon into an arbitrary time period? The fifties era gathered steam after the Korean War and the sixties era after JFK.

Do you think the butchering of my name more serves my cause or yours, joe?

[aaron]

Why shoehorn a cultural phenomenon into an arbitrary time period?

Why overlook a large body of work just because the people you hung out with didn't like it? You can tell me "you weren't there, you don't know what you're talking about" all you want, but someone was buying all those Motown records.

[D Anghelone]

I don't see the disdain for soul and african-american artists that you do.

Now is not then. Or pre-then.

Pre-then, a man always held a door for a women. Unless the woman in question was black. And this was not in Birmingham but in NYC. You never held a door for another man as that was tantamount to calling him a twat. Times change though the same people may share them.

BTW - I did hold doors for black women and noted the varied reactions to that. Quite an affront to the status quo.

[D Anghelone]

...someone was buying all those Motown records.

Not everyone was a sixties head. In fact, the "hippies", "heads", etc. were never more than a small minority.

[D Anghelone]

Furthermore...

I hold with my contention that black Americans were in many ways marginalized in the period of and by the events of the sixties.

We libertarians haven't come to revere the Great Society schtick, have we?

[aaron]

Not everyone was a sixties head. In fact, the "hippies", "heads", etc. were never more than a small minority.

That's pretty much the point I'm making. You're the one who has been equating "the sixties" with "sixties heads."

[D Anghelone]

That's pretty much the point I'm making. You're the one who has been equating "the sixties" with "sixties heads."

"Sixties music" mostly dismissed and alienated blacks and sixties music was where the money was. Bobby "Blue" Bland still performed but for relative nickles and dimes in black enclaves. Ditto for the Isley Brothers and others. Much the same but worse, the black urban neighborhoods went to hell.

There was a time when libertarian publications detailed the destruction of the black neighborhoods.

[aaron]

Ok, I'm talking about music made in the years between 1960 and 1970. You're talking about "sixties music." Let's just leave it at that.

[Gary Gunnels]

Black artists were disproportionately represented in fifties music and near absent in the pale-'n-frail sixties.

Soul music was quite popular in the 1960s.

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_music):

During the 1960s, soul music was popular among blacks in the US, and among many mainstream listeners throughout the United States and Europe. Artists like "Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and the "Godfather of Soul" James Brown have had enduring careers. Other prominent soul performers of the period were Bobby Bland, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Bobby Womack, Ike and Tina Turner, Etta James, Jerry Butler, Jackie Wilson, Sam and Dave, Percy Sledge and Joe Tex. Most blue-eyed soul artists, like the Righteous Brothers, achieved only short-term success. One notable exception has been vocalist Michael McDonald.

[linguist]

Do you know of any black people who go ga-ga over the sixties as do some simpering white boys?

Yup. Plenty! Visit Detroit and talk to anyone over 35.

[D Anghelone]

Yup. Plenty! Visit Detroit and talk to anyone over 35.

I'll pass on the Detroit trip and ask you what they like about the sixties. What do they like?

[D Anghelone]

During the 1960s, soul music was popular among blacks in the US, and among many mainstream listeners throughout the United States and Europe.

Blacks.

Mainstream.

What's your point?

[aaron]

The point is that, contrary to your first post and regardless of what time period the "sixties" actually inhabits, black artists were not near absent in popular music. Is that really so hard to understand?

[Jesse Walker]

Furthermore, soul music was very big in the 1965-1975 period. It was mostly released on singles, not albums; it was more frequently heard on AM than on FM; but it was most certainly there. I'd argue that those years overlap the golden age of R&B.

Aretha Franklin's period recording at Muscle Shoals -- the most popular, most fruitful, most fondly remembered part of her career -- began in 1967. James Brown was a dominant figure in black music into the '70s. Otis Redding had his biggest hit in 1967, right after he died. Marvin Gaye recorded What's Going On in 1971.

In fact, the only person on Aaron's list who peaked before 1965 was Sam Cooke.

[D Anghelone]

Jesse,

You are saying that black artists were as prominent in the sixties era as they were in the fifties? You are saying that black artists were as prominent vis-a-vis white artists? If not then what are you saying?

[Jesse Walker]

I'm saying they were there, they were making great music, and they were immensely popular.

And that the black artists Aaron listed were indeed stars in the '60s, in most cases even if you revise the '60s to mean "1965-1975."

[kevrob]

There's a reason that soul and r&b artists, most of them African-American, were both extremely popular and seemingly eclipsed by white rockers in the sixth decade of the 20th century. Recorded music sales exploded during that period, both because the extended adolescence of the boomers meant that the youth demo had more ready spending cash to "waste" on stacks of wax, even as other forms of selling tunes - via sheet music, frex - had been on a decline since the introduction of radio, and because there were just so many of them. I knew teens in the 60s and into the 70s who had acquired massive record collections, either because their parents gave generous allowances or because that's how they chose to spend the money they earned at after school jobs. My high school had a not-unsubstantial group of stoners who all stocked shelves late into the night at a local A&P supermarket so they always had ready cash for weed, beer, records and concert tickets. OK, maybe they just stole the beer. An oddly bourgeois reaction to the music of rebellion.

I can't understand anyone who would draw a circle around "sixties music" that would leave out the Temps, Smokey and the Supremes, not to mention Sly Stone, or the Stax artists. I was just a grammar school kid in "the 60s", but the trendmongers aimed artists specifically at us, where in the 40s and 50s they marketed toward the bobby soxers and manufactured "teen idols". [Examples: The Jackson 5 and The Beatles both had Saturday morning animated cartoons. Notice that one act was black, with a lead singer our age.]

From the late 60s to the 70s there was a market segmentation, as radio programmers drop "black artists" from "white" FM rock radio, though it never left Top 40. This was the leading edge of today's narrowcasting strategy, where PDs expect listeners to tune into stations where they will never be frightened by a song that strays outside of the openly proclaimed format. Since their companies probably own several outlets in the same market programmed exactly so that WROK can capture the ears of anyone not satisfied with what KRAP is pumping out, they kinda count on that. In the 60s, both Top 40 AMers and free-form FMers tried to cast a wide net, one of the popular, the other of the eclectic.

There were other tell-tales of the loss of mass culture experiences. With the death of the TV variety show of the Ed Sullivan type, one wasn't as likely to see different kinds of pop music acts on the same bill. General circulation magazines started dying then, too.

I'm going to read the Standard article eventually, but how different is it from something like Jeff Hart's When The Going Was Good?

Kevin

[Twba]

Narrowcasting is a good business strategy. I just moved to a town where the top three stations are owned by Clear Channel. Meanwhile, the station with the eclectic playlist is buried in the ratings. Many people want to avoid hearing something new.

[D Anghelone]

...if you revise the '60s to mean "1965-1975."

Reality knows no calendar.

People sure get worked up about pop music. Not a one bit at the mentions of the inner cities or delved into any other social or economic aspect of the fifties or sixties.

Gillespie would do well to flesh this out:

"But the revisionism is always welcome (and important), as it enriches the understanding of the current moment."

What does he, or any Reasonoid, understand to be the current movement?

[Jesse Walker]

I think what works people up is seeing someone make a statement that is demonstrably untrue.

[aaron]

Yes, that, and then being told since I wasn't there, I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about.