It sounds bizarre but before you read this entry, WATCH THIS VIDEO. It takes two minutes.
Now we can start.
My conversion to rock was a two-step dance. First the Beatles. That was in 1964. Then, Hendrix. ’67.
The Beatles: “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964)
THE BEATLES It wasn’t that I was against rock music. I just didn’t listen to it. There were too many other musics to listen to. I bought records: they just didn’t include rock. And since neither Esther nor I had a television, we didn’t see the Beatles debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in February, 1964.
Our introduction to the Beatles –for both of us– was going to a movie, A Hard Day’s Night. We saw it the month it opened, August 1964. I bought the album the week after. Some of the songs on the album were great, some not so much, but if you skipped the soundtrack instrumentals, the album was terrific. And for us, it was new.
That didn’t make me an instant convert to rockdom, just to the Beatles, but by the time I moved to New York to live with Esther the following year, it was hard to avoid rock. Rock was the flavor of the year (soon of the decade). I was taking courses for my master’s at NYU then. My classes were at the Washington Square campus. Once, twice, three, sometimes four times a week, I took the subway down to the Village, got off and walked across to the Square. There were performers everywhere. Some were bad, some good. But you couldn’t avoid hearing them and the music they played.
Still, until we left New York two years later, the Hard Day’s Night album was the only rock album we owned and we didn’t go to rock clubs or rock concerts. Not yet.
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That changed in ’67. I’ve written already about the Balloon Farm –Jeremy and the Satyrs and The Free Spirits. That was in the spring of 1967.
Mahalia Jackson: “Come on children, let’s sing”, Easter Concert (1967)
MAHALIA That Easter, we went to Lincoln Center to hear the transcendent gospel singer Mahalia Jackson perform along with her lifetime accompanist, Mildred Falls, on organ and piano. By then, Mahalia was ailing. She had trouble breathing and her voice was weaker than it had been but it was still vibrant and her music lifted the soul.
Esther and I have often talked about what’s involved in singing. I say that you don’t have to have perfect pitch or even a beautiful sound to be a superior singer because singing is communicating. Communicate sincerely and with feeling and you can make music. Feel the song inside, then talk it out. Louis Armstrong never had a classic voice and it got raspier and more curtailed over time. Billie Holiday’s voice was a shell of its former glory by the end of her life. Listen to her last album, Lady in Satin (1957). It’s painful to hear her voice but she still grabs you, even through the soppy string accompaniment that Columbia saw fit to lay on for the album. Rex Harrison never even tried to sing. He just talked while the melody played behind him. And listen to the late recordings of Tom (Antonio Carlos) Jobim with Paula Morelenbaum –Jobim had a pleasant sound and a way with phrasing but he never had much of a voice. Nor does Tom Ze’.
Singing is talking … communicating a meaning to another someone. It’s a bridge between us and akin to acting.
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In April 1967 I learned that I’d been accepted into the Ph. D. program in history at Yale. I was out of my mind with excitement but it came at a price which wasn’t paid by me but by Esther. That same month, she learned she’d been cast in the first national touring company for Fiddler on the Roof, singing in the chorus and backing up the actress playing Fumisera the witch, with one solo song. She would be on the road for at least two years, maybe longer. We’d been married two and a half years by then which really isn’t very long. I was scared about her being away that long but told her I’d back her if she wanted to go. After thinking about it, she elected not to go.
If I could now, I’d take back that moment and gently urge her to accept the offer. She had talent. She needed an opportunity to be heard. This might have given it to her.
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We celebrated our impending departure from the city by attending a pops concert by the New York Philharmonic. It came with a dinner and we went with our friends the Coldirons and the Gallaghers, John and Kay, Bob and Marty. The orchestra played the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, with a young violinist whose name I forget.
In May, we took a train to New Haven to look for an apartment and came back that same night to hear Ray Charles and his band at Carnegie Hall.
In June, we moved.
Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Purple Haze,” Are You Experienced? (1967)
JIMI One of the magazines had an article on a hot new guitarist-singer who melded blues, r ‘n’ b and psychedelic rock. His first US album had just come out, Are You Experienced? I bought it and that was it. I was drawn into this rash, raw, loud –definitely loud– music on first hearing.
By fall, when classes started at Yale, my ears were awash in the music of this and that rock band. Hendrix and the Beatles, of course. The Stones. (I didn’t like them at first. I preferred tight music and they were notoriously, deliberately loose in their approach to playing.) Jefferson Airplane. Creedence. Procol Harum. Cream. The Who. The Chambers Brothers. The Doors. (I had mixed feelings about the Doors. “Light My Fire” was great juke box music but the rest of their stuff felt overworked and under-musicked.) The Dead I never liked and still don’t. Flabby. I liked one Beach Boys’ album, Surf’s Up, basically for a few songs. Santana. Buddy Miles. Electric Flag. Al Kooper. Buffalo Springfield. BS&T somewhat. Around the edges, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Otis, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Let’s listen to Hasil Adkins again –“No More Hot Dogs” this time.
MUSIC & ME 