A 50-year Memory: A Video for December

As November ended, The Supremes were supreme, ending a two-week run at #1:

On December 4, the Byrds landed and spent three weeks leading the charts with the Pete Seeger version of Ecclesiastes:

A 50-year Memory: Two Videos for November

For four weeks in October 1965 The Beatles held the top spot in pop music. So, technically on November 1, 1965, this was still the #1 song.

But the first official Hot 100 for November came out on November 6, 1965. Away went the Beatles. In came The Rolling Stones.

A 50-year Memory - A Video for October

An early music video for the song that was #1 at the beginning of October 1965, my senior year in high school.

I don't know when or where this video was shown- I don't remember it. But the song itself has one of those great hooks and riffs that live long in the memory. Two brothers of the original combo were from Ohio which may explain why this is the official rock song of the state of Ohio. It also is the unofficial fight song of The Ohio State University Buckeyes. (Wikipedia)

The way music changes from week to week is shown by the difference between "Sloopy" and the song it replaced at the top of the charts. Here's a video from the TV show Hullabaloo with Barry McGuire performing his hit. This performance I remember. It isn't easy to forget.

By the way, McGuire was one of the New Christy Minstrels before this one shot at stardom. In the early 1970s he became a pioneer in the contemporary Christian music scene.

A 50-year Memory - A Video for September

As September 1965 began this song was to hold the #1 Billboard spot for three weeks.

Sidenote: I made an arrangement of this for a talent show in High School. Nothing spectacular, just transposing some piano scores and giving them to different instruments. It sure didn't need my help to go to #1.

A 50-Year Memory: Revisiting Highway 61

From Rolling Stone:

Happy 50th birthday to Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan's strangest, funniest, most baffling and most perfect album, released on August 30th, 1965.
Link

Yep- It's been that long.

Here from Wikipedia is the track listing:

Side one
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Like a Rolling Stone"	6:13
2.	"Tombstone Blues"	6:00
3.	"It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry"	4:09
4.	"From a Buick 6"	3:19
5.	"Ballad of a Thin Man"	5:58

Side two
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Queen Jane Approximately"	5:31
2.	"Highway 61 Revisited"	3:30
3.	"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"	5:32
4.	"Desolation Row"	11:21

An almost unbeatable listing. Inscrutable, fun, and a lot of "It doesn't get any better than this," including what is arguably the greatest song in rock and roll history, "Like a Rolling Stone."



So why not? Here's the title track- still one of my favorites.

Calendar of Saints: Jonathan Daniels (2)

Twice a week I post a quote from saints from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. They are to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (1939-1965)
Seminarian and Martyr
August 14

He and others left on Thursday for Selma, intending to stay only that weekend; but he and a friend missed the bus back, and began to reflect on how an in-and-out visit like theirs looked to those living in Selma, and decided that they must stay longer. They went home to request permission to spend the rest of the term in Selma, studying on their own and returning to take their examinations. In Selma, many proposed marches were blocked by rows of policemen.

Jon devoted many of his Sundays in Selma to bringing small groups of Negroes, mostly high school students, to church with him in an effort to integrate the local Episcopal church. They were seated but scowled at...

In May, Jon went back to ETS to take examinations and complete other requirements, and in July he returned to Alabama... On Friday 13 August Jon and others went to the town of Fort Deposit to join in picketing three local businesses. On Saturday they were arrested and held in the county jail in Hayneville for six days until they were bailed out. (They had agreed that none would accept bail until there was bail money for all.) After their release on Friday 20 August, four of them undertook to enter a local shop, and were met at the door by a man with a shotgun who told them to leave or be shot. After a brief confrontation, he aimed the gun at a young girl in the party, and Jon pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself. He was killed instantly.

-Link

Calendar of Saints: Jonathan Daniels (1)

Twice a week I post a quote from saints from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. They are to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels (1939-1965)
Seminarian and Martyr
August 14

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was born in Keene, New Hampshire in 1939, one of two offspring of a Congregationalist physician. When in high school, he had a bad fall which put him in the hospital for about a month. It was a time of reflection. Soon after, he joined the Episcopal Church and also began to take his studies seriously, and to consider the possibility of entering the priesthood. After high school, he enrolled at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia , where at first he seemed a misfit, but managed to stick it out, and was elected Valedictorian of his graduating class. During his sophomore year at VMI, however, he began to experience uncertainties about his religious faith and his vocation to the priesthood that continued for several years, and were probably influenced by the death of his father and the prolonged illness of his younger sister Emily. In the fall of 1961 he entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston, to study English literature, and in the spring of 1962, while attending Easter services at the Church of the Advent in Boston, he underwent a conversion experience and renewal of grace. Soon after, he made a definite decision to study for the priesthood, and after a year of work to repair the family finances, he enrolled at Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1963, expecting to graduate in the spring of 1966.

In March 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, asked students and others to join him in Selma, Alabama, for a march to the state capital in Montgomery demonstrating support for his civil rights program. News of the request reached the campus of ETS and during Evening Prayer at the chapel, Jon Daniels decided that he ought to go.

-Link

The Years Accumulate

A 50-year memory- 1965.

This was before they tried to ban assault trumpets.

Defend your right to keep and bear trumpets!

A 67-year remembrance- 1948.

I sure don't have it in my memory bank!

This Week in History

Some notes of absolutely little interest, but potentially interesting?

1948- A 67-year memory:

1st - The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
3rd - Cleveland's Satchel Paige make his 1st start & goes 7 innings
3rd - FDR advisor Alger Hiss accused of being a "communist"
4th - 5 day Southern States filibuster succeeds in maintaining America's poll tax
5th - Cleveland Indians set club record for most double plays in a game (6)
6th - Bob Mathias, US, wins decathlon at London Olympics
6th - Fanny Blankers-Koen (Neth) is 1st woman to win 3 golds at Olympics
7th - Delfo Cabrera wins 11th Olympic marathon (2:34:51.6)

1965- A 50-year memory:

1st - Betsy Rawls wins LPGA Waterloo Golf Open
2nd - Morley Safer's sends 1st Vietnam report indicating we are losing
5th - Dave Marr wins PGA title
6th - 32nd NFL Chicago All-Star Game: Cleveland 24, All-Stars 16 (68,000)
6th - Beatles release "Help" album in UK
6th - Indian troops invade Pakistan
6th - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act prohibiting voting discrimination against minorities

A Video for August and a 50-Year Memory

It's not Wolf Hall. It's Herman's Hermits from the summer of 1965. Fifty years ago this was just a song for the fun of it. We all liked yelling "Hen-er-y" and "Second verse, same as the first!"

Isn't that what summer is for? Fun?

A Video for July and a 50-Year Memory

The summer before my senior year. 1965. Exploding onto the scene, this song took over the month of July- number one for virutally the whole month. It IS one of the great rock and roll songs. Looking at it today, I don't remember Jagger being that young- but did he know how to play to the camera. The power exudes even in the old black and white. No wonder our parents were afraid.

50 years later, it's still very real and still an almost perfect summer song!

A 50-Year Memory: The Death of Malcolm X

May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965

He had quite a journey and was reaching some important new insights at his assassination. Perhaps that is why he died; perhaps not. He was a person of growth, never willing to stay where he was.

A 50-Year Memory: An Iconic Day

Fifty-years ago today, Dylan recorded one of his fun and classic songs- Subterranean Homesick Blues." It was became famous for two reasons. First, the last line of the second verse was the founding name of a radical group:

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

And second, the video of the song from a documentary became a template for future videos. Here, first, is the video with a talkover by director D. J. Pennebaker and Bob Neuwirth.

But we can't let it just go without hearing the whole thing without extraneous commentary.

Thanks, Bob, for this amazing song.

Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues - HQ
from Noisefield on Vimeo.

On This Day in Music

1965, The Temptations went to No.1 on the US singles chart with the Smokey Robinson penned song 'My Girl', making the group the first male act to have a No.1 for Motown,

Okay- It's a Day Late

But not really.

It was November 25, 1965 that the Alice's restaurant Massacree happened. So, breaking a little with Thanksgiving tradition, I give you Arlo 46 years to the date later....





With a Hat Tip to The Washington Post Blog for the links.