A Brief History On October 12, 1957, Little Richard made a dramatic gesture to prove he was quitting rock music for a more religious life when he tossed four diamond rings into the Hunter River in Sydney, Australia. Well, that lasted five years before Little Richard was back on stage, where he still is to this day, rocking and rolling at the age of 81. In 1955 Little Richard had a massive hit with the song “Tutti Frutti” at a time when many white parents were trying to keep their kids away from rock and roll. This slam-bang-in-your-face song was…
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A Brief History On October 11, 1975, the iconic television show Saturday Night Live made its debut with the late, great George Carlin hosting. Guest performers included Andy Kaufman, Billy Preston and Janis Ian. That memorable show featured Janis Ian singing her second major hit song, “At Seventeen.” Her first hit had been the controversial song “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking),” a song that dealt with a relationship between a 16-year-old white, Jewish girl and a black man. Initially released in 1965, the song about interracial love was released 3 times before it made the charts in 1967. It was subsequently banned from many radio stations…
A Brief History On January 29, 1967, the “hippie” counterculture scene melded with Hare Krishna at the Mantra-Rock Dance in San Francisco, later referred to as “the ultimate high.” Digging Deeper Digging Deeper, we find San Francisco about to give birth to the Summer of Love where the drug-using, free-loving, bead-wearing, mantra-chanting, status quo-rejecting, long-haired hippie counterculture reached its peak! Amidst this atmosphere, an Indian spiritual teacher, who was eventually popular enough to be featured on an Indian stamp, had founded the Hare Krishna Movement in 1966. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s spreading his message around the world.…
A Brief History On January 14, 1967, San Francisco saw the iconic counter-culture event “The Human Be-In.” Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the gathering, the brainchild of Michael Bowen, at Golden Gate Park. An evolution of 1950’s “beat-niks,” “the hippies” and “flower children” of the 1960s were looking for something other than the answers main stream America gave them, and they flocked to San Francisco, the Mecca of counter-culture. The Human Be-In became the inspiration for the musical play Hair, which of course celebrated the shift from men and boys having short hair to the (at the time) controversial…
A Brief History On January 1, 1773, the all familiar hymn “Amazing Grace” was performed for the first time at a church service in England. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find what is generally considered to be the most familiar, best loved, all around greatest hymn based on music of unknown origin. The words, however, came from John Newton, a cleric who wrote them years before with the inspiration coming from his time on a slave ship threatened by fierce weather. The prospect of imminent death elicited the beautiful words we know today, and in them he claims to have…
