hot news of 50 years ago

[calimac]

The only information I had on the source of what I was looking for was that it was published in the Saturday Evening Post sometime in 1964.  It wasn't in the first bibliography I checked, so I decided on paging through the magazine.  So I pulled the heavy bedsheet-sized volumes down from the top shelf in the compact shelving in the university library basement.  I found what I was looking for, but I found a lot of other stuff too.

*Nervous speculations on whether Goldwater was likely to win the nomination/election, whether Robert Kennedy will run for VIce President, etc.
*Polemics by both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the latter torn out of the library copy.
*Not one but two cover stories on the Beatles, both featuring cover photos I've never seen reproduced in any books about them.  Texts mostly about the band members quarreling.  Excerpts from Lennon's yet-unpublished In His Own Write, heralded on the cover with a slug line of "If you think their music bugs you, read this."  Subsequent letters to the editor, however, were mostly favorable.
*The oddest thing in the second Beatles article, though, was a page of photos of four other rock groups emerging in the Beatles' wake.  Now, a lot of great and famous rock groups came along with the Beatles, but of these four, I had heard of exactly zero.  Looking them up now, I find that two actually have Wikipedia entries, but web info on the other two is minimal.  They are: The Swinging Blue Jeans (who dress in blue jeans and ride the ferry), The Undertakers (who dress as undertakers and ride motorcycles), The Mersey Monsters (who dress like ... wait for it ... monsters, with masks and cloaks), and The Blackwells (I don't remember what they dress like).  Ring any bells?
*At least two cover stories, as well, on quintuplet babies.  These days even the Octomom can't generate that much high-toned publicity.

And a column called "Speaking Out" offering controversial opinions, such as:
*A screed against tipping (nothing's changed)
*A screed for gun control (nothing's changed).  It's by John Lindsay, then still a congressman; remember him?  He says that, after JFK's assassination, enough is enough.  We said that after Sandy Hook, too.  Now we're saying it after Isla Vista.  Nothing's changed.
*A screed defending smoking.  It's by Ogden Nash, of all people.  He says so what if the Surgeon General says it's dangerous, life is risk.  (An odd attitude for a man to take who feared flying because he'd once seen a small plane crash in 1929.)  He says he just likes to smoke.  The subsequent letters to the editor, many in sub-Nashian verse, say, "It's because you're addicted."

Comments

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

I remember the Swinging Blue Jeans' "Hippy Hippy Shake"; we even have a compilation CD with it and another of their songs. Never heard of the other three.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The Undertakers' biggest hit. I could stand about 90 seconds of it.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

I checked with Lin who is hard to fool on British Invasion, and she'd never heard of the Mersey Monsters, the Undertakers, or the Blackwells either.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I've heard of The Swinging Blue Jeans, though don't like "The Hippy Hippy Shake" even as done by The Beatles (whose version was on the BBC earlier, but not released until much later).. Too much like Jerry Lee Lewis. The other three... well, a lot of groups glommed onto the "Mersey" name (a river and a hit song by Gerry and the Pacemakers). Even at nine years old, I wasn't much into Top 40. The British Invasion didn't really start with the Beatles, though they were the first group to make it big here.

It's sometimes useful (for me, anyway) to think of the British Invasion in either of two ways:

As relief from the Kennedy Assassination. The Beatles were on a report on CBS News... on November 22, 1963. Further reports were shelved in the aftermath (claims the wiki). Certainly the upbeat bouncy music from across the ocean were a distraction, if not a welcome addition, to American culture at the time.

As Britain's recovery from WWII. John Lennon noted that England was still under rationing into the mid-50s, and missed the whole "development" phase of R&B into Rock and Roll. It seemed natural (to them) to glom onto our music, rage on skiffle for a bit, mix it up, and return with a vengeance. (Similarly, German music missed developing its own music until well after the Cold War and Berlin Wall kept them in a fixed state for a while. It wasn't until the 80s that German pop really came out with various electric/synth stuff. But I digress.)

Just a few years later than your Saturday Evening Post range, America began publishing underground newspapers. My mother wrote a book about them, and I spent much of my childhood surrounded by counter culture publications. And was almost as bored with it. Current events are important at the time, and historically ephemera is useful for many things, but yesterdays news of the day often reads like someone else's Facebook archive.