Bob Dylan Hits Number One
The music of the 1960s both reflected and directed the mood of the youth. In the ‘50s and early ‘60s, rock music was mostly about love and romance, dancing, cruising the avenue, or hanging out at the beach: “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Surf City, U.S.A.,” “The Twist,” “Stuck on You,” “Please Mr. Postman,” “Dancing in the Street,” “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” and “Baby Love.” The grittier, more socially conscious music came in the folk music world, dominated by Bob Dylan. His 1963 “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for example, asked the questions:
How many deaths will it take ‘til he knows that too many people have died?
How many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned?
How many years must some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
How many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned?
How many years must some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
Both civil rights and antiwar activists heard Dylan’s music as espousing their cause. Like many folk singers, Dylan wrote songs with socially conscious lyrics, including “The Times They Are A-Changing,” “Masters of War,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”
For the most part, 1960s folk music consisted of a vocalist or small group of vocalists, accompanied by one (or perhaps two) strummed acoustic guitars, maybe with interjections by a harmonica. Occasionally other acoustic string instruments (bass, banjo, mandolin, or ukulele) were used, and sometimes congas or bongos, but a drum set was out of the question. Amplification—electric guitars and basses, R&B-like amplified keyboard instruments—was anathema, and fancy studio production techniques were taboo.
In 1964, a group of folk musicians from around the United States coalesced into a band, led by Jim McGuinn and featuring vocalist David Crosby. Inspired by The Beatles, McGuinn persuaded his band to take up electronic instruments and to add a drummer. The Byrds were born— and so was folk-rock. The Byrds’ first recording with Elektra was a flop, but on the basis of overflow crowds at their live performances in L.A., their producer managed to get them signed with Columbia. They had begun rehearsing and refining an arrangement of Bob Dylan’s as yet unreleased “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Dylan made a new recording of “Mr. Tambourine Man” in January (1964), accompanied only by his own guitar and harmonica playing, and a simple countermelody improvised by Bruce Langhorne on a gently amplified acoustic guitar, but that version was not released until March.
When the Byrds went into Columbia’s studio in January to record a rock version of the song, producer Terry Melcher, in the interest of saving time, had hired top L.A. studio musicians to cover all but McGuinn’s jangling twelve-string guitar part: Larry Knechtel on bass, Hal Blaine on drums, and Leon Russell on guitar. The Byrds themselves were left to concentrate on their “lush and soaring harmonies.” With an instrumental line-up like that and vocalists like McGuinn and Crosby, this was no ordinary recording. The Byrds’ rock version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was also released in March, but it rose more quickly than Dylan’s version, hitting number one in June. Bob Dylan finally had a number one record—but not as a singer or guitar player—as a composer.
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LISTENING EXAMPLE 9: “MR. TAMBOURINE MAN” (1965)--
THE BYRDS/BOB DYLAN
“Like a Rolling Stone”
“Satisfaction”
In traditional folk style, Bob Dylan’s version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” begins with a short guitar introduction, just four measures of mostly strumming the tonic chord. His singing begins with the chorus. This is not a common way to begin a song, but neither was it unheard of. With four verses in between, the chorus appears five times in the version that Dylan released at almost the same time as the Byrds released their version.
The first line of the melody of the chorus descends an octave, from F to F, by scale-tones at first, then by chord tones (skips), with only one rising note before continuing to fall. The second line rises haltingly to the sixth note of the scale before falling back, by scale, to the second note of the scale, leaving an unresolved feeling. The third line, with text identical to the first, repeats the melodic shape of the first, with only one changed note. The fourth line rises in a manner similar to the first, but when it resolves by falling, it finishes on the bottom note of the scale, leaving the listener with a feeling of resolution.
The first line of the verses parallels the first line of the melody of the chorus closely, descending from scale degree eight down to one. Then a short extension repeats the second half of the first line, with a slight variation. The third line of the verse parallels the second line of the chorus. This pattern repeats a second time, and then leads directly into the chorus. Thus, there is a very close relationship between the chorus and the verse, lending a sense of unity to the piece as a whole. At the same time, because of this unity, the piece, like much folk music, could become quite repetitive were it not for the interest of the text. Compare the scale degrees of the first line of the chorus and the first line of the verse. Compare the second line of the chorus with the third and sixth lines of the verse.
Dylan uses one other technique to assure that his audience cannot just guess what is coming next. In each successive verse he adds one, two, or three new rhymes to the second and fourth half-lines, causing the form of each verse to be different and thus unpredictable. Further variety is added by the insertion of a harmonica solo before the final verse. The countermelody improvised by Langhorne adds some interest as well, but the interesting manipulation of text and images and rhymes carry the song much more than musical interest.
As might be obvious from having compared text repetition and melodic shape repetition, the chords are also quite simple and repetitive. Using only three chords (and a couple of one-finger alterations for interest in the introduction and between verses), the same pattern of chords repeats over and over for almost six minutes.
The Byrds chose to shorten the song for their version. Singing the chorus, followed by the second verse, and then one more chorus, they did not give their listeners time to get tired of the repetition in their recording that lasted less than three minutes.
Later that year, the Byrds also hit number one with the Pete Seeger adaptation of the famous section of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Unfortunately, personnel changes took a toll on the band, and their success was short-lived. There is no question, however, of their impact on the new genre of folk-rock, and even on the composer whose music took them to the top spot—Bob Dylan.
Motown and Aretha Franklin (But not Together!)
Popular music in the mid-1960s was not just folk-rockers and British invaders. Soul and R&B flourished in the mid- sixties as well. Two of the biggest names in soul music were from Detroit: Aretha Franklin and Motown. It is important, however, not to assume that Aretha Franklin recorded with Motown. Berry Gordy did try to sign her in 1958, even before he started Motown Records, but Aretha’s father intervened, opposed to the idea of his young daughter (she was only sixteen at the time) entering the music business. When she was eighteen, her father let her move to New York to start her music career, and Franklin was introduced to John Hammond, who signed her with Columbia Records. During her time at Columbia, she had several top hits on the R&B charts and jazz charts and in 1961 was even named “New Female Vocal Star of the Year” in the Downbeat magazine jazz critics’ poll.
Despite Franklin’s jazz and R&B success, only one Columbia recording broke the top forty on the pop charts. It wasn’t until her move to Atlantic in 1967 that Franklin was able to chart any higher. On Atlantic she became the “Queen of Soul” and within months had broken into the top ten. By June of that year she had earned the number one spot on the pop charts with her version of an Otis Redding 1965 composition “Respect.” Franklin’s version, with her sisters singing backup, made three important additions to the Redding version: the “just a little bit” backing vocals; a stoptime bridge spelling out R-E-S-P-E-C-T; and the “sock it to me” and “re-re-re-re” backing. The song had additional appeal as the feminist movement was gaining ground in the 1960s. Over the next year and a half, she placed an additional seven hits in the top ten, and won the first of eight consecutive Grammy awards. The Queen of Soul was hitting her stride.
Otis Redding was starting to see some success in Europe, and his agency was considering billing him as the “King of Soul.” Nevertheless, only one man was seen as the Godfather of Soul: James Brown. Known for producing “the loudest, the rawest, the most fundamental in-your- face soul,” Brown did well on the R&B charts and began hitting the pop charts in 1958. He reached the Top 40 in 1960. His greatest success came in 1965, with the release of two funky songs that relied on the twelve-bar blues form. “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)” both hit the Top 10, with “Bag” going all the way to number one on the R&B charts. They ended up being two of only three Top 10 hits in his entire career (the other did not happen until 1986). Both rely on short patterns from the horn section that interlock and repeat. Brown insisted on extreme precision, and his horn section could expect fines if they made mistakes. These tightly interlocking syncopated repeated riffs helped create the style we now call funk. The simple twelve-bar blues harmony is much less important than the execution of tight, syncopated rhythms.
One of the special things about Motown was the collaboration among the artists. In addition to the great songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, some artists did songs by Marvin Gaye, while others sang hits written by Smoky Robinson and Ronald White. The Temptations’ 1965 hit (released in late 1964), “My Girl,” was by the latter pair, who also produced the recording. Starr and Waterman call the recording “as much a ‘teenage symphony’ as any of Phil Spector’s most elaborate offerings.”
The Temptations and Smokey Robinson were important to Motown, but no one could top the Supremes, who had joined Motown records in 1961. By 1964, the Supremes were hitting the top of the charts. Even in a year dominated by The Beatles and other British invaders, the Supremes managed to elevate three songs to number one, a spot they occupied for seven of the final nineteen weeks of the year. The second of their three number one hits that year, “Baby Love,” reigned supreme for four weeks, a feat that not even The Beatles had accomplished since Louis Armstrong ended their fourteen-week run in May. The Supremes were now the most successful girl group. They were also unbeatable at Motown. No other group from Gordy’s label had hit the top of the charts twice, and the Supremes managed to do so three times in four months. With their smooth sound honed since their early days in church and school together and the backing of Motown’s house band, the Funk Brothers, all the Supremes needed was some great song-writing by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland to propel them to the top. One other factor seemed crucial to their meteoric rise: Gordy insisted that Diana Ross do all the lead singing.
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LISTENING EXAMPLE 10: “STOP! IN THE NAME OF LOVE”
(1965)—DIANA ROSS AND THE SUPREMES/HOLLAND-DOZIER-HOLLAND
In 1965, the Supremes continued their string of number one hits. The Supremes’ success was not only due to the great singing and the musical support they had from H-D-H and the Funk Brothers. Maurice King was engaged to prepare the musical arrangements and taught the girls their harmonies. Gordy ensured that his stars had classy costumes and makeup.
In March the Supremes again gained the top spot on the charts with another H-D-H composition, “Stop! In the Name of Love.” Although the music itself became famous, the choreography associated with the staccato delivery of the first word of the title was iconic: left hand on the hip, right hand extended in a stop sign gesture. The motion and text complemented each other perfectly, each making the other more memorable.
The Supremes finished the decade with twelve number one hits, just behind Elvis and The Beatles. Largely on the success of the Supremes, Motown sold more singles during this period than any other label. The Supremes became favorites on the Ed Sullivan Show, appearing sixteen times in a little over four years. When they appeared on Sullivan with the Temptations in 1967, reaction was so positive that they were invited by NBC to have a primetime special together, which further cemented their popularity.
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MONTEREY INTERNATIONAL POP FESTIVAL
In early 1967, inspired by the impressive turnout for the “Human Be-In,” a group of musicians and producers started planning a summer music festival at Monterey, a coastal California town that had previously hosted jazz and folk festivals, just north of halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The organizers assembled an impressive roster. Some were well-known national acts, like Simon and Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, and the Mamas and the Papas. Some, like Jimi Hendrix and the Who, were just starting to be known throughout the country. Others, like Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane, were more local. Even international acts, like Hugh Masakela (a trumpet player from South Africa) and Ravi Shankar (the great Indian sitar virtuoso) were on the schedule. Soul singer Otis Redding had been building relationships through a series of live performances in California, but it was still a bit of a surprise when he was invited to participate in the festival.
The festival took place on June 16–18 and attracted some 200,000 hippies for three days of peace, love, and rock and roll. As one of the first festivals dedicated to rock and roll, Monterey served as the blueprint for many festivals that followed, including Woodstock two years later. While many artists got their “moment of fame” at Monterey, the festival was career changing for three of the artists: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Otis Redding. Joplin’s bluesy set on the first afternoon of the festival was such a hit that she and her band were invited to return for the final evening, which in turn led to a recording contract with CBS records.
On the last day of the Festival, the Who, not as well known among the hippies attending the festival, started off with polite applause, but by the time they reached the finale of “My Generation,” destroying their instruments and descending into complete anarchic noise, they had also smashed the “peace and love” atmosphere of the crowd and had them worked into a frenzy. The Grateful Dead were not up to the challenge, and followed the Who with a performance that failed to enhance their reputation. Jimi Hendrix, who followed the Dead, was new to American audiences. After touring with rhythm and blues bands and playing backup for Sam Cooke, Hendrix developed his solo chops and leader skills in London, where he had moved in 1966. The festival was his chance to show a hip American audience the techniques he had developed. Hendrix’s performance of “Hey Joe” demonstrated his showmanship, including playing the guitar with one hand, picking the strings with his teeth, and playing the guitar behind his neck.
The final number on Hendrix’s set, “Wild Thing,” went even further. Not only did he play the guitar with his teeth, with one hand, behind his back, he even did a backward somersault while playing. He used the whammy bar to extremes and utilized feedback like a theremin. He laid the guitar on the floor and pulled the strings up to bend the pitches violently. He rocked against the speakers with the guitar to make even more powerful feedback. The sounds he made were like nothing the audience had heard before (although they did resemble some of the musique concrète and other avant-garde music coming from the classical realm). He finished his set with something that could not be topped. He laid his guitar on the stage in front of him, sprayed it with lighter fluid, said a little prayer, and then sacrificed his guitar to the flames before smashing it to bits in front of his mesmerized audience and tossing broken pieces of guitar into the crowd. This was worlds away from the polite rock and roll that the British Invasion had brought to the United States only three years earlier. The evolution was phenomenal, and Jimi Hendrix was now clearly the king of the rock guitar. As one author put it, this performance “set Hendrix on his trajectory to superstardom.” The only guitarist ranked above Eric Clapton on the 2015 Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time was Hendrix.
The real surprise of the festival was the fish out of water—the soul musician at the rock festival. Monterey had the potential to be a real career-changer for Otis Redding, even more than for Hendrix and Joplin. Redding, born in Macon, Georgia, in 1941, was raised in the Baptist church choir tradition and also absorbed influences from former Macon resident Little Richard and from country music popular in his hometown. He was particularly fond of Sam Cooke and had covered Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” after Cooke’s death. Redding had charted a few times in the early 1960s but did not reach the top half of the Hot 100 until April 1965. He continued to rise, taking his cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” to number thirty-one a year later. The zenith of his chart history before Monterey, however, came with Aretha Franklin’s cover of “Respect.”
Redding was scheduled to be the closing act on Saturday night, the third night of the festival. Redding caught the audience’s attention right from the start with an up- tempo version of Sam Cooke’s “Shake!” Redding cajoled the crowd to join him in shouting the repeated “Shake!” again and again, getting them involved and invested in his performance. Redding’s second selection was one that the audience knew, even if they might not have known that he was the composer—“Respect.” Since Aretha Franklin’s version had just hit number one earlier that month, the audience was aware of the difference between his version and hers. Again, up-tempo and energetic, Redding’s version kept the audience rapt. Full of improvisation, Redding’s version was strong, soulful, and exciting.
At the end of “Respect,” Redding performed a slower, quieter love song saturated with emotion. The audience was barely finished cheering before Redding shouted “Jump again, Here we go!” and launched into familiar territory, once more. It was time to demonstrate the close affinity between the best of rock and roll and the best of soul. It was time for his rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
LISTENING EXAMPLE 11: “SATISFACTION” (1967)—OTIS REDDING/JAGGER AND RICHARDS
Redding had recorded his version of “Satisfaction” in 1965, and it rose to number thirty-one on the charts in 1966, his second-highest charting recording at that time. The bluesy nature of the song has been discussed earlier in this section. This was the perfect vehicle for the soul artist to display the affinity between his genre and the rock megastars the Rolling Stones.
Sharon Monteith, in her book on American culture, says that Redding’s performance “famously converted” the primarily white audience of rock fans to “his stomping soul and blues.” Perhaps even more important than the audience of 200,000 hippies was the fact that the whole thing was immortalized in D. A. Pennebaker’s rockumentary Monterey Pop, which would earn Redding national attention when it was released in 1968. Otis Redding was poised to transcend the R&B limitation that had kept most of his recordings out of the Top 40 up to this point. Monterey showed that he was ready to hit the pop charts.
Perhaps aware of this opportunity, while staying on a houseboat near San Francisco later that summer, Redding composed a ballad that sounded less like soul and more like pop—“(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”—which he recorded in November. Sadly, Redding died in a plane crash on the way to a gig before the song was released. The single was released shortly thereafter and became his first number one pop hit. The promise of the success at Monterey was realized, but only for a fleeting moment, and too late.
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The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper
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