Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
3rd Verse, The Times They Are A-Changin' –Bob Dylan
•••
It's been too hard living
But I'm afraid to die
'Cause I don't know what's up there
Beyond the sky
It's been a long
A long time coming, but I know
A change gon' come
Oh yes, it will
3rd verse, A Change is Gonna Come –Sam Cooke
•••
History has a way of circling back. Just when we think we have left behind-
- fascism back in the 1930 and 40's;
- disability and death by viruses back in the 50's;
- racial hate back in the 60's;
- Roe vs Wade back in the 70's;
- evangelicals working to destroy the separation of church and state back in the 80's;
- a cad, running again for President without a moral center, like another cad President back in the 90's;
- and, authoritarians bombing and invading their neighbors land, like well... forever.
I can go on, but you get the point. America probably has always been two-steps forward, and one-step back. Now the one-steppers back, want to take it all the way back to the mythical 1950's, where power and control would be restored to a white majority culture.
Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' has always been one of my favorite Bob Dylan albums. The lead song is one of the greatest songs of all-time. The entire album is a somber protest as the artist's lyrics are pure poetry raising social consciousness through the medium of folk music. In recent years, I have been enraptured by Dylan's early years, especially concert footage and audio capturing the passion of his voice delivering the song to a hushed audience taking in every word and verse.
Two other songs are to me even more outstanding. First, With God on Our Side, an anti-war song written by such a young man about America having the Christian moral high ground over other countries. It smacks directly at millions of Americans upbringing, and surely mine, brought down to the level that the Little League's team prayer was somehow going to translate into a winning score.
The next is, Only a Pawn in their Game. Dylan sings truth to power about America in his pure clarity of racism and political manipulation of the powerful to the isolated, poor, and uneducated. The song is as relevant today, maybe substitute a George Floyd-like killing mixed with our current political divide, and we surely can dust off this song for a fresh listen.
The next is, Only a Pawn in their Game. Dylan sings truth to power about America in his pure clarity of racism and political manipulation of the powerful to the isolated, poor, and uneducated. The song is as relevant today, maybe substitute a George Floyd-like killing mixed with our current political divide, and we surely can dust off this song for a fresh listen.
Sam Cooke recorded his last album, Ain't That Good News released in February 1964, as he would be tragically shot dead in December by a hotel clerk in a bizarre set of circumstances involving a woman who he had taken to a hotel in Los Angeles.
Ain't That Good News is a wonderful mix of fun songs with the very serious, A Change is gonna Come which would come to be the enduring anthem of the 1960's civil rights movement. The song's first verse-
I was born by the river
In a little tent
Oh, and just like the river, I've been running
Ever since
simply opens you up to his experience, an experience where hate and hard times were some day going to be better, because the alternative could not be tolerated any longer. The theme of "we're not ever going back to that again," is a people's determination and history lesson all in a song.
I never realized that The Times They Are A-Changin' and A Change is gonna Come, would be released only eight days from each other in February, 1964. Sixty years later, they came together for me and this little blog. In fact, this past week of listening to music in this time period helped shape for me three themes about popular music of that time.
Think of the first six songs here as two-set themes of the early 1960's in music.
- The Times They Are A-Changin' and A Change is gonna Come, represent social change and the emergence of the "protest song" or statement songs with a clear message about our society.
- Glad All Over (The Dave Clark Five), and Fun, Fun, Fun (The Beach Boys), represent fun simple rock 'n' roll love songs. (The Beach Boys also needed to start putting teens in cars because only so many people could geographically get to the beach.)
- Anyone Who Had a Heart (matching Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick), and The Girl From Ipanema (matching American saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto, featuring the vocals of Astrud Gilberto.) These two songs represent the transition from 50's popular standards songs mostly sung by males, to 60's pop songs influenced by R&B, soul, jazz, rock 'n' roll, women singers, and even world culture like the bossa nova.
Like last week's blog, musically the culture is saying, "goodbye" to the previous decade, and "hello" to a new order. Enjoy the playlist my friends!
References and Resources
1964 in music - Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_in_music#February, Last accessed 11th March 2024
The Times They Are a-Changin' (Bob Dylan album) - Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_They_Are_a-Changin%27_(Bob_Dylan_album), Last accessed 11th March 2024