Artie Who?

It's been almost a week since Artie Shaw's passing. The major TV networks ran brief stories about him. They talked about his great success as a bandleader during the 1930s and 1940s, his departure from the music business and the spotlight in 1954, and his eight wives.

Newspaper coverage was better. I read about Artie Shaw in the online editions of all the major newspapers. Curiously, the Chicago Tribune was the only major paper to wait until Saturday to run a story; all of the others ran one on Friday, the day after Shaw's death. Once again, the Trib dropped the ball, as it has done so often in recent years.

A couple of TV news reporters admitted that they didn't know much about Shaw or his music. The reporters were probably born between 1970-1980. The Swing Era was 1935-1945, some 30-40 years before they were born. These same reporters probably don't know much about the Beatles or the 1960s. That's OK, and perhaps that's the way it should be. I don't know beans about pop music in recent decades, do you?

Music is a generational thing. I grew up in the 1940s hearing the music of the big bands on the radios and the phonograph in our home. It is still second nature to me. In the 1950s, I saw rock n'roll enthrall my generation.

But nothing before or since was like the music of the 1960s. Nothing!

I was in my 20s in the 1960s, which I consider the most tumultuous decade of my life. Many of my generation share that view, but we seldom talk about it anymore. That is really too bad, because the 1960s were so alive, so thrilling, and so explosive.

I lived on the north side of Chicago for most of that decade. Beginning in early 1967, I often went to a bar on State near Pearson called Barnaby's. They had a dynamite young band playing there five nights a week. It was named "The Chicago Transit Authority," or C.T.A. for short. When they released their first LP a year later, a couple of songs soared to the top of the charts, including "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" The real C.T.A. sued and made the group change their name. They chose "Chicago."

In the 1960s, music was central to everyone I knew in Old Town in Chicago (where I lived), Greenwich Village in New York City, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, or the Sunset Strip in L.A. Our lives revolved around music. The Doors, Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Jefferson Airplane, The Mothers of Invention, Cream topped the list of our favorite groups.

We also loved blues. I worked at Big John's in Chicago in the mid-1960s. Every night I heard the likes of Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and many others. Talk about exciting!

Once in awhile, I'll hear or play a song from the 1960s. One of my favorites begins with the lines:

Millionaires and paupers walk the hungry streets
Rich and poor companions of the restless beat
Strangers in a foreign land
Strike a match with trembling hand
Learn too much to ever understand
But nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady

A great song, a great lyric, a great decade. The song was called "Flower Lady" and written by Phil Ochs. To read the full lyrics, just click the title to this entry.

And that was only part of the 1960s I lived!

To be continued....