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.NO

OUL

IN

BE TLESVILLE

Alan Rinzler

Popular music

in

America is better

an

ever. For the irst time

in

the

history of the Top-Forty-Juke-Box-

Best-sellers there is some correspond-

ence between the singer and the song.

The best of todays vocalists - Diane

Warwick, Martha and the Vandellas,

Dusty Spnngfield,Patty Labelle and

the Blue Belles

-

re young people

singing from their own experience in

a stjrle that is a part

of

their particu-

la r heritage. They learned this music

at home, at church and

in

the neigh-

borhood - and fter bhe recording

session is over, its only na tur al tha t

they shquld keep on singing

in

the

same way about the same things.

In &is sense, they are the real folk

singers of our time,

fa r

more au-

thentic than the citybillys aoademi-

cally perfectmitation

of a

sound

created- from an experience different

fx,om his own. As much

as

he sounds

like Leadbelly or Big

Bill

Broonzy,

Johnny Hammond did not grow up a

black man in the South; nor did he

New

Lost City Ramblers learn heir

old-tlmey mountainmusic as

poor

Kentucky ffarmers. Theirlmusical tradi-

tion

Roes

back no farther han some

to work). Whigs,$utfpnsJocks of h&,

wallpaper, the h ur

of

their arrival in

New York, the exact location of their

daily activities, all contributed to

a

triumphant exploitation of the affluent

teen-ager. By the time the Beatles

actually ,appeared on the stage a t Car-

negie Hall, therewasnt

a

person in

thehouse who didnt know exactly

what to do: flip, wig-out, flake, swan,

fa l l , get zonked

-

r at least

try.,

\

The Beatles themselves were

impressive in their detachment. They

came to America for ~e money.

Theyattribute heir success

to

our

press agent,. They looked down a t

theirscreaming,undulatingaudience

with what appeared

to

be considerable

amusement, and no

small

understand-

ing of what theirslightest twitch or

toss

of head could produce. John Len-

non; the leader of the group, seemed

particularlyontemptuous, mocking

the audience several times during the

evening, and openly ridiculing a young

girl

in

the first row who tried to claw

her way convulsively to &e stage.

Paul McCartney bobbed

his

head

very carefulistening,to old Library

of Congress tkpes and Folkways re-

cordings. 1 ,

Another group which must ave

spent agreat deal of time ately pay- ,

ing

close attention to old records and

making aces in the

mirror

are he

Beatles, four young men

from

ahe

mainstream of working-class Liver-

pool, with skin-tight, blue gray suits

(velvet lapels), mops of long brown

hai r, and an electrical system guaran-

teed to numb the senses

of

even the

mosteluctant ttendant.Theire-

centnvasion

of

the United States

was the PR mans ,finest hour re-

portedly, thirteen ,publicity firms

worked on the debut). For weeks the

national press, radio and TV, and the

slick magazines had inshucted noviti-

ates on what to expect and how to

react. Beatle records blasted heair

waves, promoted by 1 disk jockeys

eager to claim s first discovery

(actually Beatle records were in th is

country ten months ago, but noone

played them until the press agents

got

Alan

Rinzler i s

goung editor

t

imon &

Schuster where he produced

the Young Folk Song Book. A student

o music f o r b a n y

years

he has s u n g

i n

ko th2gp-@ar -a@

~ o l k roups;

sweetly, his composure broken only

when - orror of horrors is guitar

came unplugged. (Therewas a ter-

rible moment of silence. One expected

him to run down altogether, and dis-

solve into

a

pool of quivering sta tic.)

George Ha ms on tuned his guitar con-

tinually, and seemed preoccupied

mth

someone or something at stage right.

Ringo Starr, the drummer, seemed the

only authentic wild man of the group,

totally engrossed in his own private

cacophony. For the rest, it was Jus t an-

other one-night stand.

Musically, the Beatles arean

anachronism. They come purend

unadulterated rom heearly 1950s,

the simple, halcyon days of rock.

n

roll: Bill Haley and his Comets, Little

Richard,lvis Presley, theEberle

Brothers, the Ted Steele Bandstand.

The Beatle sound is primitive rock n

roll - traight four-four rhythm , un-

distinguishable melody, basic ~ r e e -

chord guitar progressions electrically

amplified to

a

plaster-crumbling, glass-

shatteringpitch. Its loud, fa st and

furious,

totally uninfluenced by some

of

the more sophisticated elements

in

American music that have brightened

our pop scene i n recent years One can

only assume that Ray Charles, gospel,

After a season of quiet, the sounds of the Negro

revolt -the manifestoes, the marching footsteps,

the anthems of freedom-echoed in the landonce

more, The *fire in the streets had been banked

,

.

1 when summer ebbed into fall, when the weather

turned c@l, when the student cadres returned

to

school. But the flames were dancing again last I

week. A second year of revolution was at hand.

From a recent Newsweek stoly.

A glzmpse of

how

d e read

these

days.

Have y read

Newsweek lately? . Newsweek

221

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"LEADING

' C O N T E N D - E R S T

National

Book

Awards

The udges for he 964National ,Book Awa rds are readlng widely o find the books ,

that hey will choose I n March.as he most d~stlngulshed.books-by,Ame~~canu tho rs

p u b l i s k d i n t h eUnlted States during

1963.

Some

of

the

books

tliev fmd

mbst

outdtand-

ing

are listed below:

_

.~

.

. ,

, .

POETRY

.

I

, t -. ,

- , ,

' At the End of the Open Road LOUIS $IwPSO.v: We+yan

~. ollected and-New Poems.: 1924-1963

MARK VAN DQREN Hill a n d w a h g

Moving.Targ$t W. . MERWIN 'Atheneum ,

I

' SelectedoemsO H N .C R O WE 'R A N S0 M h o p f I.

To

Mix WithTime ' MAY SWLNSONScribners

1

Judges: Jean Gatrigue,Anthony Hkcht, John Hall Wheelock

. .

T h een tau rOHN UPDIKE

Knopf

The Group MARYMcCARTHYHaicourf;Bracedd World

Jdlotsttst BERNARD MALAM UD Fdrrar; Strads:. , ,', -

' V THO MA S PYN'CHON Lippincott -

.

T h e Wlll HARVEY SWADO SWorld

1

- . -JudgesTJbhn-Ch eever,Rob~eMacauley,Ph~l~pR~hv.-- .

OTHER

i Anti-Intellectualismnmerlcan Life RICHARD HOFSTADTER knopf ,

1. Apollmalre:PoetAmong hePamters FRANCIS STEEGMULLER Farrar,Straus

Beyond the 'Mehng Pot NAT HAN GLAZER and DANIEL P.MOYNIHAN 'PMIT-Harvard

I Change,operandhe Bomb ;DAVID . LILIENTHAL' 'Prin ceto n .

6 .

The Fabulous Llfe

of

DlegoRiveraBERTRAM'D WOLFE

Stein

andDay

f ;

T h eCiv j l f ia r

-

SHELBY FOOTE. I RdsIon'~,

, ,_ ~ ~

.

The'FireextlmeJAMES BALDWIN Dlal

I ,

i

Th e Fzrst New Natlon SEYMOURM LIPSET Baslc Bboke .

f . ' , _ . JphDiKeats .WA.LTER~JACKSONB-ATE H a y a r d .

1

j Johneatsheaklng of aoet AILEEN WAR D Viking

Man-MadeAkotica: ,Chaos rControl? -' CHRISTOPHER-TUNNARD I

-

I

The Lastorizon R; F. DASM ANNMacmillan

and BORIS PUSHKAREVYale

Th e 'Q uie t Cr ms STEWART UDALL Holt; Rmehartand Winston

The South and the S outherner RALPH Mc dILL Atla ntc Mon thly Press-Llttk , Browt2.

'

uccess

Sto ry -T he t f e andTimes of 5. S McClure PETER LYOF , .Sc r lbne rs

v a s p Farrr i HOW ARD ENSIGN EVANS Natural

Hlstory;Pcess-.Do bleday

Jddges: Arts

an d

Letfers-Charles Rolo, Joh n K. herman, Wylle Sypher

Histcry

nn

B ography"BenJamin

DeMott,

James Thom as.Flexner, C. Van? W oodward

Science, Pf+ osophy and ReZlgion-Houston Pete rson , Paul E Sears, George Shuster

I I

I , . -

-

Th e Na t lonaI

Book Awards re

administered

y

theNatlonal

Bobk Com-

'prizes

donated y the American

Book

Publishers .Counal, he Amefican

mlttee, a non-profit educatlonal association The awardscons ls t of 1000

Booksellers Assonation ,and he

Book

Manufacturers nstl tu te.

'

- .

Watch

for announcement of the winners-Tuesday,. MarchI , 10

222

rhy thq and blues, country an d west-

ern, and other purer folk sound @as

yet to cross the Atlantic, The

EI1gz

:fish

&ways have 'been

a

bit behind

us

"wltriess Olaver

a

gqod old-fashioned

American musical comedy,

or Sutur

ug N i g h t a n d S u n d a y Morning and

otherealisticilms - in the

1930s'

style. Often they do improve

upon-

our models; the Beatles,

with

h e i r

American accents, heir savagely de-

livered'musical clichCs, their tight

pants, hair cuts and wild 'gyrations,

are more -entertaining and intelligent

than anyth ing we produced ten years

ago.

Butthe'BeatIes remain derivative, a

deliberate imitation of

an

American

genre, The y -ar e surely not ,singing

ih a mu sicd tradition which evolved

spontaneously

B o in their

own lives or

from 'haturd:'habit of expression.

-

This is pcobably why the reaction at

Carnegie

Hall

was not a real response

td" a real stimulus.There weren't

too many soul people herehat

night

-

ither

on the

stage or,. in

the audience. Theull

house

was

made up Idrgelp

of

upper-middle-class

young ladies, stylishly dressed, care-

fully' made .up; brought into town by

ptivatecars or ,suburbanbuses

for

their n ight to howl;

to

let*go, scream,

bump, twist nd clutch themselves

ecstatically out "there n the floodlights

for

everyone to see; and with ( d e u ll

blessings

of all

Authority: indulgent

parents,rofiteeringusinessmen,

gleeful national media, even ~e police.

Later they can

all go

home and

grow

up

like heir mommies, but this was

theirchance oattempt.

a

very safe

and very private

kind

of

raptpre.

.

Most did what was expected

f them

and went home

I

disappointed. Disap-

pointed b,ecause nothing really passed

from

the stage o heaudience that

night,

n o r

from one member 'of he

audience to another. There Was may-

hem and clapping of .hands, ut no

sense of a shared experience, none 02

theexuttation feltat a pontaneous

gathering of goo folk musicians, or,

more important, at

a

civil rights rally

where reedom

songs

are sung.. The

spectacle

of

all those anguished young

grrls

at

Carnegie Hall, trying to follow

''I

Warlt

To

Huld

Your

Hand," seems

awfully vapid compared to the young

men and women who sing

I Woke Up

ThisMornid With ' My Miud"

(,

,

.Stayed-on Freedom). The Beatles

themselves are lively and not kithout

charm.Perhaps ,their greatest vi rp e

is their, sense of -humor

.

and -,self-

caricature. But Beatlemania

as"a

p h -

nomcnon is manlia for -dull uiinds.

. .

e rmN

.,. .

- .

I

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