Nineteen Hundred Sixties

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      in Music

      Listen to 8 Songs From the Bewitching Françoise Hardy

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      From her start in the yé-yé 1960s to the depths she plumbed as a singer-songwriter, Hardy, who died Tuesday, continued to entrance new generations of listeners.When she first broke through in the early 1960s, the bewitching French pop star Françoise Hardy, who died on Tuesday at 80, was initially lumped in with the yé-yés, the commercially minded rocking and twisting French singers of the era.She later came to see many of her early recordings, including her first hit, “Tous les Garçons et les Filles,” as sappy and lightweight. Hardy went on to forge her own path, becoming one of the rare singer-songwriters of her generation (and even rarer women in that category) — an immediately identifiable performer who unleashed emotion by, counterintuitively, refusing to over-emote.Her brand of cool has continued to beguile new listeners. A new generation of arty-minded Americans was introduced to her when the Wes Anderson film “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012) prominently featured her hit “Le Temps de l’Amour,” with its catchy, sinewy bass line.Here is a selection of songs — some of them famous, others less so — that provide entry points into Hardy’s extensive career.“Et Même” (1964)It bears repeating that Hardy was an anomaly in the 1960s as a female pop star writing and performing her own material. Starting in the 1970s she tended to stick to lyrics, but in the previous decade she often also composed the music, as on this gem from her 1964 album, on which she wrote or co-wrote almost all the tracks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Jac Venza, Who Delivered Culture to Public Television, Dies at 97

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      By making entertainment as well as education part of its mission, he gave the world “Great Performances” and other enduring programs. Jac Venza, a shoemaker’s son who almost single-handedly delivered to the proverbial “vast wasteland” that was American television in the 1960s and ’70s an oasis of cultural programming, including “Great Performances” and “Live From Lincoln Center,” died on Tuesday at his home in Lyme, Conn. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his spouse, Daniel D. Routhier.Mr. Venza never attended college. As an actor, he pronounced himself “dreadful.” As an aspiring artist, he began his career in Chicago by designing scenery for the Goodman Theater and window displays for the Mandel Brothers department store. But while still in his 30s, he began playing a vital role in bringing art to public television.He was working as a television producer when he was asked to collaborate with other TV innovators assembled by the Ford Foundation in the early 1960s to transform a limited service that generated no original programming into National Educational Television, the forerunner of the Public Broadcasting Service.While his fellow producers and other media experts were mulling how best to educate the viewing public through a nonprofit network, Mr. Venza recalled, he volunteered, “Why don’t we entertain them, too?”In the 1960s and ’70s, he introduced “NET Playhouse,” “Theater in America,” “Live From Lincoln Center,” “Great Performances” and, at the suggestion of the National Endowment for the Arts, “Dance in America.” He also imported popular BBC productions like “Brideshead Revisited.”He collaborated with choreographers like George Balanchine and Martha Graham, composers like Leonard Bernstein and playwrights like Tennessee Williams. Dustin Hoffman had his first starring role on television in a 1966 NET production of Ronald Ribman’s play “The Journey of the Fifth Horse.” A decade later, Meryl Streep appeared onscreen for the first time in the William Gillette play “Secret Service” on “Great Performances.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      John Barbata, Turtles and C.S.N.Y. Drummer, Dies at 79

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      Barbata belonged to marquee bands of the late ’60s and ’70s, drumming on smash hits such as “Happy Together,” the first song he recorded with the Turtles.John Barbata, the drummer for the Turtles, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who walked away from rock music at the height of his career, has died. He was 79.His death was announced in a social media post by Jefferson Airplane on Monday. A cause of death was not given and a list of survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Barbata joined the Turtles after leaving his high school band and enjoyed success almost immediately, drumming on the band’s best-known track, “Happy Together,” released in 1967.“I heard that the Turtles were looking for a drummer, they called me down to the studio to try me out on some session work, the first song we recorded was ‘Happy Together,’” Mr. Barbata wrote on his now defunct website, archived by web.archive.org.“We got it in one take,” he said.The song spent three weeks at No. 1 and became a pop classic. It’s been performed by acts as varied as Mel Tormé, Weezer, Miley Cyrus and the punk band Simple Plan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Daniel Kramer, Who Photographed Bob Dylan’s Rise, Dies at 91

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      For 366 days, he captured intimate images of the singer-songwriter as he changed the look and sound of the 1960s.Daniel Kramer, a photojournalist who captured Bob Dylan’s era-tilting transformation from acoustic guitar-strumming folky to electric prince of rock in the mid-1960s, and who shot the covers for his landmark albums “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited,” died on April 29 in Melville, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 91.His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his nephew Brian Bereck.Rolling Stone magazine once described Mr. Kramer as “the photographer most closely associated with Bob Dylan.” But that designation seemed highly improbable at the outset.Although Mr. Dylan had already begun his rise to global fame — he released his third album, “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” in early 1964 — Mr. Kramer knew little about him.That changed in February 1964, when he watched the 22-year-old Mr. Dylan perform his rueful ballad “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” on “The Steve Allen Show.” The song details a real event in which a Black woman died after being struck with a cane by a wealthy white man at a white-tie Baltimore party.“I hadn’t heard or seen him,” Mr. Kramer said in a 2012 interview with Time magazine. “I didn’t know his name, but I was riveted by the power of the song’s message of social outrage and to see Dylan reporting like a journalist through his music and lyrics.”As a young Brooklynite trying to carve out a career as a freelance photographer, Mr. Kramer decided he had to arrange a photo shoot with the budding legend. He spent six months dialing the office of Mr. Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. “The office always said no,” Mr. Kramer said in a 2016 interview with the British newspaper The Guardian. Finally, six months later, Mr. Grossman himself took his call. “He just said, ‘O.K., come up to Woodstock next Thursday.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Alex Hassilev, the Last of the Original Limeliters, Dies at 91

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      The trio’s witty, urbane arrangements made it one of the top acts of the early-1960s folk music revival. His gift for languages helped.Alex Hassilev, a multilingual, multitalented troubadour and the last original member of the Limeliters, one of the biggest acts of the folk revival of the early 1960s, died on April 21 in Burbank, Calif. He was 91.His wife, Gladys Hassilev, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was cancer.Before Beatlemania gripped America’s youth in 1964, the country fell in love with the tight harmonies and traditional arrangements of folk music — and few acts drew more adoration than the Limeliters, a trio made up of Mr. Hassilev, Glenn Yarbrough and Lou Gottlieb.Mr. Hassilev played banjo and guitar and sang baritone, not only in English but in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, all of which he spoke fluently. His bandmates were equally brainy: Mr. Gottlieb had a doctorate in musicology and Mr. Yarbrough once worked as a bouncer to pay for Greek lessons.Urbane and witty, they packed coffeehouses and college auditoriums with a repertoire that mixed straight-faced folk standards like “The Hammer Song” and cheeky tunes like “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear,” “The Ballad of Sigmund Freud” and “Charlie the Midnight Marauder.”At their height, between 1960 and 1962, the Limeliters were playing 300 dates a year and recording an album every few months, two of which — “Tonight in Person” (1960) and “The Slightly Fabulous Limeliters” (1961) — reached the Billboard Top 10.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Clarence Henry, New Orleans R&B Star Known as the Frogman, Dies at 87

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      A local hero in his hometown, he was best known for his hit “Ain’t Got No Home,” which showcased the vocal versatility that earned him his nickname.Clarence Henry, the New Orleans rhythm-and-blues mainstay who was known as Frogman — and best known for boasting in his durable 1956 hit, “Ain’t Got No Home,” that “I sing like a girl/ And I sing like a frog” — died on Sunday. He was 87.The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, where Mr. Henry had been scheduled to perform this month, announced his death. The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate reported that he died in New Orleans of complications following back surgery.“Ain’t Got No Home,” which reached No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, became Mr. Henry’s signature hit and definitively captured his humor and his vocal high jinks. Written by Mr. Henry and released when he was a teenager, the song brought him his nickname and went on to become a perennial favorite on movie soundtracks, heard in “Forrest Gump,” “Diner,” “Casino” and other films. The Band opened “Moondog Matinee,” its 1973 album of rock ’n’ roll oldies, with “Ain’t Got No Home.”The song was also used regularly in the 1990s by the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, who played it while mocking homeless people. Mr. Henry was grateful for the royalties.Mr. Henry in a publicity photo from 1960, shortly before his recording of “(I Don’t Know Why) But I Do” became his biggest hit. James J. Kriegsmann, via Gilles Petard/Redferns — Getty ImagesHis next hit — and his biggest one — arrived in 1961, when “(I Don’t Know Why) But I Do,” a song written by Bobby Charles and arranged by Allen Toussaint, reached No. 4. Later that year Mr. Henry had a No. 12 hit with his version of the standard “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” In 1964, the Beatles chose him as one of their opening acts for 18 shows on their American tour.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Gylan Kain, a Founder of the Last Poets and a Progenitor of Rap, Dies at 81

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      He spun gripping portraits of the Black experience starting in the 1960s with the seminal Harlem spoken-word collective, laying a foundation for what was to come.Gylan Kain, a Harlem-born poet and performance artist who was a founder of the Last Poets, the spoken-word collective that laid a foundation for rap music starting in the late 1960s by delivering fiery poetic salvos about racism and oppression over pulsing drum beats, died on Feb. 7 in Lelystad, the Netherlands. He was 81.He died in a nursing home from complications of heart disease, his son Rufus Kain said. His death was not widely reported at the time.The Last Poets, which originally consisted of Mr. Kain, David Nelson and Abiodun Oyewole, were aligned with the Black Arts Movement — the cultural corollary to the broader Black Power movement of the 1960s and ’70s — of which the activist poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was a central figure.The Original Last Poets, as they were billed, in the 1970 film “Right On!” From left, Mr. Kain, Felipe Luciano and David Nelson. Herbert Danska, via Museum of Modern ArtWith their staccato wordplay and sinewy rhythms, the Last Poets were pioneers of performance poetry, spinning out portraits of Black street life that often bristled with the guerrilla spirit of revolution.They made their public debut on May 19, 1968, in Mount Morris Park, now Marcus Garvey Park, in Harlem, at a celebration of the slain civil rights leader Malcolm X. Less than two months after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, it was a fraught period in Black America, but also a time percolating with calls for dramatic change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Robert Macbeth, Founder of Harlem’s New Lafayette Theater, Dies at 89

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      He created a vibrant space for actors and playwrights that became a seedbed for the emerging Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s.Robert Macbeth, a rising Black actor in the New York theater scene, was sitting in a Greenwich Village bar in September 1963, getting a drink before going onstage for an Off Broadway improv show. The evening news played in the background.“I happened to look up and there was a flash, and the flash was about the four little girls getting killed in Birmingham,” he said in a 1967 interview, recalling the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. “And there I was, sitting in a Village bar, with a Scotch in my hand.”He went onstage that night, and, rather than following the show’s loose routine, he began shouting, walking up and down the aisles, getting in the faces of the mostly white crowd.“I must have scared the audience half to death,” he recalled in the interview. But rather than absorb his message, they seemed to take it as entertainment: “They loved it, but that wasn’t the idea.”Mr. Macbeth, distraught over his inability to convey his anger and sadness, stopped acting after that night in 1963 and, in his words, went into “exile” from the stage. He worked in a bookstore, taught acting classes and tried to process the violent changes rippling through Black America in the 1960s.Slowly, an idea took form: Black actors and playwrights could never be fully effective in white-dominated spaces. They needed their own. So, in 1967, he gathered together a troupe of more than 30 actors and artists to open the New Lafayette Theater in Harlem.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More