Rolling Stones vs. Dean Martin: 1964

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | FRIDAY, 16 MARCH 2012 | RICH KIENZLE

[nickcarraway]

Today the Rolling Stones are still Rock and Roll and pop culture icons, even as they battle over when (if ever) to do a 50th Anniversary Tour, a situation that may be easing now that Keith Richards apologized to Mick Jagger over remarks Richard made about his bandmate and collaborated in his best-selling 2010 autobiography. Scott Mervis posted a very astute Pop Noise blog entry regarding Bruce Springsteen's recollections of the legendary TAMI Show movie, James Brown's explosive appearance in that film and the Rolling Stones' unenviable task of following the Godfather of Soul.

It's also worth noting that nearly 50 years later, it's easy to forget how revolutionary the Stones were in, say, 1964. But here's an example that just about anyone can relate to. It was still the Mad Men era in those days, Beatle haircuts got kids thrown out of school and music that could (and is) played in churches nowadays was considered subversive and sick.

Their music, both the hardcore blues aspects, and the blues-based rock, was too authentically black-sounding for white picket fence, white bread Mainstream America. Hell, parents were only beginning to cope with the less threatening Beatles.

Enter the Stones, appearing on ABC's Ed Sullivan-like Saturday night variety show The Hollywood Palace on June 3, 1964. The show had guest hosts and this week's was Dean Martin, then in his prime and creating the legend that's honored today with Dino and imitators around the country, mostly as part of Rat Pack shows.

The Palace, taped in an LA theater, was produced by old-school showbiz types who had little truck with this whole youth movement, prefering instead to present the old farts of showbiz (Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, etc.) and the young farts who followed in their footsteps. The Stones, no less controversial in

[ETL]

Dean Martin was a great all-around entertainer: movies (westerns, Matt Helm spy stuff), TV comedian, and fantastic singer.

[JaguarXKE]

Blow it out your ass.

Wasn't that Uriah Heep who did that one? /sarc

[JDoutrider]

mark

[wardaddy]

Its BS...

The Stones were more dirty.....bad boys....not poppy like the Liverpool lads

That they did some Delta blues and whites feared that is such crap...new media template

Hell....Chuck and Little Richard had already paved that road and had been very popular

Whites thought James Brown very odd but interesting

wilson...Percy....Otis...etc were beloved

Whites feared very white and openly racist Jerry Lee more than any black performer

Parents hated the sexual culture of rock and roll period

Some groups like doo wop and Beach Boys got a pass

The psychedelic rock arrived and parents gave up....

In retrospect those long dead parents were more right than wrong

Ignore anything rolling stone says....chickenhawk Wenner is a nut

Chet Flippo was ok....

[wardaddy]

U first too must be young or not southern with all that bullshite

Mississippi delta blues....which being from there...i know... i grew up with it

Its about women problems more than bad white folks

Leadbelly....yes i know.. not Miss....is one notable exception....he had a hard on for crackers

I knew BB King.....Son Thomas instructed my cousin....those men didn't hate whites....they may have resented their hard station early on but hell most rural whites were poor too.....their biggest issues were women...vice...the law ...no money.....not strange fruit

And 2 more points

Rock and roll is as much country as blues....listen to Hank or Jimmy

Blacks were not blackballed.....segregation yes...but folks heard them trust me

Berry like Jerry Lee killed his career due to his wild Johnson....a racially blind animal....the Johnson

And btw.....where did Charley, Son, Robert and Blind get those guitars?

Did their kin bring em over on slave ships?

Nope....evil white man provided and inspired em somewhere along the line

Everything is not about whites being bad to blacks....

That sorta mindset has given us the poor dead black kid cir

I just stand stunned how much folks just eat it up.....

Alan Lomax senior....righteous recorder of great men

His son a liberal turd who overcharges for pics

Btw....whites like Stones....Cream....SRV....and so forth owe no apologies for taking the old music to new heights and really transforming it any more than Jimi owed Dylan

/rant

[abigkahuna]

I was talking with John Lee Hooker one day in his house in Redwood Shores in the SF Bay Area back in the mid 80s. He back up what you are saying, “The Blues was born when woman was born, if there were no women, there are no blues.”

I was there at his 70th birthday, green were cooking on the stove, Frank had just called to wish a happy birthday and Carlos dropped by with A Lucille from B.B. Robben Ford was there are well as members of the Coast to Coast Blues Band. Robben had a new album out.

I remember his living room, there was a BIG picture of SRV hanging there. He would say that George would come over and rifle through that box over there—the one that had all the songs and George would steal his songs (saying that with a smile.)

JLH told of how he was battling the music companies so that musicians could get their money. He was trying to get back royalities for Muddy’s estate.

I remember my wife and I sitting in his bedroom when John Lee would have his foot up because of the gout and how he got on the phone to Carlos to set up a gig.

I asked John Lee once, sitting in his living room with the ball game on; a living room that was quite ordinary and suburban; if he ever imagined that he would have it this good, (or something to that effect), John Lee’s answer was simply, “no.”

He talked about the Stones and how Mick and Keith would sneak backstage with their runny noses to get up close, (This would have been during the American Folk And Blues Festival Tours that began hitting Europe in the very early 60s)

[nickcarraway]

One more point about this guy who, who says the Stones were rebels incorporating black culture against the white bread America.

Have they ever heard of Berry Gordy and Motown. Was Motown, "white bread," even though the company was started by one black man, and utilized the talents of mostly black people, in performing, composing, and business? Motown's first million selling single (Shop Around, by the Miracles #2) was in 1960, and first #1 (Please Mr. Postman by the Marvelettes) were long before the Beatles and Stones made it. In this guy's opinion the white Rolling Stones had to bring black music to the attention of America, because Motown didn't exist. And by the way, Gordy enforced a standard of dress and performance that Dean Martin certainly would have been comfortable with.

(By the way, the Rolling Stones covered many Motown songs, the ones I know of being: Ain't to Proud to Beg and Just My Imagination, and My Girl from the Temptations, Can I get a Witness and Hitch Hike from Marvin Gaye, I Don't Know Why from Stevie Wonder, Money from Barret Strong (co-written by Gordy), Going to a Go Go by Smokey Robinson. Under my Thumb was obviously an homage to Motown) If the Stones acknowledge Motown as legitimate, how come they needed to bring it to a white bread America that was already widely consuming it?

[geege]

As ugly as they were I can’t believe Keith Richards and how normal he looked.....

[Skooz]

BFL

[Pravious]

“Their music, both the hardcore blues aspects, and the blues-based rock, was too authentically black-sounding for white picket fence, white bread Mainstream America.”

I didn’t need to read any further than this.

[driftless2]

The Beatles never pretended to be a blues or rb band, and their covers of black rb hits were their worst recordings. They could have skipped any of their covers of blues/rb recordings (Matchbox, etc), and it wouldn’t have affected their popularity one bit. That’s all right, I never for once thought the Stones sounded black either. I liked the Stones because they had a unique sound, that’s all. They could do songs like Angie as well.

[driftless2]

How did he get screwed?

[calex59]

Elvis Presly's music was considered to be too black sounding and often said to be "Jungle" music. In fact most rock and roll was said to be Jungle music, however the neither the Beatles or the Stones music was considered "too black" in my recollection. It was considered to be extremely radical. I was fairly young then and I hated the stones, mainly because Mick looked like one ugly SOB and I just then, and still don't, like them. The beatles were kinda OK but I was into the original sound of Rock and Roll and still am. He**, I didn't even really like surfer music.

The thing is, way before the Beatles and the Stones came on the scene, adults were condemning Rock and Roll and calling it evil.

By the time those two groups arrived things had begun to quiet down a bit, no one was thrown in jail for simply scheduling the bands(as was the case in the late 50s)in certain areas and the large protests against Rock and Roll and stopped being put on by adults, mainly because a large section of the original teens who had started the rock movement were now adults themselves in 1964.

For even though I, and many of my friends(people who had graduated 1958, 59, 60), didn't like the Beatles and the Stones we by no means tried to protest them or get them banned. By 1964, Rock was half way respectable.

[driftless2]

"stole the music"

That dog won't hunt. Everybody copies everybody else. White musicians no more "stole" black music than black musicians stole white music because black musicians used non-African instruments like pianos etc. to make their music. Everybody is influenced by everybody else. Did Charlie Pride steal c&w? If I claim credit for writing a song I didn't write, then yes, I stole that music. But if I make a cover of song, I didn't steal it, I just made a different recording.

[who knows what evil?]

Best Rolling Stones performance can be see on YouTube by searching Rolling Stones gimme shelter Amsterdam 95. Lisa Fischer gives a performance that will raise the hair on your arms. If you are a Rolling Stones fan it is a must see.

Damn. I thought the 'Brown Sugar' vid with Jagger and Tina Turner was something, but this is light-years beyond that. Lisa Fischer? OMG.

Thanks!

[deweyfrank]

he got screwed out of a lot of royalties and back in the 50’s being black held him back. And that's a fact.

[murron]

My 35 year old son in law loves the Stones. Not so much Dean Martin.

[wtc911]

I was a teenager then and the sentiment is pretty much accurate although the ‘black’ angle is a bit over-stated.

[Jim Noble]

Their music, both the hardcore blues aspects, and the blues-based rock, was too authentically black-sounding for white picket fence, white bread Mainstream America.

Hmmm...

I bet there weren't 5 negroes in 1964 who bought Rolling Stones records.

Since whites were out, and they sold millions of records...

Must have been "white Hispanics".

[driftless2]

"being black held him back"

Being an American also made him millions. Two ways of looking at it.