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I wonder how many realize what music was doing in the sixties.

As far as I can tell, almost al decades had a "theme" genre, but the sixties exploded with R&B, R&R, Blues, jazz, Raggae and the Latin sound, Joan Baez type folk and those four man college kid types (Four Seasons, Kingston Trio (Yeah, I know .. I see it), Peter, Paul and Mary ..... ), and I JUST commented on another thread featuring Shirley Ellis "Name Game" that we were a generation with rhythm and introduced to "Soul" ....

Sharp dressin' dancin' back-up singin' black groups; The Temps, Smokey, etc.

American Bandstand brought the West Coast all over the nation and we went to the moon.

WE HAD RHYTHM !

Bacj just a little further, in the mid-fifties Syracuse U brought in the Four Freshmen, Errol Garner, Les Elgart, Sauter-Finegan, and others; Bill Haley was starting to be popular even among the elite kids--all just before the '60s craze bringing the Beatles. In 1957 I married a girl who had just graduated from high school, who had been in the Columbia Records Club thing, and had platters with the Hi-Lo's, Marty Robbins, Stan the Man Kenton, etc.

I have never felt comfortable with the changes from logical, sensible mellifluous classical/big band melody-based genre of the '40s to '50s that was displaced by the beat-driven "music" that followed, now winding up with tuneless and finally mindless scatological "rap" or whatever it is that I have my radio-alarm set to, that hurts my ears so bad that I have to get up and turn it off, no matter how tired I still am.

All the sweet music that rests the soul is gone. But I do love "The Girl From Ipanema" as one of those floating, dreamy songs of deeply felt romantic love. And Les Paul and Mary Ford, "Somewhere the World is Waiting sor the Sunrise." And the Hi-Lo's "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries."