The Beatles in Hamburg - 1960

 Pete  -  George  -  John  -  Paul  -  Stu

The period from August 1960 to December 1962 marked a significant period in the development of The Beatles.  Beginning on about August 17, 1960 The Beatles played at a series of Hamburg clubs including the Indra and the Kaiserkeller.  The group at this time was John, Paul, and George with Pete Best on Drums and Stu Sutcliffe on Bass.   Pete was auditioned and recruited the day before they left Liverpool!

Their schedule was intense.  The Beatles performed 7 days per week, often for 7 or 8 hours per night.  Living conditions were squalid, as Paul McCartney remembers... "We lived backstage in the Bambi Kino, next to the toilets, and you could always smell them. The room had been an old storeroom, and there were just concrete walls and nothing else. No heat, no wallpaper, not a lick of paint; and two sets of bunk beds, with not very much covers—Union Jack flags—we were frozen."  

These were the years that The Beatles gelled. Their skills were honed, their repertoire was expanded, and their reputation was begun.  The Beatles emerged from this period ready to be launched into the stardom that would follow.

 
Rock on!!  Rob; in Vancouver 

"In Hamburg we got very good as a band because we had to play eight hours a night and we started building a big repertoire of some of our own songs, but mainly we did all the old rock songs. In fact, we did everything." George Harrison

The Beatles in Hamburg

"Love is Strange" - Mickey and Sylvia

Ewan McGregor and Louise Germaine lypsynch this classic '57 hit by Mickey and Sylvia.  Enjoy...

August 6 - Hiroshima Day

On August 6, 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  15 years later, August 6, 1960 saw the US and the USSR in the midst of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War.   65 years later, August 6, 2010 sees us still living under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

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Muddy Waters 1960 - "Hoochie Coochie Man"

Newport Rhode Island Jazz Festival

July 1960

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Personnel

• Francis Clay – Drums
• James Cotton – Harmonica
• Pat Hare – Guitar
• Otis Spann – Piano, Vocals
• Andrew Stevenson – Bass
• Muddy Waters – Guitar, Vocals

Top of the Charts - "Shakin' All Over"

UK #1  August 1960 - Johnny Kidd and the Pirates

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British Skiffle Music

Enough on the American political front.  There was certainly a lot more happening in the Summer of 1960 than the lead-up to a US election.  There's British music!  August 1960 would see the Beatles begin a 2-year stint in Hamburg, Germany.  This is a significant period which would see them refine their music, settle on the their band, and develop their early repertoire.  The Beatles would emerge from Hamburg in late 1962 and begin their meteoric rise to stardom.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves in this story.   Where did their music come from?   We've already looked at Buddy Holly as a significant influence in the formation of The Beatles' sound.  Now let's have a quick look at the British "Skiffle" scene.

From Wikipedia...

"Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly associated with musician Lonnie Donegan and played a major part in beginning the careers of later eminent jazz, pop, blues, folk and rock musicians."

Lonnie Donegan made a musical living on "Skiffle Revival".  His hits included the great hits of the "Skiffle Genre" from across the pond in the US.

• "John Henry" (1955)
• "Cumberland Gap" (1957) 
• "Gamblin' Man" (1957) - UK #1
• "The Grand Coulee Dam" ('58) 
• "Midnight Special" (1958)
• "Tom Dooley" (1958) 
• "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It's Flavour..." 1959) - UK #3
• "Battle of New Orleans" (1959) - UK #2
• "I Wanna Go Home" (1960) - UK #5
• "Michael, Row the Boat" (1961) - UK #6
• "Pick A Bale of Cotton"  (1962) - UK #11 

Wikepedia

"He was the first person we had heard of from Britain to get to the coveted No. 1 in the charts, and we studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man." — Paul McCartney

"I wanted to be Elvis Presley when I grew up, I knew that. But the man who really made me feel like I could actually go out and do it was a chap by the name of Lonnie Donegan." — Roger Daltrey

More from Wikipedia...

"A large number of British musicians began their careers playing skiffle in this period and some became leading figures in their respective fields. These included leading Northern Irish musician Van Morrison, British blues pioneer Alexis Korner as well as Ronnie Wood, Alex Harvey and Mick Jagger; folk musicians Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Ashley Hutchings; rock musicians Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Robin Trower and Dave Gilmour; and popular beat music successes Graham Nash and Alan Clarke of The Hollies. Most notably The Beatles evolved from John Lennon's skiffle group The Quarrymen."

How cool is that!!  A few fun "skiffle" clips follow.

SKIFFLE ON!!   Rob; in Vancouver

"Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, 

American folk music with a beat."
Van Morrison

Lonnie Donegan - Jimmy Page

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1960 US Campaign - The Stage is Set

Author David Pietrusza describes the 1960 campaign as "The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies", JFK, LBJ, and Nixon.   Considering the continuation of the Nixon presidency under Gerald Ford, the 1960 campaign would influence the next 16 years of presidential leadership.

This is indeed a pivotal time in American politics.  A new era of leadership is emerging and a new generation is stepping up.  Nixon and Kennedy are both younger and have recruited older, seasoned running mates to bolster the appearance of experience on their respective tickets.  The choices made by these three men, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon, in the course of their presidencies would determine the course of the nuclear arms build-up, the cold war, the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the space race, and a score of other issues which would define both the 60's and the 70's.

Rebuilding the Republican Right
This would also signal a time of rebuilding the "Republican Right",  as alluded to in Barry Goldwater's 1960 convention speech...    "...let's grow up conservative's.  Let's, if we want to take this party back someday, and I think we can, let's get to work!"  Goldwater would be back as the Republican Presidential nominee in 1964, but it would not be until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that the Republican Right would finally find their muscle.  They have been flexing it ever since.

Lodge-Kennedy Dynamics
Another significant element of this campaign is the nomination of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.  The Lodge's were long-time Kennedy rivals from Massachusetts, with Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. narrowly losing his senate seat to JFK in 1952.  Lodge's son George would lose a bid for the same seat, vacated by JFK when he was elected President, to Ted Kennedy in 1962.  (I still have a Kennedy '62 tie-clip to commemorate that Senate race!) Despite the historic rivalry, Kennedy would appoint Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as his ambassador to Vietnam at a crucial moment in the history of US involvement there.  One wonders if the two weren't working at cross purposes then, but that is another story.

Remembering and Reflecting... Rob; in Vancouver

"Few presidential elections have been quite as close, 

as dramatic or as controversial as the 1960 election 

between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy turned out to be."

Isaac McPhee

1960 Republican Convention

The Republican Party met in Chicago from July 25 - 28, 1960 to nominate Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge as their President and Vice President candidates for the 1960 election.  The following videos highlight the convention with speeches from Nixon, Goldwater, Lodge, and a brief clip from Martin Luther King Jr.

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Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

 1960 SUMMER FUN:  Brian Hyland

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JFK Acceptance Speech: July 15, 1960

The New Frontier

50 Years ago today John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic Party nomination with this rousing speech on the New Frontier.  It is filled with a sense of optimism about the future that I remember as a child growing up in Michigan.  In spite of all the threats of the Cold War; the nuclear arms race, and the Vietnam War, there was an abounding optimism and faith that our new found technological prowess would help us to eradicate hunger, cure diseases, and usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity for all.  Alas!

Ella Fitzgerald: "Mack the Knife" 1960

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1960 Democratic National Convention

The 1960 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles from July 11-15, 1960.  The central work of the convention was the nomination of a ticket for the 1960 Presidential Election.  John F. Kennedy was in the lead coming out of the primaries but was challenged by two significant rivals at the convention.  Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and former Democratic Presidential Candidate Adlai Stevenson entered the race in the week before the convention.

Kennedy went on to win the nomination on the first ballot.  In a move to unite the party and bring Southern Democrats aboard he chose LBJ to be his running mate.  Ballot results were as follows:

John F. Kennedy 806 (52.89%)
Lyndon Johnson 409 (26.84%)
Stuart Symington 86 (5.64%)
Adlai Stevenson 79.5 (5.25%)
Robert B. Meyner 43 (2.82%)
Hubert Humphrey 41 (2.76%)

The following post includes a couple of videos that highlight the convention.

Bye for now... Rob

"The world has been close to war before–but now man, who has survived all previous threats to his existence, has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate the entire species some seven times over."   JFK  July 15, 1960

1960 DNC: July 11-15, 1960

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July 11, 1960 - A Snapshot in TIME

TIME Magazine featured a picture of the Kennedy's on their July 11th cover as the 1960 Democratic National Convention got underway in Los Angeles. Much of the edition was focused on U.S. politics in the lead-up to the 1960 general election.



AFRICA:  The Independence Movement

World stories focused on Africa which was in the midst of a continent-wide independence movement.  The Congo,  Somalia, and Ghana were each featured in stories which both celebrated their independence and analyzed their challenges.  The Congo was already on the brink of a civil war with the mineral-rich Katanga Province threatening to secede.  

SOUTH VIET NAM: Problem of One Man

Vietnam is just beginning to emerge in the News.  This particular story looks at the challenges faced by the unpopular South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. 

"...he is an aristocrat by birth, has no real contact with ordinary citizens or confidence in their judgments. Since an assassination attempt three years ago, Diem is constantly surrounded by police; he has neither the desire nor the ability to be a folksy man of the people. The peasants, who blame the government for a one-third fall in the price of rice this year, view Diem as a remote and austere figure, while they must contend with nightly raids by Red terrorists. To the city intellectuals, Diem's one-man rule is increasingly galling. They argue that his administration could be more liberal without impeding economic progress or exposing itself to Communist infiltration." Read more

CANADA: Acadian Winner

TIME had a small story on the Liberal win in the Provincial election in New Brunswick which saw Louis Robichaud elected as Premier.

"The decision surprised nearly everyone. In Ottawa, Liberal Chief Lester Pearson, who leads the Opposition to Diefenbaker's Tory government, confessed: "I didn't think we would win." Apprehensive shudders ran through the government benches in Ottawa's House of Commons; defeats for federal governments are customarily heralded by provincial defeats." TIME Magazine



More to follow this week on the historic 1960 Democratic Convention.

Remembering and reflecting... Rob; in Vancouver

"Elmer Gantry" - July 7, 1960

"Elmer Gantry", starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons was released on July 7, 1960.   It went on to be one of the big hits for the year with Lancaster winning an Oscar for Best Actor.

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"House of the Rising Sun" - Joan Baez - 1960

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Republic of Congo - June 30, 1960

The Belgian Congo achieved independence on June 30, 1960 under the nationalist leadership of Patrice Lumumba of the the "Mouvement National Congolais" or MNC Party.  The new African nation initially took the name "Republic of Congo", changing it to "Democratic Republic of the Congo" in 1964 to distinguish it from the former French Congo which also took the name "Republic of Congo".

June 30, 1960 marked the end of a long colonial period that included the brutal "Congo Free State", a private holding of King Leopold II of Belgium, and the "Belgian Congo", a slightly more enlightened arrangement overseen by the Belgian parliament.

These words from newly elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba expressed the hope of the fledgling nation.

"The Republic of the Congo has been proclaimed, and our country is now in the hands of its own children.
Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.
Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just remuneration for his labor.
We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun's radiance for all of Africa...
We are going to do away with all discrimination of every variety and assure for each and all the position to which human dignity, work, and dedication entitles him.
We are going to rule not by the peace of guns and bayonets but by a peace of the heart and the will ."   Patrice Lumumba  June 30, 1960

Unfortunately, the end of Belgian colonialism did not mean the end of troubles for the Congolese people.  Tribal infighting, cold-war politics, resource conflicts, dictatorships, and civil war have plagued the "Democratic Republic of the Congo" from day one to this very day. 

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Today we mark the 50 year anniversary of the formation of the "Democratic Republic of the Congo".  In so doing we remember the oppressive era of colonial Africa, the great African independence movement of the 1960's, and the ongoing struggle for peace, freedom and unity faced by so many African nations today.

Remembering and reflecting... Rob; in Vancouver

"The Congo's independence marks a decisive step 

towards the liberation of the entire African continent."

Patrice Lumumba

"Patrice Émery Lumumba" - Elijah Kalswe

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