Thursday, January 14, 2016

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (54)

Although I had read about Joan Baez in the late Fall of 1964 in reference to the Berkeley Free Speech Student Revolt, it wasn't until the Summer of 1965 that I actually first heard how Baez sounded when she sang a folk song, a peace song, a protest song or a topical song.  Time magazine had apparently put her face on its cover very early in the 1960's. But prior to 1965, Baez was rarely seen on any of the television shows that I had watched; and although Vanguard Records "for the Connoisseur" had sold a lot of Joan Baez vinyl albums between 1960 and 1965, the AM radio stations in New York City like WMCA/"Good Guy Radio" and WABC (or the AM radio stations in Indiana) that played 45 rpm "hit" singles, apparently did not play either single cuts from Baez's early best-selling vinyl albums or any 45 rpm single records that Baez may have recorded (even after Baez's 45 rpm record of Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune" began rising on Billboard magazine's hit record charts) between 1960 and 1965.

And even though I had watched portions of the August 1963 March for Jobs and Racial Equality in Washington, D.C. on television and had watched and heard Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech being broadcast live on the network television stations that day, I had not seen or heard on television the singing portion of the August 1963 March on Washington rally in which folk singers like Peter, Paul & Mary, Dylan and Baez had apparently sung civil rights movement-related songs from the rally stage. 

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