SAMUEL CHARTERS

Samuel Charters made a personal quest in the 1950s and 1960s to explore African-American music tradition and to seek out forgotten and undiscovered artists. His field recordings and books represent an important body of work for musicologists, folklorists, and fans of the Blues. He passed away last week at the age of 85. NPR's Fresh Air celebrated Charters with a re-broadcast of his 20-min interview with Terry Gross from 1987, which included great stories about Lightnin' Hopkins and about navigating institutionalized racism during his recording trips. Listen to the program and see the transcript here. New York Times obituary here. Below: Charters' influential first record with Lightinin' Hopkins for Folkways (1959).

FEDERICO FELLINI

Happy Birthday to Federico Fellini! Born on this day in 1920, Fellini transitioned through the Italian Neo-Realism movement to revolutionize cinema by freely weaving memory, dream, and fantasy into film narrative. Essential works: La Strada, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits, Amarcord. Below: the director on the set of 8 1/2 (1963). Images by photographer Tazio Secchiaroli. 

MUSIQUE CONCRETE

Art Pioneers celebrates Musique Concrete with this educational look at the BBC documentary The New Sound of Music (1979). Doctor Who fans take note!

DOIN' THE BING

Bing Crosby was once called the Mick Jagger of the 1920s. Spy Vibers who only know Der Bingle from his later years and Christmas tunes would be surprised to see him at his youthful prime, belting out hot jazz numbers with the likes of Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, and Eddie Lang. Bing was really the first super star, reaching the #1 spot as America's entertainer on radio, film, and records. As an innovator, he used early microphone technology and radio to invent a new expressive style of singing and he helped translate jazz idioms, like scat singing, to a wider audience. Bing essentially played himself in public, cultivating a relaxed, casual vibe. Way before the hat and pipe, viewers were introduced to his trademark cool in a series of Mack Sennett shorts in the early 1930s. On Christmas Eve 1962, ABC aired the Bing Crosby Christmas Special for Clairol (his fourth special and the network's first broadcast in color). The show included guests Mary Martin and Andre Previn, and featured this fantastically modern dance devoted to Bing's casual lifestyle, Doin' the Bing. I love the design choices, from the costumes and minimal staging to the use of contemporary furniture. If your season is filled with White Christmas and Holiday Inn and you crave more Bing, I challenge you to master this hilarious (and charming!) dance. Happy Holidays! Suggested Bing releases: Bix n Bing, 16 Most Requested Songs, Some Fine Old Chestnuts, Bing in Dixieland, So Rare, Johnny Mercer Songbook, Irving Berlin Songbook, And Some Jazz Friends, Fancy Meeting You Here, Favorite Hawaiian Songs. 

 

LAUGH WITH LENNON

Long before Rock 'N Roll arrived, one of John Lennon's passions was writing and illustrating satirical pieces in his school notebooks. A great fan of Lewis Carroll, his imagery could be surreal and distorted, cementing a style in childhood that would carry over into his later work as an author and musician. Lennon grew up listening to The Goons and his sense of humor can be traced to the context of Britain's own satire and surrealism boom in the late 1950s and 1960s. I honor John Lennon's passing today with a brief into this lineage of comedic pioneers, from Peter Sellers and Peter Cook, to John Lennon and Monty Python. Videos below: Lennon reads two poems in the mid-1960s and offers humorous ads for Tobias Sportwear during a radio DJ show in the 1970s.

With the rise of youth culture and a questioning of traditional class roles, social satire became the new frontier in late 1950s/early 1960s British humor. Following in the footsteps of Peter Sellers and The Goons, who offered a wild send-up of British characters and institutions, young comedians like Peter Cook and Dudley Moore of Beyond the Fringe and the future members of Monty Python became the acerbic voice of their generation. Some of the popular targets included class, the generation gap, authority, official media, media styles/conventions, education, family, and the job market. Comedy fans may recall Beyond the Fringe skits like The Great Train Robbery and my favorite below, One Leg Too Few. Film fans may remember John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (Tom Courtenay/1963) for its blend of satire and fantasy. John Lennon played a key role in this satirical climate, with his James Thurber-like books of cartoons and poetry, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard in the Works (1965).

Surrealism experienced a major renaissance in the early-mid 1960s. Long before the mind-altering psychedelia that we associate with the decade was introduced, influential artists like John Lennon were already thinking outside the box. Inspired by the surrealism of Lewis Carroll, Lennon and others challenged the status quo with a playful and eschewed view. One figure who loomed large in this movement was an American ex-pat in London named Richard Lester, who had worked with The Goons on television projects. At the dawn of the sixties, he collaborated with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan on a short film called the Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1960). John Lennon, a fan of The Goons, loved the movie and kept Lester in mind when it came time for The Beatles to make a motion picture. Seeing a clip from Running Jumping below, readers will recognize a gag which emerged in Monty Python years later called the Fish-Slapping Dance.

Richard Lester was picked to direct The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night (1964), also groundbreaking for its surreal segments, and he went on to direct the band in Help! (The Beatles/1965) and Lennon in How I Won the War (Tom Courtenay/John Lennon/1967). Lester also teamed with James Bond composer, John Barry, in two major pieces for the 1960s, The Knack... and How to Get it (Rita Tushingham/1965) and Petulia (Julie Christie/1968). Fans of The Monkees might recognize a surreal scene inspired by The Knack, where the characters wheel a bed through traffic.

The surreal and whimsical work of Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) resonated throughout the Arts in early-mid sixties England. John Lennon often listed the author as a big influence on his own imagery (see I am the Walrus below). A notable celebration of Lewis Carroll came in 1966 with the BBC's production of The Wednesday Play. With a soundtrack by Ravi Shankar, this surreal Alice in Wonderland film starred a who's who of British talent, including Peter Sellers (Goons/Pink Panther), Wilfrid Brambell (A Hard Days Night), Leo McKern, Sir Michael Redgrave, Eric Idle (Monty Python), Sir John Gielgud, and all four members of Beyond the Fringe, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and writer/director, Jonathan Miller. Most of the cast would appear again in a 1972 Alice film. Spy fans will recognize a number of actors in the film for their appearances in surreal action shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. Video below: clips from Alice in Wonderland.

An element that is pointed out when discussing the performance style of the period is the breaking of the fourth wall (when actors speak directly to the audience). This was not a new technique. Eugene O'Neill is one playwright who employed it in his play, Strange Interlude. This was parodied in the 1930s by the Marx Brothers, when Groucho actually spoke of "corridors." The convention was also seen in the wartime and post-war comedies by Bob Hope and the Warner Brothers animation studio. The sudden, snappy interplay between character and viewer was hip again in the 1960s. This convention of storytelling had an element of participation that I believe created a deeper level of engagement with the largely young audience. As viewers saw Julie Christie interact on-screen with a TV soap opera in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), films like Alfie (1966), How I Won the War (1967), and The Knack...and How to Get it (1965) actually put the movie-going viewer right into the action. Below: Lennon segments in How I Won the War.

Additional Viewing: Essential favorites from the satire/surrealism boom also include The Wrong Box (Michael Caine/Peter Cook/Dudley Moore/1966) Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974), Not Only But Also (Peter Cook/Dudley Moore/1965-1970), Bedazzled (Peter Cook/Dudley Moore/1967), The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook/1970), The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester/Peter Cook/Rita Tushingham/1969), and Magical Mystery Tour (The Beatles/1967). Lennon incorporated an odd dream into the movie where he shoveled pasta onto a "fat lady's" plate. My particular favorite sequence is this musical visualization for I Am the Walrus. 

ATOMIC ART

The impact of The Bomb on popular culture in the post-war era was a strange cocktail of fear and fascination. The 1982 documentary film The Atomic Cafe illustrated a trend in the US to transform this weapon of mass destruction into a cartoony, Sci-Fi mascot. Diners enjoyed Atomic Burgers and shakes, and the space-age fashion designers in the 1960s popularized new styles born from a fear of radiation. The influence of Cardin, Rabanne, and Courreges is even felt today in Retro Futurism. But while we enjoy the creative reactions to the Atomic Age and Cold War, it's important to keep a weary eye on the dark realities behind the artifice.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto created a conceptual piece in 2003 that presents a running timeline of every nuclear bomb explosion on earth between 1945 and 1998. Hashimoto's "1945-1998" (also called "2053" based on the number of bombs used/tested) takes the form of a digital world map, where each detonation is represented by colors and sounds arranged by country. The piece begins slowly as the timeline ticks forward, but soon the bleeps build to a cohesive pattern of sound reminiscent of early Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). To transform such data into an art experience is interesting- and even entertaining- but Hashimoto also succeeded in sending an ominous message. We might look back on the Atomic Cafe culture as a quaint period in our naive evolution since WWII, but viewers shouldn't be fooled by a false sense of security. Maybe Ian Fleming's warning of a "little man with a heavy suitcase" has thankfully not come true (ref: Moonraker/1955), but the radiation from our own nuclear testing (and power plants) is all too real. Fukushima may seem like a world away to many readers, but the crisis in Japan continues to unfold with dire details. More about Hashimoto at ctbto and Wired. Below: "1945-1998" by Isao Hashimoto. 

The music group DEVO satirized many elements of post-war culture and values in the 1980s. Readers might recall the leak of president Ronald Reagan's 1984 ill-conceived joke on NPR: "We begin bombing in five minutes." Cold War anxiety was alive and well! DEVO's iconic radiation outfit is available on their with the ad: "Protect yourself from dangerous human elements and stay cool during meltdowns in this official DEVO yellow suit." If you're asking why this parody is still relevant, these T-shirts (top picture) were available from the official Museum of Nuclear Science recently. See also the Atomic Testing Museum. 

Below: A recent Kraftwerk performance of "Radioactivity". The song was originally released on their 1975 album Radio-Activitivity (Radio-Aktivität). They have re-recorded it a number of times over the years and their Japan performances since the 2011 earthquake have included Fukushima in the list of nuclear disasters. Founding member Ralf Hütter has been leading a new line-up of Kraftwerk on a number of world tours to present 3D concerts at major museums like MOMA and the Tate. 

Learn more at my Spy Vibe blog: Cold War Comics, Atomic Platters by Bear Family, Fear and Fashion. Above: Fireball Atomic Candy. This spicy jawbreaker was introduced to children in 1954.