5th Annual Charlie Parker Celebration: 10 Days of Jazz from August 16-25, 2018

Doc: The Beatles Decade

SOURCE: JAZZWAX BY MARC MYERS
November 3, 2017
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For American teens in the 1960s, the Beatles represented the dawn of unrestrained excitement and parental rejection, a time when screaming, long hair, loud music, risque fashion, snarky humor and drugs mocked authority and convention. But through a British lens, the Fab Four were something more—an escape from glum parents, a bleak economy, a class-conscious society and a country still bound by stuffy tradition and set ways. Yesterday I found a fascinating multi-part documentary on the Beatles and the 1960s as viewed from the British perspective. Here's The Beatles Decade:

Here's Part 1: Teenage Rebels...

Here's Part 2: Sex, Spies and Rock and Roll...

Here's Part 3: Swinging Britain...

(Part 4 has been muted over a rights issue.)

And here's Part 5: The Party Is Over...

Continue Reading...

This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
Copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.

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My mother was a singer. She instilled in me a sense of swing and timing. Everywhere I went there was that sound, that happy sound of life on fire. Our next door neighbors were jazz musicians. Traveling in a hearse to jobs with the bass strapped on top and a set of vibes in the back
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My mother was a singer. She instilled in me a sense of swing and timing. Everywhere I went there was that sound, that happy sound of life on fire. Our next door neighbors were jazz musicians. Traveling in a hearse to jobs with the bass strapped on top and a set of vibes in the back. It was the early 60's. I would watch and listen and they would have be singing “Days of Wine and Roses” at age 7 with them. It was fun. It felt good. It felt right. Pop music called to me growing up. I found myself drawn to the more technical types of sounds, ones influenced by the higher levels of jazz, songs of feeling, songs of spirit, songs of the best of humanity. Throughout many radio adventures I ended up landing with jazz. I don't think it was an accident. I don't believe in jazz as a museum piece. I believe it is a living, breathing, ever evolving art form of people reaching out in the darkness, searching for the exact chords for the exact nature of human existence.
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By Chuck Leavens
Member since: 2018