Natural Women?
Women & the music industry in the 60s
How many female singer-songwriters and/or performers can you name from the 60s?
All-women bands?Female producers? Drummers? Female electric guitarists? Bass players? Women presidents of record companies?
Carole King
Carole King
Wrote many hits in Brill Building area on NYC with husband Gerry Goffin, for Shirelles, Aretha Franklin, etc.
Released her own best-selling album Tapestry in 1970
Her songs often covered, esp. by James Taylor (‘You’ve got a friend’)
The Shirelles
Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
S. Weller in Girls Like Us (about C. King, J. Mitchell, & Carly Simon):lyrics can be interpreted about fear of becoming pregnant: will you walk out on me? The song was partly autobiographical
The song as an AABA structure (verses 1, 2 & 4 have same melody & chords, B = the bridge), closer to Tin Pan Alley (Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc.) than a lot of 60s music
Aftershock: cf. Amy Winehouse, influenced by girls groups of early 60s
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte Marie
B. 1941 on Piapot Cree Indian reserve, Saskatchewan, Canada
Musically self-taught, started piano at 4, guitar at 17, experimented with different tunings, like Joni Mitchell
Began performing in Boston area, then clubs in Greenwich Village (NYC): The Bitter End, Gerde’s Folk City, The Gaslight
‘Universal Soldier’: covered by British singer Donovan
Universal Soldier
Universal Soldier
Traditional ballad form: abcb rhyme scheme, 4343 stress pattern
But unlike ballads, no real narrativeUses techniques found in oral poetry: list
(he’s a Catholic, a Hindu, etc.), grammatical parallelism (he’s fighting for X, Y, Z)
Awareness-raising song: what is our responsibility in a democracy? Where do the orders come from?
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, influential Canadian singer songwriter, musician, painter
Started off as ‘folk’ singer, but also recorded with major jazz musicians (Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter)
Self-taught but very innovative guitarist (different tunings)
Both Sides Now Big Yellow TaxiThe Fiddle and the Drum
Laura Nyro
Bio
Born Laura Nigro, Oct. 18, 1947Ca. 1954: begins writing poetry and first songCa. 1957: begins performing at summer resorts
in CatskillsCa. 1963: leads group sing-alongs at summer
camp in Mountaindale, NY, arranges spirituals and freedom songs
1964: writes first original tunes, 1st album 1967. Very influential among singer-songwriters (Joni
Mitchell, Ricky Lee Jones, etc.) but often neglected in accounts of 60s music
Influences
Girl groups: Shirelles, ChantelsSoul: Motown, Martha & the Vandellas,Curtis
MayfieldFolk: Joan BaezJazz: Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, John
Coltrane, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner…
Stoned Soul Picnic
On 1969 album: Ely and the Thirteenth Confession
Coins verb ‘to surry’Two-beat alliterative phrases: the lord and
the lightning, trains of trustClever internal rhyme: comes in akinGrammatical parallelism: There’ll be trains of
<noun phrase> (also known as incremental repetition in ballad scholarship)
Synesthetic imagery
Red yellow honey sassafras and moonshineSynesthesia: a condition where "people
experience more than one sensation in response to a single stimulus » (cf. Baudelaire's "Correspondences, Rimbaud's "Les voyelles », Sacks, Musicophilia, 2007).
Her description of instrumentation: "a warm pale blue with a few whitecaps on it."
Lonely Women
Nobody hurries home to lonely women…The blues make the walls rush in…Everyone knows…but no one knows
Janis Ian
Janis Ian
B. 1951, NYC, left-wing parents, grew up in black neighborhood in East Orange, NJ
Accomplished musician, started piano at 6-7, by her teens had learned organ, harpsichord, French horn, flute, guitar
Influenced by Phil Ochs, Dylan, took guitar lessons from blues guitarist/singer Rev. Gary Davis
Began singing in Greenwich Village clubs as a teenager
Wrote ‘Society’s Child’ at 13-14 yrs old
Society’s Child
Society’s Child
Recorded in ‘65, released in ‘66Interracial dating & marriage still
stigmatized in the 60s (Cf. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner w. Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier)
Song was promoted by composer Leonard Bernstein, but banned by some radio stations
Notice musical symbolism: harpsichord vs. Jazz/blues ending
Ending= resignation rather than revolt.
Janis Joplin
Mercedes Benz
Clever humorous critique of materialism & consumer society
Parody of spirituals, praying for a status symbol
Janis Joplin, one of few white female icons of the 60s who projected female sexuality so directly
Inspired by black blues & R & B singers like Big Mama Thornton, Etta James (or earlier, Bessie Smith)
Part of the San Francisco scene
More to Explore
Sheila Weller, Girls Like UsAlice Echols, Shaky Ground: The 60s and Its
Aftershocks (NY: Columbia UP). See chapter on Janis Joplin & interview with Joni Mitchell