With minimal ingenuity, any historical period can be made to dissolve into the ones around it. Take the rock revolution—that great shift which, emerging in the mid-nineteen-fifties and established by the mid-sixties, definitively separated the Broadway-and-jazz-based tunes that had previously dominated popular music from the new sound. The break ravaged record companies and derailed careers. In the fifties, the wonderful jazz-and-standards singer Beverly Kenney performed a song she’d written called “I Hate Rock ’n’ Roll,” and then—perhaps for other reasons, but surely for that one, too—took her own life [emphasis mine - S.S.].
Okay, I was unfamiliar with Ms. Kenney and her tragic end, so as you can imagine that got my attention.
You can find out more about her over HERE; it's way fascinating, trust me -- she should be remembered for a whole bunch of cool things rather than suicide.
And here's the anti-rock anthem in question.
Seems a little extreme to me, but obviously it was a different time. In any case, I'm a fan of that whole Fifties breathy hepster girl jazz singer genre -- I adore Chris Connor, for example -- and Ms. Kenney is obviously a superior representative of same.
I should add that the above is from a 1958 live performance on the old Steve Allen show, but alas the actual video of it has not made it to YouTube.
7 comments:
One would think she would have gotten lots of play on Dr Demento with that one. Maybe she did and I missed it.
That's she's big in Japan is a nice twist.
I was taken by that as well. 😎
Nice digging there Steve.
The star-crossed chanteuse unalived herself in 1960. At that time, Rock 'n' Roll was considered a fad that had passed, so you can't pin her demise solely on that. Given that she lived in the Village, you might wonder if she would have weathered the Folk Boom.
She obviously was an unhappy gal.
Let us also do some reflecting ourselves - how many joined the reactionary anti-disco movement in the late '70s? How many hated rap and hip-hop thirty-some years ago? With that, how many of us have either come to appreciate or even love those different styles of music that have, in reality, helped do to rock music what rock music did to those earlier forms of pop music?
The difference being that disco did, by and large, suck. 😎
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