At a Miami Beach press conference, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison bug a fisheye camera.

It was 50 years ago that the Beatles entered Abbey Road Studios in London to begin a marathon recording session. Out of the 10 songs they recorded, they immediately released “Please Please Me.” Sales in the U.S. were so poor, the song didn’t even appear on the music charts. Yet one year after the recording session, the Beatles arrived at New York’s Kennedy International Airport to be greeted by 3,000 screaming fans.

Even now, it’s hard to understand how the Beatles managed to rise to such stardom in so short a time. For three years, they had been playing dockyard bars in Liverpool, England, and Hamburg, Germany. Then, in the space of few months, they started appealing to the American imagination and built an army of screaming, adoring fans.

This sudden fame surprised the world. It also surprised the Beatles. (Asked what he thought about their sudden popularity, John Lennon replied, “I think everyone has gone daft.”) But it didn’t surprise America’s pundits and commentators, most of who were ready with a quick explanation; the Beatles were just a passing fad, another teenage craze like the one inspired by Elvis. The only thing that distinguished this group was their haircuts, which seemed to elicit endless criticism from adults.

Among the critics was Vance Packard, who wrote “Building the Beatle Image” for a March 21, 1964, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Packard was an investigative journalist who had written best-sellers about status, conformity, and advertising in America. Like many critics, he attributed the popularity of the Beatles’ music to its ability to set parents’ teeth on edge. But Packard saw something other commentators missed: the Beatles had an “exciting sense of freshness. … Surliness is out, exuberance is in. … Pomposity is out, humor is in.”

The humor came through repeatedly in the Beatles press conferences, where John, Paul, George, and Ringo turned the question-and-answer sessions into spontaneous comedy routines.

Q: How did you ever decide on a name like The Beatles for the group?
John: Well, I had a vision when I was 12, and I saw a man on a flaming pie, and he said, ‘You are Beatles with an A.’ And we are.

Q: What’s the rudest question you’ve been asked?
Ringo: The rudest was, someone said to me, ‘How are you doing, John?’
John: That’s not rude.
Ringo: (jokingly) Well, it was an insult.

Q: The airport police were quite concerned about some oversized roughnecks who tried to infiltrate the crowd.
Paul: That was us!

Q: A psychiatrist at one of your concerts in Seattle said the effect on the children—14,000 kids in there—he called it unhealthy, and he said you had a neurotic effect. How do you feel about this?
John: It was probably him that was unhealthy, watching it.

Q: John, how would you describe yourself in one word?
John: I don’t know.
Paul: ’John.’
John: ’John,’ yeah. Thank you.

Q: What do you think about the criticism that you are a bad influence?
Paul: I dunno, you know. I don’t feel like a bad influence. (to John) Do you?
John: Nah, I think you’re a good influence, Paul.
Paul: Thank you, John.

Q: As you’re confined to your room all day, what do you do?
George: Oh! Tennis and water polo.

Q: Have you been heckled at all? Have you ever had …
Paul: Oh, yeah! We used to have it in—especially in the early days! But John—John had a perfect answer! What was it …? ‘Shut up!’

Q: I must tell you, by the way, that Detroit University have got a ‘Stamp Out The Beatles’ movement.
George: I know, yeah.
John: Yeah, we heard something about that.
Paul: We’ve got a ‘Stamp Out Detroit!’
Q: They think your haircuts are un-American.
John: Well, it was very observant of them because we aren’t American, actually.
Paul: (laughs) True, that.

Q: How long do you think Beatlemania will last?
John: As long as you all keep comin’.

While the Beatles could charm reporters, their comic improvisations wouldn’t have made them so popular. It was their music—a bright sound with fresh melody lines, interesting harmonies, and a strong beat (so strong, Packard noted, that you could still follow it amid the screams of their fans.)

They also had a healthy borrowing of several American musicians. Years later, John recalled that he wrote “Please Please Me” after hearing Roy Orbison singing “Only The Lonely.” He was suddenly motivated to write an “Orbison song.” For lyrics, he recalled an old Bing Crosby song he’d heard as a child, “Please, lend your little ear to my pleas.”

When he performed it the recording studio, he sang the descending melody line—“Last night I said these words to my girl”—while Paul sang a high note in harmony. It was an effect he freely admitted he’d borrowed from the Everly Brothers.

Before flying to America where the Beatles were so noisily received, Paul McCartney worried that the group had nothing to offer. Americans already had their own groups. “What are we going to give them that they don’t already have?” The answer was talent, hard work, imagination, and the intelligence to musically borrow from the best.

50 Years Ago: Beatles Invasion! The Saturday Evening Post

The Beatles
Photo by John Zimmerman
March 21, 1964

There was no place to escape The Beatles in the early ’60s. Radio stations across the country were continually playing “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” They were also airing the swarm of criticism aroused by these four young musicians. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion about The Beatles.

A February 1964 editorial in The New York World-Telegram described their music as “a haunting combination of rock ‘n’ roll, the shimmy, a hungry cat riot, and Fidel Castro on a harangue.”

From Newsweek: “Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of ‘yeah, yeah, yeah!’) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.”

Even the mythical James Bond weighed in, telling a love interest in one of his movies, “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done. Such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above a temperature of 38 degrees Farenheit. That’s as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs.”

But what was The Saturday Evening Post saying about The Beatles? Read the cover story, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Music’s Gold Bugs: The Beatles,” by Alfred G. Aronowitz from March 21, 1964.

Beatlemania: No Passing Fad The Saturday Evening Post

The Beatles – photo by John Zimmerman

The BeatlesPhoto by John ZimmermanMarch 21, 1964

Photographer John Zimmerman was one of the best. His lens caught famous politicians and newsmakers, and even strange new groups from Britain. But this 1964 photo of the Fab Four is a classic. The cover promised “a probing analysis of their incredible power to evoke frenzied emotions among the young.” Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. What do you expect from stuffy old editors who worked Eight Days a Week? To simplify: the Beatles just made us feel Glad All Over. Okay, I’ll stop now.

Sonny and Cher – photo by Jerry Schatzberg

Sonny and CherPhoto by Jerry SchatzbergApril 23, 1966

Another classic! Cher is looking hot and Sonny is looking, well, not the least bit Republican. Always up-to-date on the latest lingo, the editors informed us that Sonny and Cher were “what’s happening, baby”. Cher was known for her mod fashions, but here’s a description of Sonny backstage at the Hollywood Palladium: “Although the musicians were wearing tuxedos, Sonny had on a yellow turtleneck sweater, a white, double-breasted pirates’ jacket with wide lapels, epaulets and yellow puffs for buttons. His trousers were white, tight, and ornamented with a wide, silver-buckled, brown-leather belt, and black boots completed the outfit.” You can’t get more hip than that. That description, by the way, was from the author of the article, Peter Bogdanovich.

Roger Miller – photo by Maurie Rosen

Roger MillerPhoto by Maurie RosenFebruary 12, 1966

It wasn’t just rock and roll. There was a “big boom in country music”. Anybody over fifty remembers the “King of the Road”. From “Engine Engine No. 9” to wishing you had a “Do Wacka Do” (okay, you had to be there), Roger Miller was big time. What is country music? “It’s soul in a rhinestone suit”, the article said, “honesty with amplifiers, a new ‘uptown’ sound that city folks like—and it’s back in the big time again.” Remember “A White Sport Coat” by Marty Robbins? The Carter Family? Sonny James? This was “that new sound from Nashville”. But no one could do “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” like Roger Miller.

The Mamas and the Papas – photo by Dan Wynn

Mamas and the PapasPhoto by Don WynnMarch 25, 1967

“Monday, Monday,” “Calfornia Dreamin’,” “I Saw Her Again” – the hits just kept coming for the Mamas and the Papas, proving they weren’t just hippies – they were hippies with talent. But they were on the wild side. A guy in one audience stood up and shouted, “Cass, Cass, I love you.” Cass “peered into the audience from the footlights. ‘Dynamite! Where are you staying?’” The article by William Kloman stated that once “the Mamas and the Papas instigated a riot, mainly to test their theory that it could be done scientifically. John got a black eye for his efforts, and they have since tried to keep their audiences under control.” Mama Cass (whose voice on “Dream a Little Dream of Me” I will always remember) died of a heart attack in 1974, John passed away in 2001 and Denny in 2007. Happily, lovely Michelle is still with us.

Frank and Nancy Sinatra – Supremes photo

Frank and Nancy SinatraSupremes PhotoJuly 15, 1967

“It has been 15 years now since rock ‘n roll was laughed off as just another fad,” the Alfred G. Aronowitz article states. “Frank Sinatra called it ‘the martial music of every sideburned deliquent on the face of the earth.’ The police in Atlanta, Ga., ruled that teen-agers couldn’t dance to it without written parental consent. Roman Catholic leaders in Boston called for a boycott of it, to be enforced by a censor. And the head of the White Citizens Coucil in Alabama saw it as part of a Negro plot to ‘mongrelize America.’” Welcome to the 60’s, folks. The diversity in music was a sign of the jumbled times: Herb Alpert, The Supremes, The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, Petula Clark. 27-year-old Nancy Sinatra, “has already collected three gold singles, which is two more than Frank Sinatra ever got in his entire 26-year career.” And then Frank and his little girl have a smash love duet, “Something Stupid.” Something Crazy was going on.

Bob Dylan – photo by Elliott Landy

Bob DylanPhoto by Elliot LandyNovember 2, 1968

Okay, I confess: once, hearing a guy on a radio program dedicate a Bob Dylan song to our troops, my response was “haven’t they suffered enough?” Not a fan of the voice – sorry. This 1968 article covered “the royal family” of pop. From Hendrix to Buck Owens, Joplin to Merle Haggard, B.B. King to the Beach Boys. And oh yes, the Stones, Simon & Garfunkel and Johnny Cash. Then, “Enter the King, Bob Dylan”. Author Alfred G. Aronowitz makes Dylan’s lyrics sound almost biblical, “….the mysterious Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” he says, is “a parable of friendship and temptation.” And “the moral of one of his songs, he recites, is that no man should be where he does not belong, that each man should help his neighbor, that no one should envy his neighbor’s lot.” But I can’t argue about the unending beauty of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which became something of a civil rights anthem. Indeed, how many roads must a man walk down…

Classic Covers: Music of the Sixties The Saturday Evening Post

What made it such a memorable year was the diversity of music. Unlike later years, when one style of music seemed to dominate the charts, 1969 yielded a crop of highly diverse offerings. One the most original sounds arising in that year was “soul music.” Growing out of ancient roots, it was just starting to blossom. Eventually, it would develop numerous branches that would yield some of the best music in American.

This was how The Saturday Evening Post described this new musical genre [PDF download] :

A year ago, at the Monterey Pop Festival, The Who exploded smoke bombs and demolished their instruments onstage. Jimi Hendrix, having made a variety of obscene overtures to his guitar, set fire to it, smashed it, and threw the fragments at the audience. But “the most tumultuous reception of the Festival,” according to one journalist, went to Otis Redding and the Mar-Keys, all of them conservatively dressed and groomed, who succeeded with nothing more than excellent musicianship and a sincere feeling for the roots of the blues.

In examining Soul Music, the Post chose to focus on the pivotal role played by the Memphis music industry.

All over Memphis the boom is on: New recording studios are being built, and old studios are being expanded to meet the growing demand for the “Memphis Sound,” which everyone wants his recording to have. And in the traditional recording centers of New York, Los Angeles, and the old Tennessee rival, Nashville, the signs of Memphis’s musical renaissance are being read with some unease; for, down among the magnolias and the cotton bales, this strange and unprecedented combination of farmers, businessmen. dropouts, day laborers, shoeshine boys and guitar pickers is making Memphis a new center of the pop-music industry. The recording industries of New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville are all much bigger; Memphis is probably a distant fourth. But Memphis has lots of hits. Recently, on a just-average week, 15 of Billboard’s Top-100 pop records and 16 of the magazine’s Top 50 rhythm-and-blues recordings were Memphis products.

There are many explanations for Memphis’s musical success, but they all boil down to that one word: Soul. Bob Taylor, vice president of the American Federation of Musicians’ Memphis chapter, says, “We don’t have the world’s best musicians, or the greatest recording equipment. But one thing the music of Memphis does have is the ability to communicate to the listener a sincere, deep feeling. You can’t listen to a Memphis record without responding to what the musicians felt when they made it. You have lo, al the very least, tap your foot.”

At the Stax/Volt studio, which produces many Memphis hits, songwriters Isaac Hayes (at piano) and David Porter pursue a song they hope will be as big as their Soul Man and Hold On, I’m Coming.

Across the country, “soul” has become synonymous with “black”—as in “soul brother.” But in Memphis those who “have it” will tell you that soul is not the exclusive property of any one race. Nor, in spite of soul music’s origins in rural poverty, does it belong to any one economic class. It might have at one time, but it has become too prosperous for that. There are too many poor country boys with Rolls-Royces and matched sets of Cadillacs…

Memphis’s special affinity for soul comes from its very special history. The soul sound was born from work cries and field hollers in the lonely stretches of the Delta, and established permanent residence in Memphis after 1862, when the Federal army, having subdued the city, made its headquarters near Beale Street. The Negro population of the city consisted mainly of former slaves who felt they had good reason to fear the local whites, and therefore stayed as close to Federal headquarters as possible. After the war many Negroes came in from the country, trying to find their families. There were only about 4,000 Negroes in Memphis in 1860, but by 1870 there were 15,000. Beale Street, now a faded jumble of pawnshops, liquor stores and pool halls, was then the toughest street in the toughest town on the Mississippi River, and it attracted the Negroes, according to one historian, “like a lodestone”…

The first blues record was cut in 1920 at the Okeh Recording Company in New York. Mamie Smith’s version of Crazy Blues sold for months at the rate of 7,500 copies a week, and soon Memphis was overrun with record representatives. They did a brisk business with records by the Memphis Jug Band, the Beale Street Sheiks, Furry Lewis, and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers…

The music business in Memphis did not revive until after the war. Another generation of blues men was on hand, most of them, as before, from the Delta. They played amplified instruments, and their newly added, heavy back beat caused the music of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf to be called rhythm and blues. It was louder than the old blues, and it had more rocking rhythm, but its lyrical content was about the same—short phrases, pithy and sentimental, often with strong sexual imagery, viewing life and love from the bottom of society…

One of the most active early rhythm-and-blues companies was Sam Phillips’s Sun Records. Phillips had been a disc jockey for years on the Dust Bowl circuit, and became a record producer to cash in on the appeal R & B had for white teen-agers. But he did not intend to stop there: “I saw that if a person could get a combination of Negro spirituals, rhythm and blues, and hillbilly or country music—not just an imitation but with feeling and fervor and soul, like the Negro singers have, and the true country singers, too—well, I could really do something.”

Anyplace but Memphis, finding such a combination would have required a miracle. All Phillips had to do was wait. One day a truck driver from the Crown Electric Co. came in to Sun Records. “His hair was down almost to his shoulders. He had a real beat-up guitar” — and his name was Elvis Presley.

According to the author, Phillips and Presley became early contributors to Soul Sound by combining “the music of the country whites with rhythm and blues, ending segregated music.”

1969: The Post Listens To “The Soul Sound” The Saturday Evening Post