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

Riding with the Rail-Splitter

The Lincoln Highway, dedicated in 1913, originally ran from New York’s Times Square to San Francisco’s Lincoln Park. Once known as “America’s Main Street,” most of the original route has long since been decommissioned or assimilated into other, newer highways. But a stretch of the original alignment still runs through northern Illinois, from the Chicago metro area to the Mississippi River. Redesignated as a national scenic byway, the 179-mile Illinois Lincoln Highway now makes a perfect weekend jaunt.

Blackhawk Statue
© July 2002 Illinois Lincoln Highway Coalition

Along the Highway, wander the tree-lined streets of Geneva, still graced by Federal-era homes as well as quaint shops in the still-vibrant downtown section (www.genevadowntown.org). Prefer outdoor recreation? Play a few holes at one of the half-dozen golf courses scattered along the Highway, or enjoy hiking, fishing, or touring a historic grist mill at Franklin Creek Natural Area (www.franklingroveil.org). Take in sights such as the majestic Black Hawk statue towering above the Rock River, where paddle-wheeler riverboats still ply the waters (cruises run April through November: www.oregonil.com). Or learn about one of the iconic names in American industry at the John Deere Historic Site, where the great blacksmith perfected “the plow that broke the plains” (Grand Detour, Illinois, 815-652-4551).

Wherever you stop along the way, keep an eye out for the original mile markers. To prove the project’s viability—and the advantages of paved roads, at a time when the concept was still a novel one—the Lincoln Highway was first paved in short stretches called “seedling miles,” which are marked by commemorative signs (www.drivelincolnhighway.com).

Road to Ruins

Car travel is a great way to get from place to place. But an expedition on the Trail of the Ancients—which runs through parts of Colorado and Utah—is a trip back in time. That’s because the Trail is dotted with some of the oldest and best-preserved Native American archeological sites in the entire country. Take a week roaming the Trail’s 480 miles, and catch a glimpse of this corner of America as it was before the coming of Europeans. In Mesa Verde National Park alone, hundreds of cliff dwellings are little changed with the passage of centuries (www.visitmesaverde.com). At the nearby Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado, history comes alive with interactive exhibits, hands-on activities, and live demonstrations of tribal lifeways (970-882-5600). Walk in the footsteps of the Ancestral Puebloan people at Edge of the Cedars State Park and Museum in Blanding, Utah (closed Sundays: www.stateparks.utah.gov), exploring the ruins of an ancient settlement.

Mesa Verde dwellings
© 2006 John Mocko

Farther along the Trail, you’ll find some of the most stunning and iconic scenery in the Southwest. The soaring sandstone buttes of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (www.navajonationparks.org) are familiar from dozens of Hollywood Westerns; about 30 miles to the northeast, the lesser-known Valley of the Gods offers vistas less familiar but no less ravishing. Leave time for a rafting trip on the San Juan River, booked through Wild Rivers Expeditions (800-422-7654 or www.riversandruins.com). End your journey at Four Corners Monument, the only spot in the U.S. where you can stand in four states at once. (At press time, the park was scheduled to reopen in June, 928-871-6647.)

To plan a complete itinerary, explore the National Scenic Byways Project at www.byways.org.

For more inspiring trips, including the Historic National Road, the Natchez Trace Parkway, and the Great River Road National Scenic Byway, look for the Jul/Aug 2010 issue of The Saturday Evening Post (on newsstands the first week of July) or subscribe here.

It’s Road Trip Season! The Saturday Evening Post

It’s 40 days until the Cub’s April 13 home opener against the Rockies. Bonnie Hunt has been counting down for months. A die-hard Cubs fan, she hasn’t missed an opening day at Wrigley Field since 1977.

And Hunt is not going to start now, even though she’s busy producing and hosting The Bonnie Hunt Show in Culver City, California.

“When I took this job, I told them we had to work the job around opening day,” she laughs. “Wrigley Field is a just a smaller, condensed version of what Chicago is all about. Everybody talks to each other, drinks beer, eats a hot dog, and hangs out. It’s just a romantic, great place.”

The Chicago native loves the tradition so much that she has her crew pass out hot dogs and root beer to members of her talk show audience. Ushers on the set wear Cubs jerseys and hats or warm-up jackets to fend off the cold studio air. When talking about her favorite place, Hunt’s voice rings with excitement.

“If I could, I would live in Chicago,” says the 47-year-old who grew up the sixth of seven children in a large Catholic family, “I just love it so much.”

In high school, Hunt worked part-time as a nurse’s aide, later earning a nursing degree and working as an oncology and emergency room nurse at Northwestern University Hospital in the 1980s. It was in the Windy City that Hunt co-founded an improvisational comedy troupe, An Impulsive Thing, and performed at the famed Second City. While still working as a nurse, Hunt auditioned on her lunch break, winning the role of waitress Sally Dibbs in the award-winning film Rain Man. The part launched her acting career that includes roles in box office hits such as Jerry Maguire, Cheaper by the Dozen, and The Green Mile. The two-time Golden Globe- and Emmy Award-nominated actress also has directed movies—the romantic comedy Return to Me, starring David Duchovny and Minnie Driver—and voiced animated movies including A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., and Cars, which she helped write.

Hunt is a passionate fund-raiser who, through ventures such as her show’s “Bonnie’s Basement,” has raised money for The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation for spinal cord injury research.

The Post caught up with daytime television’s most down-to-earth and approachable host.

SEP: Why are you so passionate about your hometown?

Hunt: Chicago is a big part of who I am. Being in the city helps you to develop lifelong skills. (Laughing) The weather alone in Chicago teaches you teamwork. Everybody has to shovel their cars out to get back on the road or you wait for the buses. You earn spring. When it turns 40 degrees in Chicago, everyone has shorts on. Out here in L.A., it hits 40 degrees and everyone has a parka on. Chicago has always felt like a giant Mayberry to me. It’s all about remembering where you came from and the strength that it gives you. Sometimes life gets cloudy, and remembering your roots keeps everything in perspective, especially when you are trying to survive in a self-obsessed industry.

SEP: Were you always a Cubs fan, and what’s it like to go to games now?

Hunt: I grew up with scrapbooks of the Cubs. It was part of the family tradition. When I moved out of my parents’ house, I had to get reception to Chicago’s radio station WGN. Just having the sound of a ball game in the background is calming. It’s the soundtrack of our lives.

My brother Tom and the guys we grew up with from the old neighborhood always go. Tommy gets the tickets, and we usually sit behind third base. I always end up looking like Neapolitan ice cream—one arm tan, the other white, and I’m mostly bright red. Going to the ball game is just fun. I was born into a team—the sixth of seven children. As a nurse at the hospital, it was all about teamwork. Even at Second City, making an audience laugh and participate is about teamwork. At the end of the day, working together is what life is all about.

SEP: You are so approachable and candid. Is there something people might not know about you?

Hunt: (Laughs) Most people know just about everything about me. I do love gardening —it’s one of my favorite pastimes. I have an herb garden, but I also plant a traditional spring garden, like I’m in Chicago, even though everything grows year-round here in L.A. I plant irises, hyacinths, and lots of tulips. It’s like an orchestra when they bloom a couple of weeks apart from each other.

SEP: You have your own personal style as a TV host, but did others influence you?

Hunt: I learned a lot from Johnny [Carson], from how to welcome a guest to a show to respecting who they are and their story. He always did that. There was nothing desperate or anxious about him. That is sometimes a lost art in television. David [Letterman] has always been so supportive and encouraging to me. He’s had me on his show and has been a business partner. He’s a friend —someone I call if I need advice or to bounce an idea off someone. Johnny and David knew and understood me. We are all from the Midwest. With that comes a certain sensibility and humor. We are all grateful for the opportunities, and it’s been a great honor to work with both of them.

SEP: Why did you decide to bring your mom, Alice, on your show for the “Ask Alice” segment?

Hunt: I’ve talked about my mom, like David Letterman has, for so many years. Everyone can relate to a mom. I’m lucky to still have my mom in my life. I just want to share her with everybody. She is still very much the same mom I had when I was 7 years old. She genuinely loves and cares about people and is very funny, which is why I have quite a sense of humor.

SEP: How did you make the transition from nursing to acting?

Hunt: It was a hobby. Growing up in my neighborhood, I didn’t really think it would be possible to act, but my dad always told us to go for our dreams. I was really lucky to be a nurse first, because it’s given me the gift of perspective. One of my patients told me, “When are you going to go out to L.A.?” I said, “I’m not going to because then I’d fail and have to come back and explain myself.” He told me, “Bonnie, facing the end of my own life and one of my biggest regrets is not going out and failing a few times.” So he made me promise I would. And I’ve failed many times, but I’ve learned from them. You always learn more from your failures than successes.

Teaming Up with Bonnie Hunt The Saturday Evening Post