Why 1964?

[desertv]

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the grrl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

 

[Tom Wells]

I'd argue it was a the range of years from 1963 to about 1967.
There was a lot of convergence for sure.
I think a lot of it was that format fragmentation had not yet occurred,
and people were exposed to a wider range of styles of music (on radio).

 

[hornet61]

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the grrl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

my theory is, the ten year cycle of evolution 1924 ragtime -1934 jazz - 1944 big band -1954 start of rock n roll -1964 as stated above - 1974 electronic , punk , club music - 1984 hip hop, metal etc....changing of the guard, every ten years a new generation kicks in, with their music and their buying power.

 

[firepoint525]

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the girl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

I would highly recommend reading Bruce Spivey's books for a little history on why it took until 1964 for the Beatles to conquer the United States. Seems that Capitol's A&R guy at the time hated the Beatles and did everything in his power to prevent them from breaking through in the states in 1963. But eventually the buzz over the Beatles got so loud that the president of Capitol asked to hear something by them. And he overruled the A&R guy, and released "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on Capitol. The rest is history.

I would say, however, that the girl group sound was actually nearing its end in 1964, save for the Supremes, who probably had a hand (at least indirectly) in killing off all the "lesser" girl groups of the earlier '60s. And the surf sound had been going for several years by then, and still had a year or two left to go.

Why 1964? A better question would be why not 1964?

 

[firepoint525]

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the girl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

my theory is, the ten year cycle of evolution 1924 ragtime -1934 jazz - 1944 big band -1954 start of rock n roll -1964 as stated above - 1974 electronic , punk , club music - 1984 hip hop, metal etc....changing of the guard, every ten years a new generation kicks in, with their music and their buying power.

I would say that the generational turnover is even faster than that! Examples:

1974: beginning of disco
1979: new wave, beginning of the end for disco
1984: heavy metal "hair" bands, end of country crossovers, end of Air Supply, etc.
1991: grunge (ugh), end of "hair" bands (at least grunge didn't last long!)

 

[Dave Andrews]

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the girl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

my theory is, the ten year cycle of evolution 1924 ragtime -1934 jazz - 1944 big band -1954 start of rock n roll -1964 as stated above - 1974 electronic , punk , club music - 1984 hip hop, metal etc....changing of the guard, every ten years a new generation kicks in, with their music and their buying power.

I would say that the generational turnover is even faster than that! Examples:

1974: beginning of disco
1979: new wave, beginning of the end for disco
1984: heavy metal "hair" bands, end of country crossovers, end of Air Supply, etc.
1991: grunge (ugh), end of "hair" bands (at least grunge didn't last long!)

1984 was also the beginning of the end of AM Top 40. XTRA the Mighty 690 went down that year, and KRLA dropped their currents. (Upstart KWNK Simi Valley bucked the trend for a few months at least and kept AM Top 40 going til at least early '85 IIRC.) Is it just me, or did music itself sound a little different when this happened?

 

[oldies76]

1984 hip hop, metal etc....changing of the guard, every ten years a new generation kicks in, with their music and their buying power.

Try 1988 with early hip hop......unless you count RAPture by Blondie in '81

 

[FRR]

As an old guy that loves music from the 1960's, I'm convinced that the years from 1961 to 1967 was the greatest music ever. After 1992 with the advent of rap and hip hop, commercial radio was as dead as a door nail as far as many of us were concerned.

 

[johnbasalla]

Actually Ragtime was over by 1924. The first Jazz recording came out in 1917 by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
The Jazz of the 1920s is often referred to as Pre-Swing Jazz. The first Country records, labeled as "Mountain", "Rural", "Southern" music, came out in 1924-1925. "Country's" predecessors included Banjo solo records that were very popular beginning in the 1890s and "Fiddle" tunes.

 

[hornet61]

Actually Ragtime was over by 1924. The first Jazz recording came out in 1917 by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
The Jazz of the 1920s is often referred to as Pre-Swing Jazz. The first Country records, labeled as "Mountain", "Rural", "Southern" music, came out in 1924-1925. "Country's" predecessors included Banjo solo records that were very popular beginning in the 1890s and "Fiddle" tunes.

I was speaking in generality of ten year increments..there is always an overlap in all music genre's and hybrids of the outgoing and incoming 1924 may have been a fusion of rag and jazz....my year examples were peak average...not stop and start specific dates.....1984 as athe hip hop date...hip hop is not just music, it has become a culture of it's own , by definition hip hop also includes rap music, dress, dance all these date back to late 70's..my 1984 again is a peak average date , when hip hop took stranglehold of the culture and hasn't let up yet.
By the early 80's the charts started to expand to the fiasco we have today from a few basic charts in the 50's to the current situation which seems like chart for every note on the scale, so it's harder to gauge how music eveolved.

 

[hornet61]

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the girl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

I would highly recommend reading Bruce Spivey's books for a little history on why it took until 1964 for the Beatles to conquer the United States. Seems that Capitol's A&R guy at the time hated the Beatles and did everything in his power to prevent them from breaking through in the states in 1963. But eventually the buzz over the Beatles got so loud that the president of Capitol asked to hear something by them. And he overruled the A&R guy, and released "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on Capitol. The rest is history.

I would say, however, that the girl group sound was actually nearing its end in 1964, save for the Supremes, who probably had a hand (at least indirectly) in killing off all the "lesser" girl groups of the earlier '60s. And the surf sound had been going for several years by then, and still had a year or two left to go.

Why 1964? A better question would be why not 1964?

I like the answer why not 1964...1964 has so many great elements of history and music, It may well be the best all-round year in pop music. The Capitol story explains the internal delay of the Beatle releases....Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.

 

[firepoint525]

1984 was also the beginning of the end of AM Top 40.

I like that you specified that '84 was the beginning of the end of top 40 on AM radio. I would say that the decline of AM radio in general was a little earlier than that. I lived in a rural area back then, and even there, the decline of AM radio was starting to be felt. For those of you who lived in the cities, the decline of AM radio was starting to be felt in the late '70s. And I lived in an area where the local AM station was able to reinvent itself and stay largely successful, which I am guessing that they still are to this day. But they moved their top 40 over to their then-new FM sister station (where it still is) and kept the AC/oldies tunes on their AM.

I remember reading an article in Billboard magazine back in the late '80s about the pending change of WLS-AM in Chicago to all-talk. The article listed a sample playlist from 1980 along with a sample playlist from 1989, and the '89 playlist definitely had more of an AC feel to it, while the '80 playlist was more "rock" in nature.

 

[firepoint525]

I like the answer why not 1964...1964 has so many great elements of history and music, It may well be the best all-round year in pop music. The Capitol story explains the internal delay of the Beatle releases....Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.

Got to see the Beatles tribute band that went by the name 1964 The Tribute. (They were 1964 As The Beatles until the (real!) Beatles' lawyers got involved! ) If the real Beatles had been able to break through in 1963, I suppose the tribute band would have called themselves 1963 The Tribute! ;D

 

[jonbruce]

Notice how very soft top 40 was in late 63 and early 64 before the Beatles burst on the scene; a lot of Bobby Vinton, Serendepity Singers, the Singing Nun etc. Something had to happen, and it did.

 

[TheFonz]

Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.

I think we were ready for them. Remember, many of the songs on those early LPs (including the Vee-Jay LP) were covers of '50s songs. The Beatles cut their teeth on American '50s rock & roll. I bought some of the their early singles, but I would have never bought the LPs if it weren't for those '50s songs (and they were available in STEREO, a real treat back then).

 

[oldies76]

Notice how very soft top 40 was in late 63 and early 64 before the Beatles burst on the scene; a lot of Bobby Vinton, Serendepity Singers, the Singing Nun etc. Something had to happen, and it did.

Same goes for the soft songs of 1980-1982 before the "new" British Invasion of 1983/84 (New Wave).

 

[wlllljoyyyyy]

...On a deep-ranging oldies show on non-commercial KPOO in San Francisco a ways ago ( Frankly going deeper than a commercial station's oldies show can really go . ) , I guess it was in fact a Vee Jay-saluting episode , the hosts mentioned that they remembered hearing both " Please Please Me " and " From Me To You " ( I believe they were both SF natives and lived there back then . ) on SF radio when they were released in '63 - The Vee Jay " FMTY " made the Bubbling Under chart in Billboard at the time , remember !

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the girl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

I would highly recommend reading Bruce Spivey's books for a little history on why it took until 1964 for the Beatles to conquer the United States. Seems that Capitol's A&R guy at the time hated the Beatles and did everything in his power to prevent them from breaking through in the states in 1963. But eventually the buzz over the Beatles got so loud that the president of Capitol asked to hear something by them. And he overruled the A&R guy, and released "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on Capitol. The rest is history.

I would say, however, that the girl group sound was actually nearing its end in 1964, save for the Supremes, who probably had a hand (at least indirectly) in killing off all the "lesser" girl groups of the earlier '60s. And the surf sound had been going for several years by then, and still had a year or two left to go.

Why 1964? A better question would be why not 1964?

I like the answer why not 1964...1964 has so many great elements of history and music, It may well be the best all-round year in pop music. The Capitol story explains the internal delay of the Beatle releases....Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.

 

[wlllljoyyyyy]

...Coming from the New York metropolitan area , I remember , then , 77 WABC having a brief resurgence post-disco , then , by the end of summer , becoming essentially an AC station , playing only that , until their final sign-off as a music station in 1982 or whenever .
Another thought about 1964:
How do " older generation " popsters Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong both having not only hits but #1s fit in there ?????????

1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the girl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

my theory is, the ten year cycle of evolution 1924 ragtime -1934 jazz - 1944 big band -1954 start of rock n roll -1964 as stated above - 1974 electronic , punk , club music - 1984 hip hop, metal etc....changing of the guard, every ten years a new generation kicks in, with their music and their buying power.

I would say that the generational turnover is even faster than that! Examples:

1974: beginning of disco
1979: new wave, beginning of the end for disco
1984: heavy metal "hair" bands, end of country crossovers, end of Air Supply, etc.
1991: grunge (ugh), end of "hair" bands (at least grunge didn't last long!)

1984 was also the beginning of the end of AM Top 40. XTRA the Mighty 690 went down that year, and KRLA dropped their currents. (Upstart KWNK Simi Valley bucked the trend for a few months at least and kept AM Top 40 going til at least early '85 IIRC.) Is it just me, or did music itself sound a little different when this happened?

 

[firepoint525]

Notice how very soft top 40 was in late 63 and early 64 before the Beatles burst on the scene; a lot of Bobby Vinton, Serendepity Singers, the Singing Nun etc. Something had to happen, and it did

That music (or at least that type of music) didn't go away completely. We had the Vogues, the Lettermen, the Association, and other similar groups later on in the '60s.

And one of the biggest travesties of justice would have to be when "The Theme from Romeo and Juliet" held "Bad Moon Rising" out of #1 in 1969. It probably would have represented CCR's best shot at having a #1 hit.

 

[firepoint525]

Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.

I think we were ready for them. Remember, many of the songs on those early LPs (including the Vee-Jay LP) were covers of '50s songs. The Beatles cut their teeth on American '50s rock & roll. I bought some of the their early singles, but I would have never bought the LPs if it weren't for those '50s songs (and they were available in STEREO, a real treat back then).

If VeeJay had had the marketing department that Capitol had, they could have broken the Beatles stateside in 1963.