Not Too Late for more 1968: A Riot of Righteous Women

Today, November 17th 2009, is when I started the journey towards being a Vinyl DJ and a more serious music blogger. So in a measure of thanks, I’m speeding up my normal as of the past year trying to post a new mix and accompanying blog as we head into Thanksgiving week so you’ll have new tunes as you cook this holiday.

2018 has been a pretty tumultuous year hasn’t it? In a way, the trends of our time echo back pretty strongly to the year 50 years previous. In all the strife of that year, there was still a bumper crop of art, making it, like every year of the 1960’s, an interesting one to overview. Also, by the end of 1968, with a not-too-similar backlash towards civil rights gains during the mid 1960’s, a neoconservative president, Richard Nixon, won on the tide of a “Silent Majority.” The tenor that the Nixon years gave us has set the background for the evolution of our popular culture, morals (and lack thereof) for a good 50 years. In response to that, heightened activism including Black Power, Women’s Liberation and Gay Rights came to the forefront.

Looking back, that far back, as a way to look forward is something to cherish. We covered a generalized mystical fifty tunes earlier this year. As I’ve started to fill in all of the years of the 1960’s with forgotten femme gems, I’ve started to overlap with years I’ve covered with overviews. This is the first year I’m overlooking what women artists produced with a companion year overview to compare to. I’ll eventually get to 1966 and 1967, and it complicates how to handle 1969 in a profound way.

Meanwhile we get to go more in depth with the women that made music magic in the R&B realms that year. It’s perhaps the first full year after the girl group Era.
“Supremes Records” for the most part were Diana Ross solo records already, and Motown stalwarts The Marvelettes and Martha & The Vandellas both saw singles that just missed the Pop Top 40, the last time we would see any classic 1960’s girl group get even close to that milestone of the hit parade. Yet, names that established themselves early in the decade, or even in the decade before were still making marvelous music.

So get out your rolling pins, be thankful for what you can, think of ways for growth, and I thank you for sticking with me on this music historian journey over close to a decade.