Prime Time for ’69: 50 Girl Power Gems from 50 Years Ago

Pardon me, as I deviate and gather around a theme. I don’t think I would have embraced the power of music without the brilliance of contributions of Black Women in particular to American Popular Music. Black people, and women in particular, brought a certain gospel, nothing necessarily about Christianity, but something always aware of reality, yet still hoping and striving for something better. 36 and a half years into my life, I continue to return to their art as my therapy.

So we arrive to 50 years since 1969! As we look to our past and see mirror reflections to our present, we see that so many artistic strides in popular music were courtesy of Black women. Like our current moment as well, the 1960’s saw the biggest pioneers from the beginning of the decade, and even some from many decades previous, still turning over new leaves as the seasons passed. The reality however, alongside the new “silent majority” election of conservative Richard Nixon, FM radio as a growing frequency again became the domain of white men. What was new on the radio and in the national Top 40 excluded some of the biggest draws of the Camelot era.

Motown Movers and Shakers became mothers. Some became school teachers, secretaries and bankers, tired of hoofing and crooning for a paltry paycheck. Most didn’t go quietly into the night. As you look down the list, within the first 10 women here are former teenagers to twentysomethings that had hit records of size in 1960 and 1961. A vast majority as we go through 50 names had been in the game for more than 5 years, and despite even a chart hit slowdown from the newly crowned Queen Of Soul, these mothers of soul weren’t gonna go peacefully away as The Seventies came swinging at them.

This does take the place of my typical “50 years later” review as I’ve done the last few years (1966, 1967 & 1968) but returns us to a form that I started when I started posting mixes on Mixcloud (1965). In a world where we spend a lot of time over-viewing the accomplishments of masculine of center artists, perhaps too heavily, to our detriment, my mission as I approach a decade of blogging and sharing Soul and R&B adjacent music of the mid-century, I want to continue to highlight voices that continue to receive far less recognition due to our societal race and gender politics.

As we strive to save ourselves from the lack of intersectional overlap of our past, we walk into 2019 with a soundtrack that hopefully empowers you for 2 hours and for many hours beyond.