Various Artists ‎– Things Go Better With Coke: Sixties Coca-Cola Commercials 1965-69

 

[I started this one way back in 2017, but for some reason never got around to finishing it.  Here you go...]

Back when I was a kid, my parents discouraged us from drinking much in the way of soft drinks. There was never that much soda in any of the houses where we lived, and that that was present was generally reserved for the grown-ups; the kids had to make do with things like milk, water, juice and occasionally Wyler's and/or (in some cases, stunningly culturally inappropriate) Funny Face fruit-flavored drink mixes. I suppose at the time it was just one of the ways and methods our folks used to watching out for our health and well-being - and being a parent now, I can sympathize with and relate to that attitude. But when I was a child, it felt like a heavy blow, as if we were being unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of something that other kids had ready access to.

However, my grandmother (on my father's side) had no such compunctions; she always had a plentiful stock of stuff like RC Cola, 7-Up and Mr. Pibb readily at hand in big half-gallon (later two liter) bottles at her house, and during our visits there she would spoil us unmercifully with near-unlimited access to this carbonated nectar ("unlimited", that is, until my folks would inevitability step in and order us "not to drink all of Grandmama's soda"). I don't think my parents fully understood that that limited availability only served to make us children desire it more, and make it seem more "special".

Even with all of that, once I got older and began living (and shopping) on my own, I can't say that I became a big pop drinker. To this day, my non-alcoholic beverages of choice continue to be water, milk and OJ (so I guess my parents did that right after all). I do keep cans of soda in the fridge, and have never prevented my own children from having them when they felt the desire. In doing so, I think I've kept them from equating soft drinks as special treats, as I once did, regarding them now as just another choice that they can take or leave. And I think that tactic has been successful; they are not big soda guzzlers either.

I think that this info will not be regarded as good news by the big beverage bottlers - Keurig Dr. Pepper, PepsiCo, and the longtime industry giant, The Coca-Cola Company - all of whom have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue promoting their products and exhorting us to drink more-More-MORE!   These companies have gone to great lengths to convince/coerce the public to consume mass quantities, with some campaigns more memorable than others. Those of us of a certain age fondly recall this classic Dr. Pepper commercial:

Or this memorable 7-Up commercial, featuring the talents and voice of the incomparable Geoffrey Holder:

And this, probably the gold standard as far as soft drink commercials are concerned, the 1971 "Hilltop" ad for Coca-Cola, featuring a reworked version of the New Seekers' song "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" - a song so popular that not one, but TWO versions of it, both made the U.S. Top Ten in 1972 and went Gold:

Coca-Cola had long been the industry leaders in innovative, creative product promotion.  The company began placing ads in national magazines as early as 1904, and by the end of that decade, their advertising budget exceeded $1 million per year, an extraordinary sum for that time.  

The very design of the unique and world-famous Coca-Cola bottle in the 1910s was a deliberate choice to differentiate the brand from that of other cola competitors.  Coke was one of the first brands to feature Santa Claus prominently in its print ads, beginning in the 1930s, an association that has remained to this day.  And from the dawn of the 20th century, the firm made heavy use of celebrity endorsements, beginning with popular singer Hilda Clark in 1901.

For over fifty years, Coca-Cola engaged the services of the D’Arcy Advertising Company as its official ad agency, and the union was very successful.  But in 1956, Coke ended its relationship with D’Arcy and transferred the company’s advertising account to McCann-Erickson, Inc. The aim was to more successfully utilize new media like television, areas that McCann-Erickson was more in touch and in tune with. The new agency proved its worth quickly with the first two Coca-Cola campaigns it managed in the 1950s – “The Sign of Good Taste” (1957) and “Be Really Refreshed” (1959).  Pop performers from the period, such as the McGuire Sisters, The Brothers Four and Connie Francis were involved in these successful efforts (note that, at the time, Coke didn't appear to be very interested in utilizing rock 'n' roll stars and making inroads into the youth market... curious).

The next major McCann-Erickson campaign was “Things Go Better with Coke,” which began in 1963. For this campaign, there was an explosion in the number and quality of ads, and the number of top contemporary music stars involved, making up for that dearth in the earlier campaigns. As mentioned in Allmusic.com:

During the 1960s, it wasn't unheard of for rock & roll groups and music performers to lend their voices to commercial jingles... But in the '60s, artists of surprisingly high stature were willing (and artists of surprisingly middling stature were asked) to lend their talents and skills to the cutting of product advertising jingles. Any act with lesser stature than The Beatles or The Rolling Stones was fair game to be approached by an advertising agency with some hope of success.

McCann-Erickson (backed by Coca-Cola's huge checkbook, I'm sure) convinced some huge stars of the period to record radio and/or television commercials under the “Things Go Better with Coke” campaign. These artists were asked to incorporate the “Things Go Better with Coke” slogan into a commercial-length song, which was generally inspired by one of their big hits (for example, Tom Jones’ Coke commercial uses the melody and arrangement of his signature tune “It’s Not Unusual”):

 Again, from Allmusic.com:

It may seem monotonous -- most of the spots include the phrase "Things Go Better With Coke" -- but the variations are fascinating, and it is a chance to hear these acts having what can only be considered fun with their respective sounds. There is a kind of surreal fun to be found in these sounds -- many of the tracks run well over a minute and are done in each artist's straight style, whatever that might be. The second of three Roy Orbison numbers here, for example, is in his hardest rocking style of the mid- to late '60s, while the third blatantly imitates "Oh, Pretty Woman." [Other] acts... completely absorb the Coca-Cola lyrics into their own respective sounds.

Acts who participated include the aforementioned Tom Jones and Roy Orbison, along with The Supremes, The Tremeloes, Jan & Dean, The Moody Blues, Boyce & Hart, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Easybeats, Ray Charles, The Box Tops, The Bee Gees, Aretha Franklin, and many, many more. All in all, the "Things Go Better With Coke" campaign, which ran until 1970, was a smashing success, and to this day the phrase is probably second only to "It's The Real Thing" in regards to a signature, recognizable brand slogan.

Initially, there doesn't appear to have been any great interest in preserving these ads for posterity; I think both the company and the performers themselves considered them to be for commercial use and generally disposable. So the origin and sourcing of this album is pretty scanty and sketchy, to say the least.  It appears that these songs were all but forgotten about for over twenty-five years, until someone at McCann-Erickson corporate headquarters pulled them all together in the mid-1990s as an in-house thing, commemorating and celebrating their innovative and successful 60's ad campaign.  As such, it was initially produced in very limited quantities (only about 100 copies or so) - it was definitely not done by a studio.  It probably would have remained an internal ad agency document if some enterprising and on-the-ball individual hadn't recognized its significance and historical value, nabbed a copy and began marketing it as a hard-to-find blank-label bootleg CD in the late 1990s.  However, even that effort was short-lived; this album has been off the market now for close to twenty years and has become a difficult find on the Web, and/or an rare, high-priced purchase from sites like eBay.

With this being an unlicensed, unregulated bootleg, even its format and track listing vary from version to version, with different album covers (as shown here) and song listings.  The original boot release listed a total of sixty-four cuts, but actually only included sixty-one, for some reason.  I can't recall where or when I ended up acquiring my copy from, but it appears I hit the jackpot - my version of this compilation includes over ONE HUNDRED tracks, both short and long radio commercials done by dozens of artists.  The quality throughout this comp is generally good to excellent, although the American material is slightly lower in fidelity for the most part (The Box Tops' tracks in particular reveal some surface noise, and seem to be the only tracks taken from sources other than tape).  And the final song, "Come Alive", appears to have been appended on to my version as a joke, as "Come Alive" was the late-60's slogan for Coca-Cola's bitter (no pun intended) rival, Pepsi-Cola.

Anyway, here for your listening pleasure is the hard-to-find but enjoyable bootleg compilation Things Go Better With Coke: Sixties Coca-Cola Commercials 1965-69, original release date unknown.  Have a listen to these short but interesting and classic blasts of '60s radio ephemera, and as always, let me know what you think.

(...and, if I may, might I suggest you enjoy this auditory experience while imbibing the thirst-quenching soft drink of your choice;  I won't make any recommendations - I'm sure one brand in particular will somehow come to mind...)

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The Beatles Book (1963 - 1969)

Here's something that's a bit of a departure from my usual music posts (although it IS music-related).  I still think that this offering will be warmly appreciated by a broad majority of readers here.

Beat Monthly was a pop/rock magazine that began being published in Great Britain in May 1963. As indicated in the title, the magazine focused on the country's burgeoning beat music scene and the popular groups emerging from it: The Shadows, Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Tornados, Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders, Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers, The Big Three and the like. Beat Monthly was put out by Sean O'Mahony, a young publisher and entrepreneur, and his target audience wasn't music fans, but the musicians themselves, the emphasis being on instruments, production and equipment in its articles. The mag gained a small but devoted following, changing its name from Beat Monthly to Beat Instrumental Monthly in the fall of 1964, then simply to Beat Instrumental in 1966, and it continued being published regularly until 1980.

The Beatles were featured on the cover of the second issue of Beat Monthly in June 1963, shortly after their second single "Please Please Me" had been released in the UK and climbed to #2 on the charts, a significant improvement over the performance of their first single, "Love Me Do", which only made it to #17. The band's album of the same name (Please Please Me) hit the music shops in late April of that year, and by late May it was the top-selling album in the nation, where it would remain for the next six months (until replaced by another Beatles album, With The Beatles). O'Mahony sensed early on that The Beatles were going to be huge, bigger than just being a featured artist in his beat magazine. So he reached out to the group's manager, Brian Epstein, and asked if he could publish a magazine solely focused on and devoted to Epstein's band. At the time, Epstein was dependent upon the releases of the group's press agent, Tony Barrow, to keep The Beatles' names and activities in the public eye. So he welcomed O'Mahony's exclusive offer.

The first issue of The Beatles Book (also known as Beatles Monthly) came out in August 1963, in an initial print run of 80,000. The magazine was an immediate smash, the go-to source for Beatles fans for up-to-the-minute information on the group. By the end of 1963, circulation in Britain had more than quadrupled, to over 330,000 subscribers, with hundreds of thousands of issues being sold overseas. O'Mahony retained control over Beat Monthly and other magazines (such as the similarly group-dedicated Rolling Stones Book beginning in 1964 and Record Collector) under his Beat Publications corporate umbrella, but he began devoting most of his time and energy to editing and overseeing the Beatles mag, penning opening editorials in every issue under the pseudonym Johnny Dean. Tony Barrow also became a regular contributor, writing articles under his pen name Frederick James and ghostwriting columns presented to readers as being written "on tour" by Beatles roadies Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans.

In O'Mahony's case, on being admitted into the band's trusted inner fold, he occupied a very rarified and privileged perspective in Beatleworld, and he knew it (the following is taken from John McMillan's book Beatles Vs. Stones):

O'Mahoney operated from a special vantage; awarded the sole and exclusive rights to publish their profit-oriented fan magazine, he became thickly intertwined in a socio-professional relationship with Epstein... and how the group [was] managed. Whatever O'Mahony's private knowledge or feelings, his acquiescence was complete. [For example] in 1964, when journalist Michael Braun released his book Love Me Do! - a gossipy account of his travels with The Beatles during the first flush of Beatlemania, which rather contradicted the group's "squeaky clean" image - its publication was not even mentioned in The Beatles Book. Nor was O'Mahony eager to reveal that John Lennon was married, since Epstein feared that the knowledge would adversely affect the band's popularity with teenage girls. When publishing photos of The Beatles, O'Mahony often turned to retouch artists who would fix any splotches or blemishes on their faces, thereby making sure they were "the sort of pictures Brian wanted to see".

In other words, O'Mahony in this period closely resembled a Madison Avenue flack. Whatever inside information he had, he would never have wanted to print anything truly relevatory about John or Paul... Instead, his magazine was merely [a] platform... meant to promote the Beatles' carefully considered "brand" meticulously.

Along with O'Mahony, staff photographer Leslie Bryce also gained exclusive and unrivaled access to the band in both their public and most private moments. He traveled the world with John, Paul, George and Ringo and took literally thousands of pictures, a multitude of which adorned the magazine during its run but the vast majority of which have never been seen in public.

As much as O'Mahony appeared to be co-opted by Beatles management, the man still showed flashes of independence in his coverage of the band.  In its later years, The Beatles Book did not hide from controversial subjects, such as whether songs should be credited to Lennon/McCartney or McCartney/ Lennon, and the nature of the relationship between John and Yoko Ono. And on the one occasion when The Beatles and their representatives pushed the publisher too hard, he showed that he too had real teeth and could push back even harder than they could. Also from Beatles Vs. Stones:

...In 1966, The Beatles decided they'd had enough of their silly fan magazine, and so they stopped providing Sean O'Mahony with the access, interviews, and photographs he needed to keep The Beatles Book afloat. But O'Mahony would not be deterred so easily. In response to The Beatles' new attitude, he phoned his lawyer and called for a meeting. Epstein likewise showed up with his solicitor, plus two more advisors, and he matter-of-factly told O'Mahony it was time to wind down the publication of The Beatles Book. Asked for an explanation, he replied, "They feel you don't tell the truth. You're not reporting them as they are..."

"O'Mahony exploded with anger," said Epstein's biographer:

The truth? What do you mean? Do you mean for example when we were in Blackpool, John Lennon flinging open the window of the dressing room and shouting to the fans below: "Fuck off and buy more records?" Was that the level of revelation Epstein and the Beatles expected from their authorized mouthpiece? Should the Beatles be reported as they really were? Or were there no-go areas?

A brief silence fell over the room... after which the two parties were able to proceed amicably enough to reach an agreement.

The Beatles Book continued to be published for another three years, until December 1969, when it was then obvious to all that the end of the group was nigh. This final issue (#77) contained a long and remarkable article by O'Mahony regarding the circumstances behind the rise and fall of the publication. In it, he levels pointed criticism at the band for their drug use, disassociating himself from that aspect of their lives (Golly, it only took him six-plus years to finally come out and condemn it, but still...).

Although the original print run of The Beatles Book ended in the late '60s, in 1976 O'Mahony revived the magazine, reprinting each of the old issues every month surrounded by eight to sixteen pages of new Beatles-related material. When after six and a half years, he ran out of material to reissue in September 1982, O'Mahony kept the magazine going with new articles and information for another twenty years, finally throwing in the towel with issue #321 in 2003. By then, circulation had dropped to below 10,000, a decent number for a fanzine, but not one to make a publisher economically viable.

I personally have never had much interest in the reissued format of this magazine that started coming out in the mid-70s, and neither have many fans. However, the original Sixties run is highly sought after and celebrated by Beatles aficionados, who eagerly sell and trade old copies on sites like eBay and Amazon. A few years ago, I found an offering of the original seventy-seven issues digitized in .pdf format, and moved quickly to acquire a copy. I can't remember for the life of me where I found these; I'd like to give the compiler the props he or she is due. But in any event, here they are for your Beatles reading enjoyment: the entire original print run of The Beatles Book, from 1963 to 1969, formatted for viewing on your computer or printing, if you're so inclined.

This one's for the legions of Beatles fans out there! Download, have a gander, and as always... well, you know.

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Saturday Morning Rock & Pop Albums From The Late '60s/Early '70s

I read online a couple of months ago that the first weekend in October, 2019 was the first in decades where not a single network aired a block of animation on its Saturday morning schedule. The CW, the very last holdout, transitioned that weekend to live-action educational programming.  It is truly the end of an era.

It's been a long time coming, I guess. NBC stopped airing Saturday morning cartoons in 1992, with CBS throwing in the towel a couple of years later. ABC, the last of the old-time Big Three networks, maintained their weekend animated slate for another decade, before also calling it quits in 2004.

I suppose in this day and age, having a morning full of animated shows is sort of unnecessary. With several cable channels specifically dedicated to children's programming, kids today don't have to wait until the weekends anymore to get their cartoon fix. In addition, streaming services like Netflix and the new Disney+ channel are also available to fill that void. And with these expanding broadcast options, advertisers no longer have to direct their kid-centric toy, game and snack ads at that old four- to six-hour network cartoon window every weekend - they can spread those commercials around. It's no coincidence that when the advertising money from these producers left the networks, so did the shows.

Another stake in the heart of the Saturday morning cartoon were new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules in the 1990s that mandated the networks to provide at least three hours of educational programming each week. The networks weren't about to mess with their prime-time schedules to meet this requirement; they all found the best place to do so was in the weekend morning slots. Now, it's debatable just how "educational" the programs are that replaced the cartoons... but as far as the FCC is concerned, these meet the letter of the law. So be it.

But still, it's sad to see another old tradition being pushed by the wayside. Back when I was a kid, Saturday morning was the best time of the week! My brother and I would get up extra-early on Saturdays, get a bowl of cereal and milk (we learned from our parents to pour those into bowls without making a mess at an early age; after their long workweeks, they were happy to sleep in on Saturdays and let us tend to our breakfast ourselves...), and plop down in front of the TV for hours of

entertainment. It would start with the syndicated shows on our local stations - like Barbapapa, Kimba The White Lion, Deputy Dawg and Hashimoto-san - before settling in for the network programs that usually started at 8:00 am. Some of my favorites from that time included The Wacky

Races, Hong Kong Phooey, Hot Wheels, George Of The Jungle, The Hair Bear Bunch, The Pink Panther, Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Shazam!/Isis Hour, and of course, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. We would camp out in front of the tube for hours, until either our parents woke up and shooed us away, or until American Bandstand/The CBS Children's Film Festival/Soul Train came on in the early afternoon - that was the signal that the morning cartoon block was over.

And if you're old enough, I'm sure you recall the Saturday morning cartoon preview specials the networks would air the Friday night before the new season started. When I was a kid, those were some of the most anticipated programs of the year! Here's one that aired on NBC in 1974, featuring the debut of new shows including Land Of The Lost and Run, Joe, Run:

(I think the most memorable preview show for me was the 1973 ABC preview special, hosted by the comedy team of Burns and Schreiber - this was the one that

featured the debut of Super Friends, the first Justice League program. My friends and I were flabbergasted - a show featuring EVERY major superhero?!? I was so excited, I could barely sleep that night! And as far as I was concerned, the next morning, the show delivered, in every aspect. Looking back at it now - the poor animation, stilted dialogue, and the annoying, unnecessary and essentially useless sidekick characters Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog - it's hard to see what all the fuss was about. But back in the early '70's, this show was IT.)

Children's TV programs have been broadcast in the Saturday morning time slots since practically the dawn of television. But in the early days (the 1950s through the mid-1960s), the majority of animated shows consisted either of reruns of Warner Brothers and MGM theatrical cartoons, or reairings of animated shows that had previously been shown in prime time a few years earlier, like The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Jonny Quest.  The remainder of the networks' Saturday-morning schedules were filled by reruns of black-and-white live-action series made in the 1950s, usually westerns like The Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers, or old comedy shorts by The Three Stooges, Our Gang/Little Rascals, or Laurel & Hardy.

It wasn't until the mid-60s that first-run original animated series 

began to dominate the time period, led by a boom in superhero cartoons, both authentic (Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Birdman And The Galaxy Trio, Space Ghost) and parody (Underdog, The Super 6, The Mighty Heroes). This era also heralded the rise of the music-based animated program, ushered in by the debut of The Beatles series on ABC in 1965.

This show was a massive and immediate success; the very first episode garnered a ratings share of 52 (meaning more than half the televisions on at that time were tuned into the show), then unheard-of for a weekend program broadcast at 10:30 am. All of the networks then recognized the power and potential profitability of having a popular musical group associated with their Saturday shows. But instead of using established groups like The Beatles (who would undoubtedly demand a share of the profits a successful show could bring), the networks instead attempted to create original fictitious bands, wholly owned and controlled by the corporation, that could be exploited 100%. Here are some early examples of these attempts to create pop acts from Saturday morning kids series, and my recollections of these programs.


The Banana Splits

By my estimation, the first of all the cartoon pop bands... but not by much.

In 1967, Hanna-Barbera Productions contracted with puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft to design sets and costumes for a new show the studio was producing, with a format loosely based on the then-popular Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, featuring a musical group of anthropomorphic characters. The Kroffts came up with four characters: Fleegle, a greenish brown dog who serves as the band's guitarist; Bingo, the drummer, a grinning orange gorilla; bassist Drooper, a bright yellow lion; and Snorky the pink and grey elephant on keyboards.

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (also simply known as The Banana Splits) premiered on NBC on September 7th, 1968, with its memorable theme song:

(Man, when I was a kid, I used to see them frolicking in that amusement park, and thinking that had to be the greatest amusement park on the planet!)

The show featured quick-cut comedy bits interspersed with band member interacting with one another and their friends/adversaries (including the Sour Grapes Bunch, a group of tough little girl characters who intimidated the Banana Splits in every encounter), and animated cartoon and live-action segments, such as the serial "Danger Island" (directed by a then-unknown Richard Donner) and the animated Three Musketeers shorts. The show also featured a new song every week, performed by the group.

All of the Banana Splits' music was done in the studio by session musicians; none of the TV characters were involved in any way in its production. But the breadth of talent involved in the writing and recording of the band's music was impressive; songwriters included greats like Barry White, Gene Pitney, Jimmy Radcliffe and Al Kooper. The sole band album, We're The Banana Splits, was released on Decca in 1968, and features tunes by all of these musicians (fondly-remembered classics from the programs, incuding "We're The Banana Splits", and White's funky "Doin' The Banana Split"), along with the show's theme song.

The Banana Splits had a successful Saturday morning TV run, airing on NBC for two years, then entered syndication in 1971. The show was a staple of weekday after-school television for the next decade, throughout my elementary and junior-high years, so I (and many others, I'm sure) absorbed multiple viewings of each episode. The program was also the springboard for the Krofft brothers' entry into TV production. NBC picked up their series H. R. Pufnstuf in 1969, which was launched via a special hour-long Banana Splits episode that fall.

So every time I see these goofy, funny, brightly colored characters and hear that "Tra-La-La" song, it always takes me back and makes me smile.


The Archie Show

Archie Comics Publications, Inc. (or Archie Comics for short) began life as MLJ Magazines in 1939 (its name was based on the initials of its three founding partners), and initially focused on superhero titles. Their leading character was The Shield, one of the first superheroes decked in in patriotic red-white-and-blue garb, predating Marvel (then Timely) Comic's Captain America by more than a year. Other heroes appearing in MLJ titles during this early period included The Hangman, The Black Hood and The Wizard.

In late 1941, drawing inspiration from Mickey Rooney's popular series of Andy Hardy movies, publisher John Goldwater (the "J" in MLJ) created the character of Archibald "Archie" Andrews with staff artist Bob Montana. Archie and his friends, including best friend Jughead Jones, rival Reggie Mantle, and love interests Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge, debuted in Pep Comics #22 in December 1941. Archie

quickly became the company's standout character, appearing in his own self-titled magazine, Archie, a month later - a title that is still in print today. And within a couple of years, the publisher had changed its name from MLJ to Archie Comics. The popularity of Archie led to the publication of a series of related titles from the 1940s through the 1960s featuring the character and his pals - Life With Archie, Archie's Pal Jughead, Archie's Girls Betty And Veronica, Little Archie, Archie's Jokebook Magazine, Archie's Madhouse, Archie And Me, Betty And Me, Reggie And Me, etc. - all of which were popular as well and long-running hits (some are also still being published to this day).

Filmation Studios was founded in 1962, and in its early years focused on creating animated TV commercials. The studio tried to branch out into network animated series, but their early attempts (including a Marx Brothers cartoon and a series featuring a boy and his dog - reminiscent of the famous "Tom Terrific" shorts featured on Captain Kangaroo in the late '50s) failed to sell. The company almost went under, before they were approached in early 1966 by DC Comics, who wanted to produce a Superman cartoon series for TV. The New Adventures Of Superman debuted in the fall of 1966 and was a smash hit, running on CBS for four years; this and other subsequent late-60s cartoon programs DC commissioned Filmation to produce (including The Adventures Of Batman, The Adventures Of Superboy, and Aquaman) saved the studio.

Looking for other potential animated projects beyond superheroes, Filmation approached Archie Comics in the winter of 1968 to gauge their interest in an animated Archie series. The publisher was immediately receptive, and by the fall of that year the program, The Archie Show, began appearing on CBS at 10:00, just after The Wacky Races and before The Batman/Superman Hour. The Archie Show was the very first Saturday morning cartoon to incorporate a laugh track (The Flintstones and The Jetsons had also used laugh tracks earlier in the '60s, but it should be remembered that these shows first broadcast at night in prime time, and weren't initially necessarily targeted towards an adolescent audience), a production technique that, due to the subsequent popularity of the program, was used extensively in weekend animation series for the next decade.

Here's the opening:

Every episode followed pretty much the same format, a seven- to eight-minute story featuring one or more of the Archie characters, followed by Archie demonstrating the "Dance Of The Week" (such as "The Betty", "The Weatherbee" and "The Hamburger Hop"), then a song performed by the gang's band,

The Archies, followed by the second seven/eight minute story and the ending credits. The songs on the program were performed by session musicians assembled by record label owner and former Monkees manager Don Kirschner, with male vocals by Ron Dante, the lead singer for the '60s pop band The Cuff Links, and female vocals initially by Toni Wine (who co-wrote The Mindbenders' hit "A Groovy Kind Of Love" in 1966, and who went on to be one of the voices in the Meow Mix cat food commercial jingle ("Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow...") which ran for over thirty years), then later by Donna Marie and Merle Miller.

The first Archies album, The Archies, was released on Calendar Records in late 1968. Most of the songs on the disc were penned by acclaimed songwriter Jeff Barry, who wrote (either solo or with his then-wife Ellie Greenwich) such classic pop hits as "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Do-Wah-Diddy", "By My Baby", "Tell Laura I Love Her" and "Leader Of The Pack". The first single off of this debut disc was "Bang-Shang-A-Lang", and it did reasonably well, reaching #22 on the Billboard charts that year

(the album itself made it to #88). But it was a single by the group off of their second album Everything's Archie, released in mid-1969, that made a bigger impact.

"Sugar, Sugar" was also written by Jeff Barry, in collaboration with Andy Kim. After a slow start that spring, the song shot up the charts, holding down the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks in September, 1969 and reaching the top position in ten other countries, including Norway, Mexico and South Africa. "Sugar, Sugar" also topped the Billboard year-end charts as the Number One song in America for 1969. To date, it is the only time a fictional band has held an annual top spot. Altogether, between 1968 and 1970, The Archies placed six songs in the Hot 100, with another Top 40 hit ("Who's Your Baby") joining

"Bang-Shang-A-Lang" and "Sugar, Sugar", and charted five albums. The disc I'm providing here, also titled The Archies, is a compilation of the band's biggest songs, put out by 51 West Records in 1979 and re-released by Sony Music Special Products on CD in 1992.

The original Archie Show format ended after one season, but CBS commissioned various iterations of Archie - The Archie Comedy Hour, Archie's TV Funnies, Everything's Archie, The U.S. of Archie, etc. - every year over the next decade. The programs weren't exactly groundbreaking or innovative, but as a kid I found them a reliable constant... like the long-running The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, an anchor for the rest of the network's Saturday morning slate.


Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was a live-action series created by Mike Marmer and Stan Burns (two former writers for the late '60s comedy spy series Get Smart) that began airing on ABC on Saturday mornings in September 1970. The premise of Lancelot Link was similar to that of Get Smart - a clandestine group of spies (the "Agency To Prevent Evil", or "A.P.E.") combating a evil international organization (the "Criminal Headquarters for the Underworld's Master Plan", a.k.a. "C.H.U.M.P.") intent upon taking over the world. However, the conceit here was that all of the roles were played by chimpanzees overdubbed with human speaking voices to match their mouth movements.

While that concept sounds straightforward, in practice it was reportedly difficult to pull off. From a magazine article on the show regarding the process: "...to make the dialogue fit the chimps’ lip action, Burns and Marmer went to ridiculous lengths. Voiceovers were ad-libbed on the set, giving birth to beautifully absurd moments of the chimps breaking into songs at the end of sentences or spontaneously reciting Mother Goose rhymes just so it would look right."

They reportedly pulled out all the stops for this show, with an enormous budget (by Saturday morning TV standards; some source refer to "over seven figures") spent on location filming, intensive animal training, wardrobe and props - including multiple minibikes for the chimps to ride during chase scenes, and even a frickin' vintage Rolls Royce Silver Cloud for the villain to ride around in! The results were both surreal and hilarious, with the shows full of wacky monkey hijinks.

In addition to the main spy story, each weekly episode would also feature a musical segment (hosted by "Ed Simian") performed by Lancelot Link's all-ape band, The Evolution Revolution. The band of chimps, all dressed in period psychedelic garb and positioned with musical instruments, would belt out their latest tune (it was revealed in a later episode that these songs were actually coded messages to other A.P.E. agents). Most of the music was written and performed by Steve Hoffman, a longtime L.A. session player and member of various minor late '60s psychedelic bands such as The Proposition and The Mystic Astrologic Crystal Band.

The following taken from an interview with Lancelot Link producer Bob Emenegger, which I found on the Badcat Records website:

"One day I met with Allan Sandler who owned a large TV production studio. I had done the score to a feature film he produced called Frazier, the Sensuous Lion. Not a big hit.

He was producing Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp for television with Carol Burnett Show writers [Stan] Burns and [Mike] Marmer. Allan asked me to score Lance Link - which was a blast!

For the songs, I brought in Steve Hoffman who I had used on several Honda TV spots. He was a gem of a find. His talent was perfect for Lance Link, both singing and writing. Steve was an unknown vocalist, from a group that TV producer Clancy Grass used. He was/is an untrained musician who played guitar left handed.

Steve composed most of the songs on the album, I did several as well ("Rollin' In the Clover" was one I co-wrote with Steve). I produced the LP exactly as if I was doing a TV commercial or background music for a film.

It was not written to be bubble gum music - I penned the songs to fit the show. As I recall, Steve did all the vocals and overdubbing and we recorded in a studio that ABC/Dunhill set up. The band was made up of studio players - about 7 musicians, 2 brass with a percussionist on chimes also. It's possible the score may have called for more instruments at times.

The videos were shot later to match the completed songs. They even played the tunes for the chimps - who were all over the place until they heard the music and began to play in sync to the beat.

As part of the marketing for the program, in late 1970 an album of songs from the show, titled Lancelot Link & The Evolution Revolution, was released on ABC/Dunhill Records. The tunes on the album, all sung by Hoffman, are mostly bubblegum pop, but as Emenegger mentioned above, not 100% bubblegum - many of the songs featured hints of hard guitar rock (like in "Teaser", "Live" and "Magic Feeling") and trappings of psychedelia (such as in "Daydreams"). Overall, in my opinion, this is actually a fantastic album and a prime example of pop from that period, good enough to stand on its own without reference to the TV show the music was derived from.

Altogether, just seventeen episodes of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp were produced. Though according to sources, it had a network run of only four months (to January 1971), I recall watching it as a child for a couple of years after; I believe that ABC aired reruns of it into 1973, usually on Sunday mornings. In any event, I have fond memories of this zany, crazy, funny program and the songs from it.


The Bugaloos

The Bugaloos was a live-action Sid and Marty Krofft production that aired on NBC beginning in the fall of 1970. The main characters were a music band made up of - yes - bugs (actually, humans in insect outfits: Joy, the butterfly and lead singer; Harmony, a bumblebee, on keyboards; ladybug drummer Courage; and I.Q., a grasshopper on lead guitar) who were enormously popular in the land were they lived, the day-glo Tranquility Forest. They were all very hippie-dippy and peace-loving (as befitted the times, I suppose), but they were constantly under attack by a witch with a musical bent, Benita Bizarre (played by Martha Raye), who was jealous of their success and who wanted to destroy them so that her awful music would be dominant in the land.

The group consisted of four British teenagers, cast from more than 5,000 hopefuls earlier in the year (one of the finalists for the role of I.Q. was none other than Phil Collins; after being passed over for the role, he joined Genesis later in 1970). The show's theme song was composed by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, who later went on to pen the wildly popular themes for '70 shows such as Happy Days, Wonder Woman and Laverne & Shirley. This one, however, was NOT their most deathless composition:

In terms of look and premise, this was a very weird and surreal show, especially looking back on it from this time and place - then again, what Krofft shows of the period weren't?  But back when it first aired, it was probably my favorite Saturday morning program. In fact, during the 1970 Christmas season that year, my dad took me to the Navy base where he was stationed in Norfolk one weekend to meet Santa Claus and receive one of the gifts they were handing out to Navy kids that year; I recall being very upset at having to go see Santa, since it was at the same time The Bugaloos were on!

At around the same time at the Lancelot Link album was released, The Bugaloos also released a self-titled album of their own on Capitol Records, featuring studio versions of songs presented on the show, sung by the cast members. This album is straight-up early '70s pop, reminiscent of music that groups like The 5th Dimension were putting out at the time. As such, there's nothing on this disc that's immediately compelling (at least to me). However, one cut off of this album, "For A Friend", actually charted, reaching #118 on the Billboard 200 that December.

The Krofft brothers had big plans for The Bugaloos, and as the first season wound down, they began preparing for the production of shows for Season 2, along with a feature film. However, the producers failed to notify the actors of their plans. As a result of this miscommunication, all of the British cast, believing the show was cancelled after 1971, returned to England - which ticked the Kroffts off royally. So both the second season and the movie deal fell through, and NBC just aired Bugaloos reruns for the 1971-72 season. Krofft Productions was hardly affected by this turn of events; their original network program, H. R. Pufnstuf, was still being aired on the network as well, and in 1971 they produced a new show, Lidsville, for ABC that had a two-year run. As a result, The Bugaloos are scarcely remembered today... except by folks like me, who look back on that strange but sweet and gentle show and smile.


Josie & The Pussycats

Josie McCoy was created by cartoonist Don DeCarlo (the person most responsible for developing the current look and design of Archie, Jughead, and their friends in Archie Comics magazines after their creation by Bob Montana) in the late 1950s. The character was named for DeCarlo's wife, and after he failed to interest anyone in featuring Josie in a newspaper strip, she began appearing in her own title, Here's Josie, in Archie Comics in early 1963. For the first few years of its existence, the comic book, featuring redheaded Josie and her friends (including ditzy blonde Melody and nerdy, bespectacled brunette Pepper), had storylines similar to that of the other Archie Comics titles (teenage romances, jealousies and rivalries; high school events; and other wholesome trials and tribulations).

A major change to the magazine's plotline came in the 45th issue, published in December 1969, when Josie and Melody decide to form a musical band, The Pussycats, with a new girl in school, Valerie. The comic book's name was also changed at that time from Josie to Josie & The Pussycats. From that point on, most of the stories centered around the band's adventures as they traveled to and performed at gigs across the country and around the world. Josie & The Pussycats quickly became one of Archie Comics' most popular titles (eventually being published well into the Eighties).

As mentioned above, Filmation's The Archie Show, the first cartoon series based on one of the Archie Comics characters, began airing on CBS in 1968 and became a huge success, not only on television but also in music, with "Sugar, Sugar" topping the charts worldwide in 1969. Filmation's rival animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions (run by longtime film and TV cartoon veterans William Hanna and Joseph Barbera), saw how successful (and lucrative) the Archie program had become, and was eager to emulate that success for their own company. After trying on their own - and failing (initially) - to create a show called Mysteries Five, about a teen rock band who solved mysteries between gigs (a concept that eventually evolved into Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?), Hanna-Barbera went to Archie Comics to see if the publisher had another property/character the studio could exploit for a show similar to The Archie Show. They were provided with Josie & The Pussycats.

In prepping for the series, scheduled to begin airing in 1970, Hanna-Barbera began assembling a real-live Josie & The Pussycats singing group, with the recordings to be produced by an entity called La La Productions there in Los Angeles. Early plans for the show included a live-action Pussycats performance at the end of every episode, so La La Productions began a search for three women who could match the comic book versions of the characters in resemblance and singing ability. This led to a now little-known conflict and controversy early in the production process:

La La's head, Danny Janssen, found who he thought were the perfect visual/singing doubles for the group: Kathleen

Dougherty (referred to as Cathy Dougher) as Josie, Cherie Moor (later known as Cheryl Ladd, of Charlie's Angels fame) as Melody, and Patrice Holloway (sister of Motown star Brenda Holloway) as Valerie. When Janssen presented the trio to Hanna and Barbera to finalize the music production deal, the studio heads asked Janssen to replace Holloway with another singer/actor; they had decided to present The Pussycats on TV as an all-white group and had already altered the appearance of the character - this despite the fact that Valerie had initially been conceived as black by Archie Comics, and had been appearing as such in the comic book for the past year. La La Productions refused to recast Valerie, threatening to walk away from the project, and the two companies engaged in a month-long standoff before Hanna-Barbera finally relented, changing the cartoon Valerie back to being black and retaining Holloway. Thus, Valerie became the first regular black female character on a Saturday morning series. But that whole attempt to "whitewash" the group reflects poorly on Hanna and Barbera, and in my mind taints their otherwise storied contributions to film and animation.

On the 'plus' side, however, word quickly spread around Los Angeles about the stand Janssen had taken. To show their gratitude, a number of the most notable soul session players in the city offered their services to La La Productions and the upcoming Josie & The Pussycats album at a fraction of their regular fees (and, by the way, the live-action segment of the show never panned out).

Josie & The Pussycats was broadcast on CBS starting in September, 1970. The shows were an amalgamation of plot devices from shows such as The Archie Show and Hanna-Barbera productions such as Scooby-Doo and Johnny Quest. Wikipedia provides the following succinct generic description:

Each episode would find the Pussycats and crew en route to perform a gig or record a song in some exotic location. Somehow, often due to something Alexandra [the twin sister of the group's manager, she traveled with the band for no apparent reason, as she had no discernible managerial or musical role; she was jealous of both Josie's success and her romance with her boyfriend Alan and constantly attempted to sabotage both] did, they would accidentally find themselves mixed up in an adventure/mystery. The antagonist was always a diabolical mad scientist, spy, or criminal who wanted to take over the world using some hi-tech device. The Pussycats would usually find themselves in possession of the plans for an invention, an item of interest to the villains, a secret spy message, etc., and the villains would give chase. Eventually, the Pussycats would formulate a plan to destroy the villain's plans and bring them to justice, which result in a final chase sequence set to a Pussycats song.

The Pussycats would succeed in capturing the villain and get back to their gig/recording session/etc. The final gag always centered around one of Alexandra's attempts to interfere with/put an end to the Pussycats' performance and/or steal Alan away from Josie, which would always backfire on her.

However, the show's opening featured a kickin' and now classic theme song:

Capitol Records released a self-titled Josie & The Pussycats album on December 15th, 1970, featuring performances by Dougher, Moor and Holloway of a few cuts from the show (mostly written by Danny Janssen), along with covers of recent popular tunes originally done by bands such as The Carpenters ("Close To You") and The Jackson Five ("I'll Be There"). Ironically, most of the lead vocals were provided by Holloway, including those for the show's iconic theme. In addition to the LP, Capitol released two singles from the album, "Every Beat Of My Heart" b/w "It's All Right With Me" and "You've Come A Long Way, Baby" b/w "Stop, Look and Listen", and licensed four more non-album singles to Creative Products as a promotional tool, making these discs available only through mail order with box tops from Kellogg's cereals.

Hanna-Barbera and Capitol were hoping that lightning would strike twice with the release of this album. But the Josie & The Pussycats album and related singles never came close to emulating the success of The Archies. Sales came in far below expectations, and plans for a national tour by the band were scrapped. It's hard to nail down exactly why this music failed; perhaps the market was flooded in 1970 with bubblegum/pop albums from bands both real and fictional (The Pussycats not only had to compete with all of the other releases detailed in the post, but 1970 also heralded the rise of both The Jackson 5 and The Partridge Family, whose early success sucked most of the air out of the pop market that year). It's a shame, really - the songs the band put out at that time were gorgeously produced and beautifully sung, and like the Lancelot Link disc, could have easily stood on their own merits without the TV association.

In 2001, Rhino Records gathered up every known Josie & The Pussycats song, including all of the album and singles releases along with alternate versions and seven previously unreleased Capitol recordings, fully remastered the music from the original tapes, and released Stop, Look and Listen - The Capitol Recordings in an extremely limited-edition set. Only 5,000 of these discs were ever produced, and afterwards the album was completely deleted from Rhino's catalog.

It goes without saying that this release is now rare as hell, with copies (if you can find one) selling for in excess of $300. I searched for well over a decade for this recording, and was finally just recently provided with a digitized copy by a new music friend I met via this blog - thank you once again, Christian! And now I am happy to share my good fortune with you all...

As for the Josie & The Pussycats show, sixteen episodes were produced for its first season, and were rerun during Josie's second season (1971-72) on CBS. In 1972, the format was changed to feature the band in interstellar adventures, and the show was retitled Josie & The Pussycats In Outer Space. Another sixteen episodes of this series were produced, and rerun through 1974. Afterwards, reruns of the original series were aired on both CBS, NBC and ABC over the next two years, making Josie & The Pussycats one of the few Saturday morning cartoons to air on all three networks during its existence (the only other one I can think of is The Bugs Bunny Show).

* * * * * * *

Thanks for coming along on this brief walk down Memory Lane with me, and looking back on some of the great (and not so great) cartoons and shows from half a century ago (geez - it really HAS been that long!) and the music associated with them. And when you can, raise a cold glass of Nestle Quik in tribute to and in mourning for the classic Saturday morning children's program, now gone the way of the dinosaur. Oh well... at least we still have albums like these left to listen to, to give us "old timers" a taste of what we enjoyed so much back then, and younger folks a sense of the time period, and what they might have missed.

In any event, enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

The Banana Splits - We're The Banana Splits (1968): Send Email
The Archies - s/t (1979): Send Email
Lancelot Link & The Evolution Revolution - s/t (1970): Send Email
The Bugaloos - Bugaloos (1970): Send Email
Josie & The Pussycats - Stop, Look & Listen - The Capitol Recordings (2001): Send Email

Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends (RS500 - #234)

June 6th, 2018... fifty years today since the death of Bobby Kennedy.

A lot of ink has been and will be spilled today regarding Kennedy's 1968 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, most of it related to the continuing "Kennedy Myth" that has haunted and teased this nation for over fifty years. RFK's run has now assumed almost legendary status - the star-crossed young warrior, going to battle against the entrenched hierarchy and the special interests; a man born to great privilege and yet a "man of the people" and champion of the poor and downtrodden; a shining light of passion and dedication, cut down just as he could all but visualize his goal. While a lot of that has some basis in fact, Bobby's decision to run that year and his prospects for winning his party's nomination, and ultimately the presidency, were a lot more complicated than that.

It shouldn't be forgotten that Robert Kennedy entered the 1968 presidential race late, on March 16th, four days after President Lyndon Johnson narrowly won the New Hampshire primary over upstart Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy (49% to 42%). The relationship between

Kennedy and Johnson wasn't just one of mutual contempt - they actively despised one another, and had since the early Fifties, when Johnson was a powerful senator and Bobby was little more than a low-level Senate staffer. When JFK assumed the presidency in 1961, with Johnson as his vice-president and his brother as Attorney General, that power dynamic had shifted to Bobby's advantage (the office of the VP having little if any real power), and the younger brother used it to humiliate and emasculate Johnson constantly - revenge for Johnson's treatment of him in the '50s. By late in JFK's first term, it was clear that Bobby, not Johnson, was the #2 man in the administration, and his power and influence would only grow after JFK's near-certain reelection in 1964 (which would have set up a remarkable "what-if" scenario in '68 - if Johnson had been retained as a VP running mate in '64, undoubtedly both he AND Bobby would have run to succeed JFK that year... which would have in all likelihood set off a intra-party war between the two candidates' factions even nastier and more bitter than what actually happened that year...).

The bullets fired at the presidential motorcade in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 suddenly and immediately altered that power dynamic yet again, this time with the new president Johnson on top, and he didn't hesitate to use it to exact some vicious payback against a physically altered and emotionally distraught Bobby, reeling in the aftermath of his brother's death. Even with all of that, Kennedy stayed on as Attorney General in the Johnson administration for several more months, ostensibly to cement JFK's legacy in the legal realm. But his heart clearly wasn't into his job, or with continuing to work with LBJ. Sensing that he could do more good - and establish his own political base for the future - outside of the cabinet, Bobby resigned his office in mid-1964 to run for the Senate in New York, defeating the incumbent Republican Kenneth Keating that November. During his four years in the Senate, Kennedy enhanced his liberal bona fides, championing civil rights and marginalized members of the population (who he referred to as the "disaffected", the impoverished, and "the excluded"), and increasingly calling into question America's involvement in the Vietnam War. By early 1968, Bobby's popularity with certain groups (especially minorities) rivaled and even exceeded that of Johnson.

Kennedy was itching to make a presidential run against the hated Johnson in 1968, who he considered to be over his head as Chief Executive and unable to adequately deal with the serious issues (war, racial divisions, poverty, etc.) he faced during his first full term. However, despite urging from his advisors and from various corners of society, Bobby considered his prospects for a successful run against a sitting president exceedingly unrealistic - the last president denied his party's nomination for a second term was Chester A. Arthur in 1884. So he announced at a January 30th, 1968 press conference (coincidentally, the same day as the beginning of the Tet Offensive) that “under no foreseeable circumstances” would he run for president. And it seemed to most of the world that that was the final word regarding a possible "Kennedy '68" bid.

However, shortly after this declaration, Kennedy, his pollsters and advisors began to sense that something was going on in the American electorate - a hidden but surging groundswell of discontent with the current direction of the country.  Bobby and his team could see that in the preliminary February polling for the upcoming "first in the nation" New Hampshire primary,

where the underfunded anti-war candidate Senator McCarthy was quietly gaining strength and support over the incumbent. It was clear to Kennedy that a significant number of people were looking for an alternative to Johnson. Bobby read the tea leaves and trusted his well-honed political instincts... while the modern narrative is that Kennedy jumped into the race only after smelling blood after Johnson's close call in New Hampshire on March 12th, the truth of the matter was that he'd changed his mind regarding his decision to run significantly earlier, prior to the primary vote. He'd planned to make his announcement in early March, but was persuaded by other influential friends to either talk McCarthy into dropping out prior to the primary (which McCarthy had no intention of doing) or waiting until just afterwards, in order to avoid splitting the Democratic anti-war vote.

Either way, Bobby's declaration on March 16th, in the Caucus Room of the old Senate Office Building, was not met with overwhelming nationwide hosannas. He was denounced in some quarters as a political opportunist, taking advantage of the trail that McCarthy's months of hard work had blazed. Despite this, he was immediately regarded as the frontrunner and the president's most formidable electoral foe. Faced with two strong opponents now, Johnson famously bowed out of the race on March 31st, throwing his support and that of much of the Democratic establishment behind the candidacy of his Vice-

President, Hubert Humphrey. In this essentially three-way race between the major challengers Humphrey, McCarthy and Kennedy, only the latter two competed head-to-head in the state primaries. Of the four primaries with active competition between McCarthy and Kennedy, Kennedy won three, losing only in Oregon in an upset a week before the crucial California primary.

While the two liberal candidates were slugging it out in the states, Humphrey concentrated on acquiring nomination delegates from states that didn't hold primaries, places where party bosses still held sway and controlled delegate selection. Unlike nowadays, back then, most states DIDN'T hold primaries, and delegate slates were largely determined by big-city political machines. So, despite his relative success in the primaries, on the night of the California primary, Kennedy still had a grand total of only 393 pledged delegates to Humphrey's 561 (McCarthy had 238), with 1,312 votes needed to lock up the party's nomination. He hoped that with his primary successes, he could convince party leaders that he was the only Democrat who could defeat the nominal Republican candidate Richard Nixon and prevent them from pledging their delegations and allegiances (to Humphrey or anyone else) too early, at least not before the party convention that summer in Chicago. Kennedy wanted to create a "bandwagon" effect of the same manner and type that helped his brother gain the nomination in 1960.

With all of this, it's a tough call to say that RFK could have arrived in Chicago and garnered the remaining votes needed to win the nomination.  McCarthy's team was still furious at him for his late entry (two days before the California primary, two Kennedy staffers went to McCarthy state headquarters in Los Angeles to argue that the loser of the California primary withdraw and support the winner; said one McCarthy worker: “I’d vote for Nixon over that SOB [i.e., RFK].”), so those delegates weren't necessarily Kennedy's for the asking. Young antiwar voters, whom he needed to draw into in his coalition, remained steadfast in their loyalty to their champion Senator McCarthy.

More significant to his overall prospects, Kennedy faced opposition from three groups central to the nominating process and influential with state and big-city political bosses:

• Southern Democrats, many of whom bitterly resented his civil rights advocacy; 
• Much of organized labor leadership, who remembered his crackdowns on crooked Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and other corrupt union officials; and—despite his upbringing and pedigree;
• Titans of industry, who viewed with deep worry his steady drift to the left during his four years in the Senate. 

While Kennedy was hugely popular with minorities and the poor during his campaign, those groups would have almost no voice at the convention, and zero pull with the power brokers there.

So, looking at it in a cold, hard, objective manner, I seriously doubt that Bobby would have been able to get to 1,312. Of course, the events in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in the wee hours of June 5th, 1968, and RFK's subsequent death little more than a day later makes all of that a moot point.

I was still in preschool in 1968, so I have little to no memory of the earthshaking events of that year - war, assassinations, riots, flights to the moon. Therefore, Kennedy's death had no impact on me at the time.  It was only later that full force of the event hit home. In my opinion, the RFK assassination was the single most significant event of the late 1960s affecting American history - more than the Watts riots, more than the Martin Luther King assassination, more than the moon landing. It seems to me that with his passing and the missed opportunity of a Robert Kennedy presidency, America lost its last, best chance to reclaim the shining beacon of hope, justice, truth and right in the world that had begun slipping from our grasp in the '60s.

It's impossible to say with any certainty, but it is likely that under Kennedy, America's involvement in Vietnam would have ended much earlier - not with any sort of victory (as the Pentagon Papers later revealed, prior administrations had concluded years earlier that a military conflict there was essentially unwinnable), but possibly with better terms and a saving of thousands of American lives. With a government led by a leader liked and trusted by marginalized groups, implementation of civil rights laws probably would have been expedited. And among other things, Watergate and its aftermath, the public's mistrust of and disillusionment with government and political service, never would have happened.  With the prospect of a Kennedy administration, there was an anticipation and expectation of a more caring and compassionate government, responsive to the issues and needs of the many, especially those needing assistance - and spearheaded by a tough-minded, experienced professional.

As Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote in a recent op-ed in the Miami Herald:

It turned out the tough guy had an instinct for the underdog and a deep, moral indignation over the unfair treatment that trapped them in their hoods and hollers, barely subsisting in the shadows of plenty. He saw their humanity. This, I think, even more than his opposition to the war in Vietnam, was what drew people....

There was in that last ragged campaign of his, this sense of the possible, of the new, of fundamental, systemic change. There was this sense of a more compassionate America waiting just below the horizon. There was, in a word, hope. Or as Rep. John Lewis, then a campaign aide, consoled himself in the grim weeks after Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis: “At least we still have Bobby.”

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article212396079.html#storylink=cpy

The key word in that section above is "hope" - to many people, that's what Bobby Kennedy represented, and that's what was lost.

Looking back fifty years now at the events of that time, the thing that is most devastating and distressing about Robert Kennedy's death to me is that there wasn't any interim period needed for citizens to assess his legacy - people IMMEDIATELY knew what a profound loss they and the nation had suffered.

RFK's funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on the morning of June 8th, 1968, then his body was transported by special train down to Washington, DC, where he was to be laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. Without provocation or urging, hundreds of thousands of people lined the entire length of the railroad tracks and packed the stations along the route, paying their respects to their lost champion as the train moved past. A sampling of the photos of the assembled crowds is haunting and devastating in depicting the grief and despair of a vast swath of the nation:

 

The Number One song in the U.S. the week of Kennedy's death was "Mrs. Robinson" by the pop duo Simon & Garfunkel. The song was originally included in the soundtrack to the hit Mike Nichols-directed film The Graduate, released in late 1967, and released again as part of the folk-rock duo's 1968 album Bookends. The song, one of several Simon & Garfunkel tunes included in the movie, was originally titled "Mrs. Roosevelt", but was revamped and retitled for the film to refer to one of the main characters, the adulterous Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft. While popular in its own right, the film version of "Mrs. Robinson" was markedly different from the album version, released a couple of months later. It was this latter version that climbed the charts in the spring of 1968, peaking on June 1st and remaining at the top of the charts for most of that month.

The most famous and celebrated portion of the song refers to the former Yankee great Joe DiMaggio:

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Wu wu wu
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Jolting Joe has left and gone away
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

In an interview years later, Simon discussed this lyric and explained that the line was meant as a sincere tribute to DiMaggio's unpretentious heroic stature, in a time when popular culture magnifies and distorts how we perceive our heroes. He further reflected:

"In those days of Presidential transgressions and apologies and prime-time interviews about private sexual matters, we grieve for Joe DiMaggio and mourn the loss of his grace and dignity, his fierce sense of privacy, his fidelity to the memory of his wife and the power of his slience.  ...I didn't mean the lines literally... I thought of him as an American hero and that genuine heroes were in short supply."

In the wake of the assassination, it was easy at the time to figuratively transfer the meaning and context of the words in that song to the nation's feelings regarding the loss of RFK.  Being that Bookends was consciously constructed to contain many of Paul Simon's major lyrical themes (including "youth, alienation, life, love, disillusionment, relationships, old age and [especially] mortality"), the album became almost the perfect accompaniment to and encapsulation of the nation's collective feelings during that terrible month.  I can't listen to the album nowadays without thinking of Bobby.

In memory of Bobby Kennedy, all that he was and all that he could have been, here's Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, released by Columbia Records on April 3rd, 1968. Enjoy, reflect, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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