Natural Women?

Women & the music industry in the 60s

How many female singer-songwriters and/or performers can you name from the 60s?

All-women bands?Female producers? Drummers? Female electric guitarists? Bass players? Women presidents of record companies?

Carole King

Carole King

Wrote many hits in Brill Building area on NYC with husband Gerry Goffin, for Shirelles, Aretha Franklin, etc.

Released her own best-selling album Tapestry in 1970

Her songs often covered, esp. by James Taylor (‘You’ve got a friend’)

The Shirelles

Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

S. Weller in Girls Like Us (about C. King, J. Mitchell, & Carly Simon):lyrics can be interpreted about fear of becoming pregnant: will you walk out on me? The song was partly autobiographical

The song as an AABA structure (verses 1, 2 & 4 have same melody & chords, B = the bridge), closer to Tin Pan Alley (Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc.) than a lot of 60s music

Aftershock: cf. Amy Winehouse, influenced by girls groups of early 60s

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte Marie

B. 1941 on Piapot Cree Indian reserve, Saskatchewan, Canada

Musically self-taught, started piano at 4, guitar at 17, experimented with different tunings, like Joni Mitchell

Began performing in Boston area, then clubs in Greenwich Village (NYC): The Bitter End, Gerde’s Folk City, The Gaslight

‘Universal Soldier’: covered by British singer Donovan

Universal Soldier

Universal Soldier

Traditional ballad form: abcb rhyme scheme, 4343 stress pattern

But unlike ballads, no real narrativeUses techniques found in oral poetry: list

(he’s a Catholic, a Hindu, etc.), grammatical parallelism (he’s fighting for X, Y, Z)

Awareness-raising song: what is our responsibility in a democracy? Where do the orders come from?

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, influential Canadian singer songwriter, musician, painter

Started off as ‘folk’ singer, but also recorded with major jazz musicians (Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter)

Self-taught but very innovative guitarist (different tunings)

Both Sides Now Big Yellow TaxiThe Fiddle and the Drum

Laura Nyro

Bio

Born Laura Nigro, Oct. 18, 1947Ca. 1954: begins writing poetry and first songCa. 1957: begins performing at summer resorts

in CatskillsCa. 1963: leads group sing-alongs at summer

camp in Mountaindale, NY, arranges spirituals and freedom songs

1964: writes first original tunes, 1st album 1967. Very influential among singer-songwriters (Joni

Mitchell, Ricky Lee Jones, etc.) but often neglected in accounts of 60s music

Influences

Girl groups: Shirelles, ChantelsSoul: Motown, Martha & the Vandellas,Curtis

MayfieldFolk: Joan BaezJazz: Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, John

Coltrane, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner…

Stoned Soul Picnic

On 1969 album: Ely and the Thirteenth Confession

Coins verb ‘to surry’Two-beat alliterative phrases: the lord and

the lightning, trains of trustClever internal rhyme: comes in akinGrammatical parallelism: There’ll be trains of

<noun phrase> (also known as incremental repetition in ballad scholarship)

Synesthetic imagery

Red yellow honey sassafras and moonshineSynesthesia: a condition where "people

experience more than one sensation in response to a single stimulus » (cf. Baudelaire's "Correspondences, Rimbaud's "Les voyelles », Sacks, Musicophilia, 2007).

Her description of instrumentation: "a warm pale blue with a few whitecaps on it."

Lonely Women

Nobody hurries home to lonely women…The blues make the walls rush in…Everyone knows…but no one knows

Janis Ian

Janis Ian

B. 1951, NYC, left-wing parents, grew up in black neighborhood in East Orange, NJ

Accomplished musician, started piano at 6-7, by her teens had learned organ, harpsichord, French horn, flute, guitar

Influenced by Phil Ochs, Dylan, took guitar lessons from blues guitarist/singer Rev. Gary Davis

Began singing in Greenwich Village clubs as a teenager

Wrote ‘Society’s Child’ at 13-14 yrs old

Society’s Child

Society’s Child

Recorded in ‘65, released in ‘66Interracial dating & marriage still

stigmatized in the 60s (Cf. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner w. Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier)

Song was promoted by composer Leonard Bernstein, but banned by some radio stations

Notice musical symbolism: harpsichord vs. Jazz/blues ending

Ending= resignation rather than revolt.

Janis Joplin

Mercedes Benz

Clever humorous critique of materialism & consumer society

Parody of spirituals, praying for a status symbol

Janis Joplin, one of few white female icons of the 60s who projected female sexuality so directly

Inspired by black blues & R & B singers like Big Mama Thornton, Etta James (or earlier, Bessie Smith)

Part of the San Francisco scene

More to Explore

Sheila Weller, Girls Like UsAlice Echols, Shaky Ground: The 60s and Its

Aftershocks (NY: Columbia UP). See chapter on Janis Joplin & interview with Joni Mitchell