By Chris Tyle - Jazz Musician and Historian

America entered the 1960s with the status quo of the 1950s, but it was a decade marked by incredible change, turbulence, and, once again, a war in Southeast Asia. The country elected a young, energetic president in 1960, but John F. Kennedy was felled by an assassin before the end of his term as was civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Kennedy’s brother Senator Robert Kennedy. The war in Vietnam created massive demonstrations, especially by those under 30, to demand that the U.S. end its participation there.

As the 1960s progressed, rock ‘n’ roll became the dominant popular music as the music industry focused on youth culture. In 1963 an English pop group, The Beatles, became the most popular music group of the decade, scoring hit upon hit in the pop charts. Their unique approached to rock music and their original compositions expanded rock music from a strictly blues-based medium into a more creative medium.

Technical strides put a man on the moon, and the invention of the transistor made music more portable. By mid-decade cassette tape and recorders were introduced, quickly followed by the eight-track tape, which made it possible to customize music for listeners who no longer had to rely strictly on radio broadcasts.

The first few years of the 1960s were very much like the 1950s, when jazz still garnered a segment of the popular audience. But with the rise in popularity of the Beatles and television becoming the dominant form of entertainment, jazz clubs began to close, putting musicians out-of-work. But some musicians continued on, striving to extend the boundaries of jazz into new areas. In 1961 tenor saxophonist John Coltrane formed a revolutionary quartet, utilizing many aspects of jazz’s rhythms and harmonies into his approach, culminating in the recording of a milestone work in 1964, A Love Supreme, an album that ensured his position as an important saxophonist and one of the most influential jazzmen of the decade.

As jazz struggled to continue through hard times, some jazz musicians looked to the rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll and strived to add elements of that music to jazz, creating “fusion jazz.” The culmination of this movement was the landmark recording by trumpeter Miles Davis entitled Bitches Brew which became a popular seller and catapulted Davis into almost pop star status.

Although there had been Latin American rhythms in jazz beginning in the 1920s, especially those associated with dances such as the rhumba, meringue and the tango, in 1960 a Brazilian guitarist and composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim, began to receive recognition for his music, a combination of jazz and the Brazilian rhythm known as samba.  American tenor saxophonist Stan Getz’s collaboration with Jobim and vocalist Jo?o Gilberto scored a hit with Jobim’s tune “The Girl from Ipanema.” This type of jazz-plus-samba became known as the bossa nova and has since become part of the flavor of jazz.

By the 1960s the heyday of Tin Pan Alley was gone, superseded by music written by individual artists and groups. The 32-bar song form, the standard for almost 50 years, would disappear in favor of blues-influenced rock ‘n’ roll numbers.

During the decade, tunes that are part of the jazz standards list are almost evenly divided between show tunes (Broadway or movies), jazz originals, and pop tunes. A list of million-seller records of the decade does include a few songs that are part of the jazz standards list (underlined):

• “Hello Dolly”
• “Exodus”
• “Sunny”
• “I Can’t Stop Loving You”
• “Yesterday”
• “I’m a Believer”
• “Honky Tonk Woman”
• “Hey Jude”
• “To Sir with Love”
• “Help!”
• “Monday, Monday”
• “Daydream Believer”

Also worth mentioning is that there were a few recordings by jazz artists that crossed over onto the pop charts but substantially fewer than in the past.

• “Stranger on the Shore”: Acker Bilk
• “Take Five”: Dave Brubeck
• “Girl from Ipanema”: Stan Getz
• “Midnight in Moscow”: Kenny Ball
• “Hello Dolly”: Louis Armstrong