Monday, May 18, 2009

This Date in 1969- Music

Another list of hit songs from www.laradio.com (L.A. Radio People) that jogs my memory comes from the Top Five Flashback, May 18, 1969:
Get Back by the Beatles & Billy Preston, Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In by the 5th Dimension, Love Can Make You Happy by Mercy, Hair by the Cowsills, Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

So many different groups of that day could be heard on the same pop stations without having to tune into specialty stations like now. And that was when AM radio was the main radio source of pop music as FM radio was still developing and was the place to hear some offbeat radio. I can remember each of these songs so distinctly and they are still enjoyable to me, but I think also about how long ago it was that they were hits, brought home by considering that so many of these artists in the named groups are gone now.

The main things that these songs remind me of is from the college period for me and the Vietnam War era when so much was happening there, including the draft and troop buildup.

On this particular date, it was roughly a whole year since Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis (April 1968) and Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel after winning the June primary election for the Democratic presidential candidate on the first Tuesday in June 1968.

Those times seemed to be filled with a number of historic events and the music was part of the times.