WELL, GET BACK, WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED

                      

Last night, thanks to C.B.S., I turned back the clock to that signal night of February 9, 1960 when The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and changed the popular musical landscape indelibly.  For two hours I was in a state of minor ecstasy, seeing the original “Fab Five” in black and white, then seeing the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, both in well-preserved seventies, in the audience and then performing. In addition to  the dynamic duo, the TV audience witnessed a plethora of today’s stars, from pop, to country, to hard rock, pay tribute to The Beatles, playing and singing their songs.

You could see the combination of reverence, appreciation and musical kicks on that C.B.S. stage last night, plus luminaries of stage and screen recapturing their lost youth. It was a love fest, a tribute to the group, more than any other, who made rock n’ roll a household word.

When my wife and I sat with the three of my four kids who were then born to watch that Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, we were in our mid thirties and simply looking to see what all the fuss from England was about. We were the younger edge of the “square” generations grown up on swing and jazz music. As a jazz buff, I had always liked what was known in the old racist days as “race music”, the rhythm and blues of the early pioneers of what became r & b. I dug Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Fats Domino, Leadbelly and the southern blues /folk school and was beginning to like the sounds of that white kid from Memphis who made some of those great black and blue sounds. By the time that show was over, I knew I was witnessing a force of nature, the way those kids synthesized the early "r&b” sounds and gave it their own inimitable twist.

So, thanks and plaudits, C.B.S., for transporting us back in time and reminding us what a legacy and library of great songs The Beatles bequeathed us. Their songs sounded great at the time---and equally well in the hands of modern artists who stamped their songs with their own mark. We got back to where we belonged and heard great music, better than ever after fifty years.  And , let me tell you, those two seventy-year-olds show eternally young souls.

I had a blast from the past and a big wind from today.