Skip to main content

Harold Land - Chocolate Mess

During the decade, the types of parentally approved and appropriate dress for teen boys consisted of loose fitting slacks, an ironed shirt and tie, a sports jacket, and polished black or brown loafers. Haircuts were short and neat. Clean cut preppy boys donned tan chinos, a type of pants, that ended just below the ankles, V neck sweaters, and white buck shoes or Top Siders, deck shoes. Their female equivalents wore saddle shoes, bobby socks, blouses with pleated skirts, or dirndl dresses, which featured lots of petticoats, and came sleeveless or with puffed sleeves. Favored hairstyles included the ponytail and bouffant, hair that was teased and combed up to stand high on a woman's head.

Teens who embraced rock 'n roll began looking and dressing in ways that veered from the accepted norm. Teenage boys wore tight fitting blue jeans and white T shirts, an outfit that represented the essence of rock 'n roll rebellion. Or they adapted the greaser look favoring tight T shirts and dungarees, a type of jean, along with black leather jackets. Their hair was grown long, greased with Vaseline, and combed on both sides to extend beyond the back of the head, a style known as the ducktail, or D.A. White bucks were replaced by blue suede shoes, the name of a mid 1950s smash hit by early rock 'n roll icon Carl Perkins, 1932–1998. Their girlfriends expressed themselves by wearing felt poodle skirts, which often featured such images as record players and musical notes attached to their fronts, or they wore short, tight skirts, stockings, tight blouses and sweaters, and an over abundance of eye shadow and lipstick. While a preppy couple who was going steady, or seriously dating, exchanged class rings or identification bracelets, a greaser girl instead put on her boyfriend's leather jacket.


Harold Land - Chocolate Mess
  • Released in: 1972
  • Genre: Jazz, Funk, and Soul
  • Composed by: Leon Chancler

"In the early 1980s through to the early 1990s Harold Land worked regularly with the Timeless All Stars, a group sponsored by the Timeless jazz record label."

See previous Song of the Day 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Moondog - Behold

The history of jazz has been one of fusion. Its musicians and composers have continually drawn upon a huge range of different musics to create the rich and diverse tapestry that is world jazz today. Jazz is an evolving tradition of music making. And how often, in the life stories of individual jazz musicians, do we see these same patterns operating at microcosm? The richness of Turkish music and culture sometimes seems at odds with its turbulent and cruel history. In 1979... the country suffered its third military take over in thirty years... Every kind of music was in Turkey at that point. But it was not appreciated. To understand the culture of the country, with those three military takeovers, Turkey could not go anywhere. Musically, it was very difficult. But things were beginning to happen. Traditional Turkish music is essentially monophonic, rich in melody and rhythm but with little by way of harmony. The contrast with western music, with its beautiful harmonies but rhythmic weakn...

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday Genre: RnB Released in: 1984 Duration: 5:14 "The Gap Band was most successful when working with producer Lonnie Simmons, with four consecutive gold records. Their party train soon slowed to a stop. They reformed in the 90s and occasionally toured and attempted a comeback album." See Previous Song of the Day