LibGuides: Primary Sources: The 1960s: Music & Dance

Online Sources: Music - 1960's

"I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die-Rag" (Social History for Every Classroom)
more... less...

"In 1959, at the age of seventeen, Joe McDonald joined the Navy. After his discharge three years later, he enrolled in a Los Angeles college where he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, McDonald moved to Berkeley, California just as protests against the Vietnam War were becoming more visible. He formed a band called Country Joe and the Fish which recorded the "Fixin-to-Die-Rag" in October. The song, while never a commercial success, became one of the most powerful anthems of the anti-war movement."
Billboard Magazine (via Google Books)
Elvis Presley
FBI Vault: James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix
FBI Vault: Janis Joplin
FBI Vault: Jerry Garcia
FBI Vault: The Beatles
FBI Vault: The Grateful Dead
FBI Vault: The Monkees
more... less...

"The Monkees were a U.S. pop band created for a television show of the same name in 1966. The band also toured and made record albums even after the show was cancelled. References to the band appear in two places in FBI files: a 1967 Los Angeles Field Office memorandum on anti-Vietnam war activities and a second document redacted entirely."
Grateful Dead - Internet Archive
more... less...

"Created in 2004 this collection consists of both audience and soundboard recordings. It is not uncommon to find multiple versions of the same show. For more information please see the FAQ. The Grateful Dead collection is not currently open to public uploads."
Inside the 1969 Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash Sessions
more... less...

"Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash had formed a mutual admiration society even before they met in the early 1960s."
John Lennon
Library of Congress Audio Recordings Online
more... less...

A selection of Audio Recordings from the Library of Congress. Over 18,000 are available online.
View of a Culture: Presenting Rock Music in Los Angeles, 1960s-1970s
more... less...

"This series includes interviews with individuals involved in behind-the-scenes or on-the-air presentation of rock music in Los Angeles area during its critical period of growth and importance, the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on both the music itself and the culture that accompanied it as rock music developed from popular dance music into a significant art form and as much of it emerged from underground into mainstream culture. "
YouTube
more... less...

Provides access to videos on various topics. Check to see who uploaded the video and what you can find out about them. Videos can be altered, so it is a good idea to evaluate the source. See if you can find more than one video of the same event.

Dance Studies Collection
The only collection of curated primary and secondary full-text materials to support informed performance, pedagogy, and scholarship in dance. Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection presents the historical context of 20th and 21st century dance through 150,000 pages of exclusive photographs, correspondence, magazines, dance notation, and reference material that dissolve the distance between archive and scholar and draw dance students into the library.
Music & Dance Online
Music and Dance Online delivers the largest, most diverse catalog of music content in the world for students, scholars, and patrons of the arts. The multimedia resource features works from thousands of respected partners, covers hundreds of genres from alternative to zydeco and from alternative dance to operatic arias, and encompasses a wide range of content formats - including scores, reference, and high definition audio and video.

Alexander Street Press Music Online - Sample Selections - 1960s

Alexander Street Press Music & Performing Arts
Music & Performing Arts combines audio and video that spans all time periods, hundreds of thousands of seminal artists, composers, choreographers, and ensembles to provide an unparalleled learning environment for the teaching of music.

Ballad of the Green Berets - Barry Sadler
Billboard Magazine (via Google Books)
Broadside Ballads, Vol. 11: Interviews With Phil Ochs
Charles Manson: Lie, The Love and Terror Cult
more... less...

Recordings made prior to the Tate/La Bianca Murders. The related documents includes a brief interview with Manson.
Classic Protest Songs from Smithsonian Folkways
more... less...

"War, social injustice, personal plaints, and calls for action have long fueled musical creation and performance. In Classic Protest Songs, Mark Gustafson and Jeff Place tap the historic Smithsonian audio collections to compile 22 songs favored by leaders of antiwar, civil rights, industrial labor, farm worker, and other struggles to air their grievances. Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Janis Ian, Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger, Barbara Dane, Guy Carawan, Phil Ochs, and other marquee artists let their voices ring out with calls for peace and justice."
The Complete A&M Recordings performed by Baez, Joan
more... less...

Alexander Street Press Music database
Ella Swings Gently With Nelson
Folkways Years, 1955-1992: Songs of Love and Politics
more... less...

"Peggy [Seeger] personally selected these traditional and original songs focused primarily on the themes of love and politics. From a dominant figure in the folk song movement in the U.S. and England for more than 35 years, these titles have reached millions: Freight Train, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Gonna Be An Engineer. "21 tracks display the variety of Peggy's repertoire, her range of styles, love of tradition and innovative songwriting prowess."" Alexander Street Press Music database
Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs
more... less...

"For nearly 60 years Pete Seeger, with his banjo and 12-string guitar, has made music which inspires people to improve their lives and world. Selections on this anthology, culled from the hundreds Seeger recorded for Folkways Records between 1955 and 1999, include concert and studio recordings about prominent events and themes of the twentieth century: the Spanish Civil War, union organizing, and the civil rights and antiwar movements"
If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle
more... less...

"For over 50 years Pete Seeger's music has included songs on labor, civil rights, peace, and the hope for a better world. This CD contains 24 tracks selected from hundreds released on Folkways Records in the late 1950s and 1960s and 2 new songs recorded especially for this collection. Pete plays the 5-string banjo and the 12-string guitar and appears on some tracks with Almanac Singers and his grandson Tao Rodriguez."
CNU ONLY
The Jimi Hendrix Experience: 1966-1967
The Kingston Trio: Snapshot, Live in Concert 1965
Lest We Forget, Vol. 1
more... less...

"Songs played a large role in the movement to close the racial divide in America during the 1960s, and prayers, chants, sermons, and shouts were also fundamental to this task. This album features clips of these cries for freedom heard across the southern states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and the District of Columbia. At voter registration rallies, in churches, at conferences or during mass meetings these words changed lives."
Lest We Forget, Vol. 2
more... less...

"Songs played a large role in the movement to close the racial divide in America during the 1960s, and prayers, chants, sermons, and shouts were also fundamental to this task. Guy and Candie Carawan recorded Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Albernathy speaking just after they were arrested for attempting to, as Caucasians, sing in a black church. Armed with only one microphone, they were fortunate enough to be released just in time to record the historic event heard here."
Lest We Forget, Vol. 3: Sing For Freedom
more... less...

"Songs played a large role in the movement to close the racial divide in America during the 1960s, and prayers, chants, sermons, and shouts were also fundamental to this task. This collection of freedom songs was recorded during "The Sing for Freedom Workshop"a remarkable event that brought together the best of freedom singers to share the history of this tradition, better organize the freedom song movement, and enrich an already powerful repertoire of song."
Pop Goes the 60's
Presenting Isaac Hayes
Sing For Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs
more... less...

Hymns, speeches, spirituals, gospel songs, and prayers...a moving civil rights collection drawn from 1960s field recordings in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The compilation captures the irrepressible spirit of that era and reveals a determined and triumphant African American culture. A collection of glorious songs and heartstopping selections by The SNCC Freedom Singers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others. "...[T]here is wonderful singing here, great conviction, and the immediacy of living truth...powerful documentation of the most important social movement of our time."
We Shall Overcome: Songs of the Freedom Riders and the Sit-Ins
more... less...

"This 1961 recording of spirituals, gospel and new music to "express the spirit of freedom" was the result of an effort by producer and performer Guy Carawan to bring together singers representative of hundreds of thousands African American students from the south participating in sit-ins, stand-ins and freedom rides for "first class citizenship" during the civil rights movement. The songs are performed by The Montgomery Gospel Trio, comprised of three high school girls from Alabama, as well as four seminary students who call themselves "The Nashville Quartet" in an impromtu session as recorded by Moses Asch."
With A Little Help From My Friends

Book & Audio/Video Sources: Music - 1960s

A selection of books/e-books available in Trible Library.
Click the title for location and availability information.

Off campus access instructions (for e-books)

1+ : The Beatles (video)
50 Years of Rolling Stone by Rolling Stone LLC, Staff; Jann S. Wenner
Call Number: Online - Ebook Central

ISBN: 9781683350200
The American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-1966. Volume two (video)
The American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-1969. Volume three (video)
The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966 Vol. 1 (video)
"A rare collection of performances by America's premier bluesmen at the peak of their artistry."
And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir by Joan Baez
ISBN: 0671400622
The Beatles Anthology (video)
Call Number: ML421.B4 B42 2003

ISBN: 188440961X
The Beatles [sound recording]
Call Number: M1630.18.B43 B43 2009

ISBN: 5099969944901
Bob Dylan: Song Book by Bob Dylan
British Invasion: 5 DVD Box Set
Cherokee Mist: The Lost Writings by Jimi Hendrix
Call Number: ML410.H476 A25 1993

ISBN: 0060169761
Chet Baker live in '64 & '79 (video)
"The first performance filmed 1964 in Belgium for the program Jazz pour tous; the second performance filmed Sept. 3, 1979 at the Jazz Kongsberg Festival in Norway."
The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (video)
ISBN: 0780025040

"Documentary about Monterey Pop Festival of 1967; includes festival footage and performances."
Dance As a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present by Selma J. Cohen (Editor)
Call Number: GV1781.C678 D17

ISBN: 0060413158

Publication Date: 1974-01-01
Ella Fitzgerald live in '57 & '63 (video)
George Harrison: Living in the Material World (video)
"Using unseen photos and footage, ... director Martin Scorsese traces the life of George Harrison in a personal film, weaving together performance footage, home movies, rare archival materials and interviews with his family and friends"--Container.
Gimme Shelter (video)
ISBN: 0780023811
Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews by Dennis McNally (Editor)
ISBN: 0316389595
John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance by Martin Iddon
ISBN: 1107014328
John Coltrane Live in '60, '61 & '65 (video)
ISBN: 9786311433683

"Filmed March 28, 1960 in Düsseldorf, West Germany; December 4, 1961in Baden-Baden, West Germany; and August 1, 1965 in Comblain-La-Tour, Belgium."
The Leonard Bernstein Letters by Nigel Simeone (Editor); Leonard Bernstein
Call Number: ML410.B566 A4 2013

ISBN: 030017909X
Living with the Dead by Rock Scully
Call Number: Online - Ebook Central

ISBN: 1461661137
The Lyrics: 1961-2012 by Bob Dylan
ISBN: 1451648766
Magical Mystery Tour (video)
ISBN: 5099940490595
Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis; Quincy Troupe
ISBN: 0671725823
Motown, the DVD
Performances originally filmed and broadcast on various television programs 1965-1972.
Motown: The Sound of Young America by Adam White
ISBN: 0500518297
Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion by Judith Tick (Editor); Paul Beaudoin (Editor)
ISBN: 0195139887

Publication Date: 2008
The Pete Seeger Reader by Ronald D. Cohen (Editor); James Capaldi (Editor)
ISBN: 019986201X
Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo
ISBN: 0306807777
The Studio Albums 1968-1979 (Joni Mitchell) [audio]
Through the Eyes of a Dancer by Wendy Perron
ISBN: 0819574074

Publication Date: 2013
To Stretch Our Ears: A Documentary History of America's Music by James Heywood Alexander
ISBN: 0393974111

Publication Date: 2002
Voices of the Civil Rights Movement [sound recording] by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Woodstock: 3 days of Peace & Music (video)
ISBN: 1419859595
Woodstock: Defining moments by Kevin Hillstrom; Laurie Collier Hillstrom
ISBN: 0780812840
Woodstock: The Oral History by Joel Makower
Call Number: ML38.W66 M34 1989

ISBN: 1438429746
Yellow Submarine (video)
ISBN: 5099962146098

Search for More

Suggested terms to look for include - diary, diaries, letters, papers, documents, documentary or correspondence.

Combine these these terms with the event or person you are researching. (example: civil war diary)

Also search by subject for specific people and events, then scan the titles for those keywords or others such as memoirs, autobiography, report, or personal narratives.

An additional option is to do a search on a topic and use the "Resource Type" limiter on the left side of the results and choose the option "Primary Sources" - please note this is extremely limiting as most primary source materials are not marked in records with this resource type and you will miss seeing a large number of useful items.