The Summer of 1963 was a beginning for some, and an ending for many more. America would never quite be so young again as it was that year.
The Beach Boys emphasized youth as much as any rock and roll band ever has. Their home ground of Southern California, of course, features Summer weather all year long, and Summer activities all year long. And 1963 was the year of surf rock. The Beach Boys had released the album Surfin' U.S.A. on March 25.
It contains the title track, which rose to Number 3 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. It's not the best Beach Boys song, but it is the most familiar one – much like the soon-to-be-recorded "She Loves You" became the prototypical early Beatles song. The album also contains the racing song "Shut Down," which became the B-side to "Surfin' U.S.A.," and also became a Top 40 hit.
It also includes 2 instrumentals that had been made famous the year before by lefthanded guitarist Dick Dale, considered the true father of surf rock: "Misirlou" and "Let's Go Trippin'." At the time, "trippin'" meant just that, going on a roadtrip, not feeling the effects of a mind-altering drug, or simply being crazy.
Beach Boys bass guitarist and main songwriter Brian Wilson was then dating a woman named Judy Bowles, whose brother Jim was a surfer, and knew all the surfing spots in the southern half of California. Brian thought of how Chuck Berry had listed a bunch of cities in his 1958 song "Sweet Little Sixteen," and decided to try the same thing.
Brian's brother, Carl Wilson, was one of the few guitarists who has ever been able to play Chuck Berry riffs as well as Chuck himself. But this song was so close to "Sweet Little Sixteen" that Chuck sued. A settlement was reached, and Chuck has been listed as the sole author of "Surfin' U.S.A." ever since. Chuck later told them that he loved the song.
The Beach Boys' 1st song, titled simply "Surfin'," was released in 1961, and was a regional hit. The next year, they released "Surfin' Safari," and it became a national Top 20 hit. "Surf rock" became a big deal, especially with instrumentals like "Misirlou," the Chantays' "Pipeline," and the Surfaris' "Wipe Out," with its epic drumming by Ron Wilson (no relation to the Beach Boys).
And yet, the only song about surfing that ever hit Number 1 on Billboard magazine's "Hot 100" chart was "Surf City," by Jan & Dean (Jan Berry and Dean Torrence), in their July 20 edition. As the skateboarding craze followed, Jan & Dean had a Top 20 hit with "Sidewalk Surfin'" in 1964.
The Beach Boys also specialized in songs about cars, and the racing thereof, like "Shut Down," "409," "Little Deuce Coupe," "Fun, Fun, Fun" (about a teenage girl and her Ford Thunderbird), and their 1st Number 1 hit, "I Get Around," which topped the chart in Summer 1964. They even recorded a Christmas album, which included "Little Saint Nick," which invoked Santa Claus working on his sleigh as if it were a hot rod.
The Beach Boys' car songs inspired others: "G.T.O." by Ronnie & the Daytonas, "Hey Little Cobra" by The Rip Chords, and "Dead Man's Curve" by Jan & Dean. The last of these, partly written by Brian Wilson, proved tragic and prophetic: In 1966, Jan Berry was badly hurt in a crash on North Whittier Drive, not far from the real-life curve mentioned in the song, at 9900 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Ironically, the only member of the Beach Boys who was a regular surfer was the other Wilson brother, Dennis, the drummer. Brian, Carl, their cousin and lead singer Mike Love, and rhythm guitarist Al Jardine, who had been Hawthorne High School quarterback Brian's best friend and star receiver, weren't surfers, though they all acted out the part, especially with their onstage clothes. Brian never went surfing until 1976.
In a further irony, Dennis died by drowning in 1983, although that was because he was drunk and fell off a boat, not because of a surfing accident.
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On June 1, 1963, Jomo Kenyatta was sworn in as the 1st President of Kenya, which would achieve full independence from Britain on December 12. On June 3, Northwest Airlines Flight 293, a Douglas DC-7, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Alaska. All 101 people on board, including several U.S. military personnel, were killed.
Also on June 3, The Shoes of the Fisherman was published. This novel, by Morris West, was about a priest who had been a prisoner in a Soviet gulag, who was named Pope, affecting the Cold War. Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, a devout Catholic, would later call it his favorite novel, and hand out copies of it.
But the timing of its publication couldn't be worse: With the Second Vatican Council (a.k.a. Vatican II) still in progress, the real Pope, John XXIII, died of cancer that day. A new Pope would be selected on June 21: Giovanni Battista Montini, the Archbishop of Milan. He took the name Paul VI.
On June 4, reflecting the fact that professional athletes were paid so little that they had to have off-season jobs, Cleveland Browns safety Don Fleming and co-worker Walter Smith were electrocuted and killed on a construction site outside Orlando Florida. Fleming was only 25 years old. The Browns retired his Number 46.
This came just 17 days after the death of Ernie Davis, the 1st black player to win the Heisman Trophy, also signed by the Browns, but who died of leukemia without ever playing a professional down. Despite this, the Browns retired his Number 45. And that was just 8 days after the death of Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb of the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the top defensive linemen of the era, apparently from drugs.
On June 5, John Profumo, Britain's Secretary of State for War, resigned after revelations of an extramarital affair with Christine Keeler, who had also had an affair with a man who turned out to be a Soviet spy. One thing led to another, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had to resign on October 18. On June 7, The Rolling Stones released their 1st single, "Come On." On June 9, actor Johnny Depp was born.
On June 10, actress Jeanne Tripplehorn was born. And President John F. Kennedy gave the commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C. In it, he announced a plan for a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would be signed by the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union on August 5. Following the incredibly close call of the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous October, JFK wanted a genuine peace:
Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children. Not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time but peace for all time...
If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
But the world, and its politics, move on. On June 11, Thích Quảng Đức, a 65-year-old South Vietnamese Buddhist monk, committed suicide by self-immolation, burning himself to death at a major intersection in the national capital of Saigon, to protest the oppression of Buddhists by the government of President Ngô Đình Diệm, who filled that government with his fellow Catholics.
It was, perhaps, the first sign that Americans had that, while the North Vietnamese were Communist and evil, the South Vietnamese may not have been "good" simply because they were capitalist and anti-Communist.
And June 11 would be a turning point in civil rights, as well.
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The University of Cincinnati, despite being based in a "border" city, had featured one of the more racially-integrated college basketball teams in the country, including the most versatile player in the game, Oscar Robertson. He was already in the NBA, though, by the time the Bearcats won the NCAA Tournament, and thus the National Championship, in 1961 and 1962.
They reached the Final again in 1963, on March 23, at Freedom Hall in the Southern city of Louisville, Kentucky. Their opponents would be Loyola University of Chicago. In that Final, while Cincinnati started 2 black players, Loyola started 4 players, the 1st team ever to do so: Center Les Hunter, forwards Jerry Harkness and Vic Rouse, and guard Ron Miller. Only guard Jack Egan was white. Loyola won the game, 60-58 in an overtime classic.
On April 16, having been arrested in Birmingham, the largest city in Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote what became known as the "Letter From Birmingham Jail." On May 3, there was another demonstration, and the police turned biting police dogs and fire hoses -- powerful enough to be called "water cannons" and cause real pain -- on the demonstrators. It made the white police look like totalitarian animals, and rendered their claims of the black protestors being "Communists" look damned stupid.
On January 14, George Wallace was inaugurated as Governor of Alabama, and, in his Inaugural Address, promised, "And I say to you: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!" On June 11, he stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium, then both the main indoor athletic facility and the registration building for the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. The purpose was to deny the registration of the school's 1st black students. Two were making the attempt: James Hood and Vivian Malone. He said, as Governor, he had to "denounce and forbid this unwarranted and illegal action by the central government!"
It was not illegal: The Supreme Court had ruled segregation illegal in 1954, so Wallace was the one breaking the law. And it was not unwarranted. So Kennedy wanted his Attorney General, also his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, to do something about it. RFK sent his Deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach, and federal marshals to Tuscaloosa. Katzenbach showed Wallace a federal warrant for his arrest, letting him known that if he did not get out of that door, he would be handcuffed and arrested, and exposed as a federal criminal on national television.
Martin Luther King Jr. was willing to go to jail to challenge a law he believed was unjust. George Corley Wallace was not: He decided that looking weak was better than looking like a criminal, and he backed down. But he was still a hero to America's bigots.
Nevertheless, accompanied by Katzenbach and the marshals, Malone walked in, and became the 1st black person to register as a student at the University of Alabama. Hood followed.
That night, JFK spoke from the Oval Office of the White House, and announced he was having a Civil Rights Bill submitted to Congress. He said, "We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it... But are we to say to the world, and, much more importantly to each other, that this is the land of the free, except for the Negroes?"
Mere hours later, Medgar Evers, the field secretary for Mississippi by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was shot and killed in his driveway by white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith. Twice in 1964, all-white juries would be unable to reach a verdict. In 1994, a mixed-race jury finally convicted him.
Despite the Evers assassination, the civil rights bill would become law, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- but JFK would not be the President who signed it into law.
And on August 28, Dr. King would speak at the Lincoln Memorial, the highlight of the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In front of a crowd of 300,000 people, he said, "I have a dream that, one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal.'"
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Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the most expensive and most-hyped movie ever made to that point, premiered on June 12. Somehow, it made a profit. Other notable films released in the Summer of 1963 included Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor, Irma la Douce, Jason and the Argonauts, PT 109 (about JFK's real-life World War II heroics), The Great Escape, Toys in the Attic, the Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello franchise-starter Beach Party, Flipper, Promises! Promises!, and a horror film whose title would become the name of perhaps the first "heavy metal" band: Black Sabbath.
Actress Helen Hunt was born on June 15. On June 16, Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union became the 1st woman in space, and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of Israel retired, handing the post over to Levi Eshkol. On June 17, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that State-mandated Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional.
On June 18, Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz died of cancer, and Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive lineman Bruce Smith was born. On June 20, the Moscow-Washington Hotline was authorized, to improve communications between the Cold War capitals. And the last episode of the ABC sitcom Leave It to Beaver aired.
On June 24, 94 people were killed in a landslide on Geoje Island in South Korea, and Britain granted Zanzibar self-rule. In 1964, Zanzibar would united with Tanganyika to form the Republic of Tanzania. Singer George Michael was born on June 25
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President Kennedy traveled to Europe to meet with various national leaders. On June 26, 1963, 60 years ago today, he spoke at West Berlin's City Hall, with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and the man who would succeed him in that post, then the Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt.
JFK addressed a crowd estimated at 450,000 people, roughly the same number that was on hand for Woodstock, 6 years later. Heinz Weber, of the German mission to the United Nations, translated Kennedy's English words to the crowd:
Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "Civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!
There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!
There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin!
And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin!
And there are even a few who say that it is true that Communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin!
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.
The great Boston Irishman had the Germans eating out of the palm of his hand. The Hall was 3 miles from the Wall, but the speech was broadcast on West German television and radio. How well the East Germans were able to jam the transmission is unknown, but, surely, some people in East Berlin heard Kennedy's words.
He closed with:
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one, and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."
JFK's favorite part of the trip was a visit to his ancestral homeland, Ireland, on June 28. In 1843, Patrick Kennedy, JFK's great-grandfather, left Dunganstown in County Wexford. At this time, 120 years later, the biggest business in town was the Albatross Company, a fertilizer factory. JFK told the locals of Patrick, "If hadn't left, I'd be working at the Albatross Company."
Baseball Hall-of-Famer John "Home Run" Baker, a 3rd baseman for the 1910s Philadelphia Athletics, died on June 28.
Part II of this article will follow in August.
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