Category: sixties

Positively 4th Street #MusicMonday

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Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña by David Hajdu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Positively 4th Street

A better for Positively 4th Street might be Positively 4th Street: The Lives, Loves and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña. It chronicles Bob Dylan and Joan Baez’s romance and the causes of its dissolution.

More interesting, however, are the life, loves and times of Richard Fariña, who tragically died in a motorcycle accident, on the day of the 21th birthday party he threw for his wife Mimi Baez Fariña (Joan’s younger sister).   Why there isn’t a cult surrounding Richard Fariña, I don’t know. I came away wanting to know more, read Richard’s one novel Been Down So Long It Looks Up to Me, and discover the recordings by Richard and Mimi Farina.

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Petula Clark – "Downtown" #MusicMonday

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Petula Clark might well have been the top female pop vocalist of the mid-1960s, with hits such as “Downtown” “Colour My World” “I Know A Place” “My Love” “Don’t Sleep in the Subway.”

Here’s my favorite: the peppy “Downtown”:

Petula Clark today:

Petula Clark at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Arts Party in May, looking terrific for a lady who will turn 80 on November 15.  Name her a Dame to mark her 80th birthday!  

Nina Simone performs Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne #MusicMonday

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After my recent #MusicMonday features on Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne and Female jazz vocal compilations, it seems fitting that I feature Nina Simone’s unique styling of “Suzanne”:

In the 60s, Nina Simone was known for protest songs such as “Mississippi Goddam.” She also performed songs such as The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s “Feeling Good,” Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You,” and “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life” from the musical Hair with her one-of-a-kind styling.

In a future #MusicMonday feature, I’ll present Nina Simone’s cover of Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn’s “Love Me or Leave Me.”

Blast from the past: 60s #cosmetics ads

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When I was a kid, I hung out with my next door neighbor, who was two years older than me.  I liked her company more than that of her sister, who was only a couple of months older than me.  Gayle and I might have been young, but we were precocious in our fondness for clothes and cosmetics.

Here are a couple of items we coveted, but our mothers wouldn’t let us buy:

Source: flickr.com via STYLE on Pinterest

Lipshine from Helena Rubinstein’s Lightworks collection featured a “Splitstick” that was gloss on one side, color on the other, packed in a graphic black and white tube.

I love those swingy, pleated tent dresses!

Body Paint by Coty Originals has to be one of the most unusual cosmetics I’ve seen.  It came in a paint bucket complete with paint roller and pan.  Shades were blue, green, and mauve.  There were also four flesh tones.

This ad was scanned from the July 1967 issue of Seventeen.  The dress is by Betsey Johnson.  Can you believe that she’s been around this long?

Retro 60s eye makeup

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Total Beauty (of which I’m a member) has had a series on makeup and costumes for Halloween.

This feature on Retro ’60s Girl struck a chord with me: “Channel Twiggy with extreme false lashes and a pale pout.”

Be sure to visit Jamie’s excellent profile of Twiggy on her The Beauty of Life blog.

The eye makeup also reminds me of Penelope Tree, another top model of the sixties.

Penelope Tree