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How the farmworkers’ movement used concerts to fundraise
Show title:
American Masters
Video title:
How the farmworkers’ movement used concerts to fundraise
Video duration:
3m 40s
Video description:
Music promoter Jim Cassell organized concerts as fundraisers for the farmworkers’ movement with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Garcia, Cheech and Chong, Crosby and Nash, Taj Mahal, Malo, Tower of Power and others.
“It was an era when the United Farm Workers Union movement was so supported by everybody, so the bands would perform basically for free," said Cassell.
Reed was always at the forefront of American avant-garde music, beginning with creation of the Velvet Underground in 1965. Gritty and realistic, the brutal honesty in Reed’s lyrics and sound made him a cultural icon of the disenfranchised throughout the ’60s and ’70s. From punk rock to grunge, he has had an unparalleled influence on the American music scene.
Bebop, a style of jazz developed in the 1940's, changed American music but wasn't taken seriously for much of Charlie Parker's life. This mid-century popcorn television commercial shows how the public's perception of bebop was riddled with stereotypes.
Charlie Parker's nickname "Yardbird" came to be while he was on the way to a gig with some fellow musicians and involved a bird in a yard that had an unfortunate fate.