The Sixties: The Dark Side

This guide covers the decade 1960 - 1970

Overview

For every Luke Skywalker, there is a Darth Vader. For every Woodstock, there was an Altamonte. Every decade has its own basket of bad apples. The Sixties was no different.

Musicians' Early Deaths 1959 - 1975

Duane Allman (of The Allman Brothers), 24, 1971
The Big Bopper, 28, 1959
Patsy Cline, 30, 1963
Eddie Cochran, 21, 1960
Sam Cooke, 33, 1964
Babby Darin, 37, 1973
Nick Drake, 26, 1974
Mama Cass Elliot (of The Mamas & Papas), 32, 1974
Jimi Hendrix, 27, 1970
Buddy Holly, 22, 1959
Brian Jones (of The Rolling Stones), 27, 1969
Janis Joplin, 27, 1970
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (of The Grateful Dead), 27, 1973
Jim Morrison (of The Doors), 27, 1971
Gram Parsons, 26, 1973
Otis Redding, 26, 1967
Jim Reeves, 40, 1964
Richie Valens, 17, 1959

Teenage Tragedy Songs

In the late fifties and early sixties, a number of songs concerning death charted. For four or five years, this tragedy theme seemed to guarantee a chart success. After 1965, the theme with rare exceptions seemed to be over.

Teen Angel, Mark Dinning (1959)
Tell Laura I Love Her, Ray Peterson (1960)
Ebony Eyes, The Everly Brothers (1961)
Leah, Roy Orbison (1962)
Patches, Dickey Lee (1962)
Deadman's Curve, Jan & Dean (1963)
Last Kiss, J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers (1964)
Leader of the Pack, The Shangri-Las (1964
Ode to Billie Joe, Bobbie Gentry (1967)
Honey, Bobby Goldsboro (1968)

Songs found on Spotify
Musicians found on allmusic.com

Some Bad Guys

David Berg, cult leader
Arthur Bremer, assassin
Albert DeSalvo (The Boston Strangler), serial killer
Jimmy Hoffa, labor leader
Charles Manson, cult leader
"Murf the Surf" Murphy, jewel thief and murderer
Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin
James Earl Ray, assassin
Jack Ruby, assassin
Sirhan Sirhan, assassin
Richard Speck, serial killer
Charles Whitman, serial killer

Assassinations and attempted assassinations

Five Days in November by Clint Hill; Lisa McCubbin
Call Number: E842.9 .H55 2013
ISBN: 9781476731490
Publication Date: 2013-11-19
The five infamous, tragic days surrounding JFK's assassination

Jan. 17, 1961. Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba executed.
Sept. 18, 1961. UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold dies in mysterious airplane crash.
June 12, 1963. Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers assassinated.
Nov. 2, 1963. South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem assassinated.
Nov. 22, 1963. President Kennedy assassinated.
Feb. 21, 1965. Malcolm X assassinated.
Oct. 9, 1967. Guerilla leader Che Guevara executed in Bolivia.
April 4, 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.
June 6, 1968. Bobby Kennedy assassinated.
May 15, 1972. Attempted assassination of Governor George Wallace.
Sept. 11, 1973. Chilean President Salvador Allende dies in coup.
Sept. 16, 1973. Chilean poet, musician and political activist Victor Jara murdered.

Dark Side Movies

Bonnie and Clyde
DVD 1967
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Based on the true story of Clyde Barrow, a charismatic convicted armed robber who sweeps Bonnie Parker, an impressionable, petite, small-town waitress, off her feet. The two embark on one of the most infamous bank-robbing sprees in history.
The Haunting
DVD 1963
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This psychological thiller tells the story of four people who come to the house to study its supernatural phenomena. Based on the Shirley Jackson novel
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho
DVD 1960
ROLLING STONES: GIMME SHELTER
DVD 1970
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Called the greatest rock film ever made, this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When 300,000 members of the Love Generation collided with a few dozen Hell’s Angels at San Francisco’s Altamont Speedway.
Rosemary's Baby
DVD 1968
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1968 Horror movie. After unwittingly becoming friendly with a coven of witches and warlocks, a young wife is impregnated by the Devil.
The Wild Bunch
DVD 1969
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The brutal story of violent men who lived during the Mexican revolution in the year 1913. It portrays a band of magnificent losers in a dying lawless West.

Some 1960s Tragedies

In Cold Blood
DVD 1967
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Based on the book by Truman Capote. The true story of a callous murder of a prosperous and respected Kansas farmer, his wife and two teenage children by two ex-convict drifters in 1959.

Nov. 15, 1959. Ex-cons Richard Hickock and Perry Smith murder Clutter family in Kansas. Murder chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
May 1, 1961. First U.S. Airline flight hijacked to Cuba.
Sept. 29-Oct. 12, 1963. Hurricane Flora killed some 7000-8000 in Cuba and Haiti.
March 13, 1964. Rape and murder of Kitty Genovese outside New York City apartment building.
March 27-28, 1964. 8.6 Alaskan earthquake.
Aug. 11, 1965. Watts Riots.
July 13, 1966. Richard Speck murders 8 student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital.
Aug. 1, 1966. University of Texas tower sniper shooting by Charles Whitman.
Jan. 27, 1967. The three astronauts of Apollo 1 lost their lives in a fire.
July 12-23, 1967. Urban riots in Plainfield, and Detroit, Newark.
April 4, 1968. Urban riots in Washington, DC; Chicago & Baltimore after shooting of Dr. King.
July 18, 1969. Ted Kennedy plunges his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing Mary Jo Kopechne.
Aug. 8, 1969. Sharon Tate murders by Charles Manson family.
Dec, 4, 1969. Meredith Hunter murdered at Altamont Festival.
July 30, 1975. Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears.

Dark Side Reading

1968 in America : music, politics, chaos, counterculture, and the shaping of a generation by Charles Kaiser
Call Number: E 846 .K29 2018
ISBN: 9780802128034
Publication Date: 2018-04-17
I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt
Call Number: HV 6446 .B73 2016
ISBN: 9781586422387
Publication Date: 2016-06-29
Biography of the mob hit man, Frank Sheeran, who claimed he killed Jimmy Hoffa.
Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson; Douglas Brinkley (Introduction by)
Call Number: HV 6489. C 2 T 48 1999
ISBN: 9780679603313
Publication Date: 1999-12-07

Additional References

Farber, D. R., & Bailey, B. L. (2005). The Columbia guide to America in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rockwell, J. (2014). The times of the sixties the culture, politics and personalities that shaped the decade. New York, NY: Black Dog.
Strain, C. B. (2016). Long Sixties: America, 1954-1974. Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Strodder, C., & Phillips, M. (2007). The encyclopedia of sixties cool: A celebration of the grooviest people, events, and artifacts of the 1960s. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press.