Exactly a half-century ago, an assassin gunned down President John F. Kennedy, the same day that The Beatles released their second album. The world would never be the same again.
John F. Kennedy in the Dallas motorcade in 1963.
I remember it all in black and white.
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President John F. Kennedy’s shocking assassination on this day in 1963 constitutes my first memory of anything of national or historic significance, partly because it signaled a colossal event for the Sinkevics household.
My family didn’t own a television at the time but felt compelled to rent a tiny black-and-white model from the local appliance store to watch broadcast coverage of the funeral and follow-up news reports on the national tragedy.
As a dimunitive lad in the first grade, just a few days of watching those black-and-white images (aided by rabbit-ear antennae) left an indelible impression – from the heart-rending procession of the flag-draped presidential casket through the streets of Washington D.C. to late-night airings of old war movies. (According to the Associated Press, 41.5 million households tuned in for the funeral and only 50.3 million had TVs at the time, so we weren’t alone.)
The Beatles, “With the Beatles”
Those black-and-white memories also remain forever entwined with the music that would transform my young existence.
On the day JFK was gunned down, Dale & Grace’s “I’m Leaving It Up to You,” was the No. 1 pop song in the land, following the even more forgettable “Deep Purple” by Nino Tempo & April Stevens.
But on the very same day that JFK’s murder stunned a nation, something monumentally unforgettable also rocked the music world: The Beatles released their second album in Great Britain, “With the Beatles,” portending a phenomenon that would take the United States – and much of the rest of the globe – by storm just a couple of months later, with the Fab Four scoring 10 Top 40 Billboard hits in less than four months at the start of 1964.
The album cover for “With the Beatles,” that iconic, stark black-and-white photograph of the four moptops, was replicated for January 1964’s U.S. release of “Meet the Beatles!”
John F. Kennedy
And from that point on, I was a Beatles fanatic, playing black vinyl 45s of their hit singles, collecting black-and-white Beatles cards (the Fab Four version of baseball cards), watching their momentous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on my aunt and uncle’s black-and-white TV, thrilling and chuckling to the Beatles’ black-and-white movie debut in “A Hard Day’s Night” while seated inside Grand Haven’s sprawling old Grand Theater.
Over the years, my black-and-white memories of the early ’60s somehow have balanced the tragedy of JFK’s untimely murder with the unbridled joy of experiencing that burgeoning Beatles sensation.
Sadly, that connection between an assassination and the Beatles would dramatically be reinforced just 17 years later when a misguided miscreant would gun down John Lennon – another influential icon felled in his prime with so much more to offer the world.
But unlike those days in 1963, this devastating loss was played out in “living color.”
— John Sinkevics for Local Spins
Email John Sinkevics at jsinkevics@gmail.com.
Copyright 2013, Spins on Music
nice John………..
really well done John
Very nice reflection John. There’s something haunting about those black and white images of the JFK funeral procession, and something timelessly magical about the footage of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The joy of the latter helped pull us out of the grief of the former. What a time.
Wow, John…very vividly put.
I’ve often thought that one reason for the Beatles’ colossal and rapid success in the U.S. was the instant joy antidote they brought to a nation in deep darkness and mourning. Thank God they did.