Arts & Culture

Commentaries

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50 Years Later: The Sunday Night that Forever Changed Music

WKMS | By Brian Clardy,

Matt Markgraf

Published February 5, 2014 at 3:50 PM CST

Fifty years ago this Sunday (February 9, 2014), four mop-topped lads from Liverpool took to a television stage and changed the world. The Beatles made their stateside debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in three consecutive headlining performances to great anticipation and fanfare, drawing over 73 million viewers and launching the 'British Invasion.' Commentator and Murray State history professor Dr. Brian Clardy reflects on their first performance and its cultural impact over 50 years.

In the three months after the assassination of President Kennedy, the nation was still numb from the pain of a profound loss: a young leader cut down in the prime of his life. The country was also sitting on a deep racial divide that had left far too many causalities and anxiety about the struggles to come.

A presidential election year had arrived, one that would bring highs and lows of its own.

The mid-winter of 1964 seemed to be a very bleak and foreboding period as Americans were still in the throes of an emotional roller coaster.

And then they came: The Beatles.

John Lennon…….Paul McCartney…….George Harrison…..Ringo Starr.

They were four young, creative and energetic lads from Liverpool, England who were already a sensation in Europe, but now they had arrived on American shores to set the American musical horizon ablaze.

And they would appear on the weekly Sunday meeting place where Americans gathered in front of televisions to bid adieu to the weekend and to welcome the challenges of the week ahead: CBS’s “Ed Sullivan Show.”

Sullivan had broken ground before with such artists ranging from Elvis Presley to violinist, ItzhakPerlman. But The Beatles were unique in their own right.

They were young……brash….comfortable in their own skin.

They sang in a harmony that harkened back to classic Rhythm and Blues and traditional English choral melodies. And their lyrics were poetic and spoke to the longings of the human heart.

Songs like “Till There Was You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” celebrated love and light in such a unique way that it drew in the listener and appealed to their imagination.

And the tune “She Loves You” became the anthem of a generation.

In the few short years after that Sunday night “Ed Sullivan” appearance, they changed the musical firmament forever with revolutionary albums such as “Rubber Soul,” “Abbey Road,” and the Grammy award winning recording “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” among many others.

That Sunday night in February 1964 truly set in motion of the great bursts of innovation that the world has ever known.

And fifty years later, the Fab Four still appeal to our sense of youth, imagination, and a world filed with wonder and the beautiful possibilities that life has to offer. Their music spoke to their generation and inspired millions of artists to give their creative best.

Dr. Brian Clardy is an Assistant Professor of History and Coordinator of Religious Studies at Murray State University. He is also the Wednesday night host of Cafe Jazz on WKMS.