Dec 26, 2017 -
I first showed up on S. Highland Street in the summer of 1967. I was fifteen years old then and had begun to take trumpet lessons with Richard Steff at the then Memphis State University Music Department. That was every Saturday morning for the next two years, more or less.
I had been playing trumpet for about three years in 1967, and after attending Bellevue Junior High School in 1966 and 1967, Mr. George Toney, the band director there, suggested that I try to get private trumpet lessons with Dick Steff who was trumpet instructor at Memphis State then and a graduate (Masters degree) from the Eastman School of Music. Steff agreed to take me, and with my brand new "Silver Flair" trumpet (made by King) I showed up at Steff's office in June, 1967, I guess on the first Saturday of that month. In contrast, the Hippie counterculture had yet to launch itself into Memphis' history at that time. The beginning was starting to take shape though. It was clear when you got off at the Music Building on Central and began to see kids (in college) dressed up in these weird looking outfits and growing their hair to their shoulders that something was going on, but what exactly I wasn't quite sure yet. I also didn't know exactly what all of this "new look" on campus was about, but I soon found out that it was a new way of thinking that was first of all against the Vietnam War and secondly was against a world that had simply gotten boring and too much the same for everyone unless you wanted to be "square" as the term was then and just accept American culture as it was. Once I found out that this counterculture mentality was all about setting yourself free from the mainstream stupidity all around you then, I fell right in step with their way of thinking. I turned "cool" as we said then, and I began to think that the old way to thinking was nothing more than the quickest way to wind up a loser in life by the age of thirty with nothing but a stupid job, and dumb wife, and a house full of retarded kids you couldn't pay for. In short it was all about being different, and I liked that.
The story in 1967 was sort of weird at first when I look back fifty years ago now and see what stands out in my mind. The Arab-Israeli War was that year. The Who (rock group) appeared. The first I'd heard of Jimi Hendrix stands out--and The Doors. And the first I'd actually been around anything that was radical such as really developing for the first time in my life a sense of deep resentment when I was forced to take a second year of ROTC at Central High and then I ran into a direct threat to the continued development of my image and identity as a musician, namely an instructor named Newport who was a retired Army Master Sergeant. He and I had already clashed a few times during my freshman year at Central, but in my junior year things between us reached a climax. I had been getting luckier finding more paying gigs playing the trumpet around Memphis, and I had no interest in being a shave headed little drone following the whims and dictates of those whom I viewed as a bunch of old fossils when I could be going out and developing myself professionally and doing a hell of a lot better than they were or would ever do as I viewed life at that time at age 17. They were running Central High School like World War II was still going on and we were all headed off to the front to fight the Japs or the Germans. That was their generation. Not mine. And then we had the new ideas entering society that were represented by certain people wearing long hair and dressing in a manner that was considered taboo such as wearing old army jackets and military insignia such as the Iron Cross and other such icons that stood for one thing and one thing only--non-conformity to the established social order in America at that time (and of course opposition to the Vietnam War). At Central anything that remotely related to being an adherent to or a believer in anything related to this growing counterculture movement was immediately met with severe resistance and immediate punitive action. For me, Jack Simpson was the keeper of the watchtower in that respect, and anything that remotely looked like something "hippie" or "anti-establishment" to him was immediately quashed and rendered neuter. So just soon as I began to grow my hair over my ears and eyes, Simpson (a lieutenant in the Arkansas National Guard too in addition to being Assistant Principal) "took to the field" and began to issue suspensions and expulsions to me on the spot just to make sure that I got the message that my kind and my radical ideas were not welcome at Central.
OK, back to the Hippie Scene in Memphis when it was first just getting started.
First of all you have to know what a Hippie was. You didn't have to grow your hair long, dress in weird clothes, and go around praising the benefits of drugs, rock music, and free love. That was only one side of the movement. The other side was more difficult to see and involved a new way of thinking that primarily rejected the existence of a society that wanted to dictate everything you were or were going to be from cradle to grave.
I had been playing trumpet for about three years in 1967, and after attending Bellevue Junior High School in 1966 and 1967, Mr. George Toney, the band director there, suggested that I try to get private trumpet lessons with Dick Steff who was trumpet instructor at Memphis State then and a graduate (Masters degree) from the Eastman School of Music. Steff agreed to take me, and with my brand new "Silver Flair" trumpet (made by King) I showed up at Steff's office in June, 1967, I guess on the first Saturday of that month. In contrast, the Hippie counterculture had yet to launch itself into Memphis' history at that time. The beginning was starting to take shape though. It was clear when you got off at the Music Building on Central and began to see kids (in college) dressed up in these weird looking outfits and growing their hair to their shoulders that something was going on, but what exactly I wasn't quite sure yet. I also didn't know exactly what all of this "new look" on campus was about, but I soon found out that it was a new way of thinking that was first of all against the Vietnam War and secondly was against a world that had simply gotten boring and too much the same for everyone unless you wanted to be "square" as the term was then and just accept American culture as it was. Once I found out that this counterculture mentality was all about setting yourself free from the mainstream stupidity all around you then, I fell right in step with their way of thinking. I turned "cool" as we said then, and I began to think that the old way to thinking was nothing more than the quickest way to wind up a loser in life by the age of thirty with nothing but a stupid job, and dumb wife, and a house full of retarded kids you couldn't pay for. In short it was all about being different, and I liked that.
The story in 1967 was sort of weird at first when I look back fifty years ago now and see what stands out in my mind. The Arab-Israeli War was that year. The Who (rock group) appeared. The first I'd heard of Jimi Hendrix stands out--and The Doors. And the first I'd actually been around anything that was radical such as really developing for the first time in my life a sense of deep resentment when I was forced to take a second year of ROTC at Central High and then I ran into a direct threat to the continued development of my image and identity as a musician, namely an instructor named Newport who was a retired Army Master Sergeant. He and I had already clashed a few times during my freshman year at Central, but in my junior year things between us reached a climax. I had been getting luckier finding more paying gigs playing the trumpet around Memphis, and I had no interest in being a shave headed little drone following the whims and dictates of those whom I viewed as a bunch of old fossils when I could be going out and developing myself professionally and doing a hell of a lot better than they were or would ever do as I viewed life at that time at age 17. They were running Central High School like World War II was still going on and we were all headed off to the front to fight the Japs or the Germans. That was their generation. Not mine. And then we had the new ideas entering society that were represented by certain people wearing long hair and dressing in a manner that was considered taboo such as wearing old army jackets and military insignia such as the Iron Cross and other such icons that stood for one thing and one thing only--non-conformity to the established social order in America at that time (and of course opposition to the Vietnam War). At Central anything that remotely related to being an adherent to or a believer in anything related to this growing counterculture movement was immediately met with severe resistance and immediate punitive action. For me, Jack Simpson was the keeper of the watchtower in that respect, and anything that remotely looked like something "hippie" or "anti-establishment" to him was immediately quashed and rendered neuter. So just soon as I began to grow my hair over my ears and eyes, Simpson (a lieutenant in the Arkansas National Guard too in addition to being Assistant Principal) "took to the field" and began to issue suspensions and expulsions to me on the spot just to make sure that I got the message that my kind and my radical ideas were not welcome at Central.
OK, back to the Hippie Scene in Memphis when it was first just getting started.
First of all you have to know what a Hippie was. You didn't have to grow your hair long, dress in weird clothes, and go around praising the benefits of drugs, rock music, and free love. That was only one side of the movement. The other side was more difficult to see and involved a new way of thinking that primarily rejected the existence of a society that wanted to dictate everything you were or were going to be from cradle to grave.