{"id":4948,"date":"2013-06-04T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T19:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=4948"},"modified":"2014-05-13T10:25:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T14:25:44","slug":"the-crew-cuts-long-hairs-and-a-culture-war-kickoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2013\/06\/the-crew-cuts-long-hairs-and-a-culture-war-kickoff\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crew Cuts, Long Hairs and a Culture War Kickoff"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Woodland Avenue, from 58th Street to 60th Street, west of Martin Coal Company, July 26, 1960. (PhillyHistory,org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Larry Magid didn\u2019t need to go to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City to hear The Crew Cuts<\/em> in July 1960.\u00a0 He knew their six-year-old hit Sh Boom<\/em><\/a> and preferred the original version<\/a> by The Chords<\/em>. Back in 1954, the 12-year-old Magid and his West Philly buddies heard the difference between the two\u2014loud and clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of a moral outrage,\u201d Magid later recalled<\/a> to the Inquirer\u2019s<\/em> Dan DeLuca. \u201cIt just didn’t seem fair. Because the Chords<\/em>‘ version was a better song. And that was not just for me, but for many kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chords<\/em>, an African-American group from the Bronx, had written Sh Boom<\/em> in the back seat of a Buick and they<\/em> had put on the map. But with marketing guidance from executives at the Mercury label, four white boys from Toronto who didn\u2019t even like<\/em> the song were transformed from The Canadaires<\/em> into The Crew Cuts<\/a> <\/em>and sold more than five million copies. Sh Boom<\/em> became a #1 record – one of the first examples of doo-wop on the record charts. It won Downbeat’s<\/em> poll as the best rhythm and blues song of the year. And with Mercury on their side, the formula of turning Black hits (Oop-Shoop, Earth Angel, Ko Ko Mo, Don’t Be Angry<\/em>) into \u201csafe-sounding harmonies\u201d for White audiences became the Crew Cuts\u2019<\/em> calling card.<\/p>\n

Their success was about music, but it was also about hair. With white-bread sound and looks to match, the Crew Cuts<\/em> launched a line of hair products making in-store promotional appearances for Collegiate Hair Cream. They recorded a jingle version of their hit for Sh-Boom Shampoo.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1960, the Crew Cuts<\/em>, appeared at Atlantic City\u2019s Steel Pier with Anita Bryant, the former Miss Oklahoma whose recording of Paper Roses<\/a><\/em> had peaked at #5 on the Billboard Pop chart. Later as spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission, Bryant became even better known for her appearance in television commercials singing “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” and her delivery of the tagline: “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” In 1977, Bryant came out as an anti-gay rights activist.<\/p>\n

The Crew Cuts<\/em> remained together for 12 years, breaking up about the time young audiences took up with Rock and Roll. \u00a0A few years after that, Larry Magid opened The Electric Factory at 22nd<\/sup> and Arch Streets, a former tire-warehouse where he booked groups<\/a> including Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.<\/em> They filled the place with audiences of 5,000\u2014not once, but as many as two or three times a night. By then, the Crew Cuts<\/em> were long out of style, and so were crew cuts. It wasn’t about hair, although hair played its part. It was<\/em> about the rise of an American Counterculture.<\/p>\n

In the Spring of 1969, when a drunken Jim Morrison of The Doors<\/em> allegedly exposed himself on stage in Miami, Anita Bryant and more than 30,000 others gathered soon after at Miami\u2019s Orange Bowl in a \u201cRally for Decency<\/a>.” The next day, Pat Buchanan, a young speechwriter in the Nixon White House seized the opportunity to publicly mention the rally and \u201cthe pollution of young minds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Culture Wars had officially begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry Magid didn\u2019t need to go to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City to hear The Crew Cuts in July 1960.\u00a0 He knew their six-year-old hit Sh Boom and preferred the original version by The Chords. Back in 1954, the 12-year-old Magid and his West Philly buddies heard the difference between the two\u2014loud and clear. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}