60 years ago today, Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, two days after the JFK assassination. Like 9/11 was to my generation, the JFK assassination was to boomers. Every boomer knows where they were when they heard the news. My dad recalled that he heard the news when he was at home having lunch (in those days, there was no cafeteria at the primary school and kids would walk home to eat lunch) and then his friend came in and saw my grandmother crying. The JFK assassination is one of those events that marked the beginning of the 60s. It shook the country.
As a classic rock fan, I wanted to know what connections there were between classic rock and the JFK assassination. Well, we do know that not long after, Beatlemania began. In late 1963, The Beatles were already famous in their native England and they were on the brink of making their big break in America. The day of the JFK assassination, November 22, 1963, there was a story about The Beatles that aired . While a lot of OG American Beatles fans were introduced to The Beatles because of The Ed Sullivan Show, that wasn’t the first time they were talked about on American television. There was a segment about them that aired on The CBS Morning News With Mike Wallace and it was supposed to be repeated in the evening news with Walter Cronkite, but then President Kennedy was assassinated and that segment was shelved, until Walter Cronkite decided to air it at at later time to lift up the spirits of the American people with a positive story, so it aired on December 10. You can watch and listen to the clips from that time period:
But that’s not the strongest connection. It’s an interesting tidbit and coincidence. Did any classic rock band come into contact with someone involved in the JFK assassination? As a matter of fact, yes!
The Band, who were then known as The Hawks and worked as Ronnie Hawkins’ backing band were playing gigs in the American South and played at a venue that Jack Ruby owned in Fort Worth. It was a sketchy place and because they weren’t making big bucks yet, they couldn’t all multiple hotel rooms so they had to take turns sleeping at the venue to guard their guitars and equipment. Robbie Robertson told the story in The Last Waltz and in an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos on the CBC. Here’s a clip:
And here’s my teaser for chapter 1 of Crime of the Century. As you might notice, I am wearing a pink dress from the 1960s that I’ve had in my collection for about a decade now. This is the closest thing I have to what Jackie Kennedy wore on November 22. If you don’t have Instagram, no worries, I also uploaded the clip to my YouTube channel.
Let me know if you want to see more Crime of the Century teasers!
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