1959: Issa's Sunday Service, #161

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I really can't go very long without revisiting the Patti Smith: she is known as the high Poetess of Rock for good reason. Today's song, 1959, is a bit of a history lesson from a counterculture point of view. Certainly the year was pivotal in so many ways. Here are some random facts from that year, courtesy of Wikipedia and HistoryOrb.com (a bit of an indulgence, yes, but an informative one):

• In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana.
• Motown Records founded by Berry Gordy, Jr.
• Pope John XXIII announces that the Second Vatican Council will be convened in Rome.
• Swiss males vote against voting rights for women.
• A chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper and pilot Roger Peterson goes down in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all 4 occupants on board.
• Recording sessions for the album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis take place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City.
• Recording sessions for the influential jazz album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis take place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City.
• Two monkeys, Able and Miss Baker are the first living beings to successfully return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
• Groups of Kurdish and communist militias rebelled in Kirkuk, Iraq against the central government.  
• At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, United States Vice President Richard Nixon and USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev engage ine the "Kitchen Debate".
• The Xerox 914, the first plain paper copier, is introduced to the public.
• Typhoon Vera hits central Honshū, Japan, killing an estimated 5,098, injuring another 38,921, and leaving 1,533,000 homeless. Most of the victims and damage are centered in the Nagoya area.
• The first official large unit action of the Vietnam War took place when two companies of the ARVN 23d Division were ambushed by a well-organized Vietcong force of several hundred identified as the "2d Liberation Battalion".
• Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev meets Mao Zedong in Beijing.
• The 10th anniversary of the People's Republic of China is celebrated with pomp across the country.
• Rod Serling's classic anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS.
• The U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
• Riots break out in the Belgian Congo.
• The Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas is brutally murdered, inspiring Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
• MGM's widescreen, multimillion dollar, Technicolor version of Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston, is released and becomes the studio's greatest hit up to that time
• The first known human with HIV dies in the Congo.
• Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Theodore Roethke
• Texas Instruments requests patent of IC (Integrated Circuit)
• Vince Lombardi signs a 5 year contract to coach Green Bay Packers
• Boston Celtic Bob Cousy sets NBA record with 28 assists Boston Celtics score 173 points against Minneapolis Lakers
• Iran & US sign economic & military treaty
• Iraq & USSR sign economic/technical treaty
• Uprising against Chinese occupation force in Lhasa Tibet
• Dalai Lama flees Tibet for India
• "Raisin in the Sun," 1st Broadway play by a black woman, opens
• Oklahoma ends prohibition, after 51 years.
• Vatican edict forbids Roman Catholics for voting for communists
• Pulitzer prize awarded to Archibald Macleish
• "Kookie, Kookie Lend Me Your Comb" by Byrnes & Connie Stevens hits #4
• Japanese-Americans regain their citizenship
• Presbyterian church accepts women preachers
• 1st house with built-in bomb shelter exhibited
• Harvey Haddix pitches 12 perfect innings, loses in 13th
• Allen Ginsberg writes his poem "Lysergic Acid."
• Bob Dylan graduates Hibbing HS in Minn.
• Postmaster General bans D H Lawrence's book, Lady Chatterley's Lover
• 1st telecast transmitted from England to US
• "West Side Story" closes at Winter Garden Theater NYC after 734 perfs.
• Dr Leakey discovers oldest human skull (600,000 years old).
• William Shea announces he plans to have a baseball team in NYC in 1961.
• "Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis," debuts on CBS-TV
• Lee Harvey Oswald announces in Moscow he will never return to US.
• 12 nations sign treaty for scientific peaceful use of Antarctica
• 1st color photograph of Earth from outer space
• Citizens of Deerfield Ill block building of interracial housing
• Richard Starkey receives his 1st drum set

Here's Patti's take, desolation angels and all, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times:

1959 

Listen to my story. Got two tales to tell.
One of fallen glory. One of vanity.
The world's roof was raging, but we were looking fine;
'Cause we built that thing and it grew wings,
in Nineteen-Fifty-Nine.

Wisdom was a teapot; Pouring from above.
Desolation angels
Served it up with Love.
Ignitin' strife like every form of light,
then moved by bold design,
slid in that thing and it grew wings,
in Nineteen-Fifty-Nine.

It was Blood, shining in the Sun;
First: Freedom!
Speeding the american claim:
Freedom; Freedom; Freedom; Freedom!

China was the tempest; And Madness overflowed.
The Lama was a young man,
and he watched his world in flames.
Taking Glory down by the edge of clouds;
It was a cryin' shame.
Another lost horizon. Tibet the fallen star.
Wisdom and compassion Crushed, in the land of Shangri-La.
But in the land of the Impala, honey, well,
we were lookin' Fine,
'cause we built that thing and it grew wings;
In Nineteen-Fifty-Nine.
'Cause we built that thing and it grew wings;
In Nineteen-Fifty-Nine.

It was the best of times, it's was the worst of times;
In 1959; 1959; 1959; 1959; 1959; 1959; 1959.
It was the best of times; It was the worst of times.
In Nineteen-Fifty-Nine. 

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And here's a near perfect live take:

 

       

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Artwork by Ion Theodorescu-Sion

 

spring's first dawn--
the priest pretending
to sweep

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don 

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