Comments on: The Dance of the Visions, Part VI(a): From Hipsters to Hippies

By: Gus

Gus — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:45:33 +0000

I’ve heard stories about Sinatra insisting that Sammy Davis be allowed to stay at the same fancy Las Vegas hotels as him. This is hardly cutting edge civil rights stuff.

By: Cory Panshin

Cory Panshin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:44:58 +0000

My perceptions were the same, Mike — which is why I was so surprised to learn in the course of writing this entry that in the context of the late 50′s and early 60′s they were part of the same hipster spectrum as the beats or Lenny Bruce and saw themselves as rebels against “square” society. But mainstream success is fatal to cool.

By: Michael Banks

Michael Banks — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:21:40 +0000

“Establishment” is the wrong term to describe my perception of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1965. The precise word is “mainstream.”
–Mike

By: Michael Banks

Michael Banks — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:59:56 +0000

I came along a few years after you, but for a time my knowledge of contemporary society came from Mad Magazine, as well.

A side note: perhaps because of I wasn’t really aware of Sinatra and Davis before the mid-Sixties, I didn’t consider them examples of cool. To me–at age 14 in 1965–they were polished products of Hollywood and record companies. “Cook” always meant to me the outlanders, people like Dylan who made their own tracks. Sinatra and Davis came across as part of the Establishment. When I thought about hipsters, I thought of the beatniks from the Fifties, Dylan, Lenny Bruce, and jazz musicians. I have no idea whether that was any sort of majority or representative view for my age group at the time. It was probably a view shaped by what I read and heard about.
–Mike