9.05.2015

Sunday, September 5, 1965: 'Hippie'


Following in the line of hep/hip and hipster, the term comes into wider use after Michael Fallon's series of stories for the San Francisco Examiner (and later with San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen's frequent use of the term). The articles also serve to put San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district at the center of the counterculture movement.

-- Image from http://blog.littlehippie.com: @

Other early uses
* "Certainly most musicians in their teens start out as what people call "church" rather than as hippies." ("What's Wrong with the Clubs," Kenneth Rexroth, Metronome magazine, May 1961): @
* "Do What the Hippies Do" (song by Freddy Cannon, 1963): @
* "Where do all the hippies meet?" (from "South Street," song by The Orlons, 1963): @
* "New York hippies have a new kick -- baking marijuana in cookies" (Dorothy Kilgallen, June 1963): @
* "... finally the bar reaches a sort of equilibrium, the hippies return and the cycle starts all over again." ("Baby Beatniks Spark Bar Boom on East Side," Sally Kempton, The Village Voice, September 10, 1964): @
* "Their music is Berry-chuck and all the Chicago hippies." (Andrew Loog Oldham, liner notes for "The Rolling Stones, Now!", released February 1965): @
* ... "a kind of glorious spokesman for the pubescent hippie." (Gary Greene, writing about Bob Dylan, Tucson Daily Citizen, July 24, 1965; subscription required): @
* "The result is a thoroughly likable, relaxed performance of a well-educated hippie who moves through his role with no reference to the fact that he is a Negro." (United Press International article on Bill Cosby, September 28, 1965): @

References
* "American Hippies" (W.J. Rorabaugh, 2015): @
* "American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles and Radical Ideas in U.S. History" (edited by Gina Misiroglu, 2015): @
* Entry from "The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English" (edited by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, 2013): @
* "Hippies: A Guide to an American Subculture" (Micah L. Issitt, 2009): @
* "Hip: The History" (John Leland, 2004): @
* "Hippie" (Barry Miles, 2005): @
* "San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History" (Mick Sinclair, 2004): @
* "Debating the Counterculture: Ecstasy and Anxiety Over the Hip Alternative" (article by Michael Wm. Doyle, from "The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s," 2001): @
* "Beneath the Diamond Sky: Haight Ashbury 1965-1970" (Barney Hoskyns, 1997): @
* "The Haight-Ashbury: A History" (Charles Perry, 1984): @ 
* "Defining 'hippy' " (audio from John Gilliland's "The Pop Chronicles," 1969): @
* "The Social History of the Hippies" (Warren Hinckle, Ramparts, March 1967): @ 

4 comments:

  1. Was there a song in the early 1960s that had the line, 'Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street; where the dancing is elite, South Street, South Street"

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're right. "South Street," from The Orlons in 1963.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Wk98IH2fU

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks--grew up around Philadelphia and just took it for granted it referred to South Street there; didn't have a clue what "hippies" were in 1963.

      Delete

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