Political humor of the 1950's - you don't really hear much about it these days. The forum for political humor has changed a lot over the decades. But in 1959 Political humor and social satire, like most social movements of the day, were considered outside the mainstream and relegated to the domain of nightclubs, college campuses and the occasional appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

But that's not to say the message was buried, and comedians like Mort Sahl rose to prominence during a time when questioning where our society was heading was just getting started. It was also a time when FM was slowly coming into its own and that proved to be a great launching pad for a lot of consciousness raising, politically as well as culturally.

I ran across this broadcast, originally aired over a local Los Angeles FM station (KRHM which became known as KMET and later The Wave) who happened to have a recording of a Mort Sahl appearance at L.A. State College in September of 1959. As far as I know, it's never been available commercially and it's classic Mort Sahl.

You may need to Google many of the names he mentions, like Claire Booth Luce, but you'll get a taste of what the political climate was like from a non-mainstream perspective. And that could be instructive or ironic, since a lot of the issues Sahl talks about are issues we're still dealing with some 50+ years later.

And further evidence some things just don't change, and may never change.

Here is a performance by Mort Sahl, as recorded at L.A. State College and broadcast by Les Claypool over KRHM-FM in Los Angeles on September 30, 1959.

If you think the Hippie Movement of the 1960's was the most parodied, lambasted, pigeonholed and marginalized era by mainstream media, you have only to listen to this documentary, produced by KNX Radio in Los Angeles in 1959 to know The Beat Generation won that dubious achievement hands down.

Titled The Beatniks, this one hour look at the Beat Generation as it was happening in Venice California was narrated by noted 60's and 70's Astrologer Sydney Omar and hosted an interesting cast of characters, headed by the somewhat self-appointed guru Lawrence Lipton who figures prominently as spokesman for all that is Beat and Bohemian in Los Angeles at the time, even to the point of proclaiming The (Greenwich) Village and North Beach (San Francisco) were no longer relevant, but now The Gas House in Venice was. Once you get around the rather quaint and self-conscious proclamations, there are some interesting people who were legitimately influential forces in the Beat Generation, among them Kenneth Patchen and Stewart Perkoff.

So it's an interesting listen, even if it is slathered over with a lot of marginalization.

But then, that's the 50's anyway, and mainstream always.

Teen Idols and Exploitation movies were synonymous with each other in the 1950's. Something about Rock n' Roll and mixed up youth had wild appeal for the mass market, or at least the marketing departments of movie studios who were seeing a precipitous drop in attendance for traditional movies.

Paul Anka, riding the crest of a very popular wave in the 1950's as a singer-songwriter, got his feet wet in film via an MGM project called Girls Town, which starred sex-bomb Mamie van Doren heading a cast which included the likes of Mel Torme` and Cathy Crosby.

Anka wrote the film's title theme as well as including two songs, one being Lonely Boy which Anka plugged via this interview done by MGM to promote the film.

A slice of history which became part of the backbone of our culture from the 1950's on. But on July 24, 1959 when this Promotional Radio program aired, it was still reasonably new and youth was still the object of derision.

How times have changed . . . .or not.

Another episode in the radio discussion series The Great Challenge. This segment from April 7, 1959 asks the question "Is The American Public Getting All The Information It Needs?".

And in 1959 the opinion was pretty much divided. However, the feeling was unanimously shared that information was becoming more complex and subsequently harder to absorb. This was in 1959, fifty-one years ago.

Joining Eric Sevareid on the panel were Arthur Schlesinger, Charles A. Sprague, James Hagerty, Robert E. Swayze and James Reston - all respected journalists, authors and historians at the time.

Eric Sevareid (CBS News): “Are we coming to the point here where more and more only rather highly educated people can really understand the news of our universal faith, the news that we’re getting every day? Is the complexity, the volume of this outrunning the rise in the average and normal level of understanding? What do you think Mister Reston?”

James Reston (New York Times): “I think . . yes, I think we are coming to that point. I think a fundamental thing has changed in this country on this very point. I remember when I first went to England as a reporter, being astonished at the passivity of the English electorate. Coming from a part of the country where everybody second-guesses Washington, has a chip on its shoulder, is naturally skeptical as the American people have always been, this astonished me. But I think we’re becoming much more like the English now in our own attitudes toward government. I think, I have the feeling, it’s a disturbing feeling and it may be wrong, but I have the feeling that this country would support the President if he sent an armed convoy into Berlin or if he made a deal on Berlin. Or support him on Quemoy and Matsu or support him if he abandoned Quemoy and Matsu. I think this is something new in American life. At least I feel there has been a fundamental change due to the complexity.”

I think by 2011 the consensus of opinion regarding the complexity of news and events on the parts of Mainstream Media is "don't even try", and opt for the "info-tainment" approach which is long on puff and woefully lacking in substance.

But you wonder, in that time, has it been a conscious decision to give up presenting useful information or is this the product of that universal dumbing-down we've been getting so much of the last thirty-or so years?

You'd think, with the amount of access we have now and the ease with which to get it, we'd all be disgustingly well informed. And maybe its that cultural divide we're seeing a lot more of lately.

The gap, it appears, is getting larger by the minute.

(Pres. Eisenhower in 1959 - to some, The Old Hippy)

Listening to Eisenhower lately makes me wonder if anyone remotely like him would be in the Republican party today. I'm afraid not.

We all think of the Civil Rights movement as something of the 60's, but it was during the 1950's, during Eisenhower's watch, that the ball got rolling. School Desegregation and the formation of the Civil Rights Commission along with the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Bills are part of that legacy, although some would argue it wasn't nearly enough. The fact of the matter was, the 1957 Civil Rights Bill, which guaranteed voting rights, was the first law of its kind passed since Reconstruction.

Here is an address Pres. Eisenhower gave at a luncheon sponsored by The Civil Rights Commission as part of its National Conference on Civil Rights from June 9, 1959.

Pres. Eisenhower: “The only motivating, energizing force is public opinion. If that public opinion is well informed, then the United States will act wisely and strongly and fairly at home and abroad. And so, you are not solving, in my opinion or helping to solve just one problem, you are working for America. And I say to you, in my opinion, there can be no better thing to do.”

One thing I suppose you can say in favor of the Cold War Era is that it forced people to talk about issues they probably would have avoided like the plague any other time. Issues of mortality, morality, and democracy were all very much on peoples minds in that decade. Much of it was under the guise of paranoia which, as we all know is a given because our culture is fear-based anyway. So living in dread fear of "the bomb", "the retribution" or "the act of God" is just sort of The American Way.

These days it's distraction at any cost, which explains why mainstream media is twisting itself in knots in order not to let you look at the 700 pound Gorilla in the living room, namely - Occupy Wall Street.

But in 1959 was all about Totalitarian states and the easily identifiable "bad guys" and what sort of people were we, anyway? So the airwaves (both radio and Television) were filled with panel shows, talk shows, interview shows, documentaries, News Specials - all about our place in the World; What Direction Democracy - What Fresh Hell Is This?

This particular radio program, called appropriately enough, The Great Challenge, was a product of CBS Radio News. And it, like many programs of the day, sought to raise questions and find answers for this rapidly complicating society of ours. The topic for discussion was "Can Democracy Meet The Space Age Challenge?"

On the panel were Senator John F. Kennedy, Dr. Merle Fainsod of Harvard as well as Arthur Larson of Duke University and Clinton Rossiter. The program was moderated by veteran news reporter and anchor Eric Severeid. And typical of the tone of the program was this answer to the above question from Senator Kennedy.

Sen. John F. Kennedy: “ I would say that the basic problem is how a free society with its freedom of choice and breadth of opportunity, how that society can meet successfully the challenge of a totalitarian system which is able to devote all of the energies, both human and material, to the advancement of the interest of the state. And that is particularly pressing at a time when we’re moving into a new age and a new scientific age where the discovery of new weapons, with long range examinations of the outer limits of the universe as well as the most minute particle of electrical energy. So that I would say the basic issue is whether a democracy faced, I would think, with the most critical peril since the time of Lincoln. Whether that democracy can find a leadership to sustain itself and still maintain the freedom of that society over a long range period, I believe it can.”

Ironically, a little less than a year after this broadcast, Senator Kennedy made his intentions known for the White House - and that Era began.

But at the time, that March 24th in 1959, the attention was driven by the uncertain world, the looming obliteration and the terrifying new technology, lurking in the wings.

But like everything else - it came - it went - and life trudged on.

Here is The Great Challenge, as broadcast on March 24, 1959 .

A taste of Chicago Blues tonight by way of the legendary Memphis Slim. Tonight's track is off his 1959 Vee-Jay album Memphis Slim At The Gate Of Horn. Something about truth in advertising and Vee-Jay Records - their most famous irony was Jimmy Reed At Carnegie Hall. So what if it wasn't an honest-to-god live album - it looks good on the album cover.

And frankly, it wouldn't have mattered if this album was recorded in a phone booth, it features one of the leading bluesmen of the 1950's in the top of his form and Wish Me Well is a fitting example of just why he was so great.

Good way to start the weekend. Give it a shot.

On this particular day of September in 1959, news centered around the goings on in Moscow and the conclusion of the cultural exchange event, The Moscow Fair. The Cold War had attempted a thaw in 1959, with events like this taking place both in the U.S. and in Russia. This event was also significant as it became the stage for the famous impromptu Khruschev/Nixon Kitchen debate in July.

Here is a recap of the Fair, as presented in a Special News Report from CBS Radio on September 13, 1959.

Back in the dim-distant past, there was a time when Broadcast journalism had an obligation to ask the thought provoking questions, especially during a time when the world was in a state of flux. How technology and communications were changing at such a rapid rate it caused some to question just where all of this was headed, and was it heading anywhere good.

On this program, The Great Challenge, part of the special series CBS Radio ran in 1959, Howard K. Smith moderated a panel that covered a wide range of topics. Included on this panel were several leading journalists, critics and historians of the day, including Arthur Schlesinger, Allan Nevins, Arthur Krock, Ernest K. Lindley, Dr. Elmer E. Schatschneider and Ernest J. Hughes. The subject this episode covered was called Government And The Democratic Process, and it raised several questions over government's role in our society and how it was looking at Foreign Policy. One question was posed about Bigness.

Howard K. Smith: “Does anyone feel that the tendency towards bigness in our institutions is a menace to our democratic institutions. Big Industry, Big Labor and in fact, Big Government?”

Dr. Elmer Schatschneider: ”I think Government has to be big in a time when you have so much big industry. It has to cope with this sort of thing. I think you could show that changes in the organization of the economy always, themselves in the organization of government. And I think for a reason of maintaining an equilibrium within the system. It takes a big government to cope with the kinds of problems we have.”

Needless to say, there was a wide array of answers. But it's interesting to realize that, even in 1959, the question of Big Business was just as much on everyone's mind as Big Government was - as well as Big Military, which became the memorable basis for President Eisenhower's Farewell address some two years later.

It's not that any of these issues suddenly appeared to us the last ten or so years. Over 50 is a bit more like it.

So naturally you would assume none of this should come as a surprise. Yet it does.

Going back to the roots tonight. Bobby "Blue" Bland is probably one of the most influential blues singers to have come out of the 1950s chitlin circuit. His career dates back to the 1940s when Jump-Blues was evolving and he's continued his soulful and elegant delivery as a big-band blues singer even today at the mellow age of 80.

His chart hits started in the mid 1950's with Further Up The Road and continued well into the 1960's. Although he never achieved mainstream popularity, he has always enjoyed a large and loyal following, and his live appearances are memorable events. I remember seeing him play clubs around Los Angeles in the early 1970's and the houses were always packed to capacity with Bland, the ever suave and cool practitioner of sweet heartache.

Tonight's track is from 1959. Wishing Well, not one of his better known sides, but one that perfectly captures the spirit of what Bobby Blue Bland is all about.