Little Richard Found Religion and the IRS Found Bill Haley

• Place – USA
• Time – 1950s
• Target – Rock ‘n’ Roll

The Fifties introduction to rock ‘n’ roll music arrived in conjunction with the destined leader of the youth revolution, James Dean.

Dean was a rebel with a cause, leading the youth away from the establishment and towards finding their own individual identities.

This began to ring alarm bells with J Edgar Hoover.

He believed that this unruly element, sweeping their way across the USA, had to be curtailed immediately.

As the head of the FBI, he had managed to manipulate presidents and control governments for many years.

An axiom had to be put into place so in 1955 Hoover made a conscious decision to defame and neutralise rock ‘n’ roll along with the youth movement associated with it.

It would take the next four years for the complete demise of rock ‘n’ roll and its figureheads to take place.

In 1958 The DJ Alan Freed faced controversy in Boston when he told the audience,

“The police don’t want you to have fun.”

As a result, Freed was arrested and charged with inciting to riot quickly followed by the payola scandal, the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing the payment.

Then Chuck Berry was imprisoned and Elvis was drafted into the army.

The attempt to take Elvis’s crown by

came to a very abrupt end during his 1958 British tour.

The newspapers broke the story that Jerry’s wife was only thirteen years old.

This caused uproar and after only three gigs he returned to the USA where the scandal exacerbated.

He was quickly blacklisted from radio and pretty much vanished from the music scene subsequently.

1959 saw Buddy Holly along with the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens all killed in a plane crash.

Little Richard found religion whilst Bill Haley found the IRS chasing him, forcing him to work outside of the USA, which he only found out in the early 70’s that he had paid off his debt to the IRS back in 1962.

1960s ushered in the era of the clean-cut boys from next-door.

Bobby Vee, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Darin, you get the idea.

Some believe that Hoover’s success in curtailing the outbreak of the youth culture and the need for their own identity crisis led the way to setting up sensitive agency operations like COINTELPRO and the CIA’s MHCHAOS.

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