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In the tradition of The Old, Weird America and Deliver Me from Nowhere, cultural critic Steven E. Jones explores American pop culture through the work of record producer Tom Wilson, and the artists with whom he collaborated in the miraculous year 1966.
1966 was a transformative year in popular culture, and especially in popular music. It's the year when go-go dancing met the electric blues, bubblegum pop met underground rock, free jazz met psychedelia, and they all morphed into one another like fluid blobs in a liquid light show. Diversifying radio formats, including the emergence of "underground" FM stations, greeted an efflorescence of boundary-breaking artists, records, and songs, at once showcasing and encouraging fervent experimentation. At the center of these changes, by turns channeling and amplifying these vibrant energies, stood the profoundly influential, if subsequently unheralded, record producer, Tom Wilson.
It would be hard to find a figure more solidly located at the junction of the currents traversing America in 1966: a Black man working in almost exclusively white studio settings, Wilson played a vital role in an astonishing array of landmark records: after producing Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel in the previous year, in 1966 alone Wilson produced albums from Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground, Hugh Masekela, The Animals, Sun Ra, and more. Any one of these would be a standout on most producers' resumes. Taken together, they testify to an influential career, and invite a new appraisal of a pivotal moment in American pop culture. As Jones reveals in this energetic account, Wilson's radical eclecticism, his embrace of diverse musical genres, was a response to the times, as was his engagement with the music industry as a whole and with the low and the high in pop culture. It was all part of making pop music in what he called "an era of complex mixed media," and what he meant by his often-repeated catch-phrase, "everything is everything."
Dying young in 1978, without leaving behind a significant archive of interviews or writings, Wilson has been unjustly overlooked. Everything is Everything provides a long overdue testimonial, celebrating him as an avatar of the most important trend in pop music in 1966: an exploding eclecticism, accompanied by a sometimes desperate search for authenticity.
"In 1966, music was up for grabs. Through close, astute examination of groundbreaking albums recorded that year, Jones reveals the shadow cast by producer Tom Wilson, the unlikely visionary connecting dots, erasing genres, and opening doors at this pivotal moment." —Alan Light, author ofDon't Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac's"Rumours"
"Pop music got on a whole new trip in 1966, and Tom Wilson was the conductor. Jones' fascinating book illuminates this oft-overlooked figure and his crucial involvement with some of the era's most important artists and albums."—Dan Epstein, author of Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76
"Two books rolled into one: an exploration of Tom Wilson, understudied maverick and industry mainstay, and of 1966 in pop music via the array of groups he produced. This works because of the intricacy, thoughtfulness, intelligence, and prodigious research that animate these pages."—Eric Lott, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism
"A kaleidoscopic portrait of a chaotic and creative year in popular music history organized around one of the most neglected and influential producers of the era, Everything is Everything is everything and more." —Loren Glass, author of Carole King's Tapestry
"InEverything is Everything,Jones does something rare in cultural criticism, correcting several prevailing myths about the explosion of creativity in the Sixties and shedding welcome and long-overdue light on producer Tom Wilson." —Jim DeRogatis, author ofLet It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic
"Wow!" —Marshall Crenshaw
"The currents of popular music swirled into each other in 1966—shaped by the soft-spoken and untrammeled producer Tom Wilson. Jones'sEverything Is Everything offers an eye-opening and ear-opening tour of these forces at a pivotal experimental moment." —Sean Wilentz, author of360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story