Was there any nostalgia for 1940s music in the 1960's.

IMO not very much.  Nostalgia didn't really take off until the mid-70's.  Of course people who grew up with music of another era tended to stick with "their music" - but the young didn't embrace the "old stuff" much.  Whatever '40s nostalgia there was, it solidified during the '70s, not the '60s.

Disco was heavily influenced by big band/swing music in addition to the funk/soul music, along with its signature one-dimensional rhythm beat. In the 1960s, swing/big band music what those under 30 were still rebelling against.

A book entitled "Simon Says: The Sights and Sounds of the Swing Era, 1935-1955" by George T. Simon was published in 1971 and is still one of the most definitive sources for the genre. As far as classic Hollywood movies, those really never went away thanks to them being reran on television frequently. But the rise in appreciation in a literary sense for Hollywood took off in the late 1960s with lots of books about cinema right up until the fall of the studio system and rise of TV. Plus, Madison Square Garden had its first Big Band festival concert in 1970. Along with a side of 1950s (understandable since the early '50s wasn't much different from the late '40s), the 1970s provided the biggest nostalgic kick to the 1940s.

If there was nostalgia for a time in the sixties, it would probably have still been the 1920s (the TV series "The Roaring Twenties" came out that decade along with a couple of period pieces), but the '60s was still by large a "live for today" time, as the Grass Roots sang.

I can recall a Glenn Miller revival during the 1970s, but not in the 1960s. In fact he never went away.

Personally, the whole "20-year nostalgia cycle" seems like an overblown theory to me. I can't find much evidence of it prior to the '70s, when there was some nostalgia for the '50s. Now people seem to think it's a law of nature.

Personally, the whole "20-year nostalgia cycle" seems like an overblown theory to me. I can't find much evidence of it prior to the '70s, when there was some nostalgia for the '50s. Now people seem to think it's a law of nature.


There was 20s nostalgia in the 40s, but I think even then most nostalgia was for the 1890s.

There was 20s nostalgia in the 40s, but I think even then most nostalgia was for the 1890s.


Can you give some examples about 1920s nostalgia in the '40s? I never noticed any.

Here's an example I found the beach boys sang an unreleased version of The Things We did Last Summer which came out in 1946 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7aXKIKp4TA&app=desktop
In 1969 they did a cover of Cotton Fields which originally came out in 1940 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d9CQPQOhWy4

Here's an example I found the beach boys sang an unreleased version of The Things We did Last Summer which came out in 1946 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7aXKIKp4TA&app=desktop
In 1969 they did a cover of Cotton Fields which originally came out in 1940 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d9CQPQOhWy4


Nina Simone in the 1960s did a lot of covers of Ella Fitzgerald songs.

If there was any 40s nostalgia at all, it appeared primarily during the early 1970s. Perry Como made an unusual comeback on the charts from 1970 to 1973, while Bette Midler brought the Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" to a new generation. A lot of the soft singer/songwriter hits of the early 70s, especially by acts like the Carpenters, took a fair amount of cues from the mellow, pre-rock and roll songs from around the 1940s, not just in their classic instrumentation but also their melodic tendencies and vocal delivery.

I doubt it. The postwar years of 1946-1964 was basically one gigantic era where (other than the rise of television) not a whole lot changed. In the early '60s, '40s stars like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin still had a large cultural presence. It wasn't really until after the JFK assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin, the campus protest movement, and the Watts Riots in 1965 that the "Sixties" as we know them really started. It's interesting how the '40s would've still seemed somewhat recent in 1960, but by 1970 they would've seemed positively ancient.

I'm surprised there's nostalgia for 1940s anything, really! I always thought there was nostalgia for the 1920s, but then it skipped straight ahead to the 1950s, probably the biggest nostalgic decade of all time ;D

There was a big swing revival in the 90s.

I call them the flirty forties. Just bash your eyelashes and thrive!  :D  :D  :o  :P

There was a massive folk revival in the early '60s and many artists were influenced by 1930s/1940s folk-blues, musicians like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, ect.

There was also a revival of turn of the century vaudeville/ragtime that intersected with psychedelia, the most famous example being The Beatle's Sgt Peppers. Even psychedelic art was heavily influenced by 1890s/1900s Art Nouveau. 

There was a massive folk revival in the early '60s and many artists were influenced by 1930s/1940s folk-blues, musicians like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, ect.

There was also a revival of turn of the century vaudeville/ragtime that intersected with psychedelia, the most famous example being The Beatle's Sgt Peppers. Even psychedelic art was heavily influenced by 1890s/1900s Art Nouveau.


Thanks for this. Definitely influences from the 1940's that helped the 1960's.

The Andrews Sisters have always been popular.

Frank Sinatra had a massive comeback in 1966.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMvzQFqsyRg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug8cBIbxDaY

There was the movie, "The Sound of Music", which takes place in the late '30s, just before WW2.