Santa Cruz bans rock-n-roll

Provocative. Suggestive. Morally corrosive. The devil’s music. These were all common descriptions of rock-n-roll at the time of its beginnings. It seemed to stir up exactly the sorts of passions thought improper and immoral by the Powers That Be, and for that reason could not remain unchecked. Bans on rock-n-roll took on airs of the usual generational divide — parents worrying about their children’s behavior — as well as of racism, with rock-n-roll including in it a number of prominent African-American musicians. Such was the case when an entire California city banned the music.

On this day, June 3, in 1956, the town of Santa Cruz, California, just seventy miles from the liberal bastion of San Francisco, banned rock-and-roll at public gatherings, calling the music “detrimental to both the health and morals of our youth and community.”

Santa Cruz authorities cited a concert the previous night by the local band Chuck Higgins and his Orchestra, that produced a crowd of several hundred teenagers “engaged in suggestive, stimulating and tantalizing motions induced by the provocative rhythms” by the all African-American band. Cities on the east coast followed suit: a rock-n-roll concert riot in Asbury Park N.J.’s Convention Hall prompted a ban on the music in all of the city’s dance halls. Yet rock-n-roll seemed to thrive in spite of – or perhaps because of – the crackdowns.