{"id":237590,"date":"2025-11-07T07:15:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T12:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=237590"},"modified":"2025-11-07T13:38:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T18:38:44","slug":"the-best-of-rock-n-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/11\/the-best-of-rock-n-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dream bill of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and more are currently appearing at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts \u2013 albeit in photographic form, in the Jorgensen Gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight Days a Week: An Illustrated Record of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll,\u201d which opened in September and will run through December 13, is the product of years of research, archiving, and fandom by Ken Best \u2013 journalist, WHUS disk jockey, and recently retired University Communications specialist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to show the music industry as well as the music,\u201d Best says. \u201cBecause, as an industry, you don\u2019t just have musicians, you have artists doing graphic design, you have photographers, you have posters, you have authors and journalists producing books, and I\u2019ve got a ton of that stuff that I\u2019ve collected, starting with my time in high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Best, a Woodstock attendee<\/a> who interviewed numerous rock legends during his time as a journalist, assembled the impressively diverse collection in the Jorgensen Gallery from his own archives and from the work of Connecticut photographer Joe Sia, whose iconic photo of Jimi Hendrix in New Haven \u2013 known as \u201cThe Shadow\u201d \u2013 adorned the cover of his and Best\u2019s book \u201cEight Days a Week: An Illustrated Record of Rock and Roll,\u201d which gives the exhibit its title.<\/p>\n

\"Three
Visitors to the “Eight Days a Week” exhibit examine some of the 53 portraits of rock legends on display (Peter Morenus \/ UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cJoe\u2019s photos from the book had never been seen all together before, other than in the book, so that was something I wanted to focus on,\u201d says Best. Sia, who died in 2003, was a renowned photographer whose first published photo graced the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine in 1969.<\/p>\n

Visitors to the exhibit can now see 53 striking photographs of performers from the period when rock \u2018n\u2019 roll went from being dismissed as a teen fad to being a serious popular art form.<\/p>\n

But the exhibit also includes historic vinyl LPs; posters; promotional materials; books; magazines; and other ephemera that together tell the story of an American form of popular music that went on to conquer the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe roots of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll are in jazz, the blues, gospel music, and country,\u201d Best says. \u201cI hope that people come away from the exhibit with an understanding of how those influences came together to make rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, and how rock \u2018n\u2019 roll then developed in lots of different directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first glimpse, there may not seem to be much in common between rock \u2018n\u2019 roll pioneer Chuck Berry and heavy metal thunderers like Led Zeppelin, but Best says a straight line can be drawn between them, and further on into the present.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou start with country blues, and that becomes electric blues and r&b, and that becomes an open door for English guitarists like Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, or Jimmy Page to take things to new levels of baroque extravagance, as Sam Charters said in his book ‘Walking a Blues Road,’ the anthology of his\u00a0 pioneering writings about the blues that are part of his blues archives here at the Dodd Center,\u201d Best says.<\/p>\n

Best says the experience of putting the exhibit together was gratifying, and that he\u2019d like to take it on the road \u2013 ideally to somewhere in Fairfield County, where Sia lived.<\/p>\n

For now, though, the exhibit has a few more weeks at the Jorgensen Gallery and Best, who spins records every Wednesday at 3 p.m. on WHUS, still has his ears open for good music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope people come away from this with an appreciation not just of where music is now, but how it got there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n