The 1966 folk song that was rejected by 22 labels before selling a million copies
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it probably didn’t bring any solace to the multitude of record labels that had unknowingly passed over a colossal hit back in 1966, when they sent a budding young folk singer named Janis Ian on her merry way, refusing to release what would soon become her defining track.
Ian was only 14 years old when she entered into the musical realm, with a record collection chocked full of figures like Joan Baez, and a willingness to carry forward that same spirit of socially active, socially reflective American folk music. Luckily, she emerged at exactly the right moment in time, during which figures like Baez, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon were spurring on a renaissance in folk music, in doing so paving the way for the soundtrack of the counterculture years which were to follow. Even still, major record labels weren’t quite as convinced.
Hit records were, and still are to a sizeable degree, the be all and end all of major record labels back in the 1960s, which put them in a rather tricky transitional period. While there were still countless bubblegum pop acts willing to peddle their vapid tales of romance and heartbreak to radio stations, pandering to mass audiences in the hopes of breaking into the singles charts, young people themselves were increasingly moving away from that spirit.
By the end of the decade, even the hit factory that was Motown had moved on to releasing the kind of politically active protest music that young music-buyers were being drawn towards during the counterculture period.
Back in 1965, though, the young Janis Ian was just a little bit too ahead of her time. Atlantic Records had financed the recording of her track ‘Society’s Child’, a remarkable folk track penned on the topic of interracial relationships, but quickly decided that the song was not fit for mainstream consumption.
It is worth remembering, after all, that interracial marriage was not fully legalised in the United States until two years later, with the landmark Supreme Court case Loving vs Virginia. Ian’s song, therefore, was an essential anthem for the time, but it was also deemed too risky for Atlantic to release – particularly since Janis Ian herself was a virtually unknown teenage prodigy at the time.
Instead, Ian shopped the song around a multitude of different record labels, none of which were inclined to take a chance on a song as revolutionary as ‘Society’s Child’. Eventually, though, Verve Records – a record label known at the time as a predominantly jazz and R&B-centric outlet – agreed to release the single in 1966.
Around the time of that aforementioned Loving vs Virginia ruling, that Verve release shot up into the Billboard singles charts, becoming an icon track of that age and peaking at number 14 on the charts. Of course, it might have gone even further, were it not for public resistance against the idea of interracial marriage in some of the more primative, ignorant areas of the United States, which were still ruled largely by racial discrimination.
For Janis Ian, though, the song was a colossal success, and spurred on a music career which seemingly went from strength to strength throughout the 1970s, although ‘Society’s Child’ remained one of her greatest, most beloved efforts – much to the presumed chagrin of the various record labels that had turned it down years prior.
