From the mouths of babes…

The Anonymous Children Of Today were exactly what it said on the label. Anonymous? Check. We don’t have any record of who was in the group. Children? Check. We know they were kids, but no pictures exist so we don’t know if it was 10 kids or 30, or what ages they might have been. Today? Check. They did live in their present time.

Here’s what we do know: The Anonymous Children Of Today recorded only two songs during their brief existence and released them together as a single in the fall of 1969 on Chisa Records. The Chisa label was founded in Los Angeles in 1966 by South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela (who we’ll meet again in a future post) and producer/saxophonist Steve Levine. One of the artists signed to the label was a guitarist named Arthur Adams who normally played with The Jazz Crusaders but released a few solo singles on Chisa.

Adams had written an instrumental called “Love And Peace” which The Jazz Crusaders recorded in 1968. Either Adams, or maybe producer Levine, decided it might be a good idea to find (or construct) a vocal group made up of kids to sing a couple of socially conscious songs. To that end, Adams teamed up with a lyricist to add some words to “Love And Peace,” words which spoke of trying to change the current culture of divisiveness, anger and violence.

Like thousands of other records released in 1969, “Love And Peace” failed to make an impression (even with the mighty Motown as Chisa’s new distributor), and The Anonymous Children Of Today never got the chance to become…non-anonymous.

Singers and musicians — really any creative young people of that era — truly believed they could change the world for the better. Despite the war, the protests, the violence, and the cultural divide, they still had an optimistic outlook for the future, and the kids who sang “Love And Peace” probably never expected the lyrics would be just as relevant nearly 60 years later.