When the passing of a generational icon hits home

August 28, 2021

cultural icon I can feel the excitement here, can’t you?

Connie Hamzy died the other day. If you’re a Boomer, like me, you probably know who she is, even if you think you don’t. She was a generational icon. An unlikely one.

“Out on the road for 40 days
Last night in Little Rock put me in a haze
Sweet, sweet Connie, doin’ her act
She had the whole show and that’s a natural fact.”

Connie was a rock groupie (starting at age 15) and Grand Funk made her reputation in their song, “We’re An American Band.” She was a girl who wanted to be famous, and she was, for having sex with rock musicians. She told the London Sun once that she thought that made her “somebody”…and it did.

Did I know her? No. Did I even think of her over the past 60 years? Not very often.

But. Her death saddened me.

If you followed rock in the 1960s, it isn’t a stretch to see her as a cultural icon of the 1960s and 1970s. That’s why I felt a strange sadness at her passing.

One by one, those who were emblematic of our era are passing. Their leaving this world is always a tangible indicator that my own life is passing, too.

She was only 66.

Take a listen: Grand Funk Railroad We’re An American Band
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Lynda Beth Unkeless says:

August 28, 2021 at 3:36 pm

I had not heard about Connie’s passing in the overwhelming press of news lately.
The death of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts at age 80 the past week did not escape me though… I thought about my hero Bob Dylan now also 80. And if I am alive when he dies how hard it will be for me to process his passing. The soundtracks of our youth make up the heartbeats of our lives. ??

Carol Cassara says:

August 28, 2021 at 3:46 pm

I was so saddened to hear of Charlie’s passing. Connie was probably obscure to most but just so much part of that zeitgeist back then.