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A Philly icon's one-of-a-kind take on 1968 (with today's bonus track)

    by Will Bunch | Columnist
    Published 

Zack Stalberg (now head of the Committee of 70 good-government group) and his tenure atop the Daily News from 1984 up through the start of 2005 is increasingly the stuff of newspaper legend and today -- asked to contribute to the DN's excellent ongoing reminiscence of 1968 -- he quickly shows why that was the case:

IT WOULD HAVE been so much easier to write about 1969.
Quality dope. Asian women. Plastique affixed to the undercarriage of my jeep.
Instead, this newspaper asked me to recall the agonizing, tumultuous, conscience-wrenching year of 1968. Because I entered the military smack in the middle of it.

Luckily for the world, Zack Stalberg survived Vietnam. There's a good chance at least one of those young men pictured at top at the Philadelphia Induction Center did not, sadly. Meanwhile, Claude Lewis recalls, as the headline correctly points out, the POLICE riot in Chicago in that summer of 1968, while Bobby Seale, who spent 20 years in Philly after his tumultuous '60s turn as a Black Panther, hails Barack Obama, something the RNC no doubt would have pounced on two weeks ago.

Now -- no disrespect to the late great Marvin Gaye -- here's the greatest soul song of 1968 (in a much later live version...there's no good online video of the original studio take). This song also reminds me of years later when it was music for what I thought was the most ineffective anti-alcohol ad ever, because every time I saw it I wanted to go out to a bar and drink beer and play Aretha Franklin on the jukebox. For a bonus thrill, check out this 1968 duet between the Queen of Soul and Joe the Plumber's favorite pop vocalist.