A Letter From The Publisher: may 21, 1965

THE ears of nearly every TIME reader everywhere surely have been haunted, horrified or, at least, reached by that pervasive, durable phenomenon known as rock ‘n’ roll. This week’s cover, a photomontage* put together by Associate Editor Charles P. Jackson, shows some of the young performers who are now at the top of what can only be described as the heap. They are 1) The Shindig Dancers, 2) The Beach Boys, 3) Petula Clark, 4) Trini Lopez, 5) Herman of Herman’s Hermits, 6) The Righteous Brothers, and 7) The Supremes. What they and their fellow bobbers of the big beat are like, where the phenomenon came from, and the considerable impact it is having on manners and morals around the world are closely examined in the Music cover story by Writer Ray Kennedy and Senior Editor A. T. Baker.

IN the White House sits a onetime teacher who wants to go back to that profession and who is, perhaps, the most education-minded President in U.S. history. What sort of education did he have? Last week TIME took up the task of getting a full answer to that question.

Reporters from bureaus across the country were deployed to seek out and interview teachers, professors and fellow students of Lyndon Johnson. Houston Bureau Chief Ben Gate made the Texas rounds, interviewed the President’s former teachers in grammar school, high school and college, and spent a day talking with the citizens of Cotulla, 70 miles from the Mexican border, where 20-year-old Lyndon Johnson taught the fifth, sixth and seventh grades for a year. A key source for the story and a key force in the education of L.B.J. Howard Mell Greene, 78-year-old retired professor of government at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, was found in the Ozarks hamlet of Brixey, Mo. The President himself took time during a crowded week to sit for an interview with the Washington bureau’s Jean Franklin. She found him relaxed, gracious and full of fascinating reminiscences about his school days.

With details that go back to the time when Lyndon Johnson’s mother taught him to read at the age of four, Writer Ed Magnuson and Senior Editor William Forbis fashioned an authoritative account that provides new insight into the character of the man who came from a one-room country school to the most important office in the world.

* Photographs by Julian Wasser, Pierre Boulat, J. Alex Langley and Art Shay.