Eclectic Company: How I Got To Here — Part II

From the first chorus of “Blowing In The Wind” that my beatnik counselors taught us to sing at summer camp, I was in love with folk music. It was, after all, the 1960s, and the Folk Scare as it came to be called was in full flower. My upstate New York camp even boasted a jug band with a washtub bass player! Through the long 1960s I was held spellbound listening to recordings and performances by folk singers of traditional songs from many lands in exotic languages, by the instrumentals and solos of virtuoso musicians in flashy or subtle styles, and especially by the political and topical songs championing many righteous causes or commenting on the day and (mostly) the American citizen’s condition.

I was a voracious reader with catholic tastes, but I was also an avid fan of ‘50s and ‘60s rock and roll — what I heard of it at the time on radio, or on jukeboxes in pizza joints, or at the community center’s teen events in Queens, New York — because the tunes were so harmonizable. So I can tell you why I became hooked on folk: the easy-to-sing-along-to songs had ideas in them, concepts and theories I had read about in books, and I could hear humor, irony, sarcasm and passion in numbers like Malvina Reynolds’ commentary on social uniformity, “Little Boxes” (“little boxes made of ticky-tacky . . . and they all look just the same”), or composer of “Beans In Their Ears” Len Chandler’s moving subtle civil rights song “Keep On Keepin’ On” (“some people try to say what I should be/that’s something they seem to know so well/well it’s what I want to be that’s on my mind/and no one seems to listen when I tell . . . sometimes it seems as if I’m on that track/with everybody rolling on and me just looking back”), and not much of the moon-June-spoon-ing that was the focus of most popular music.

I was only 16 when I hitchhiked to the Philadelphia Folk Song Society’s annual festival in an August hurricane that flooded the rivers and creeks around the Wilson’s farm in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, where the event wasn’t quite washed away. The mud on the hillsides leading down to open wooden stages was knee-deep and sucked off two pairs of buffalo sandals that were all the footwear I had with me, and convinced me to hack off my jeans to make shorts. But the music! Man, I didn’t even notice that I was wet and filthy and cold for most of the weekend. I just sat cross-legged on the ground, hugging my knees, listening with big ears and singing along. Somehow I found myself in the inner circle, back at the performer’s hotel, where the incredible musicians I’d heard on stage gathered in bedrooms to jam. By the time I stumbled off to sleep at five in the morning, I was punch drunk on the music I’d heard and the idea of making music myself.

My favorite folk festival was Fox Hollow, on the New York/Massachusetts border land of Fiddler Bob Beers, the late national treasure, because the audience (500+?) and performers (a dozen+?) all camped together, and the late night jams in tents and around campfires included whoever of the campers wanted to attend. I always went, and sometimes sang, never daring to break out my guitar. It was at that festival that I watched Aly Bain of The Boys of the Lough file down his fiddle’s bridge to play the droning sounds he’d learned from French Canadian fiddler Jean Carignan, and where U. Utah Phillips, “The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest” as he liked to style himself, introduced mountain dulcimer player Jean Ritchie of the Singing Family of the Cumberlands by saying she was there to play “Dull Some More.”

Since that festival ended, I’ve found two weekends that remind me of it: The New Bedford (Massachusetts) Summerfest, held on various stages throughout the cobblestoned streets of the City’s National Whaling Museum Park around July 4th, and the New York Folk Music Society’s Spring Weekend (they host a winter weekend in February and also produce the Eisteddfod festival in the fall), held at a Catskills Mountains resort on Memorial Day. This year the latter featured unaccompanied ballad singers Elizabeth LaPrelle and her mother Sandy LaPrelle, from southwest Virginia, gently humorous songman John Krumm (fabulous understated guitarist), Triboro (three wonderful harmonizing singers and musicians from New York’s boroughs) and Bill Christofferson and Dave Howard, from New York and Connecticut, respectively, purveyors of gorgeous old country songs on fiddle and guitar. About these adventures and much more, next time.

Until then, here are some singers, songwriters and instrumentalists — by no means the exhaustive list — who captured my imagination on record and in person in the Sixties. Through the miracles of youtube.com and metrolyrics.com, you can get captured too: The Almanac Singers, Eric Andersen, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, David Bromberg, The Clancy Brothers, Leonard Cohen, Judy Collins, Country Joe & the Fish, Jim Croce, Barbara Dane, Reverend Gary Davis, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Richard & Mimi Fariña, Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp, Steve Goodman, The Greenbriar Boys, Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, John Hammond, Tim Hardin, John Hartford, Richie Havens, John Herald, Carolyn Hester, The Holy Modal Rounders, Cisco Houston, Mississippi John Hurt, Janis Ian, Burl Ives, The Kingston Trio, Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band, Peter La Farge, Lead Belly, The Limelighters, Ewan MacColl, Taj Mahal, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Don McLean, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Joni Mitchell, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Maria Muldaur, The New Lost City Ramblers, Laura Nyro, Phil Ochs, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul & Mary, John Prine, Malvina Reynolds, Jean Ritchie, Tom Rush, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger, Patrick Sky, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Dave Van Ronk, Muddy Waters, Doc Watson, The Weavers, Bukka White, Josh White, Howlin’ Wolf.