The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- For Bob Dylan -As The 1960s Folk Revival Turns 50- “Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival”- A Review

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Hedy West performing "Cotton Mill Girl" on Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest". That show and this performer are prime examples of the 1960s folk revival down at the base of that revival.


CD Review

Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival, 4 CD set with booklet, Smithsonian Collection Of Recordings, 1991

In various parts of America this year (2009) marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of many of the folk song societies that, organizationally, drove the folk revival of the early 1960s. That, I know is true for New England, although the genesis of such groups in other sections of the country I am not as sure of. The CD under review, Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival, was produced and released by the Smithsonian Collection Of Recordings in 1991 and therefore is not directly related to any anniversary celebrations. It nevertheless, in spirit, represents that same long ago taken on ambition by the various local folk song societies to chronicle the history of roots music in America. Forty plus years on we just have a wider selection of items to pick and choice from.

And that is the rub. This 4 CD set has attempted to do two things, and I think has done so successfully. First it has highlighted the starting of roots music with such early influences as The Fisk Jubilee Singers, Buell Kazee, John Jacob Niles, Leady Belly, The Almanac Singers (that included Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger among others), John and Alan Lomax and others who were uncovered in some very strange and interesting ways. Then the set moves on to the interim post World War II figures of Pete Seeger, The Weavers, The New Lost City Ramblers and the like. Those two influences then got assimilated and extended by the early 1960s folk revivalists whose work makes up the bulk of the material here. Such names as Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band and many others who I have reviewed in this space over the past couple of years and who now get a new life here as “the old fogies” that will influence the next generation of folk revivalists.. To finish off this series there are several later post folk revival tracks from the likes of Taj Mahal, Sweet Honey in the Rock and Magpie.

The second task of the series is to act as the magnet for any future interest in folk music. To aid that task, as is to be expected from the Smithsonian as a premium historical music collection provider, there is an incredibly informative booklet available by Norm Cohen. Hey, I know a lot about and lived through most of the 1960s folk revival and I still learned a lot of stuff from this booklet. But here is the really nice part. In the future there will be no need of some young musicologist like Alan Lomax, Harry Smith or Pete Seeger to go into the field to recover our common roots music. This is now your first stop. That will leave more time for singing and creating new songs. Nice, right?

Below is sampler of the lyrics to some folk songs in this set.

"Blowin’ in The Wind"

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, n how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before theyre forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before its washed to the sea?
Yes, n how many years can some people exist
Before theyre allowed to be free?
Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesnt see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.



Misc, Big Rock Candy Mountain Tabs/Chords
Looking for Misc Lyrics? Browse alphabet (above).

Artist: Misc
Song: Big Rock Candy Mountain Misc Sheet Music
Misc CDs


Send “Big Rock Candy Mountain” Ringtone to Cell Phone


Peter Lurvey had requested this song. I don't know if it's the same one,
because this is an old one that my sister, Val Heiserman, transcribed MANY
years ago. I don't know who the original artist was, and since I haven't
seen the movie that it's in now, I don't know who's doing it now. Anyway,
here goes.

"Big Rock Candy Mountain"-Harry McClintock
C F C
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, there's a land that's bright and fair,
F C Am G7
For the doughnuts grow on bushes, and there's lots of cookies there,
C F C
For the dogs and cats are happy, and the sun shines every day,
F C F C
There are birds and bees, and the bubble-gum trees,
F C F C
by the lemonade springs, where the whippoorwill sings
G7 C
in the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, the houses are built of blocks
And the little streams of sody pop come trickling down the rocks,
The soldiers there are made of lead, and they are very brave,
There's a lake of stew, and ice cream too
You can paddle all around in a paper canoe,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, the frogs have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth,
and the hens lay hard boiled eggs
There's chocolate pie in all the trees, and jam in all the lakes,
Oh, I'm going to go where the wind don't blow,
there's a big free show, and candy snow,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

RAMBLIN' BOY

Tom Paxton

He was a man and a friend always.
He stuck with me in the bad old days.
He never cared if I had no dough,
We rambled round in the rain and snow.

So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.
So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.

In Tulsa town we chanced to stray,
We thought we'd try to work one day.
The boss said he had room for one,
Said my old pal we'd rather bum.

So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.
So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.

Late one night in a jungle camp,
The weather it was cold and damp.
He got the chills and he got 'em bad.
Try took the only friend I had.

So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.
So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.

He left here to ramble on,
My rambling pal is dead and gone.
If when we die we go somewhere,
I bet you a dollar that he's rambling there.

So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.
So here's to you my Rambling Boy,
May all your rambling bring you joy.

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.