For Bob Dylan -*This Land May Be Your Land-But Folk Musak Has Got To Go

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Roger McGuinn performing The Birds "Eighth Miles High".

DVD Review

This Land Is Your Land: The Folk Years, Rhino Records, 2002

Sorry, fellow folkies but I am going to get up on my soapbox today. I have just viewed a Public Broadcasting System (PBS)- made concert film from 2002 that stars a number of the lesser lights of the folk revival of the 1960s that, frankly, has set my teeth on edge. You know groups like the Kingston Trio, The Highwaymen, the present day version of the New Christy Minstrels, and individuals like Judy Collins and Roger McGuinn. Soft-core folk, or as I put it in my headline- folk musak. Hell, the producers even brought out the Smothers Brothers and their tired old shtick. Now, as I pointed out elsewhere, this is a calculated and clever stratagem on their parts, in order to use this concert as a vehicle for the seemingly endless fundraiser that the system does. As I also pointed out a number of month ago in a similar review of a James Taylor concert these PBS guys know their demographics.

What they apparently don’t know is when to cry “uncle”. Some voices from the folk revival of the 1960s still have some spunk. Dylan on a good night. Same with Baez. A whole slew of lesser known names like Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin, Rosalie Sorrels before she retired, and others put on solid performances with new material at comparable ages to the folks who performed here. Now all musical tastes are highly individual and I admit that, on more than one occasion, have been heard in the old hootenanny days and now, to sing a go to things like the Kingston Trio’s “MTA” song and “Tom Dooley”. Judy Collins’ “Amazing Grace” and “Both Sides Now”. Or even the Limelighters “Greensleeves”. But, almost two hours of this stuff. Come on. Give me fifteen minutes of Dave Van Ronk, Lou Reed, or any of that slew mentioned above any day. No, I will not go gentle into that good night, thank you.

Note: The only really redeeming musical factor in this whole concert were the three songs performed by Roger McGuinn. He came alive with his versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, Pete Seeger’s adaptation of “Turn, Turn, Turn” and a virtuoso long acoustic performance of “Eight Miles High”. He, at least, knew how to keep us awake past our bedtimes. Thanks, Roger.


Mr. Tambourine Man
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Copyright ©1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music

For Bob Dylan - A Song For Our Times- Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side"

Commentary

I am in high dudgeon today against the latest Obama moves for troops escalation in Afghanistan. I am also writing a review of the Martin Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan, "No Direction Home", from PBS in 2005. This film covers the early protest song-oriented part of Dylan's career, among other things. As part of the documentary there are many film clips of early performances. The one that struck me as apt for today is his rendition of the song "With God On Our Side" together with Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. Powerful stuff. Here is my take on it today.

In the interest of completeness concerning my earlier evaluations of the Dylan songs "Masters Of War" and "With Good On Our Side" on his early albums here are the lyrics to the latter song.

Interestingly, except for changing the Cold War theme against the Russians then to the so-called War On Terror now against seemingly every Muslim that any American presidential administration can get it hands on (Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan) and Obama (same and, maybe, Pakistan) these lyrics "speak" to me today. The word they speak is hubris, American hubris, that the rest of the world has had reason to fear, and rightly so. What do they "speak" to you?

"With God On Our Side"-Bob Dylan-1963

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns on their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

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.         

*A Song Of The 1960's Civil Rights Struggle- Richard Farina's "Birmingham Sunday"

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Joan Baez performing Richard Farina's "Birmingham Sunday".

Markin comment:

Here is a song for Black History Month- a Civil Rights song made famous by Joan Baez and written by Richard Farina (her brother-in-law, married to her sister Mimi although I am not sure if he was at the time the song was written). It concerns the tragic and obscenely racist bombing of a black church killing four young, innocent black girls. Yes, one can still weep over that one today.

Birmingham Sunday

Come round by my side and I'll sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

That cold autumn morning no eyes saw the sun,
And Addie Mae Collins, her number was one.
At an old Baptist church there was no need to run.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom,

The clouds they were grey and the autumn winds blew,
And Denise McNair brought the number to two.
The falcon of death was a creature they knew,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom,

The church it was crowded, but no one could see
That Cynthia Wesley's dark number was three.
Her prayers and her feelings would shame you and me.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

Young Carol Robertson entered the door
And the number her killers had given was four.
She asked for a blessing but asked for no more,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

On Birmingham Sunday a noise shook the ground.
And people all over the earth turned around.
For no one recalled a more cowardly sound.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

The men in the forest they once asked of me,
How many black berries grew in the Blue Sea.
And I asked them right with a tear in my eye.
How many dark ships in the forest?

The Sunday has come and the Sunday has gone.
And I can't do much more than to sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
And the choirs keep singing of Freedom.

The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind-A Female Take

The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind-A Female Take

By Leslie Dumont

[You never know how things will turn around in the media business. One day you can’t get a thing published for love or money and the next you have more offers than you can shake a stick at. I originally was a stringer, a free-lancer, on this site a number of years ago when Allan Jackson was running the show but never got past that status despite submitting a number of articles that would later be published in places like Progressive Nation (both hard copy and on-line) and Women’s Weekly. Never got past a few short reviews of folk music when Allan decided to go all out and feature the folk revival of the 1960s, long dead except for devoted aficionados like myself. That fate for my major work despite the fact that at the time I had a relationship with Josh Breslin who Allan had known ever since they met out in California in 1967 during their Summer of Love adventures. I wasn’t expecting to be given a by-line gratis but did feel my work was good enough to see the light of day as it did later. 

Recently with the changeover in management after Allan retired (there have been other rumors of a coup and such but knowing guys like Josh and Sam Lowell, who knew Allan from back in high school, involved that is boys will be boys stuff from their youthful political intrigue when every move had some such ramification) the new manager Greg Green contacted me, contacted from what I heard a number of women writers to give this site a better-rounded and more inclusive look. Finally (and maybe while he is at how about some black writers, women ones too). That contact started an avalanche of offers from some other on-line sites asking for articles mostly on folk music and books, maybe an occasional film. Some I have taken or will do so soon but I committed myself to a series of articles for Greg. Recently Sam Lowell mentioned above wrote a nostalgia article about his folk music experiences-The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind where he talked about the almost universal phenomena among college women folkies of emulating the leading straight long-haired women folk singers of the day Joan Baez, her sister Mimi, and Judy Collins. Greg when he contacted me asked as my first piece to give the women’s side of the story since he had heard from Sam who had heard it from Josh that I had a story to tell. Tell from what he quaintly called the distaff side like this was about 1960.  So here goes. Leslie Dumont]     

*******

Sam Lowell was as much a folk music junkie as I was back in the 1960s which he or somebody called the “folk minute” and strangely that seems about right since it got swamped by the British invasion and later acid-laced rock. I am a couple of years younger than him so I missed the very start when guys like Bob Dylan was working his way east to sit at Woody Guthrie’s feet (literally I think if some documentary I saw at the Orson Welles Theater out of Harvard Square on a college date about Woody and Arlo is right), Dave Von Ronk was switching from jazz combos and creaky-voiced folk song poetry session clear-outs and Joan Baez and her younger sister were walking around Harvard Square trying to get somebody, anybody to listen to their traditional folk song gigs featuring old-time Child ballads. My baptism came in 1964 but was nevertheless a big deal for me in breaking out, like a lot of us of whatever was happening at the time to make us jump out of our skins. 

I grew up in Ardsley-on-Hudson (we just called it Ardsley but that was, and is, its official name) about thirty miles from New York City and when I was in high school there, a senior, I had a boyfriend, Lenny, from town who went to NYU not far from what turned out to be one of the serious folk meccas, the Village. He would, for the eternal college boy cheap date which every guy who was into folk music blessed to high heaven and which I will give my view on soon, take me to the arch in Washington Square where every weekend budding folk singers would strut their stuff. Some good, some frankly bad who maybe knew a couple of chords and tried to work that into something mainly I think as a way to meet girls since if you looked at the obligatory guitar case “basket” it would be empty of donations. That was the cheapest of cheap dates which I didn’t care that much about because I was just thrilled to be in New York City away from stuffy Ardsley. When Lenny had some money we would move up a step he would take me to a coffeehouse for a cup of coffee, a lingering cup of coffee, and a sandwich or pastry. Occasionally when I had some money, allowance money, I would take pity on him and we would go “dutch treat” but I will go further into that social custom so more later.

Like I said what did I know about what in those days a guy was supposed to do for dating purposes since Lenny was my first serious boyfriend. I thought it was great that a college guy was interested in me, would take me to New York City (usually without telling my parents where I was going since they would have had a fit if they thought I was going  to “sin city” especially at night), and buy me a meal. I know a few of my girlfriends were jealous that I had a boyfriend in college when all they had were stupid high school guys whose idea of a date was to go down to the river and try to “feel them up.” I heard a few guys who wouldn’t give me the time of day suddenly let it be known that they were interested in me. (Probably figuring if I was with a college guy I was “easy” knowing the guys although it did not turn out like that with Lenny whom I still talk and meet occasionally when I am in Boston for a conference or some event.) It wasn’t until I was in college that I found out that guys in those days who were interested in me would spring for a real dinner in a nice place. Were supposed to do that. But that had nothing to do with folk music which I did seriously get into with Lenny and would continue to like to hear until this very day.              

Of course knowing Sam, although we hadn’t been in contact for a number of years since when I was a stringer, he had to go on and on in his article about every trend that led a certain small section of our generation to grab onto folk music as a way of showing our rebellion and, here I agree with Sam, a revulsion of what was passing for our youthful rock and roll which seemed to have run out of steam. Had to do all of that just to get to the point about how in a short while, particularly after the mainstream media of the time, Time magazine for one, dubbed Bob Dylan the king of the folk scene and long straight raven-haired Joan Baez the queen, his queen the silly bastard, young women, women who included me as well, were wearing their hair longer-and straighter. He seemed to think this was something from out of space or something when it was merely us keeping up with a fashion which women have been doing one way or another and not just for men don’t’ forget since  Eve.                

What had gotten Sam in a tizzy was an old photograph of Joan Baez, Mimi Farina (her married named then being married to hell-bent songwriter-poet Richard) and Judy Collins at Newport in I believe 1963 where he noticed the long-haired effect. The photograph graced one of the months in a New England Folk Song Society calendar. That got him wondering once again about how they were able to keep it that long or get it that straight. That is when he thought back to the whole hair-ironing experience and a story about one of his dates at the time.  

Sam also made an outlandish comment and I will quote here just to make sure I don’t fumble up what he said:        

“Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from North Adamsville High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.”

He stands in the dock condemned by his words. Stands condemned for his small part in “forcing” women into making a certain fashion statement if they wanted dates from folkie guys. Maybe it was too early although maybe it was more gentile Lenny but he never made a big issue about it, never insisted that I “do something with my hair.”  But standing in the docket with Sam is Stan Gower, a guy whom I was dating when I was in college in Boston at Boston University, and who had the same nasty attitude as Sam although he was slier about it. I had first met him at the Joy Street Café around Charles Street near Boston Common one night when they had their folk night (before every night was folk night at the place when Eric Von Schmidt put the place on the map by writing Joshua Gone Barbados which he sang and which Tom Rush went big with on the local folk radio programs) and then we had a coffee together, That night I had my hair kind of, oh I don’t remember what they called it then but something like beehive or flip or something which highlighted and enhanced my long face. I thought I looked fine. I was not then hip to the long straight hair thing and so I thought nothing of it while I noticed many of the young women, they were almost all young women in a place like that then unlike now when it is almost all older women in the occasional coffeehouse venues hiding out in church basements and a few remnant places in Harvard Square or Berkeley but I kind of let it pass without any comment.

Then one night many weeks later after we had had a couple of subsequent dates and I hadn’t seen him for a while wondering what had happened to him since I was very interested in “going out with him” he called and asked for a date saying some nonsense about being busy with school work. I startled him when he picked me up at my dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. I met Stan at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made my face even longer. He smiled that Stan smile that always got to me and said the real reason he didn’t call me up was because he was not sure that he liked my hair the way it was. Instead of showing him the door, I really was interested in him, I blushed like crazy. When Stan asked me a couple of minutes later why the change I did have a good comeback, did lie to him, when I declared that I could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing my idol Joan Baez (and later Mimi and Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish. He smiled that Stan smile again but I think he knew I had done it to please him.

Of course Stan then compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking me if I had it done at the beauty parlor or something and I looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go. Still silly schoolgirl me let that go. Little did he know then or later that just before our dates I would get the iron board out and either I or one of my roommates, proably best friend Anna, and try to starighten out as best I could my hair that would turn kinky every time I washed it. So I joined the crowd, Stan always when we were together said he loved it and after a while I did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses that Sam mentioned his girlfriend started wearing instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things I used to wear under strict orders from my mother to essentially show no signs of having shape to tempt errant boys with).    

That recollection by Sam got me thinking about other funny ideas we had back then.  About the occasions when Lenny and  had to go “dutch treat” which I never told my high school girlfriends about or they might not have thought it was not so cool to be dating a college guy, a poor college guy. That “dutch treat” thing was thus not very popular then unlike now when it is no big deal although there were slight changes and essentially has gone the way of one breadwinner fathers in the household economy. As much as I liked Stan that “dutch treat” is what happened when we went to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue thing. Stan and I were thus by definition not on a heavy date, by definition neither supposedly had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after those first few dates and so no social stigma attached to this understanding although I was hurt having let my hair grow long with certain expectations. Folk music was our bold.  Despite my persistent BU dorm roommate rumors what with Stan hanging around all the time listening to my albums on the record player we had had never got to the serious lovers stage. A few years later I mentioned that Club Blue night to Stan, who after all that dorm hanging around and rumor stuff actually was hanging around to see my best friend roommate Anna Jacobs who was by his side that night, as we waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Jim Lawrence, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.

He asked me, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” I had replied yes and that I too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.

As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph which jogged Sam memory their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk times (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother I was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yes, ladies, the photo is still around.           

*The Not Joan Baezs- The Music Of Ronee Blakley

The Not Joan Baezs- The Music  Of  Ronee Blakley

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Ronee Blakley performing "Need A New Sun Rising".


CD Review

Welcome, Ronee Blakley, Collector’s Choice, 1975


A couple of years ago I spend a little time, worthwhile time I think, running through the male folk singers and songwriters of the folk revival of the 1960s. The premise, at the time, was to compare the fates of those singers to the man who has stood up as the icon of the era, Bob Dylan. I went through a litany of such male artists as Jesse Winchester, Jesse Colin Young, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Rush and the like and found no particular common denominator other than they were still performing (those who were still alive) at some level acceptable to them, if not at Dylan’s level and status.

As another aspect of that premise I looked at some (fewer) women folk singers and songwriters in comparison to the acknowledged “queen” of that folk revival, Joan Baez. Alas, other more political work interfered with a more extensive look at the “not Joan Baezs”. I will begin to make partial amends here, with the artist under review, Ronee Blakley. Oh, you are not familiar with the name? That is probably fair enough unless you might have gotten around to the local folk club circuit in the 1970s, or seen her as Barbara Jean- a Loretta Lynn prototype in Robert Altman’s classic, edgy homage to country music, “Nashville”. Or perhaps, some other movies like “Nightmare On Elm Street”.

You, in any case, probably do not know her from her two great albums produced in the early 1970s and composed of, mainly, her own songs. That is a shame because between her majestic voice and her fiery, sometimes acid-etched, lyrics, including taking on some very topical subjects like the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton by the Chicago police and touting all the varieties of female independence and assertiveness she did some very good work. And then “puff”. No more music, at least recorded music. I have not been able to find out exactly why but she certainly takes her place in that group that I, sadly in this case, call one-note “janies”.

So what is good here: certainly the acid-etched “American Beauty”; her ode to female independence “Young Man”; the old-timey homage to home and family “Idaho Home” that I often find myself singing out of the blue; and, another grasp at autobiography “She Lays It On The Line”. Nice stuff.

*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- A Folk Revival, Revival? - “A Mighty Wind”- A Film Review

Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- A Folk Revival, Revival? - “A Mighty Wind”- A Film Review

A "YouTube" film clip from the movie "A Mighty Wind".


DVD Review

A Mighty Wind, 2003




One of the strands of leftist cultural expression, apart from the central struggle to get people fighting for a workers party that fights for a workers government, that this space has attempted to explore and give some meaning to is the folk revival of the 1960s that was a critical nodal point in this writer’s turn away from mainstream popular culture. Now, as an attentive reader might well know, I have reviewed more well-known folk figures like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger than one could shake a stick at. I have also paid plenty of attention to lesser figures like Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, as well as reaching back to the iconic figures from the mist of time that motivated those revivalist performers, like Harry Smith and the Lomaxes, John and son Alan. In short, I have paid my dues and have treated that folk revival with proper respect.

Not so this mostly witty sent-up of a film that takes on the whole revival of the folk revival question head first, and gives it a big boot in the behind. The story line, such as it is, and which is not really the factor that keeps this thing moving, is that an old folk music agent has died, leaving a request to his erstwhile dutiful son to try to bring the top three acts that he acted as agent for back for one more shot in the limelight. Nothing wrong with that premise, unless of course it is merely done to take a crack at the pocketbook of the nostalgically-inclined sector of the now aging folk music component of the post-World War II “boomer” generation. And this film does just that, doing a nice job of putting-on the whole PBS-like public television apparatus that thrives on just such events to satisfy their demographics, and helps raise that every constant need for cash from its listeners.

Of course, as is to be expected, it is no easy thing to get the three groups to cooperate, especially the star attraction, Bob and Joan, oops, Mitch and Mickey. Along the way there are more sent-ups: where the folk niche fits in today’s download-driven music market; the problems with aging voices; and the dippy doings of some of the folk musak entertainers. This one is for laughs, and although some bits are corny, intentionally or not, there is enough to keep you interested for the one and one half hours that the movie has you in its grip. From a guy who takes his folk music straight, and with no nonsense, that means something.

*****The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind

******The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind

 

The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind

Laura Perkins was talking to her daughter, Emily Andrews one afternoon in April when she went to visit her and the grandkids up in Londonderry that is in New Hampshire, after returning from Florida, down Naples way. Laura had spent the winter there, a pilgrimage she had been doing the past five years or so since she, New England born and bred had tired, wearily tired of the winters provided by that section of the country and joined the “snow bird” trek south. Been doing more of the winter since she retired as a computer whizz free-lance consultant a couple of years ago. Emily the first born girl from the first of her three marriages who now had a couple of kids of her own although she has retained as is the “new style,” post-‘60s new style anyway, of women retaining their maiden name, or went hyphenated, kept Andrews in the bargain although Laura had given that name up minute one after the divorce which was messy and still a source of hatred when Emily’s father’s name is mentioned and thereafter kept her maiden name through the subsequent two marriages and divorces. During the conversation Laura commented to Emily, having not seen her for a while, on how long and straight she was keeping her hair these days which reminded her of the old days back in the romantic early 1960s when she used to hang around the Village in New York at the coffeehouses and folk clubs listening to lots of women folksingers like Carolyn Hester, Jean Redpath, Thelma Gordon, Joan Baez, Sissy Dubois and a bunch of others whose names she could just then not remember but whose hair was done in the same style including her own hair then.

Laura looked wistfully away just then touching her own now much shortened hair and colored a gentle brown with highlights, how much and for how long only her hairdresser knew and she, the well-tipped hair-dresser, was sworn to a secret Omerta oath even the CIA and Mafia could admire in the interest of not giving into age too much, especially once the computer whizz kids started showing up younger and younger either looking for work or as competitors. Meanwhile Emily explained how she came to let her hair grow longer and straighter (and her own efforts to keep it straighter) against all good reason what with two kids, a part-time accounting job and six thousand other young motherhood things demanded of her that would dictate that one needed a hair-do that one could just run a comb through, run through quickly.       

“Ma, you know how when you get all misty-eyed for your lost youth as you call it you are always talking about the old folk days, about the days in the Village and later in Harvard Square after you moved up here to go to graduate school at BU, minus Dad’s part in that time which I know you don’t like to talk about for obvious reasons. You also know, and we damn made it plain enough although you two never took it seriously, back when we were kids all of us, Melinda and Peter too, hated the very sound of folk music, stuff that sounded like something out of the Middle Ages and would run to our rooms when you guys played the stuff in you constant nostalgia moments. [That Middle Ages heritage, some of it, at least the rudiments, actually was on the mark if you look at the genesis of say half of the Child ballads which a folk enthusiast by that name in the 1850s over on Brattle Street in Cambridge collected, a number of ballads which ironically got picked up by the likes of Joan Baez in the late 1950s and played at the coffeehouses like the Club 47 and Café Nana just down from that Brahmin haven street. Or if you look to the more modern musicologists like the Seegers and Lomaxes who went down South, down Appalachia way, looking for roots music you will find some forbears brought over from the old country, the British Isles, that can be traced back to those times without doing injury to the truth.]

“Well one day I was in Whole Foods and I hear this song over their PA system or whatever they call it, you know those CDs they play to get you through the hard-ass shopping you need to do to keep the renegade kids from starvation’s door. The song seemed slightly familiar, folkie familiar, so I asked at the customer service desk who was singing the song and its name which I couldn’t quite remember. Of course the young clerk knew from nothing but a grey-haired guy, an old Cambridge radical type, a professor-type now that I think about what he looked like probably teaching English Lit, a guy you see in droves when you are in Harvard Square these days doddering along looking down at the ground like they have been doing for fifty years, standing in the same line as me, probably to return something that he bought by mistake and his wife probably ran his ass ragged until he returned the damn thing and got what she wanted, said it was Judy Collins doing Both Sides Now.  

That information from the professor, and that tune stuck in my head, got me thinking about checking out the song on YouTube which I did after I got home, unpacked the groceries, unpacked the kids and gave them their lunches. The version I caught was one of her on a Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest series from the 1960s in black and white that was on television back then which I am sure you and Dad knew about and she had this great looking long straight hair. I was envious. Then I kind of got the bug, wanted to check out some other folkie women whose names I know by heart, thank you, and noticed that Joan Baez in one clip taken at the Newport Folk Festival along with Bob Dylan singing With God On Our Side, God-awful if you remember me saying that every time you put it on the record-player, had even longer and straighter hair than Judy Collins.

“There she was all young, beautiful and dark-skinned Spanish exotic, something out of a Cervantes dream with that great hair. So I let mine grow and unlike what I heard Joan Baez, and about six zillion other young women did, including I think you, to keep it straight using an iron I went to Delores over at Flip Cuts in the mall and she does this thing to it every couple of months. And no I don’t want you to give me your folk albums, as valuable as they are, and as likely as I am to get them as family heirlooms when as you say you pass to the great beyond, please, to complete the picture because the stuff still sounds like it was from the Middle Ages although Dylan sounded better then than I remember, better than that croaking voice he has now that I heard you play one time on your car radio when we were heading up to Maine with you to go to Kittery to get the kids some back to school clothes.”        

Laura laughed a little at that remark as Emily went out the door to do some inevitable pressing shopping. After dutifully playing with Nick and Nana for a couple of hours while Emily went to get some chores done at the mall sans the kids who really are a drag on those kinds of tasks and after having stayed for supper when Sean got home from work she headed to her own home down in Cambridge (a condo really shared with her partner, Sam Lowell, whom she knew in college, lost track of and then reunited with after many years and three husbands at a college class reunion).

When she got home Sam, making her chuckle about what Emily said about that guy in the line at Whole Foods looked like and tarring Sam with that same brush, working on some paper of his, something about once again saving the world from the endless wars of the American government (other governments too but since as he said, quoting “Che” Guevara, always Che, about living in the heart of the beast the American government), the climate, nuclear disarmament, social inequality at home and in the world, or the plight of forgotten political prisoners, which was his holy mantra these days now that he was semi-retired from his law practice was waiting, waiting to hear the latest Nick and Nana stories instead she told him Emily’s story. Then they started talking about those old days in the 1960s when both she and he (he in Harvard Square having grown up in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston and her in the hotbed Village growing up in Manhattan and later at NYU where they went to school as undergraduates) imbibed in that now historic folk minute which promised, along with a few other things, to change the world a bit.

Laura, as Sam was talking, walked to a closet and brought out a black and white photograph from some folk festival in 1963 which featured Joan Baez, whom the clueless media always looking for a single hook to hang an idea on dubbed her the “queen of folk (and Dylan the king),” her sister Mimi Farina, who had married Richard Farina, the folk-singer/song-writer most poignantly Birmingham Sunday later killed in a motorcycle crash and Judy Collins on stage at the same time. All three competing with each other for the long straight hair championship. Here’s part of what was said about the picture that night, here’s how Laura put it:    

“Funny how trends get started, how one person, or a few start something and it seems like the whole world follows, or the part of the world that hears about the new dispensation anyway, the part you want to connect with. Remember Sam how we all called folk the “new dispensation” for our generation which had begun back in the late 1950s, early 1960s, slightly before our times when we caught up with it in college in 1964. So maybe it started in reaction to the trend when older guys started to lock-step in gray flannel suits. That funny Mad Men, retro-cool today look, which is okay if you pay attention to who was watching the show. In the days before Jack and Bobby Kennedy put the whammy on that fashion and broke many a haberdasher’s heart topped off by not wearing a soft felt hat like Uncle Ike and the older guys.”

“Funny too it would be deep into the 1960s before open-necks and colors other than white for shirts could be worked in but by then a lot of us were strictly denims and flannel shirts or some such non-suit or dress combination. Remember even earlier when the hula-hoop fad went crazy when one kid goofing off threw a hard plastic circle thing around his or her waist and every kid from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon had to have one, to be tossed aside in some dank corner of the garage after a few weeks when everybody got into yo-yos or Davey Crockett coonskin caps. Or maybe, and this might be closer to the herd instinct truth, it was after Elvis exploded onto the scene and every guy from twelve to two hundred in the world had to, whether they looked right with it or not, wear their sideburns just a little longer, even if they were kind of wispy and girls laughed at you for trying to out-king the “king” who they were waiting for not you. I know I did with Jasper James King who tried like hell to imitate Elvis and I just stepped on his toes all dance when he asked me to dance with him on It’s Alright, Mama.”  

“But maybe it was, and this is a truth which we can testify to when some girls, probably college girls like me, now called young women but then still girls no matter how old except mothers or grandmothers, having seen Joan Baez on the cover of Time (or perhaps her sister Mimi on some Mimi and Richard Farina folk album cover)got out the ironing board at home or in her dorm and tried to iron their own hair whatever condition it was in, curly, twisty, or flippy like mine, whatever  don’t hold me to all the different hairstyles to long and straight strands. Surely as strong as the folk minute was just then say 1962, 63, 64, they did not see the photo of Joan on some grainy Arise and Sing folk magazine cover, the folk scene was too young and small back in the early days to cause such a sea-change.”

 Sam piped up and after giving the photograph a closer look said, “Looking at that photograph you just pulled out of the closet now, culled I think from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the rage among the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from Carver High. But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy sexual desire thing about hopping in the hay, and that was that.”                   

“My old friend Bart Webber, a guy I met out in San Francisco  when I went out West with my old friend  Josh Breslin in our hitchhike days with whom if you remember I re-connected with via the “magic” of the Internet a few years ago, told me a funny story when we met at the Sunnyville Grille in Boston one time about our friend Julie Peters who shared our love of folk music back then (and later too as we joined a few others in the folk aficionado world after the heyday of the folk minute got lost in the storm of the British Beatles/Stones  invasion).”

“He had first met her in Harvard Square one night at the Café Blanc when the place had their weekly folk night (before every night was folk night when Eric Von Schmidt put the place on the map by writing Joshua Gone Barbados which he sang and which Tom Rush went big with) and they had a coffee together. That night she had her hair kind of, oh he didn’t know what they called it but he thought something like beehive or flip or something which highlighted and enhanced her long face. Bart thought she looked fine. Bart, like myself, was not then hip to the long straight hair thing and so he kind of let it pass without any comment.”

“Then one night a few weeks later after they had had a couple of dates she startled him when he picked her up at her dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. She met him at the door with the mandatory straight hair although it was not much longer than when he first met her which he said frankly made her face even longer. When Bart asked her why the change Julie declared that she could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing her idol Joan Baez (and later Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish.”

“Of course he compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking if she had her hair done at the beauty parlor or something and she looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go. So she joined the crowd, Bart got used to it and after a while she did begin to look like a folkie girl, and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched Catholic school shirt things she used to wear.”     

“By the way Laura let’s be clear on that Julie thing with Bart back in the early 1960s since his Emma goes crazy every time anybody, me, you, Bart, Frankie Riley, Jack Callahan mentions any girl that Bart might have even looked at in those days. Yeah, even after almost forty years of marriage so keep this between us. She and Bart went “Dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. They were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after the first few dates but folk music was their bond. Just friends despite persistent Julie BU dorm roommate rumors what with Bart hanging around all the time listening to her albums on the record player they had never been lovers.

“Many years later she mentioned that Club Blue night to me since I had gone with them with my date, Joyell Danforth, as we waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with us to see if I remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while I thought I remembered I was not sure.

I asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.”

As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who as mentioned before was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk times (think Pack Up Your Sorrows). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother Julie was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yeah, we have the photo as proof.           

*Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part Two- The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-BonnieDobson

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Tim Rose (co-writer of the song) performing "Morning Dew".



CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001



Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:



Disc Two: Dave Van Ronk on “He Was A Friend Of Mine” and You’se A Viper”, The Chad Mitchell Trio on “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream”, Hedy West on “500 Miles”, Ian &Sylvia on “Four Strong Winds”, Tom Paxton on “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”, Peter, Paul And Mary on “Blowin’ In The Wind”, Bob Dylan on “Boots Of Spanish Leather”, Jesse Colin Young on “Four In The Morning”, Joan Baez on “There But For Fortune”, Judy Roderick on “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”, Bonnie Dobson on “Morning Dew”, Buffy Sainte-Marie on “Cod’ine” and Eric Von Schmidt on “ Joshua Gone Barbados”.



Bonnie Dobson on “Morning Dew”. Bonnie Dobson would not be a female singer that would have made my previously mentioned lists of ‘not Joan Baez’s’ but off of this recording she could have been. That high soprano voice and mournful delivery was the epitome (for worshipful males, and maybe females as well) of how we wanted our “love” songs done. Some female folk singers have lasted, including Baez herself. I do not know the fate of Bonnie Dobson but the musical world is filled to overflowing with one-hit Johnnies and Janie’s. Folk is no exception to that rule but this song has now gained, rightly, a measure of immortality.



"Morning Dew"



Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,
Walk me out in the morning dew today.
I can't walk you out in the morning dew my honey,
I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

I thought I heard a baby cry this morning,
I thought I heard a baby cry this today.
You didn't hear no baby cry this morning,
You didn't hear no baby cry today.

Where have all the people gone my honey,
Where have all the people gone today.
There's no need for you to be worrying about all those people,
You never see those people anyway.

I thought I heard a young man moan this morning,
I thought I heard a young man moan today.
I thought I heard a young man moan this morning,
I can't walk you out in the morning dew today.

Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,
Walk me out in the morning dew today.
I'll walk you out in the morning dew my honey,
I guess it doesn't really matter anyway,
I guess it doesn't matter anyway,
I guess it doesn't matter anyway,
Guess it doesn't matter anyway.

*An Encore-Mary McCaslin's "Prairie In The Sky"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Mary McCaslin Doing "Prairie In The Sky".
CD Review

Prairie In The Sky, Mary McCaslin, Rounder Records, 1995

This review has also been used for McCaslin's "Broken Promises" CD.

Okay, okay I have had enough. Recently I received a spate of e-mails from aging 1960's folkies asking why, other than one review of Carolyn Hester's work late in 2008, I have not done more reviews of the female folkies of the 1960's. To balance things out I begin to make amends here. To set the framework for my future reviews I repost the germane part of the Carolyn Hester review:

"Earlier this year I posed a question concerning the fates of a group of talented male folk singers like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton and Jesse Colin Young, who, although some of them are still performing or otherwise still on the musical scene have generally fallen off the radar in today's mainstream musical consciousness, except, of course, the acknowledged "king of the hill", Bob Dylan. I want to pose that same question in this entry concerning the talented female folk performers of the 1960's, except, of course, the "queen of the hill" Joan Baez. I will start out by merely rephrasing the first paragraph from the reviews of those male performers.

"If I were to ask someone, in the year 2008, to name a female folk singer from the 1960's I would assume that if I were to get an answer to that question that the name would be Joan Baez (or, maybe, Judy Collins but you get my point). And that would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Baez was (or wanted to be) the female voice of the Generation of '68 but in terms of longevity and productivity she fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other female folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Baez, may today still quietly continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Carolyn Hester, certainly had the talent to challenge Baez to be "queen of the hill."

Well, as the CD under review will testify to, the singer /songwriter Mary McCaslin also was in contention, back in the days. I am not familiar with the current status of Ms. McCaslin as a performer although I know several years ago I attended a benefit concert to raise funds for her medical needs. Nevertheless I can remember the first time I heard her in a coffeehouse in Cambridge doing Woody Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills Back Home". And that was appropriate as Ms. McCaslin is certainly in her singing style and her songwriting interests attached to the Western United States. That tradition got an additional acknowledgement in that Cambridge performance when she brought down the house with her version of the country classic "Pass Me By If You're Only Passing Through".

That western theme and, in addition, several more inward searching tracks, make this a very representative McCaslin effort. Needless to say "Pass Me By" sticks out on the first theme and "Prairie In The Sky" on the second. She also does a very fine version of the old Ames Brothers (I think) "Ghost Riders In The Sky". So, all in all, whatever her later personal journey back in the days she could have been a contender for "queen of the hill". Listen up.

In The Time Of Your Parents'(Ouch, Maybe Grandparents') Folk Moment, Circa 1955-“Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Harry Belafonte performing his version of the Banana Boat Song (ho, hum).

CD Review

Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999


Yes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.

Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.

But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.