*"Inside Dave Van Ronk"- In The Youth Of The Folksinger (Oops) Jazz Vocalist Dave Van Ronk

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.   

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Dave Van Ronk performing Green, Green Rocky Road".


CD Review


Inside Dave Van Ronk, Dave Van Ronk, Fantasy Records,1969



When I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about the Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artist such as Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk doing "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" (which is included in this selection) and that was it. That old-time gravelly voice (even though I found out later that he was relatively young at that time) still commands my attention in the same way.

The last time I saw Dave Van Ronk perform, after not seeing him for a fairly long period of time, was not a particularly good night as he was pretty sick by that time. Moreover, his politics seemed to have crumbled over time from that of the hardened Trotskyist of his youth going out slay the benighted Stalinists for the soul of the working class. His dedication to leftist politics, as testified to by those who knew him well like Tom Paxton, was well known and passionate. A man who can write an intersting ditty about the notorious Moscow Lubyanka political prison is definitely a political man. Although no one asks a musical performer to wear politics on his or her sleeves as a litmus test, given his status as a prime historian/activist of the folk revival of the 1960's, this was disconcerting.

That folk scene, of which Dave was a central and guiding figure not fully recognized outside a small circle to this day, was not only defined by the search for root music and relevancy but by large political concerns such as civil rights, the struggle against war, and the need for social justice. Some of it obviously was motivated as well as simply a flat out need to make our own mark on the world. Dave was hardly the first person from this period to lose his political compass in the struggle against injustice. I say this with sadness in his case but I will always carry that memory of that late night radio experience in my head. That said, please listen to this man reach under a song. You will not forget it either.


Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies


Come all ye fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court your men
They're like a star on a summer morning
They first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story
And they'll make you think that they love you well
And away they'll go and court some other
And leave you there in grief to dwell

I wish I was on some tall mountain
Where the ivy rocks were black as ink
I'd write a letter to my false true lover
Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

I wish I was a little sparrow
And I had wings to fly so high
I'd fly to the arms of my false true lover
And when he'd ask, I would deny

Oh love is handsome, love is charming
And love is pretty while it's new
But love grows cold as love grows older
And fades away like morning dew

On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- *Jumpin’ And Jivin’, Indeed- All Out In The Age Of The Big Bands

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Cab Calloway performing "Minnie The Moocher".

DVD Review

Jumping& Jivin’: The Jazz Classics From The Big Band Era, Volume One, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Fats Waller and various other bandleaders and sidemen, Acorn Media, 2007.

I recently reviewed the work, in his prime in the 1960s, of jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. There I noted that my interest in jazz, as such, was at the many places where jazz and the blues intersect. This volume of jazz- centered music from the big band era of the 1940s is a prime example of that statement. Not all of the twenty plus “soundies” (the old time version of MTV-type music videos for the benefit of the younger reader) from the 1940s and early 1950s here derives from the blues but a good number do. The compilers of this DVD have put, in one place at one time, many of the best big bands from that era, including Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine and Count Basie. The production values on some of the material is not great but you are getting this for its look at cultural history, warts and all.

Moreover, there are two performers who perked my interest from the blues perspective. One was the incredible performances of Mr. Cab Calloway in his classic “Minnie The Moocher” and the, well, bluesy “Blues In The Night”. I last recall seeing old Cab in the original John Belushi “Blues Brothers” film from the 1980s. That was nothing compared to these performances in his prime. Watch this. The other outstanding performance here is from Lena Horne. Yes, I know, I am supposed to be true-blue to Ms. Billie Holiday. And I am. Except last year I heard Lena doing “Stormy Weather” on a 1940s CD compilation and was blown away. Here on her “soundie” “Unlucky Woman” she does so again. So call me perfidious, okay.

"Minnie the Moocher" -Cab Calloway

folk's here's the story 'bout Minnie the Moocher
she was a red hot hoochie coocher
she was the roughest, toughest frail
but Minnie had a heart a big as a whale

(hidey-hi's!)

she messed around with a bloke named Smokey
she loved him, though he was coke-y
he took her down to Chinatown
and he showed her how to kick the gong around

(hidey-hi's!)

she had a dream about the King of Sweden
he gave her things that she was needin'
gave her a home built of gold and steel
a diamond car, with the platinum wheels

(fast hidey-hi's!)

he gave her a townhouse and his racing horses
each meal she ate was a dozen courses
she had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
she sat around and counted them a million times

(hidey-hi's, one mo' 'gain!)

poor min, poor min, poor min!


"Unlucky Woman"

I was born on Friday, married on Friday too
Yes I was born on Friday, married on Friday too
But I didn't believe in jinxes till the day that I met you

I don't want no more lovin', I'd rather be all alone
No i don't want no more lovin', I'd rather be all alone
So when payday comes around, I can call my money my own

Now love is just a gamble, it's just like shootin' dice
But it's my bad luck that I got snake eyes twice
I'm an unlucky woman, guess I was born that way
And if anyone can change me, they can move right in today

I don't want no more excuses, I don't want no jive
I wouldn't want you daddy if you was the last man alive
I've learned my lesson, and I've learned it just in time
Good luck will never find me, till I cross you off my mind

*On Artie Shaw's Centenary- Swingman Shaw On Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust"

Click on headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Artie Shaw blowing a mean clarinet on Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust." Wow!


Markin comment:

This is the kind of music that was on the radio in my house when I was a kid, the music of my parents' generation. At least that was the music on the radio that I heard and is etched from the memory bank of ancient childhood before I "expropriated" the radio for Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee and the rock and rollers of the 1950s.

*From "The Rag Blog" -Amy Goodman : In Praise of Lena Horne

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry-Amy Goodman : In Praise of Lena Horne.

Markin comment:

I have made my own comments about Lena Horne elsewhere in this space. But the point that Lena made about the studios cutting her out of films shown in the South makes me want to scream one more time- Mississippi Goddam.