The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #75122 Message #1927820
Posted By: Suffet
05-Jan-07 - 07:46 PM
Thread Name: Little known '60s Folk Singers
Subject: RE: Little known 1960's Folk Singers
Mark et al.,
Yes, I must have been at the Four Winds in New York during the winter of 1967. It was one of the few remaining basket houses at the time. Did it later become the Samurai, or were both the Four Winds and the Samurai on the same block? I can't recall. I can't even remember if it was on West 4th or West 3rd, but I do remember that it was just east of Sixth Avenue.
As I said, we would sing at the Four Winds until the lookout warned us to stop.
I was just 20 in 1967, and the big names of the folk revival hit Greenwich Village much earlier in the decade, and many had moved on by then. I first started hanging out in the Village in 1964 when I was 17. Fred Neil was still around, and so was David Cohen (David Blue). Dave Van Ronk was everywhere, of course. Tom Paxton lived over on Morton Street, and he was pretty much a superstar. So was Phil Ochs, who lived on Prince Street, just south of the Village. Janis Fink, not yet Janis Ian, was younger than me, and I first recall hearing her around 1965. I do remember that Peter Tork appeared pretty regularly at the Night Owl Cafe maybe even a couple of years earlier. But the Night Owl was definitely not a basket house. Other people I heard at the Night Owl included Tim Hardin and John Sebastian.
However, those were not the people I hung out with. My "crew" at te time included Peter Greenberg (later a studio guitarist), Adam Kreiswirth (now a bluegrass musician in Florida), Grant Weisbrot (bluegrass mandolinist, moved to New Orleans, died of a heart attack a few years ago), Bob Lusk (Celtic trad musician, now living in Kingston, NY), Bob Malenky (blues guitarist, still in NYC), Peter Debin (guitarist and folk dancer, later moved to Massachusetts and died of a stroke), and Gene Tambour (bluegrass musician, used an elastic bad guitar capo as a pony tail clip, still in NYC).
But Greenwich Village was not the only folk scene in New York City in the 1960s. There were Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen who ran Broadside from their apartment on the Upper West Side, and there was also the Interlude Cafe in Kew Gardens, Queens, where Michael Cooney and Pat Sky were among the regulars. More on that some other time.
--- Steve