In the late 1950s I was introduced to things like folksingers. My first serious gal friend hauled me to a nightspot in Chicago--a beat bistro in a basement at Chicago and Dearborn that was called the Gate Of Horn. She wanted to hear something called "an Odetta!" Us kids were let in if we only drank Coke. It seemed strange but trad folksingers were playing these bars. It was mesmerizing and noir and a real adventure, and we were ready for anything that came at us.
Sunday afternoons, in 1959, there were Hootenannies--programmed open stages -- at the "Gate." At the first one of those hoots I went to a fellow named Sandy Paton was participating. Fresh back from the UK, he sang songs he'd taped from Jeannie Robertson, the McPeake Family, Captain Bob Roberts and many others. To say that it was a mind-opener and a mind-blower for me was pretty accurate. Sandy said he had an LP album coming out soon on Elektra -- and I figured I'd be getting one eventually. --- First, though, I graduated high school -- and then went off to work at my uncle's factory in Evansville, Indiana all that summer of '59.
In Indiana, I ordered Sandy's record at Bob Shadd's Record Shop the first week I was in town. --- It arrived eight weeks later on the last day of my summer job!! What a wonder that album was;---the first American recording of "Wild Mountain Thyme" was on it-- "Katy Cruel" -- Long A-Growin'" -- "Byker Hill" "The Overgate" -- "The Foggy Dew" -- many others. Years later, when I told Mr. Paton how much I loved that record, he questioned my taste in music. He hated the way Elektra had forced him to accept Fred Hellerman playing second guitar. The company also cut a verse off of "Wild Mountain Thyme" because, they said, it was too long to get any air play. When I asked Sandy to sign the album 30 years after it came out, he wrote:
Dear Art:
It seems that the sins of one's past
eventually catch up.
No escape for the wicked!
Sandy Paton
No sentiment there, but I'll always love that album---The Many Sides Of Sandy Paton -- Elektra Records--#148 Two fine photos of the thespian sides of Sandy--and one of the folksinger side adorn the cover. I'll send a scan of it to Katlaughing to see if it can be made available here.
After Evansville, I went to the University Of Illinois (Champaign) but wasn't interested. I was only into learning guitar. After that it was the U. of I. at Chicago--then on Navy Pier.--As we sometimes said, it was the only university in the country that could be torpedoed! Our folk club at Navy Pier hosted a concert by Frank Hamilton that year--1960. I'll never forget his simply great versions of the Russian song "Meadowlands" and Pete's "Singin' In The Country"--and a bunch more. --- I lasted at that school until I realized that college was interfering with my education! I left and got a day job at Rose Record Store--"the world's largest" they said, on Wabash Avenue in Chicago.
Be patient, people, Sandy comes back into the tale real soon!!!! I wanted to give those set-up details first.
To continue:
A block and a half North down Wabash Avenue was the great Kroch's And Brentannos Book Store. On my lunch hours I'd wander around the Art Institute a while, and often go to Kroch's to find a book.
One day in 1962 or '63 I wandered in there and, unbelievably, found a new sales department right up in front---ALL FOLK RECORDS. Pete, Woody, Cisco--it was a treasure trove. And behind the counter was a fellow I knew-- from my past, SANDY PATON!!! Somehow, Sandy had sold 'em on the idea of featuring trad and folk---quite a preposterous idea both then and now -- maybe.
Folks, I lost 40 pounds that year because all my lunchhours were spent talking with Sandy. Sandy saw my hunger for experiencing rhe land and the music---finding the "tales with tunes" that the found songs were. Those kinds of songs became my mission. Sandy pretty mush told me the way to credibility as a folksinger might be to get out on the road and meet the ones on the land and see, first hand, how the details and hardships of life, the topography of the land, the historical background, the loves and hates and heartfelt desires of the folks there and then, as well as before, had shaped these songs into the real documents that they become.
Later on, Sandy would say that he used to tell everyone the same stuff---but that I was the only one who had gone and done it. He wondered if I'd ever forgiven him. From where I sat, though, it all seemed terribly logical. It felt like great advice.
You see, after my mother passed away, Carol and I had a small inheritance. After getting married in 1967, we traveled the first 3 years we were married. We moved, with all our pets and our records, to the Oregon coast and opened our "Folk Art Shop" in Depoe Bay. We loved the coast and the Pacific Northwest---until we ran out of cash and headed back to Chicago where being a folksinger (and not a salmon fisherman or a lumberjack) was, at least, a possibility.
As I said in another post, my father died when I was five. I was sure I had his genes and would depart early -- so we sort of Retired First! Older relatives thought we were irresponsible as all hell, but I just told 'em, "Sandy Paton told me to do it! He gave me permission." ---- Of course, that made it kosher with everyone. ;-) As it turned out, Carol and I are now too ill and out of it to retire meaningfully. We did it right, I've always thought. Tons of good memories.
In Chicago I honed my musical skills a bit---picked my mentors carefully---Pete, Cisco, Paul Durst, Aunt Molly Jackson, Paul Clayton, Bob Gibson, Utah Phillips, Harry Haywire Mack Mcclintock -- and surely Sandy. Sandy became almost a dad to me. The music, the ethics, yes, the politics, the respect and love for the process that mechanized the treasure hunt and the whole gestalt called tradition. I tried to tell Sandy some of that through the years. Why I never told him all of it, I will never know. --- I suspect I always thought there would be time...
Also, in Chicago, all through the 1970s, I did a folk music column for Emily Friedman's grand magazine called Come For To Sing. In several of those I wrote about Sandy Paton---and what he has inspired me. ------ Well, what goes around, comes around. Sandy read some of those columns and began asking around about who this guy was!? Some told him that I was an OK folksinger. Possibly he heard me somewhere too---I don't know. The next thing I DID know was that Sandy wanted me to come and play at the Folk Legacy Folk Festival in Hartford, Connecticut. I was blown away---again, people. I've run out of superlatives to say how much Sandy and Caroline have meant to me. I don't think Sandy had remembered our talks in the Chicago book store. but one thing led to another until, miraculously, Sandy asked me to do a record for Folk Legacy. ---- All I can say is it felt like coming home to be in the great presence of so many people whose music I loved. Gordon, and Ed and Anne and Jonathan Eberhardt, all the folks---Frank Proffitt, Jim Ringer, Edna Ritchie, Sarah Gunning, Arnold Storm, Howie Mitchell, Skip Gorman, Jerry Rasmussen, All the Beech Mountain singers like Lee Monroe Presnell.
I'm tired tonight after trying to write this again after losing it in cyberspace today. Just know that it was better before.
As you people have said, there really are no words to tell Caroline how much she and Sandy have meant in our lives. I've gone on and on here trying to tell you some of it. I see I have left out the late Lee Haggerty who came into Kroch's book store and bought a ton of records from Sandy, and then, sort of funded the beginning of Folk Legacy in Vermont as Sandy's partner. So there. Now I've put Lee here where he belongs.
Time for bed. Love to all---and especially to Caroline, Robin and David. Of course, to Sandy!
Onward, and upward,
Art & Carol Thieme
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