Folk Musician - Autobiography.

Subject: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Tunesmith
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 04:29 AM

There are two parts to this:

First, I'd like a list of folk musicians autobiographies/biographies.

Secondly, who's autobiography(not yet written)would Mudcatters most like to read.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 07:07 AM

I know there are autobiographies of Judy Collins and of Joan Baez. There are many biographies of Bob Dylan. There are a couple of Woody Guthrie (as well as an autobiography). Christy Moore's One Voice: My Life In Song is an autobiography of sorts. Jean Ritchie has an autobiography. Pete Seeger, Stan Rogers, Leadbelly, Lee Hays, Phil Ochs, Dave van Ronk all have biographies (the van Ronk one is pretty much an autobiography).

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Tunesmith
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 07:56 AM

In the UK, Ewan MacColl has a autobiography and there is a biography of Bert Jansch.
Ralph McTell has autobiography but,I believe it covers his life before he became a performer.
I've just read Barbara Dickson's autobiography, which I enjoyed, but, of course, a lot of the book covers her later non-folky career.

I'd love Archie Fisher to write his autobiography.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 07:57 AM

louisa killen

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 09:22 AM

Packie Byrne - Recollections of a Donegal Man

Aly Bain - Fiddler on the Loose - written with Alistair Clark

Roy Williamson - Flower of Scotland: Roy Williamson, My Father, written by Karen Williamson

Joe Holmes - Here I Am Amongst You: Songs, Music and Traditions of an Ulsterman - written by Len Graham

Ewan MacColl - Journeyman: An Autobiography

Eddie Butcher - All the Days of His Life: Eddie Butcher in His Own Words: Songs, Stories and Memories of Magilligan, Co Derry - written by Hugh Shields

Biographies I'd like to read - Hamish Imlach, Archie Fisher, Peter Bellamy, Alex Campbell, Jean Redpath, Peggy Seeger, Marie Little, Rosie Hardman, Dick Gaughan, Brian McNeill, Andy Irvine

Not a musician, but Bill Leader's autobiography would be a great addition to the history of "this sort of" music in the UK. (As if he hadn't done enough already!)

Ross

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 10:20 AM

I love all of them - almost as much as the music.

Christy moore's was good where he told his life story by showing how he had related to various songs. Original.

Society Blues by Elijah Wald - about Josh White is one of my favourites. Also his book on dave Van Ronk is a good read.

Derek Brimstones was quite good - but I wish he had told it like it was.

Ralph McTells two volumes are similarly considerate of the feelings of the living.

Baby Let Me Follow You Down by Ric von Scmidt and Jim Rooney are good.

Bit disappointed by Last Night's Fun was expecting more actual fun for the reader.

Patrick Humphries book about Nick Drake is a very interesting social document. I'm not really convinced by his analysis of drakes personality, but I can see how he might come to think what he does think.

Lots more, but I realise that's just my opinion.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: rumanci
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 11:22 AM

I thought I remembered a previous thread like this although headed biographies rather than specifically autobiographies. Worth refreshing.

Yer tis

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: rumanci
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 11:38 AM

P.S. In answer to the original questions:-

some of my favourites were listed in that previous thread and there are many others here,there and published since that I would really like to get my hands on. I'm currently reading a loaned copy (thanks j) of Warren Zevon's biography "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" which is brutally and starkly honest and a rough read at times though leavened with some sparkling humour too.


whose autobiography would I really like to read?

Bruce Murdoch

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 01:00 PM

Woody had three biographers, Joe Klein, a factual but not perceptive one, Ed Cray who actually knew Woody and wrote a great one, but "Woody, Cisco and Me" by Joe Longhi, a non-musician, gives the most detailed account as to who Woody really was.

There were some of us who knew Woody before he succumbed to Huntington's, singing and playing in tune and on pitch, with clarity and brevity. I had the honor of his calling me one of his pickin' buddies.

Most of his imitators copied the way he sang after he was disabled with his crippling disease.

Many of the autobios on folk singers are whitewashed and glamorized for the star-conscious public.

One guy, not a folksinger but a great musician, Dave Crosby wrote a good one called
"Long Time Coming" because he graphically portrayed the Sixties in an honest way.

I would like to see more of them being written in an honest way.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 01:17 PM

Erik Darling's "I'd Give My Life"

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Elmore
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 02:44 PM

"lonesome Traveler:The Life Of Lee Hays" by Doris Willens, "Paul Clayton and the Folk Song Revival" by Bob Coltman," music From the True Vine", a biography of Mike Seeger by Bill C. Malone, The Tour", a memoir by Bill Staines.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Bert
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 02:51 PM

...Secondly, who's autobiography(not yet written)would Mudcatters most like to read....

All Mudcatters of course. We get snippets of their lives from time to time but it would be great to learn more about our friends.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 04:52 PM

One shouldn't have to list both the subject and the author of autobiographies

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 07:38 PM

Lonesome Traveller is great. You can't help feeling that if more British people knew about the American folk revival and characters like Lee - they would understand the development of their own folk revival better.

The universality of the folk experience, and the sense of a means of expression opening up, is really what makes it so attractive - not the insularity.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 08:28 PM

Shusha Guppy: "The Blindfold Horse" and "A Girl in Paris".

Hamish Imlach: "Memoirs of a Fat Folksinger".

Duncan Williamson: "The Horsieman".

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 09:15 PM

Hamish was great. I read his autobiog. It was quite fun, but I'd love to have understood what made him that sort of musician.

Is it just some great gift that is revealed to you? That unique touch. he was such a neat picker.

You know I saw him just once . I was 19 years old and I was doing this horrendous teaching practice in the coldest winter I can remember in Boston Lincolnshire. Blizzards and black ice for weeks. I woke every morning in my digs and watched the steam from my breathing make a cloud in front of my eyes.

In Boston , they have this Arts Centre converted from an old priory - Black Friars Arts centre. that's where i saw Hamish. that night he played Matchbox Blues by Blind lemon. Nothing like Blind lemon - that's what the traddies never understand - British guitarists make that stuff their own, it becomes British folk music.

i think Hamish must have got the song from Rabling Jack Eliot. Anyway that night I learned the Texas variation on the twelve bar in C (which involves a C9th and A flat and a soprano run - sort of like BLJ's falsetto voice.

I'm still working on it forty three years later, and one day it will be good enough for me to play in public!

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 20 Nov 11 - 09:34 PM

Dick: "One shouldn't have to list both the subject and the author of autobiographies "

Surely that would be more than a bit mystifying, as most people don't include their own name in the title?

Jack: I didn't know Hamish Imlach had produced an autobiography - its full title appears to be "Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice: Reminiscences of a Fat Folk Singer" - first published by Mainsteam Publishing in 1992, ISBN 1851585125, currently available (?! £32) in a new (2010) edition from Gallus Press, ISBN 095659901X.

Ross

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Nov 11 - 02:36 PM

Sringsinger writes:

"There were some of us who knew Woody before he succumbed to Huntington's, singing and playing in tune and on pitch, with clarity and brevity. I had the honor of his calling me one of his pickin' buddies.

Most of his imitators copied the way he sang after he was disabled with his crippling disease."

Frank,

I was under the impression that your encounters with Woody date from around 1953 or 54 in California; from Woody's last great trip west before his hospitalization. A time when he was already well in the grip of his Huntington's disease.

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Nov 11 - 03:01 PM

guest, you are talking to frank hamilton, cop on, and it is hospitalisation wuth an s

Subject: RE: Folk Musician - Autobiography.
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 21 Nov 11 - 05:57 PM

I believe Mr Swarbrick intends to complete an autobiog with the help of Mrs. S. I'd pay £50 for that!