Subject: RE: Bob Shane is done after 47 years
From:
Stringsinger
Date: 14 Jan 13 - 06:02 PM
"If it weren't for the commercial interest that developed, we may not have had a folk revival."
I don't agree with this statement. Folk music was never dormant before the commercialization of it. There was plenty of interest in it, much of it fostered
by Left Wing activists which spawned many folklorists like Archie Green, Alan Lomax,
Ken Goldstein, and musician performers such as Pete Seeger, Bob Miller, Paul Robeson, Bess Lomax Hawes, Hally Wood, Aunt Molly Jackson, Florence Reese, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie and early Burl Ives, Josh White, Rolf Cahn, Barbara Dane, Jo Mapes, Theo Bikel, Odetta, Cynthia Gooding, Tony Saletan, Derroll Adams, Ernie Lieberman, Win Stracke, Leon Bibb, Betty Sanders, Vera Hall, Richard Dyer Bennet, Tom Glazer, The Almanac Singers, Washington Square on sunday afternoons, many artists on Library of Congress field recordings such as McKinley Morganfield (AKA Muddy Waters) and the list is long with too many names to mention.
I argue that because a folk ballad is a form of journalism, sometimes highly political and controversial, the rise of the commercial aspects of folk music owe much to musical political activists like me. Remember that SingOut! was named after the Pete Seeger, Lee Hays song "If I Had a Hammer". Also, that the big hit for the KT was Bess Lomax Hawes and Jackie Alpert's song, "Charley on the M.T.A." which was written as a campaign song for Walter J. Obrien, Independent Progressive Party candidate for Boston's mayoral race and was introduced on a sound truck to promote him.
Sam Hinton in California recorded Vern Parlow's "Old Man Atom" which was squashed by the FCC at the time for being too "communist". There was a substructure for the Folk Revival that predates the commercialism of the Sixties built from coast to coast by the Left. The vitality of the music was responsible for its popularity even before anyone had heard of the Weavers. It was precisely that folk music was a reaction to the commerciality of the music business that propelled its interest even into rock and roll. The Left was the perfect vehicle to foster this interest being anti-authoritarian, anti-commercial, and concerned with songs that had messages. Pete Seeger was a one man PR campaign for folk music and all the commercial groups that came after him owe him.
Union rallies often, though not plentifully, featured folk performers. We played events for Progressive functions raising money for various causes. In those days,
we called them "bookings".
What the great "Folk Scare" as Dave Van Ronk called it, was just the fact that because of the earlier vitality and interest, there were those who could cash in on it such as Al Grossman and other musical business managers. (He put together Peter, Paul and Mary.)
Also, the singer/songwriter was an outgrowth of publishers who found they didn't have to pay royalties to earlier substantial ASCAP lyricists and composers.
There was a folk revival taking place long before it hit the charts. The KT found a way to fuse the revival on a commercial level by combining it with the frat house audience. They just stepped in front of the parade.
If anything, the commercialization of "Mighty Wind" folk music sapped the vitality of the growth and weakened a real interest in authentic traditional music for many years. But it was always there and always will be regardless of who cashed in on it.
Bess Lomax Hawes started the first folk song guitar classes in the country and the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago still teaches many people about the medium, all before the commercialization of the "Folk Scare".
The revivalist aspect of folk can be attributed to a political "socialist" outlook typified by the early issues of SingOut! under the editorial policy of Irwin Silber.
Pete Seeger found his wings as a performer singing for the Henry Wallace campaign in front of thousands.
I give the ownership of the Revival to the Left, rather than the commercial music hucksters.
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sj
