Good December Morning folks. I've been reading the thread on "PBS nostalgia folk fundraising," and it got me thinking about other attempts to put unpopular music on the tube.

I never saw any of the Pete Seeger "Rainbow Quest" shows when they came out, but rented ALL of them last year from the library. Great music, both from Pete and his guests, although a more awkward host would have been hard to find. Watching my life-long hero attempting an interview with The Greenbriar boys was positively painful, ha ha!

Here in Canada we had "Let's Sing Out" hosted by Oscar Brand. It ran for a few years, had some reasonably non-commercial acts (I was on it a couple of times) but unfortunately the Producer apparently doesn't want to make the tapes available. Too bad.

Jack Linkletter's "Hootenanny" was a totally weird experience for me. I was very aware that they had blacklisted Pete Seeger (the official explanation was that he 'couldn't hold an audience', ha ha!!) so I really DIDN'T wanna watch it...but I DID. Faithfully. Just too hooked on the music I guess. Saw Bob Gibson, The New Lost City Ramblers, Judy Collins, and a shit load of commercial acts like Joe and Eddy, The Backporch Majority, Nice Crusty Mistrials, Serendipity Singers etc. I even bought the "Hootenanny Magazine". Probably learned the names of every member of the Wayfarers, Brothers Four, and other groups.

It must have been difficult for the producers to tread that very thin line...getting as much dollar value from "the folk scare" while trying to downplay that the core of this movement was bent on changing a whole social structure.

Remember this was only a few years after Dylan was told not to sing "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" on Ed Sullivan and told THEM to go F**k themselves.

I did three separate TV series in Toronto, on (pretty) traditional folk music (with SOME singer songwriters) and fortunately remembered to get at least one copy of each show (think there were about 20 shows in all) for my own archive. I was pretty happy with the shows, but they featured local guests only.

Probably the strangest TV 'folk' experience I've ever had (I think Peter T has also seen this) was a CBC (in black and white) show featuring the young Bob Dylan in a set made up to look like a BUNK HOUSE IN A LOGGING CAMP (!!) Bobby wandered around tables annoying actors playing tough loggers, with "The Times They Are a Changin"....just the thing that a REAL logger would wanna hear! A fitting close to the show might have been the loggers throwing Bobby's Gibson on the fire and getting him to "squeal like a pig"!!

Cheers

Rick