One of the guests was Hedy West. I used to like her style of singing old time songs with a banjo and I was wondering if anyone knew what happened to her. I don't recall hearing of her since the mid-late 60s.

BTW: For those who don't know it, "Rainbow Quest" was a TV show hosted by Pete Seeger in the mid(?) 60s.

Murray

Thanks,

Murray

I sometimes do perform; but I don't champ wildly at the bit to dash about on the road with those good instruments; even though it's fun to sing, and to see people. The road was a delight for the first 10 years, 40 years ago?

My daughter Talitha is 19 and is a senior at the Univ of Penn, studying classics (attic Greek) her father's first field, and playing violin and viola wonderfully, Brahms, Bach, Barber, Bartok - those beautiful "B's" - along with some other composers who strayed farther in the alphabet. Her sleek adult feathers have grown in, and my frayed ones are settling back into putting in orderly and accessible form the documents of my family's music, lives and community that I gathered from 1954 to 1980, the year my grandmother died and my daughter was born.

I also compete with the groundhogs to cultivate my garden. And I play Sandy's old guitar, and my old banjos & piano.

Zip! went the time, Hedy

I am originally from Phila. myself. My late wife was a violinist who studied with in Phila with. Bill DePasquale and Geoffery Michaels for some time. I am sure your daughter would ask "who are they".

I am a graduate of U. of P. myself.

I hope a book comes out of your family documents and music. Your father must have collected some interesting stuff himself.

Murray

Thanks for the welcoming words re current work. I'm aiming to make it a book. My father sang, but his passion was the social conditions of the group of his origin. I'm glad "Cotton Mill Girls" has stuff in it for you.

Phila's a good place; & it's the gentler place in the States for classical string study. It's hard to miss the DePasquale family here. They weren't small to start, and they kept growing. My daughter went to middle & high school will Bill & Gloria's son. Don't know Geoffery Michaels. Talitha studied/studies with Yumi Scott & Syd Curtiss (both also of the POrch & Curtis) & Yayoi Numazawa.

Did you study at Penn in the days Kenny Goldstein was there? Last year the folklore dept got absorbed into the English dept. Therefore Roger Abrahams is now in the Eng dept. Sounds like the prospects for young folklorists has shrunk.

Daughter's phoning. Farewell. Hedy

The rubb of "Larkspur" was stunning dishonesty and disregard for my limited intent.

I had no idea I was being impersonated on the web, that a site had been set up in my name (HedyWest@hotmail.com), that my teenage neighbor had given out his address as mine and had for months sent out mail, received and responded to mail as if he were I.

I still don't know the extent of what I don't know. I steadily learn bits more.

Hedy

How you could just post and have it now inactive seems like voodoo, but Joe must have it figured out. Maybe. I hope. Anyway, just keep posting and whatever you do, follow his instructions. They are probably gibberish but then Joe is a priest wannabe who turned in his knee pads and the old Latin babblespeak habit dies hard.

Spaw (Village Idiot)

Joe, I already told her you were a super human being, faster than speeding byte, more powerful than a Pentium III, able to leap tall piles of Commodore 64's in a single bound..........all that stuff.

But Hedy, its like I said............Humor him and soon you'll be able to be you even though you aren't you at the moment. (Look in a mirror and check on this.....I may be wrong)

Spaw

Joe is a nice, trustworthy, intelligent guy, and he'd never lead you astray. (Cash only please, Joe.)

Who besides me still has the "New Folks" record that Hedy shared with David Gude, Jackie Washington and the Greenbriar Boys?

this uk guy saw her in 65/66 tour and is still in love

cheers

bill

What was the name of the coffee shop in Philly where all the good performers came. The best I can recall it was on Sansom St opposite a bar called "Little Johnnie's". (By the way Little Johnnie was the page who yelled "Call for Phllip Morris" on the adverts.) I almost lived in that coffee shop for some time in the 60s, I can remember what it looked like; but I can't recall its name.

I don't recall the name Kenny Goldstein; but then again, I was a mathematics graduate student.

Abby. The guy who ran the big folk music program was named Joe Zewacky or something like that. I was trying to remember who was there before him. Was it you? (sorry about the thread creep)

Murray

Murray

What a party! Everybody's come! Set this one up on me, Joe. You ARE a heck of a good guy. Catspaw49, I name you Centiscreed, on account of your looooonnnnnng list of postings and your 49 paws. Father Joe was a model guide, crafty and patient with a www-greenhorn squaring her ignorance with a bolshi swagger. At the end of no-purple-paths, I looked in the glass, & it looked like me.

Thank you all for the welcoming words. That was kind.

Abby, did you study with Mac Leach? It IS a sad twist that his separation of folklore at Penn from English has reverted. I think & hope it's no longer possible to divorce folk verse from its music.

Bill D., I'm glad you're keeping life breathed into "..Notion" and "Pans...". My portion of New Folks gives me the willies! I needed a few more years performing before recording! I'm chagrined Welk (who bought the folk portion of Vanguard) has reissued it - or my portion of it - I bumped into it at Amazon.com, where you can hear the stuff, and I mailed them a "Ouch! Don't buy it!" review. Since they're merchants, I reckon they won't post that one. The Greenbrier Boys were grand on that recording, though. I'd be happy if they'd put Johnny Herald singing "Stewball" on each of my tracks.

Mary, what does a former classicist do?

Yes, Joanne, the net changes the world, doesn't it? Just a few seconds, Click, and we're reading the English pages of nzz.ch/online! Hello, again. I don't remember Curly Goss, but I like that name.

Pete Peterson, those German songs, and that German language I was compelled to learn to work on figuring out some contradictions in the adult community that hovered about me when I was little. They knew everything, including when and why the Revolution would come; they crowded into our living room in Douglasville, Georgia (& other places) and they talked very importantly. They were from all over the place, but primarily they came from NYC. They were specific about what was good and what was evil. A big evil was prejudice. I didn't understand if prejudice was evil, how come it was good to be prejudiced against rich people and Germans, as they seemed to be. When I was 9 I visited NYC where one of those important people who knew everything met me and told me, "You're from the South. Are you prejudiced against Negroes." It was clear he had a vision of a stigma on my forehead. He saw me as a member of an evil group; a cousin of a German. It was also clear he was prejudiced. Eventually I went to Germany to try to clear up the confusion. It didn't really clear it up, because things are NOT clear. Much of what those people said was confirmed. But those "important" guys were all wet. That's how I got to those German songs, Pete. (There are some nice ones from Pennsylvania.)

Tangent finished. 5:30 am is a bad time to write!

Shame on me for the screed! Sorry, Catspaw49.

See you later,

Hedy

Duplicate post deleted.
- Joe Offer-

OK, that is the last time I mention the Second Fret on this thread; but I am glad I did let it creep.

Every once a song just grabs me and I try to learn enough of it to perform it at our local informal sessions. Hedy's "Roving Gambler" is one of the current ones although it hasn't seen the light of day yet. I don't play the banjo so it has to fit on the guitar.

Murray

Art Thieme

Hedy: Yes, happily I did a bit of study with the Blessed Leach - but only as an undergrad. I took every class he offered, though, and we talked a good bit. That was the period Goldstein was hanging out regular, Abrahams was a grad student & Lomax was a PhD candidate. That last was a bit of a joke but he needed the Credentials to get grants. He did take it seriously, though. Greenhaus was there somewhere but we never met.

Art, were you a student at Chicago? If you were, what were you studying other than their famous core.

Bob, I wrote you a separate note.

Fall's here.

Hedy

Nope, I wasn't a student at U. of Chicago. But I did attend the U. of Illinois at Navy Pier (then). We used to say it was the only university that could be torpedoed. I did manage to get to the first 7 U. of Chi Fests and many after 191970. Even eas on a few of 'em.

Didn't do well at school at all until I found the University Of The Open Road. Took my instruments and hit the proverbial hot dusty road for the next 40 years (hurt my hand) until health (actually lack of health) told me to quit. And I know what you mean about the road getting old quick. When I was 20, it was great. Even past 40 and 50. Pushin' 60, I can't believe I did it anywhere near as long as I did. Must've loved the music. Yep, that's what it was that made me go the course, I'm sure. It was really the 'road less travelled'.---------"And that has made all the difference."

Am really looking forward to the CDs release! Glad you're here. Right now, if I've got anything, I've got too much time on my hands. For years the words, "

Art Thieme

As far as the core at the U. of C. goes, there's an ominous sculpture to that first nuclear reactor where Amos Alonzo Stagg football stadium used to be. The reaction was under the stadium. Mandel Hall, where the Folk Fest concerts are STILL HELD every February, is right across 57th Street. (The sculpture is a cross between a surreal mushroom cloud and orbiting nuclear particles. I was glad they made the thing scary.)

What I was trying to say was, For years, on my banjo head, I had the words: THIS MACHINE KILLS TIME.

Art (sheepishly)

What's "qq"?

Hedy

"The Ash Grove" with nary an ash, nor even a tree in sight, let along a grove. Only a Pearl supported by a Forbes in a nondescript structure in a trafficked sprawl where it rarely rains on those micah-sprinkled-stucco-buildings that dry out a southern mountain salamander most at home were the springs break out from vast underground rivers to meet already moist humus, moss, trillium, rhododendron, & old Catawbahs breathing cool clean blue air.

But in trooped Johnny Cash & Bill Monroe & Doc Watson & Stu Jamieson & Clarence Ashley & Roscoe Holcomb (allowed to sing when done being a reflecting-stage-prop for his owner) & Cousin Emmy (whose histing her skirt & peeing in the sink & talking of "poontang" was what was expected of her by Scruggs & Flatt, who knew her from many another dressing room) & many a Carter & Country Joe MacDonald & the Fish & Mable Hillary & Bessie Jones & & & & & &....

The Pearl-supported-by-the-Forbes deepened his sheen with big concerts of Ravi Shankar & Joan Baez...

But the salamander's skin dried out and she wriggled off to wetter climes.

Art Thieme, that's a VERY GOOD last name. Did the "road" ever make you feel your brain was becoming a cauliflower? Perpetual motion like on a caged squirrel's wheel, and all those seductive clappers... If they're right, we surely must be glorious creatures! You don't get softened-up (or down) like that in more standard day-to-day life. I believe it's lethal for them and it's lethal for us, when we start to believe it. It's a con-trail for everybody. The performers, their audience; the celebrities, their adorers; the politicians, their convinced supporters; royalty, their bamboozlees, etc & so on.

It's late/early again!

Night,

Hedy

That's an improved "variation on a theme": THIS MACHINE KILLS TIME.

Hedy

Murray (Admitting he never was on the road by necessity.)

Center for Folklore and Ethnography Graduate Program in Folklore/Folklife

So it's at least recognized as a "program" if not a whole department. It may be there's no undergraduate dep't or major but I guess that's the same as it was way back. PhD courses and just "classes" (I hope) for undergrads. There's at least one full-time staff. The Penn website also gives: "The Undergraduate Program in Folklore and Folklife (Folklore Minor)" There are quit a few classes offered including "Issues in Folklore Theory." Hmmm. What issues could there possibly be?

Pete, I think the greater the distance into memory the better the sound of me on "New Folks". My narcissism begins to dance with the Topic records, and gets carried away with "From Granmaw and Me" that I'm preparing for 1st issue now. Thanks for the "pp" explanation. Was there a specific lily who got gilded at Penn in that age? Or do you think of the whole place as getting that treatment? I met that flak about studying German, and about our own prejudices.

Abby, that "issues.." leaves one thinking.

Hedy

Thanks, folks!

katlaughing

Where was that cosmic coffee housed? So much coffee, so many houses, so many songs ago. One might turn dreary & dream of measuring out one's life in coffee houses. Or in pubs floating in smoke. Or Kleintheater all whitewashed in stone cellars where pre-Americans stream in for wine & Kultur, even for wild & wooly American germinal Kultur. They look close & are mostly gracious - in Holland they turn into swarming bees between every song - in Germany they can get well lubricated & raucous - in Sweden thoughtful & melancholy - We take their money & look close in return. Everyplace feels more like home than Los Angeles. I feel like a Swede tonight. Morose.

Sandy, you're gracious to have overlooked my screwy syntax. I got carried away ...

Abby, I don't understand how those academic divisions work; What does a "center" do, I wonder. Was there a "center" before the reorganisation, I also wonder.

Hedy

Hedy, back in '63 or so I heard you at -- I think -- one of the late afternoon $1 concerts at Town Hall in NYC and you played/sang a hauntingly memorable The Brown Girl. The tuning I worked out when I tried to replicate your version was a open "d" with a high tuned fifth string and duplicating drone effect on the second and third: aDAAD. I love the way it sounds but I've always been curious: was that really the tuning you used?

I've long enjoyed your music, Hedy, thank you.

Guest, Pete Peterson - Here's some history, I hope, on:

Barlow Knives

Sorry to add to the thread creep.

Alice

Everyone carried a pocketknife when I was a child. It was always coming in handy, to cut into a crab-apple, for example, before you dipped it into a palmfull of salt and downed it, or just whittling on a stick, or infinite other applications. The most common and reasonably priced brand was made by the Barlow company. You could get them almost everywhere, too. My grandmother stocked them in her store, as did the other merchants I was aware of. My dad always had one in his pocket.

Hedy

By the way, thread creep continues, does everyone know that the pen knives featured in so many songs was the knife kept on hand by the literate to sharpen their quil pens. That is why only the upper class kill with a pen knife in the old songs. The lower class had to rely on other deadly instruments.

Never get married to a stock or to a banjo. Keep yr eye peeled on the horizon.

Guest Fretless,

"$1 concerts" has a marvellous sound, no? D, as tonic, was close. I believe I always used C#/Db as tonic, i.e. on the long neck capoed at the 4th fret. Tuned: G#C#G#C#D#; more straighforwardy, GCGCD all raised 1/2 step. But, it's good that you devise your own tuning. Those tunings with triplicate-pitch can be wonderful: viz., your ADAAD. I like to use GCGCC and to play melody on 2 strings, either at unison or parallel octaves. Not always "pretty", but relentless, and can express horror of the insensate.

"Surreal," Guest? "otherworldly?" I have dirt under my nails and between my toes. Better get busy with the Barlow knife. From under the nails, anyhow. Ouch, re the toes.

That's interesting, Naemanson: "... That is why only the upper class kill with a pen knife in the old songs..."

Hedy

Spaw

Are you bringing out the worst in me?:

"...Thong underwear..." "What's that?" said she. "A Monica flip, of course." said he,

A Monica flip, a Monica flap, The tiniest thing, the skinniest strap,

"Pop!" went the thing on her fat young thigh, - It takes far less to catch that guy's eye -

"Snap!" it sounded on her juicy haunch - And Bubba was off to his usual raunch.

Lov-el-y, lov-el-y, furry and fair, Our pre-zee-dent preyed and swizzled down there.

And where was the wifey? Where was she? The wifey cried, "Foul! Con-speary-assy!"

Certainly NOT Hedy

Monica winked; Our Commander blinked

for the Constitution, best turn to Nat Hentoff.

Hedy

You may have dirt under your nails and between your toes (careful with that blade) but your way with words has more in common with the sublime than with the ordinary. Especially when the reader is ignorant of that which spawned them.

A good day to you.

With Pat Moynihan let's minimize the classified:

I haven't relistened, but the tuning was bound to have been GCGCD (2nd string raised 1/2 step from the standard G tuning). GCGCD is one of those tunings that get called (strangely, to my mind) "modal". Strange, both because tunings are pitch-clusters, not scale arrangements, and because all the scale arrangements we accompany with tunings fall into some modal-pattern (or our reconstructed guess as to which patterns were called which mode-name). The conventional major scale we call ionian and the minor scale we generally call aeolian. Why do we then leave them out of category "modal". Are we really shortening "modal" to mean those less-often used modes?

I believe I frailed rather than strummed "Pretty Polly". I certainly do now.

Guest, will you forgive me if I ask whether that could be synonymous with "Ignorance is bliss."

Hedy

Hedy, Maggie Holtzberg used to live here in GA and moved to Boston. She was fiddlin' a storm. They had a group here doing Celtic (Irish mainly) called the New Road which was great. They disbanded. Two of the members went to Ireland to learn more.

Frank

I'll have to try The Brown Girl in the more typical, old-timey gCGCD tuning, although I admit it's going to be hard to shake my ear off the now-accustomed dime of the triplicate aDAAD. Another tune that sounds really fine in the aDAAD triplicate is Bascomb Lamar Lunsford's Swannoah Tunnel.

And for another interesting triplicate tuning, try gGGBD, with the fourth string dropped an octive to serve as a low drone. Makes for an appealing version of Melvin Wine's "Wine's Delight."

A few years ago Ed Pearl tried to revive the Ash Grove on the pier at Santa Monica, but it was a short-lived venture.---John

Bill Clifton lives in Mendota, Va. His Email "elfltd@3Wave.com"/ I enjoyed those tours and recordings with Bill and his family. It's fun to sing with Bill.

Hedy

I can imagine Bill luxuriating in the velvet of the tropics. He plays velvet, sings velvet, talks velvet, too. The Carters are part of the core of his life. He lives cheek-on-jowl with them. Or, with Jeanette.

Hedy

Jon

Hedy....DO you know about HearMe? If you have a PC and not Mac, as Jon said, you can join in a live song circle. Its not hard to load or anything and its fun listening to someone in Australia, then England, then here, then wherever. If you have a mic, you can sing some too, which I know would be a treat for all of us.....You might get a big kick out of it. 'Course you can get a big kick out of a mule too, but HearMe is a lot less painful.

Spaw

I guess that's yet another disadvantage of using a Mac. Maybe it's time to change to PC. HearMe sounds fine.

Hedy

I will be sure to get the word out if I hear anything

That obstruction's more formidable than the ones I bump into, like "error 11...restart".

Hedy

Martin Carthy was through here last week, and mentioned that you taught him the tune which he uses for "Famous Flower of Serving Men", but he doesn't remember the tune's original name. Do you? It's the same one, roughly, that Fairport Convention used as the beginning of the instrumental medley following "Matty Groves", which they call "The High Road to Linton".

Peace, Paul

JAB

Art

Met and heard Sheila Kay Adams at a writer's conference in Greeneville, Tennessee last September. Sheila Kay's a wonderful storyteller and singer of the old pure southern appalachian ballads. Frails pretty, too.

Glad to hear Hedy West is well.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: New Hedy West CDs,br> From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27-Jan-00 - 01:07 PM
Shop: Saro , Pretty Saro

"Best of Hedy West" and "Pretty Saro" are now available from Camsco. If you wish to order direct, you can call Camsco at 800/ 548-FOLK (3655). Mention Mudcat and Mudcat will get a cut of the proceeds.

If you haven't heard Hedy, you should. She's a fine singer and a wonderful banjo picker.

I am the daughter of one of your classmates, Shirley Bandy, with whom you attended school in Murphy NC around 1954 or 1955. She has talked of you and your music often and I was so excited to find you here. I too wrote to the HedyWest@hotmail address only to find it inactive. I know my mother would love to hear from you if you have the time to email her. Thank you so much. I plan to purchase some of your CD's for her birthday in June. She will be so surprised! The email address is ourhyacinth9@aol.com.

Thanks again, Vicki Chesterfield

There are very few people in this world who bear the name of Joe Offer. I highly doubt that this message was posted by one of them. I am quite certain that "Sid" is the same person as the Joe Offer impostor.
-Joe Offer-

Mary Katherine

28 May - well, I checked with him by e-mail, and it seems to check out. I wonder if we're related. I met an Offer I wasn't related to only once. If my questioning his identity was offensive, I'm sorry.
-Joe Offer-

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Thanks.
-Joe Offer-