Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s

Subject: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,BASSMAN
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 04:23 PM

I have noticed for a long time that it is nearly impossible to hear live performances where oldie folk songs (ie Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary among others) is performed. (that is of course except the original artists still performing at large venues) I'm talking of club sized venues. Recently I have joined a group that had played back in the 60's and are reviving this music, and so far we have had terrific reviews, but the point is that everyone says "We just don't hear this style of music anymore" There seems to be a tremendous interest albiet silent for these great old songs. Anyone have an opinion?

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: smallpiper
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 04:29 PM

There seems to be a revival going on in 60's and 70's folk style songs at a session last night there were at least 3 lindisfarne songs sung.

Good stuff bring it on back

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Bassman
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 04:36 PM

I should have made myself clear, smallpiper. I was refewrring to American Folk music. I enjoy Celtic traditional music tremendously, and have spent some terrific times listening to sessions in Doolin and other places in Ireland and Scotland, but somehow we in America have not revived this music as you folks have in Ireland and the UK. We are doing a great arrangement of Roddy McCorley, however!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: M.Ted
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 04:48 PM

You just started a revival, Bassman--groups come and go, and, for good or ill, the music that is performed in public depends more on what performers are interested in playing than in what audiences are interested in hearing--chances are, no one even knows what music people want to hear until they applaud--

"Folk" performers evolved from pop or classical performers who performed pop or classical arrangements of "folk" songs to Weavers/Kingston Trio "one style fits all" kind of playing to protest singers to Dylanesque psycho-balladeers to Seventies Middle-of-the-Road "acoustic" to a revival in interest in traditional playing and singing styles, to the current singer-songwriter stuff--the thing is that the performers move on to new and allegedly better things, but the audiences remember what they love forever--

Years ago, there was an old guy who played at the Alameda flea market, and he wrote out the names of every song that he knew on giant pieces of cardboard for people to request--Pop Goes the Weasel and Camptown Races were very popular--and, believe me, no one had played either tune in a Bay Area club in living memory--

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: UB Ed
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 05:05 PM

Tapping into nostalgic baby boomers; of course you'll have good response to those songs played on the radio in that day. Marketing, marketing, marketing. But the music was good. It'd be interesting to see the reaction from some lesser known songs from that period.

You gotta do "I'm in Love with a Big Blue Frog" and "Weep for Jamie."

Where ya'll playing?

Ed

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 05:10 PM

You are 100% correct about folk Singing at clubs. Yup it's back but you are wrong about the type or era of songs thats popular. Anyone is fine, also it helps if the songs allow the audience to join in. People like good singing as much or more than good songs!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 05:11 PM

I think that as the folk music "movement" moved away from the "Great Folk Scare" of the 60's and more into tradition-based modes such as bluegrass, old-time and Irish music, the music of Kingston Trio, PP&M et al fell into disregard among many active folkies. Now that forty years have passed since their initial appearance, many of those 60's songs have achieved the respectability that seems to naturally come with age. They just don't seem as "cheesy" now as they did twenty years ago. At one time, I wouldn't have done "Puff the Magic Dragon" to save my life. Now, I'd do it without hesitation.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mudlark
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 05:17 PM

Haha...I still draw the line at Puff, but have always sung the Border Ballads and American folk music that was sung and made popular in the last 50's/early 60's. Since I still know that (large) body of work by heart I still play it a lot (whereas w/memory aging I have a harder time now memorizing) and it seems to me there is a growing interest again. There was a time that to call oneself a folksinger was to empty the room!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: CraigS
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 05:20 PM

Go back thirty years and that stuff was so common you didn't want to sing it - if you did try, you'd work up a couple of songs, get to a club and someone else would sing them right before it was your turn - then you'd be scratching your head for something to sing. Luckily, most of those people are now pipe-and-slippered in front of the TV, so you can take a chance on it these days!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 05:42 PM

Thanks UB ed for the counsel! Those tunes need reviving, but there are so so many that do! We are in Dalton, GA about 100 miles north of Atlanta near Chatanooga. Good bluegrass country, but the oldie folk music is, so far, a hit!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 06:28 PM

By the way, MudLark, where do you play? I'd like to catch a show!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: smallpiper
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 07:10 PM

I guess you've not heard of Lindisfarne then - not just an island off the coast of Northumberland - but also a 70's band that loosley (very they included a mandolin player) fitted into the genre of folk rock and sang their own compositions. Songs like Fog on the Tyne, Lady Elenor and Hey Mr Dream Seller ( a song about drugs if ever I heard one) being in the pop charts. They seem to be a bit on the revivalists list. Sorry never heard of most of the chaps you're talking about.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 08:09 PM

smallpiper, where do you hail from? I was actually in Lindesfarne a couple years ago, right out from Berwick on Tweed, if I remember, and I wondered after you said that if I had missed a music association there! We have a very good Scottish heritage celtic band here in the states hailing from, of all places, Louisiana. They are called Smithfield Fair, and quite good.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 01:20 AM

A singer I know sings a lot of songs that 'no one' ever sings anymore and the people love it. Songs like 'Home on the Range', 'You are My Sunshine', 'Red River Valley', 'Grandfather's Clock', 'Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kitbag', lots of others. She sings from many different eras and genres and artists: Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, John Denver, Patsy Cline, Bill Staines, Jo Stafford, Satchmo... Pretty amazing. But what surprises me the most is how many people welcome the songs they learned as children. They sing along lustily and ask for more.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Taliesn
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 02:12 AM

Peter ,Paul & Mary's material is alive and well , but I guess the turning point / decline of folk-civilization was the folk-Pop-izations of "The Mama's and the Papa's" which , I'm sure , will wrinkle a few noses here , but their harmonies are still classic and "Creek Alley " as well-written a folk song ,albeit California-style ,as any written in capturing its *time* and it is still predominantly the vocal harmonies which can be supported by a single guitar as any P.P&M tune.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mudlark
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 03:58 AM

Ebbie...those old childhood songs are the last ones to go, too. Singing in convalescent homes with a large number of dementia and Alzheimers, many of whom can't put together a cohesive sentence, I find they can still sing You are my Sunshine, My Bonny Lies over the ocean, Workin' on the Railroad, etc. Makes me think that music resides in the old brain...

JimmieT...These days I mostly sing on my front porch, out in the country near Paso Robles, CA. But I occasionally do an afternoon gig at a local winery, and I play with a couple of local musicians. They are younger, however, and to my surprise am finding myself playing a lot of Eagles tunes...a far cry from Mary Hamilton!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: smallpiper
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 05:15 AM

I'm from Northumberland out of Irish parents (republicans who came here to help the Brits fight Hittler) but for my sins now live in that mecca for catters - Hull. There will be loads of sites around on Lindisfarne the band - who are no where near as wonderful as Lindisfarne the place - and you will surely be able to hear some of their stuff on MP3.com

When I was small there was a predominance for songs from the north east of England - music hall songs Cushy Butterfield, Lambton worm etc which declined form many people's rep but I noted at Whitby folk week are making a welcome return. So the revival appears to be global.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: alanabit
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:26 AM

The title of Lindisfarne's "Hey Mr.Dream Seller" was actually "Meet Me On The Corner". I am sure the island is a wonderful place and I shall go there when I have a chance. However, in defence of the band, I have to say they were fine musicians and good blokes. I met them in my college days and admired both their music and their decent, unaffected personality. They played what we called folk rock back then. It could be too much rock for some tastes, but there were jigs and reels in there along with Woody Guthrie songs. Wasn't the "Creek Alley" by the Mamas and Papas actually "Creque Alley"?

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Bassman
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 12:14 PM

To Alanabit and others on this thread, I hate to be stupid, but could anyone shed some light on what traditional music is played in England? I have heard several times wonderful Celtic sessions in pubs in Scotland and Ireland, especially County Clare, but is there a significant amount of English music or is the music predominantly of Scot or Irish origin? Sorry again, but maybeI will find out.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 12:36 PM

"I think that as the folk music "movement" moved away from the "Great Folk Scare" of the 60's and more into tradition-based modes such as bluegrass, old-time and Irish music,"

Bluegrass, "traditional"??? Hardly. It's a modern, commercial, consciously designed music, whose originator and general (modern) time of origin are well known. The name refers to the band, The Bluegrass Boys, where it all started. The name of the band does NOT refer to the music, but the other way around.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 01:12 PM

Interesting thread... Just a couple of observations. I was asked to book an opening act for an appearance of the Kingston Trio eight or nine years ago, which I did. I booked Sally Rogers and Howie Bursen, who brought a lot of energy and entertainment on stage and did it with great professionalism. When the Kingston Trio came on, they were so oblivious to the audience that I found it one of the most insulting experiences I've ever had. Their playing was sloppy (even by Kingston Trio standards) they spent way too much time cracking jokes among themselves, hardly acknowledging the audience's existence, they cracked each other up laughing how drunk they'd gotten the night before, and punctuated all the self-indulgence by tossing bones to the audience... the music we grew up with. I've never heard anyone get on stage and put so little effort into their music as I did that night. And they didn't need to. I listened to the audience as we were filing out of the auditorium and they were all raving, "Weren't they great!" Talk about Pavlov's dogs! Man!

I don't think I am unnecessarily critical about all of this because I happened to LIKE the Kingston Trio, bought several of their albums and still sing a couple of songs that I learned from them. But, I expect a little more commitment to the music than a lousy lounge singer. They just seemed like a lousy lounge trio, singing folk music. I guess you might say that I didn't enjoy them. :-)

As for us old fogies, when we heard the Kingston Trio and the Highwaymen and the Chad Mitchell Trio and all the rest, it created a fire in us to find the original sources, which we found much more exciting. That's a trip that's hard to reverse. Now, if someone was singing The Ballad Of The MTA and sang it with a freshness and enthusiasm, I'd still probably like it. Maybe a new generation can bring some freshness to those 60's "arrangements" of songs that go back many years before the 60's. Unless you're talking 60's songwriters, there aren't any 60's "folksongs." There are songs that are much older than the 60's that were popularized briefly in the sixties. Those songs have continued to be sung since the folk boom fizzled. It's just that they're more likely to be sung in a pre-60's style in folk circles.

Many years ago, I participated in a terrific workshop titled "Songs We All Know But Are Too Cool To Sing." I think that every folk festival should have that workshop. I did I've been Working On The Railroad, and everyone sang along, lustily. But, the topper for me was my old friend Jerry Rau (he of no discernible ego) who sang A, B,C,D,E,F,G and asked everyone to sing along with him. And everybody did. There wasn't a cool person left standing. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 06:14 PM

Actually, you can go back further than the Sixties.

I first got interested in folk music way back in 19 aught 52. Back then there were no more than about half a dozen of us in this area. When we said "folk music," people thought we were talking about "Country and Western." Although lots of people liked to listen to us sing our weird songs, most people thought we were kind of peculiar. Our sources for songs were pretty skimpy compared to now. There was no internet and no DigiTrad. All there was were half a dozen Burl Ives records (10" LPs), one or two apiece by Richard Dyer-Bennet, Susan Reed, Cynthia Gooding, the Weavers, Josh White, and a well-stocked record store might have a couple of Folkways records such as Pete Seeger's Darling Corey album, and maybe even a Leadbelly. The Anthology of American Folk Music came out about that time, but most record stores didn't stock it and most of us didn't even know about it. Printed sources we knew about were pretty much limited to Carl Sandburg's American Songbag, Lomax's Folk Song USA, and one or two paperbacks like The Burl Ives Song Book. Some of us dug around the public and university libraries and discovered all kinds of good stuff.

Several songs were considered "standard repertoire." Songs like Down in the Valley, On Top of Old Smoky, John Henry, Lord Randal, Barbara Allen, The Streets of Laredo, Greensleeves, Black is the Color, Venezuela, The Drunken Sailor, The Midnight Special, and a couple dozen others. Some of us who frequented the libraries discovered recordings by people liked Frank Warner and Bascomb Lamar Lunsford and even more Folkways records, plus a few field recordings. We learned songs from these to add to our "standard repertoires." Then came Harry Belafonte in the mid-Fifties, The Kingston Trio in 1958 with Tom Dooley (which I had already learned from a Frank Warner record), and then all hell broke loose. The Great Folk Scare took off.

There was a sudden outpouring from radios and juke boxes of songs that most people had never heard before. Many were traditional, but a lot of them were brand new songs written to sound like folk songs. Aspiring singers newly introduced to folk songs usually didn't bother with the older recordings, especially those scratchy old field recordings, they used Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, Peter Paul and Mary, New Christy Minstrels, and Joan Baez records as their sources. There were new songs everywhere—and a rapid turnover in songs. It wasn't long before it reached a point where if you started to sing something like Greensleeves, John Henry, Lord Randal, or (God help you!) On Top of Old Smoky, people would sit there and groan and roll their eyes. These songs had become too familiar and since there was a whole bunch of new songs coming out, these old war horses had to go. The sad result is that I rarely, if ever, hear any of these songs sung anymore. And there are hordes of relatively younger singers of folk songs who not only don't sing them, but many have never heard them—or even heard of them.

Now, I know that there are those who would say, "Well, that's just the folk process. Songs come and go." And they usually add, "but the good ones last." Well, that doesn't quite wash. Suddenly thrust into the realm of "Pop Music," folk songs and ballads that had lasted for sometimes hundreds of years were subjected to the principles that govern "popular" music. The world of Pop music deals with "disposable" songs. Once they become familiar enough have made a pile of money for somebody, they have to be tossed in the Dumpster to make room for the next batch of "hit songs," so that more records get cut and sold and more money gets made. You can't have old songs clogging up radio station turntables and record store bins. As a result, as the Sixties progressed, a lot of very good traditional songs got tossed along with the schlock stuff. If you hauled a song back out of the Dumpster and tried to sing it, the eye-rollers went to work, sighing heavily and looking bored. More often than not, these were other singers! Not only did a lot of traditional material suffer that fate, but a lot of pretty good newly written stuff went the same route. It seems to be an aspect of our "disposable" culture.

Well, I'm all for recycling! I've long thought I would like to put together a concert—and possibly a CD—entitled "Oh, NO! Not THAT again!" made up of songs like those I've listed above. These are good songs, and it's damned well time people started doing a little Dumpster-diving!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Mike Nichols
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 06:46 PM

My friend Pat has a great show with a ton of listners. It's called Roots Rock Live and it debuts for the year on August 5th! Check him out on radio.babson.edu @ 6pmEST...He's had Jonatha Brooke on, who I love!

If his show is any indication, folk and folk rock are very popular

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: BH
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 06:57 PM

My .02 cents worth to this really interesting thread.

Back when the Kingston Trio was a rage I always wondered why---they were not traditional, they were not of the quality and commitment of the Weavers(or other people from PPM, Ochs, etc)---basically they were "commercial pop folk" with a nice sound. My opinion.

Now as to the "folk scare" of the '60s---dare I say--Kumbaya. Does anyone dare do it anymore? Lovely piece---why is it used now as a metaphor for the "corny 60s"?

Any song can be used and recycled in many versions---and bring joy and meaning to new generations of listeners and performers.

BIll Hahn

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: curmudgeon
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:07 PM

I don't know if I'm showing my age or my title, but I would rather not see a remake of the popular folk gruops of the '60s. Oddly enough, Bassman, who started this thread explains it thus, "We are doing a great arrangement of Roddy McCorley, however! "

Now there's nothing wrong with an arrangement, but that's about all these aforementioned groups wre about. Take a good old song (read no royalties to pay) slicken it up, and shove it up the ears of the unknowing public. And make a lot of money.

I was fortunate enough to know a little bit about folk music prior to the Great Scare. My grandfather knew a couple of songs, I found more in old song books while learning piano, I got a couple of recordings of Ewan macColl and A.L. Lloyd while in high school, and a teacher introduced me to an early recording by Frank Warner.

I admit, I did listen to the Kingston Trio, the Highwaymen, et al., but if I heard a song I liked, my first impulse was to find out the sources of the song, the history, and the correct text. For the big companies to copyright a PD song, changes had to be made.

If you want a good example of how this worked, find a copy of the Tradition LP, "Come Fill Your Glass With Us," Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers. Now after enjoying these straightforward renditions of trad songs, listen to what happened after Mitch Miller and his gang got hold of them.

I do have friends and acquaintances who still perform in this '60s manner:more power to them. But I personally feel a closer rapport with the countryman who commented to Vaughan Williams at a professional presentation of folk songs,"I suppose it's nice for him to have the pianoforte, but it does make it awkward for the listener."

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: michaelr
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:18 PM

Being somewhat younger than the average Mudcatter and having come of age in the early 70's, I remember PP&M, The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, The Clancy Brothers, and other sweater-type folkies being regarded among my age group as desperately unhip. We wanted nothing to do with that -- it wasn't rock'n'roll!

Everyone tends to regard with fond and sentimental affection the songs they heard and loved during their formative years -- the popular music that was played on the radio. If you grew up with schmaltzy pap like "The Sound of Music", you can love even that, as evidenced here in some recent threads. And if you grew up in the 80s, you may well still like the metal trash of the big hair bands.

The point is, the phenomenon has nothing to do with the quality of the music in question, and everything to do with memories.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:21 PM

Regarding to Don Firth, I say let me at that dumpster! There are a lot of fine old tunes that people still love to hear, if they are performed well. to curmudgeon, the point is that Roddy McCorley is a great song with a great message, as are any number of Kingston Trio songs, and songs fromthe the 16th centuryto the present. Good music is timeless. Why should old music not be revived? Shakespeare is still popular in theater!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:26 PM

Exactly so, curmudgeon!!

Dialog heard in a Seattle coffeehouse in 1959:--

(Guy requests song. I sing it.)
Guy: "But that's not the way the Kingston Trio does it."
Me: "Sir, first of all, there are three of them and only one of me. Second, I learned that song before the members of the Kingston Trio even met. And third, I learned it from the same record they learned it from!"

Similar dialogs happened fairly frequently, and I was not the only one.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: curmudgeon
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:47 PM

Jimmyt -- I fear you have missed my point. A good song is a good song. But when it gets buried in arrangements, overorchestrations, sweet melodious harmonies, the song gets lost. The listener is more absorbed by the arrangement and loses sight of the message.

Listen to the words, listen to the tune -- all else is superfluous -- Tom

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:59 PM

Something to think about, but I for one enjoy the harmonies perhaps as much as the words, but I guess I am from more of a musical rather that a poetic background. I sometimes get caught up not paying enough attention to the message! Point well taken!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:59 PM

MichaelR: I've always felt that you could probably guess someone's age within an accuracy of five years if You asked them what music they loved the most. It's usually the music that they heard when hormones started raging. That's another thread: songs as a memory of the onslaught of puberty. Get married and have you first kid, and you'r out washing the car listening to Chuck Berry, or Jimi Hendrix, or maybe by now, even Nirvana. That's why I was so amazed that the people who came to the Kingston Trio concert that was so slap-dash, when they thought sounded great. They were in the back seat of their 1958 Chevy Impala, or staying up all night talking in their dorm room. Nothing wrong with any of that. You can guess my age pretty closely when I tell you that I was completely floored the first time I heard Gee by the Crows, and Earth Angel by the Penguins (not the Crew Cuts.)

It's not the songs that died when the folk Boom ran out of steam. It was the novelty of hearing them on top 40 radio. Personally, I have no desire to hear Highwaymen or Chad Mitchel Trio arrangements of traditional songs any more. I've looked at a collection of folk songs from the 60's titled Bleeker and McDougald. I was there when all of that was happening, and I was very excited about it. Now, when I look at the recordings, they don't interest me. I'd rather pull out my Old Time Music At Clarence Ashley's or my Watson Family albums and listen to them.

That said, I agree that the old songs should be resuscitated. I remember in the 80's hesitating doing The Cuckoo, because everyone had heard it to death by Clarence Ashley. But, I did it at a coffee house and it was a new song to half the people there. It's not just On Top Of Old Smokey. How about stuff like Wagoner's Lad, Little Sadie, Stackerlee, and all the other great songs that (almost)no one does any more? Why limit yourself to reviving The Kingston Trio's repertoire and arrangements? The SONG'S the thing.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mark Ross
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 08:33 PM

I'm with Jerry, the best part of the THE GREAT FOLK MUSIC SCARE was that it encouraged so many of us to dig deeper. There are songs that need to be sung, not just because they are old, but because they have something important to say. I just found out that Childs' criteria for ballads was if he could trace them prior to 1475(the date of the introduction of the printing press to England). These songs have lasted that long because they mean something! And to most of those youngsters hearing them for the 1st time, we are as close to the tradition as they are likely to get. Jerry, as to what you say about dating someone by their musical taste, last year at a Canadian festival, I bet Ken Perlman who was leading the banjo workshop, that I could tell within 2 years when another player started learning the banjo by his performing style. I won. The fellow sounded "so '60's" that it was so obvious that he had started playing around 1964. His presentation made that obvious.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Amos
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 09:05 PM

Well, for my part I was well into digging deeper by the time the Trio showed on the horizon and I really thought their stuff was slick, over-smart, unfeeling of original context and shallow. I outgrew this rabid superiority compex when I got a little older and realized how much money they made!! LOL!!


A

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Guest:Mudlark
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 09:09 PM

I've played Wagoner's Lad, and Who's gonna shoe your pretty little foot, and Shadygrove, to name 3 of about a million--give or take--of old songs of their ilk for 40 years. And you are right, Jerry, to most people now they are brand new.

I agree also that Leadbelly, Doc Watson, the Carter Family and the songs they sing/sang will be around long after the likes of the K Trio are forgotten. Tho I listened to the K. Trio, et al, I thought they were uncool and dorky compared to MacCall, Cynthia Gooding, etc. A little like the Boston Pops doing the Beetles...

Don Firth...great story!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: John Hardly
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 09:57 PM

Hey, Weavermania is performing (in Chicago and elsewhere)...

Can PeterPaul&Maryania be far behind......ChadMitchelltrioania?......BarryMcGuireania?

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Art Thieme
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 09:58 PM

Early Bob Gibson was deeply rooted in the tradition. His arrangements (chord changes) showed up in MANY other folk scare set lists. Some even paid Bob for those. The Limelighters did a huge batch of 'em----as did the Chad Michell 3 especially when Jim Roger McGuinn was their intrumental backup.

FOLK ERA RECORDS (check out their site) has issued a ton of the old Folk Scare K.T. stuff----and the new stuff too by John Stewart, Eric Darling etc. etc. etc. Critic's Choice CD catalogue has good collections too.-----------One o' these days some retro company might even buy up and put out my LPs on a compilation CD or two. (**BG**)

Out of Chicago, right now---as we speak----there is a fine group called WEAVERMANIA. Michael Smith does Lee Hays' bass parts, Mark Dvorak does Pete Seeger's role on banjo, Michael's wife Barbara Barrow does Ronnie Gilbert's parts and Tom Dundee does Fred Hellerman's guitar work and singing parts. Recently Pete Seeger joined them in their concert at the Chicago Historical Society and radio station WFMT-FM broadcast it live. I just sent a copy of the part of that concert I managed to tape record to Roy Harris in Cardiff---U.K. (Roy is Burl here at Mudcat.) Whoops, maybe I shouldn't've let that out. Just consider it a verbal cyber-fart.-------------Roy is a great fan of the "good aspects" of the American revival in those years-----as am I a huge fan of those Ewan and Bert Lloyd and Isla Cameron and Peggy Seeger and Roy Harris and Lou Killen and Jeanie Robertson incandescent years. Some of us folkies did o.k. stuff me thinks. And it WILL get noticed down the line somewhere. What goes around, comes around ! As with CDs, history repeats, but it costs twice as much every time around----or so it seems.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Art Thieme
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:02 PM

John Hardly,

You beat me to it. But I gave some detail -- and that delayed my post.**BG**

Art

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:44 PM

How come nobody is doing rock and roll and rhythm and blues like Pat Boone did, anymore? :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: M.Ted
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:57 PM

Thanks for your comments, Don--very true, and very entertaining as well!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:03 PM

Thanks for your input everyone! This is my first post on this (or any other folk) site so I appreciate your being kind to a novice. I love folk music, but I am a relative newcomer to it. I will take much from your opinions BASSMAN

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: bflat
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:37 PM

Hey , if it weren't for the Kingston Trio I might never have turned to folk music as my prime focus. I was a kid back then but my older brother, whom I idolized, was into bongos and Harry Belafonte and then the Trio and it became my intro. I believe I've grown since then and isn't music the expression of the soul and therefore it's own depth for the listener. I get totally lost in music, can you? I will always be interested in the past.

Ellen

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Janice in NJ
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:55 PM

For what it's worth, I routinely sing Kumbaya, The Sloop John B., Danger Waters, The Cruel War Is Raging, and 500 Miles. I have sometimes been known to do The South Coast, Take Her Out of Pity, and The MTA Song, and I can be cajoled into singing Tom Dooley.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 12:40 AM

Tom Dooley was widely circulated long before the KT got it -- Frank Warner played it on a hand-crafted banjo, for one.

But there's nothing wrong with their songs as such -- even the corny ones like Scarlet Ribbons and Long Black Rifle have a place somewhere, i guess -- the thing that always annoyed me was their slick blend and their smarmy polish. They seem to have no gut feel for the real work behind the songs they sang. When they sang with enthusiasm, you got the feeling it was because it said "Sing enthusiastically here" on the scores, or something. I don't mind their songs but I never could connect with their style. Money or not.

A

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: M.Ted
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 12:58 AM

Pat Boone is still around--his heavy metal album is a favorite of mine--but everyone to their own taste--

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mudlark
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 03:11 AM

Amos...I agree completely..."con gusto!" way overdone, to the point that many more serious folksingers got kind of wary of emoting much at all in a song. I noticed this was true of all the old timer Arkies I knew also...their deliviery was very deadpan, tho possibly for differnt reasons. I think it was the country equivalent of uncool, to "show off" by emoting at all.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: UB Ed
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 09:34 AM

Jimmyt/Bassman (as you seem to be one and the same? Bassman the evil twin?)...

Welcome to the Mudcat! Use the search engine for lyrics and research on just about any topic (yes, even non-musical) you can think of.

I've been to Dalton; lots of carpet folks up there, but beautiful scenery and close to the start of the Appalachian Trail. I believe Young Harris College is also nearby.

Your proximity to Chattanooga should also be another opportunity for gig venues...

Best to you.

Ed

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,BASSMAN (jimmyt)
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 09:55 AM

Ed,Thanks for the note! We are close to Chattanooga, and are thinking of trying our hand at some busking just for the fun of it! We mostly just love to play, but the interest in hearing this music is keeping ahead of our song list. My background is in commercial standards music. I started playing minstral shows and "dances at the VFW, etc" in 1962 when I was in the 8th grade. Played trumpet in about any type of music you can imagine from clubs playing jazz to rock groups in the early 70's. Had little interest in folk music until my wife turned me on to this wonderful stuff in 1968. It is just within the last 3 months that I have had an opportunity to perform the music, as I have picked up a string bass a couple years ago to mess around with and it is now consuming me! I have done a lot of theater, and have a soft spot to those smarmy harmony do-wop groups of the late 50s and early 60s, having performed Forever Plaid as well as a couple other original shows that were well received, but this folk music has a lot more substance to it and I find it to be a lot more gratifying to sing and play. I know a lot of the purists on this thread are probably gagging at this account, but facts are facts, and this is how I have arrived at an interest in the music. We can't all have cut our teeth on the Weavers!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 10:26 AM

Bassman: No gagging here. Truth is, almost everyone at Mudcat cut their teeth on popularized folk music, whether it was by the Kingston Trio or the Weavers. I know that the Weavers were far more committed to folk music, and knew the tradition, but they still had a commercial sound or we never would have heard them on a.m. radio. Whatever brought you to the music... :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 10:54 AM

JErry:

That's the core, and well said, too. Whatever brought you into singing is worth a tip o' the hat, even if it was the Carpenters!! LOL!

A

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: M.Ted
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 12:54 PM

Some of you are beginning to lapse "Folkier than thou art"--and you have forced our polite newcomer, Bassman, into a polite and unnecessary apology--shame on you!

As per Jerry's comment, many of the Weaver's earliest radio hits featured the full studio orchestra and chorus that was so popular in mainstream "pre-rock" pop music--makes the Kingston Trio sound like field recordings--still fun to listen to!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: smallpiper
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 01:11 PM

Hey alanabit, visit the island you'll love it. Its a long time since I listened to any of Lindisfarnse stuff so I can excuse my forgetting of one title. I was part of the team that got the band back together after they split up in the mid 70's and started them on the rocky road of christmas specials and reunions! They are still going strong (I believe) and I agree a nicer bunch of blokes you'd be hard put to meet.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 02:53 PM

No lapse from me. As I've said often in the past, I have always known and will always know what folk "is" in spite of mod morphings of it. To paraphrase Jesus (a first for me), "You guys don't know what you're doin' so you ain't to blame I guess."

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 03:30 PM

I liked Jimmy Rogers, the Cumberland Three, the Tarriers, and The Kingston Trio. Further back, I probably gained my real interest in folk music through Frankie Lane, who never sang a folk song in his life. Or, how about Sixteen Tons by that ole Pea-picker, Tenessee Ernie Ford, or Muleskinner Blues by The Fendermen. And as far as exuberance and high energy is concerned, the Kingston Trio sounded like they were sleep-walking in comparison to my great favorite, Lonnie Donnegan. Purity is a tough thing to measure. Which is more impure?.. bouncy white-buck folk music, or folk songs backed by the Gordon Jenkins Orchestra? And you think that the Weaver's weren't recording for the money? Or that they didn't want national exposure for their own careers and ego? Do you think that they did it just for their love of folk music? The only thing that's pure on this planet is Ivory Soap and it's only 99 and 44/100ths percent pure. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 03:46 PM

Jerry, Lack of purity is definitely my human failing too. Still, I know what folk music is (to me). That folk music is, at least, 99 & .44% pure----if not more. I don't know if it floats or not---so I've been floating my ideas out here for a while now just to see if it makes some waves. I don't want to swamp anyone though---- ;-)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 04:53 PM

Well, at least Art is coming clean, and I should add the reminder that all that floats is not soap!

Jerry, sorry for the snobbery. The recordings I first fell in love with were Frank Warner and Leadbelly, and they both sounded like they had lived through the very melodramas about which they sang. The Weavers, studio or not, poured their hearts out and filled their renditions with what struck me as purely genuine gusto.

I dunno about Folkier than Thou (it might even be an oxymoron!) but I like a singer who sings squarely from the middle of his song, so you feel, listening, like the real story is unrolling around you. Tom Lehrer qualifies, Bessie Smith qualifies, so does "Lili Marlene" and Marlene Deitrich and Georges Brassens and (for some strange reason, probably that Afrikaans accent) Josef Marais with Miranda hell, even Francoise Hardy qualifies, but the Limelighters somehow never did. In spite of which I still occasionally sing their L&M filter cigarette commercial! :>)

But that's just me, and I am not trying to cop a superior attitude, just express a preference.

A

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Deckman
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 05:25 PM

O,K, Don Firth! Because of your arm twisting, I read this thread. Let's see if I can make sense of it all? Apparently another folk revival is happening ... again. If I'm correct, this will be number 5, or is it 6, since we started playing together? So, let's do it right this time: let's get new strings on our guitars, I'll dig out some of our standard cheat sheets from the fifties, you call Patti, I'll get a gallon of cheap red wine, and we'll know we've 'made it (again) when the Seattle Yacht Club shedules us. CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: M.Ted
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 05:38 PM

Folksongs have no real existance of their own, and only survive if they can be transmitted from one generation to the next by some sort of carrier, be it busker, balladeer, or Barney--

Mitch Miller and Gordon Jenkins made folksongs part of the lives of a lot more people than Richard Dyer-Bennet did--all matters of taste aside--and that is what makes it folkmusic, rather than an collection of anthropological artifacts--

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 05:42 PM

AMEN, MTED!!!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 05:51 PM

Hey, Folks:

I'm not accusing anyone of snobbery, here. I'm just saying that many of us... Amos being one of perhaps several exceptions, came to folk music through commercialized versions that we heard on the radio. Unless you had some old toothless geezer plucking banjo down the road from you, you probably were introduced to music by records and on the radio. Recordings and radio play revolved mostly around money. People don't play stuff on the radio, except on college stations and some other FM stations unless it has some commercial potential. Ah, there's the rub. For many of us, we didn't hear the Folkways albums because we didn't live in a big city. I never heard of Folkways until I came to New York City in 1960, when I was already 25 and hooked on folk music because of the Kingston Trio, Lonnie Donnegan and Jimmy Rogers. FM radio wasn't even avaiable where I grew up until I was in my teens. And we didn't get it.

All I'm saying is that many, if not most of us didn't come to folk music through Frank Warner, or Bascom Lamar Lunsford... or any of the people whose music I came to love. That doesn't mean I want to run downstairs and get my Kingston Trio albums out to listen to them. But, I give them and people I never enjoyed (like the Limelighters or the Chad Mitchel Trio) credit for introducing people to folk music who otherwise might never have heard the more authentic folk music I love. My attitude isn't, "What are you listening to that stuff for?" It's "If you enjoy the Kingston Trio or Peter Paul and Mary, listen to these recordings... this is where they got the songs from." I don't want to turn people off. I want to turn them on. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mudlark
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 05:53 PM

This whole thread makes me yearn for Gallo's long defunct Paisano red wine...or even the Cribari Family. It wasn't good but it sure was cheap!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 06:02 PM

Hey, Bob!! Sounds good to me!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Gareth
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 06:14 PM

Possible drift, or possibly not, given a lead, !Joanna! or Guitar, in any mixed gathering the old popular songs are still sung, possibly because the Words or known. "Tipary (Sic)" "Pack up you Troubles in yer Old Kit Bag", and others that have survived in the peoples memory.

And yes I've heard songs such as "Dolly Grey", and "Tipary" sung with gusto at Llanstock and the White Horse Festival.

For what its worth if it is held in memory before the record fades from the charts it becomes Folk !

Gareth

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Deckman
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 06:16 PM

Hey Mudlark ... Do you remember that label on the Cribari red wine (dago red) label. That big nosed old wine maker gave definition to lechery! We used to go caving in the Santa Cruz mountains with bottles of that poisen, but only because the bottles were small enough to fit into our packs. WOW. I think I just caused a thread creep! Forget everything I just said. CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: BH
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 07:04 PM

Michael R. you are so right--all has to do with memory and your youthful years. Nostalgia is a strong force. I am reminded of a true story of a person I knew who cried a few days after the funeral of his father---he said he really was crying for his lost youth and now realized his aging since he never cared for his father that much.

We live with our fond memories.

But, Mted brings up another point---the produced orchestral Weavers---as an example. Even Pete Seeger now says that they felt and looked like performing monkeys in their monkey suits. Yet--in truth--that and groups like Kingston Trio (harken back to the earlier part of the thread) did introduce people to "folk" music. I still never did understand the intrique with the Kingston Trio though----folk ala beach boys.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 07:59 PM

Back to a thread fragment I brought up earlier but received no response, is folk music being performed in England predominantly Celtic origin, or is there an original English Folk music that is being performed. I know there is English folk music, but as a trend, is the music largely Irish, Scottish and or Welsh origin?

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: curmudgeon
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 08:21 PM

There is no such creature as Celtic music aside from the grasping minds of record producers. There is Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish, Bretagne music all of which is Celtic. Then there is English folk song.

Those popular groups of the '60s drew most of their non-American repertoire from the English tradition. Most had neither the inclination nor the ability to grapple with "braid Scots' dialects.. And until the eruption of Makem & the Clancys, there was little Irish trad music available, aside from Seamus Ennis, Patrick Galvin, Margaret Barry and Joe Heaney.

I don't recall which group recorded a version of "Tail Toddle," but based on the notes and the rendition, I am quite sure that they had no idea what the song was about, nor cared -- it was up tempo and arranged well.

If you've got a few spare dollars, go to your local used book store, or on line, and get a copy of "Folk Song In England" by A.L.Lloyd; he says it better than I ever could hope to -- Tom

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: harper
Date: 28 Aug 02 - 08:38 PM

Yep, Barney is one who is keeping folk music alive; much as I hate to admit it. Used to be, I could teach my Kindergarten kids a folk song I knew they'd love.... but the last few years, they already knew it. "Barney sings that one," they'd inform me!!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Fortunato
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 10:52 AM

I learned my first songs from the 78's my mother played. The artists were mostly 'hillbilly' as they were called then: The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, et al. And, of course, the Oklahoma Yodelling Cowboy, Gene Autrey. But I didn't start playing them on the guitar until I was eleven or so and by that time Jimmie Dean, Don Reno and Red Smiley, and others were on our local TV Channel 5 in Washington DC and I'd bought 45's of Johnny Cash singing Hey Porter and lots of others. By age 15 or so, I had early compilation LPs of Merle Travis. For the sake of brevity, I have never owned a Folk Revival Album. But I do have recordings of songs and artists, like the Skillet Lickers, that the Folk Revival brought to light, without which light they would still be unavailable and I'm grateful for that. I just can't find the sand and grit in the 'pop' recordings of folk music. For them that like it, it's the very thing. My 'folk music' needs a little dirt under it's fingernails. When John Hartford sang "You are my Sunshine" in "Down from the Mountain", his innate sincerity and empathy restored the grit and simple pathos to a song that was entirely threadbare. Do you take my meaning? cheers, chance

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Steve-o
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 02:33 PM

What a wonderful thread this is! All kinds of great ideas and feelings about this funny thing "folk music". This right here is WHAT I CAME TO THE MUDCAT CAFE FOR. I have always sung all those songs that were popularized by the Weavers, K. Trio, Bob Gibson, etc.- without shame, and without categorizing and putting them in little boxes or arguing about their "authenticity". And you know what??.... people in bars and in parks and up at campgrounds and all over the place love to hear them, they sing along, and the songs have a life of their own, which will always be so. It's because they're ABOUT SOMETHING, as opposed to the garbage that we're fed by the mass media. Keep on singin' 'em out!!...let's have another of them there "folk revivals"....the first one wasn't half bad!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 02:54 PM

Hooray for Steve-o THis is exactly my sentiment! The big thing is that if the music is done with feeling and done well, People love it! I am quite interested in the history lesson that we have been given. Sincerely, the input of people from all backgrounds and folk experience from a couple years back to the ones who cut their teeth in the 50's or earlier is great, but I still contend that if, and that's a big if, you care about what the audience wants to hear and enjoy, you should not discount all the songs form yesteryear. Audiences like to be challenged, but they also like what they know! to use a theater paraphrase, "sometimes I go to the theater for intellectual stimulation. Sometimes, I just want to be entertained!" I think both times are valid for performing arts

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: beachcomber
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 07:12 PM

Gosh, what a mighty thread, and I havn't got time right now to fully peruse it,. This 'll refresh it , right.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Deckman
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 07:22 PM


Wasn't that a mighty thread
Wasn't that a mighty thread
Wasn't that a mighty thread, Great GAWD that mornin'
When BASSMAN wondered why!
with all appropriate apologies. CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 09:02 PM

Steve-o, Bob, Don, Jerry-----to all the folks I've met here at Mudcat (except Jerry---who I've known forever me thinks).-----It's the humor between the lines of all these posts that make me happy and glad to think we all are friends. We recognize our seriousness where our attitudes toward this music are concerned----but keeping it light (lite?) is the name of the game. The respect felt is palpable. Makes me glad I hang out here to pass along what little I've picked up. If I've got anything now, it's too much damn time on my hands. I've come to feel about my computer and Mudcat the way I felt about the words going around the edges of my banjo head ala Woody and Pete, "THIS MACHINE KILLS TIME !!!" Tanks t' all o' youse --- as folks 'd say in the Chicago wherein I grew up.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mudlark
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 11:37 PM

Deckman: As I recall, the label was the best thing about Cribiri, after the price. I now not only have a hankering for cheap red wine, I've also been dredging up all those old songs, trying to remember words. And getting nostalgic for Theo Bikel, coffee houses, and beatnik garb.

Came in from a 5 hour session last night just in time to catch the last half of Grateful Dawg, the doc. made of the Grisman/Garcia collaboration and old timey music. Sheer pleasure and great timing. They did When I went to Liverpool, a song I've sung ever since hearing it on Thar She Blows...and they kept panning the record album cover as the guys played. It looked in a lot better shape than mine!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 11:45 PM

We just finished a 4 hour rehersal for an upcoming job and added a number of eclectic songs to our set! Jamaica farewell, Sloop John B, Quit your Lowdown ways, as well as a lot of "works in progress!" i was pumped before weeven started from all the terrific thoughts I have encountered on this thread and a couple of others I am following. I feel like I have met a lot of very neat people from my first couple days on Mudcat!~ Thanks everyone! (Why does everything I say on here sound like it is from an old Lassie show?)

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: JJ
Date: 29 Aug 02 - 11:58 PM

Father Crib, we used to call it in Central Pennsylvania, after the picture on the front of "B. Cribari -- Fondatore," which I have probably misremembered.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 10:40 PM

This is the first thread I ever started here, and upon re-reading it, I know why I hang in there when I get angry or disgusted or get my feelings hurt by occasional comments.

At the risk of sounding corny again, there are some really intelligent comments by some real folk music greats sprinkled among my "Gee whiz comments." I hope you enjoyed reading this thread half as much as I did. It kind of gives me a new lease. Thanks, folks , for making Mudcat the place it is. jimmyt

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:30 PM

Jimmyt,

It's nice to see this thread again and realize, for once, maybe I didn't make an ass of myself. It's just so easy to click and post things that should've been slept on and self-censored.

So I'm going to bed!!   I hope to see some of you at the Fox Velley Festival tomorrow and Labor Day--Geneva, Illinois U.S.A.. It's a real treat for me and Carol to get to festivals now---and see and hear old friends. Martin Gibson, if you are there I'll buy you a funnel cake. ;-)

Art

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:59 PM

I agree with jimmyt and Art completely. I didn't even realize this thread was two years old until I was nearly all the way through reading it. Definitely a Mudcat moment.

Oh, and it's "Creeque Alley."

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Tinker
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 02:45 AM

Thanks for refreshing this jimmyt. It's been a long day, and this was a wonderful gift to find.

tinker

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 09:28 AM

nostalgia ain't high art.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,KT, at a borrowed computer
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 09:53 AM

Great thread folks! I do a lot of "soloing" and include a lot of the old songs mentioned here but this makes me want to get a group together! Thanks for the inspiration!

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:32 AM

KT I just happened to luck in to being at the right place at the right time. My group had performed from 1963 to 66 then all went off to various colleges and has just gotten back together a month before this thread started. We stay as busy as we want to be, but most fun is getting together one week night per week, someone brings a song or 2 we open a couple bottles of wine and just play and sing for 3 or 4 hours in my kitchen We have good acoustics there, good lighting so the old eyes can see words and chords if they are written, and , most importantly a place to set wine glasses and snacks. I have never enjoyed music more than I do right now.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Deckman
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:39 AM

Jimmyt ... I echo your words: "I never enjoy my music as much as now." It's like several things I've discovered in my life ... it get's better with age! CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 01:49 PM

I'd like to add two things. England has traditional music as well as traditional song - for example but not by way of limitation, Morris tunes.

Second, for much song, the arrangement is as much if not more than the bare melody - see for example my thread "who records the English Tradition". It is submitted that the arrangements and harmonies were largely lost by the bowderisation of the collectors who pursued the purist theory of "the tune".

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Eric the Streetsinger
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 12:16 AM

I remember my college days when every week or so we got another wandering folkie through- not always good ones, but their hearts were in the right place! Usually they'd do a workshop or two as well as their shows, and they'd share songs with you. We also had a bi-monthly open mike/song swap. It was great if you were like me, and had some chops on the guitar, but hadn't written much yet.
You'd meet with a few folks, swap a few songs, and voila! Instant repertoire! The songs with legs, why so many folks would learn them that when you'd get together for a hoot, or an open mike, you'd have some common ground too, and you'd do some group singing on "Blowing in the Wind" or some CSNY, Peter Paul and Mary, or a Steve Goodman song. Gradually, as you got your legs under you, you'd start to reconfigure your repertoire and put your own stamp on it. And you'd rewrite some of the stuff you knew, and pass that on at the open mikes or hoots, and it was pretty damned cool. You know, I bought hundreds of albums on the sayso of those itinerant folksingers. They'd come to town, play the song, and say "this was written by John Prine, or Cat Stevens, or
Gordon Lightfoot, or Angie Bell, and if the song was good, I was out to "Liquorice Pizza" the next day to buy the album.
I didn't get to see John Prine much back then, but I knew his songs, because people who loved them had played them for me, and I had all his albums, and I made damned sure I told everybody I knew about them, and they'd go out to get their own copy.
Good culture, good business.
I started working as one of those small time troubadours back in 74 or 75. I played alot of folk music, Peter Paul and Mary, Limeliters, that kind of stuff.
I could sound an aweful lot like Robert Allen Zimmerman on a good Staturday night, and I bet I sold some albums for him!   
There were loads of good gigs, 200 bucks a night or better in some strange rooms.
In the early Eighties I got a job at a summer camp in New Hampshire, and I played music every night at the campfires we had there. It was great fun. It made me feel great that the kids went home with some of my music, and they'd taught me some of theirs.
Well I was in the Navy from 84-88, and during that time I didn't play out much, except to Busk in Seattle and San Diego. When I got out in '88, I went back to that summer camp. For the final campfire the camp director asked me to sing "Blowing in the Wind" and "Leaving on a Jetplane" and I did. About six months later, the camp Director got a letter from an ASCAP representative. Apparently one of our campers that summer was the daughter of an ASCAP lawyer, and she told glowing stories about campfire music, and daddy the lawyer told his boss, and ASCAP came around demanding a royalty payment on behalf of Mr's Dylan and Denver. Now we weren't making money off the music, no cover charges, no promotions, no album sales. It was just folks around a campfire, sharing their favorite songs. ASCAP wanted money for it.
When I started getting back out into the nightclubs and cafes, things had changed. Open mikes were competitive ventures, where everyone got up to sing their own songs, and you better as hell not pick up a lick or try to learn someone else's song, because business is business.
And you'd better be careful to copyright your own songs before you played them out, 'cause someone was always watching to steal anything good that you did.
So I can tell you one thing- this folksinger at least thinks twice about singing or promoting ASCAP or BMI protected songs. I haven't dropped them out of my Repertoire, but I'm more selective about where I'll do them- don't want to slight Mr. ASCAP man.
Its sad that culture has been commodified in this way.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Deckman
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 05:59 AM

That was a very interesting post. Thanks for taking the time. Bob

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: lucky_p
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 07:18 AM

I'll add my 2 cents.

I've skimmed all of the posts and didn't see any mention of the fact that in the 60's -- at least in America -- folk music had a life beyond itself. I remember -- I was there. The 60's brought together wave upon wave of social movements in a way that was unprecedented in the U.S. -- the civil rights movement, anti-war movement, student movement, women's movement, gay rights, and the list goes on. And folk music, with content that promotes the values of community and communal experience, along with the elevation of the working person, the rebel, the iconoclast, rather than competitive, coporate experience; and the musical form of the hootenany/sing-along promoting the group experience; resulted in an energy that perfectly fueled and was fueled by the social movements of the time (i.e., "in unity there is strength"). And when you add to that a Bob Dylan or Joni MitchelL that take the basic form to a whole other level (not to mention an infant music business that was not yet overly corporatized and supported pushing the artistic envelope with no guarantee of immediate profit), you had a truly wonderful, experimental, magical time that had resonance mostly within its own boundaries.

I guess the point I am making is that the resonance, the impact, the creative fulfillment both in the composing, playing and listening, is not transferable to our day. Not really. As I said, the music had a life beyond itself. Out of that context it is not the same. Some of it is pretty, other parts overwritten, other parts sophomoric, and some wonderful, but the statement, the emotional resonance, existed only within that special time and space.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Midchuck
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 08:24 AM

I sang Farina's "Children of Darkness" at a circle a few weeks back. Hadn't sung it in years. It didn't seem out of date at all. I wish it had.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 08:57 AM

With regard to lucky_p's comments,

In the 70's & even the 80's - attending University in Australia meant that one had a social life and mixed with the other faculties. It's true that some graduated with 'Refec Honours', but you got and Education in Life, and Social behaviour, as well as some 'book larnin'.

Nowadays the students have too high a study workload to waste time talking socially to other students, and the faculties don;t mix as much, cause they have their own special 'social places'. That's when they aren't working a job or two to pay for fees and books and food and rent and clothes, and...

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: KT
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 09:04 AM

Jimmyt - Sounds like a GREAT evening to me! What time? : )

Eric - Oh, horrors!! That is so sad to me, that sharing of music in such a non-profit way, must be so heavily moderated. As a songwriter, I can't believe that that's what Denver or Dylan would want. I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, and paying royalties to record another's work. If there are sales of that work, all the moreso.   But your campfire experience does not warrant that. That's not what it's about. We're really missing out on the gift of music if it all always boils down to money.

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: jimmyt
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 10:58 AM

Our rehearsals are open to all Catters. Allan C stopped in and we had a great session with him. I guess they are a little different than just guys sitting around playing in that we do stop and work out harmonies and the like but the fun is a constant. Did you ever think about the fact that the best seat in the house for any music is right in the middle of the music for the musicians themselves?

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: GUEST,Richard's other computer
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 02:33 PM

I find that "We shall overcome", "With God on our side", "All my trials" "Turn, turn, turn" all still go well - and have a political resonance again - as does "Eve of Destruction".

Subject: RE: Help: Why so little interest in performing 60s
From: Once Famous
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 11:10 AM

It is pretty cool to have found this resurrected thread and read through all of the "confessionals" of people like myself who came to folk music, guitar playing, singing by way of the Kingston Trio and the folk groups of the '60s.

To say that I didn't try to emulate and still to a degree do, Nick Reynolds harmony parts would be a lie.