What got you hooked on folk music?

Subject: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Ythanside
Date: 09 May 07 - 08:47 PM

I know, I know, you're not really hooked because you can give it up any time you want to, yeah, yeah, yeah. Face it, if you're reading this then you've got a habit, and may even be a performer. I'm just curious to discover who or what led you astray.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: AWG
Date: 09 May 07 - 08:53 PM

Im just got lured in by the snappy subject line. I'm only hooked on Celtic Woman. However, folk music has it's place in the music world, no need for a total ban...yet.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 09 May 07 - 09:08 PM

dunno, all I know is that I've been hooked for about 30 years.

sandra (hopeless case)

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 09 May 07 - 09:08 PM

It wasn't called "Folk" music where I was raised.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 09 May 07 - 09:47 PM

I began college in 1958, nearly coinciding with the Kingston Trio, and having earlier heard the Weavers and Gateway Singers. At Santa Monica City College and met, and became friendly with folks who actually played the music. They introduced me to old-timey music and 'ethnic' music, etc. I still have some albums, in various states of playability which I obtained way back then. My very first 'folk' album purchase was "Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites," by Harry Belafonte; I still play it nigh on 50 years since.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Ythanside
Date: 09 May 07 - 09:50 PM

Jim Lad, it wasn't called 'folk' music where/when I was growing up, either. No-one I knew at that time had any concept of its classification, but that didn't diminish its undeniable and seemingly universal appeal one whit.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Scoville at Dad's
Date: 09 May 07 - 10:03 PM

Blame the Red Clay Ramblers.

My parents were folk-fan holdovers from the 1960's and 1970's. I went off to college and fell in with the wrong crowd; in this case, it was a string band. I probably learned more about music than anything else and I never got anywhere near the music department. None of us ever looked back.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Deckman
Date: 09 May 07 - 10:13 PM

Her name was "SUE"! My lips are sealed. Bob

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Bugsy
Date: 09 May 07 - 10:15 PM

I stumbled onto a folk club at my local youth club when I was 15 (1963) then saw Jesse Fuller on "Ready Steady Go!" one Friday night on the TV, but it was Derek Brimstone who got me hooked. I thought he was the greatest! (still do in fact.) I remember him coming into the shop where I worked and being all excited 'cos he'd just been booked for the Stevenage Folk Festival. I believe it was his first.

Luv ya Del!


Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: cshurtz
Date: 09 May 07 - 10:16 PM

For me....Dylan when I was 17 (which was 1997). I went backwards from there and discovered Guthrie and the crew...and then slowly it consumed my whole life

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Bill D
Date: 09 May 07 - 10:37 PM

Pete Seeger, The Beers Family, The New Lost City Ramblers all came to town in one year (1961) and made clear to me what Burl Ives had been singing on Jack Paar...plus one guy in town knew Child Ballads and had a subscription to "Sing Out"...so we started having Hootenannies and ignoring PP&M. Then there were the Jean Redpath records in the public library...there was no turing back.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 09 May 07 - 11:04 PM

WFMT's Midnight Special. When I was a child my folks let us stay up late Saturday night to hear it. I went in wanting to hear the Bill Cosby routines and left hooked on Folk Music.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 09 May 07 - 11:30 PM

Let me clarify, then. Folk music is what we sang at home. What we were taught at school, heard on the radio, listened to for entertainment, used to record local events (Efsee, I think mentioned The Ibrox Disaster Song recently, although there are others) and what we shared with our friends and visitors over the coal fire.
There was no need to call it Folk Music. We were the Folk who were singing the songs about our own lives and fantasies.
No disrespect to our North American neighbours but if The Kingston Trio was your family's introduction to Folk Music then you would be considered "Converts". That in no way implies that groups such as The Kingston Trio & The Spinners did little to increase interest in this form of music. Quite the opposite.
I remember the gradual change over from the John McCormick & Fr. Sidney McEwan types to the Clancy's & Dubliners and I am probably relatively young compared to many of the UK Mudcatters. I'm 52.
So: I wasn't being flippant. Folk Music is just music to me. It is the other genres which require a heading in my books.
I get so perplexed when the inevitable "What is Folk or Traditional" thread comes around. It is what it is! It's the other stuff which needs explaining and I can never find the words to explain that when it matters.
Cheers!
Jim

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Padre
Date: 10 May 07 - 12:23 AM

In 1955, I checked an album by Richard Dyer-Bennett from the local library - then I found the Smithsonian album of Anglo-American Ballads, and one of the Lomax recordings from Angola prison... from there it was all downhill! But even before that, I would listen to WSM late at night.

Padre

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 10 May 07 - 12:45 AM

I think the realization that the music I liked was what people were calling folk came from reading the liner notes to my sister's Peter, Paul and Mary and Chad Mitchell Trio albums. Before that, it was just the songs us kids sang in the bus on the way to day camp. But once I knew it had a name, I knew where to look for it in the record shops.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 May 07 - 12:57 AM

I think it was because Mary Travers was gorgeous. I didn't graduate out of Peter, Paul and Mary until about 15 years ago.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 10 May 07 - 01:23 AM

Hee, Hee, I'm glad you got beyond that Joe.

Barry

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 10 May 07 - 01:52 AM

Can't really remember but loved going to 'folk clubs' when I was in my late teens -although I loved pop music too. Discovered Martin Carthy (NOT the Watersons) when I was about 15 and teaching Sunday School ( I know - it was many years ago) -- the priest used to invite the Sunday School teachers over for dinner and he played me Martin Cathy -- To the Beggng I will go.....' - it was all downhill from there -- while still LIKING 'other ' music. I have a really hard time liking 'other' music today although my son occassionally leaves a CD in my car that I find really interesting.......

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: mrdux
Date: 10 May 07 - 02:09 AM

Like Phil, I'm another one who got hooked on folk music by the "Midnight Special" (WFMT-FM, Chicago), around 1960 or so. Similar story -- I had to get into bed but my parents let me stay up late on Saturday night listening to it on the the radio.

In case anyone is wondering, "'The Midnight Special' is WFMT's (Chicago's Fine Arts Station) weekly aberration of folk music and farce, show tunes and satire, odds and ends, madness and escape." It was started by Mike Nichols in 1953 and is still broadcasting every Saturday evening, now hosted by Rich Warren.

michael

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 10 May 07 - 02:17 AM

The music has always been there as part of the background of my life and a number of artists consigned to the "folk" bucket were well known to me, but the first piece of performed 'folk music' which really caught my attention and didn't let go was Dave Burland singing "The Shooting of his Dear" (introduced as a Newfoundland variant on Polly Vaughn")on the radio.

Ian

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Sooz
Date: 10 May 07 - 02:32 AM

Donovan

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 10 May 07 - 02:52 AM

Dave Van Ronk, in a little dive on Boylston St in Boston, must've been mid to later 60's. Sayed with folk until maybe around 1970 then fell forever back with it arond the mid 70's, been happy ever since.

Barry

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Rowan
Date: 10 May 07 - 03:59 AM

Like JimLad I grew up with the music around me, not realising it would be later called folk music. In my case it was in Victoria during the 40s and it wasn't until the late 50s that I heard the genre named as such. Welcomed participation kept it and me going.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Essex Girl
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:03 AM

The Essex Skipper in Harlow with the likes of The Ian Campbell Folk Group. Lorna Campbells voice set me on the road that I'm still on over 40 years later.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: greg stephens
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:06 AM

I was vaguely aware of folk music from an early age as we all were, but it waas Lonnie Donegan singing "Rock Island Line" in 1956 that got me hooked. An addiction that has deepened with the years, and I believe it is incurable.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Jim Lad
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:13 AM

Which Victoria?

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:18 AM

Where have all the Flowers Gone - just that song, on the radio about 1963. Mind you the Cuban Missile Crisis on the tv news was a decent sort of way of focusing your mind on the issues dealt with in the song.

Luckily Richard Bridge wasn't around to tell me that it wasn't folk music.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Bugsy
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:24 AM

You're right there Greg, Lonnie Donegan did have a lot to do with me getting hooked too.

CHeers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: MG John
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:37 AM

My first visit to a folk club occured after being invited by some students with whom I worked.They had just joined a new club in Leeds.The club didn't last longer than a few weeks, but by then I had visited other clubs in the area, and appart from folk songs, I also discovered Irish music was regularly being played live at The Regent public house in the city centre.
Nearby was another pub which hosted a well known folk club, (The Brig), at which, names such as Tony Capstick, Mike Harding, Barbara Dixon, plus many other names which later became famous. It was in 1973 when Barbara Dixon sung a song which she intoduced to the geography experts amongst us as being based at Ythanside, and on seeing this thread it prompted me to make an addition to it.
I found most of the people very friendly,(some I am still in touch with) and it was n't long before I was given the 'nick name' of which many years later I chose to use on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Megan L
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:39 AM

When i wis a bairn ma maw sang like a linty whitever she wis daen. "The Rowan tree, star o rabbie burns, grannies hielan hame and mony ithers heck i could probably sing the first verse or chorus o a hundered or mair Scot's sangs - she never bothered singing wan right through :)

ootside ma mither weel there wis Matt Maginn, the corries, robin hall and jimmy magregor, moira anderson, bill macue,andy stewart and others for the singing then there wis peter and danny wiper (Melodeon players)ma paw learned the melodeon listenin tae aul 78's o them and of course jimmy shand.

these days some fowk mak fun o them or critisise them but they kept things going till a new genteration could tak up the baton.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Terry McDonald
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:41 AM

Even earlier than Lonnie, there was Elton Hayes and the Americans Josh White, Burl Ives, and Big Bill Broonzy who would occasionally feature on radio programmes. For some reason singer/guitarists appealed to me. Then there were also the Sunday morning Big Bill Campbell radio programme, mainly 'cowboy' songs, but I liked the ones that had some sort of historical dimension (usually the civil war ones) or ones like the Streets of Laredo. It just seemed to me that there was a body of music out there which linked the present to the past. Later, of course, came skiffle, which led me into trad jazz (again, I liked the links with early American history) and then into English music through the folk clubs of the mid sixties. Like everyone else,it seems, I'm still singing and playing.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Terry McDonald
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:45 AM

For 'then there were' please read 'then there was'!

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: redsnapper
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:47 AM

McPeake family back when I was about 12.

RS

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:57 AM

Hello,

My Mum introduced me to what we now call folk music...she had wonderful songs from her youth and uncles who trod the boards at Music Halls.

Then there were the "Singing Together" Schools Broadcasts which were a great feature of the week in the UK at that time...although how we got away with all singing about large masculine members of a valuable ethnic grouping wearing boots primarily used for seafaring...I can't imagine!

Learning ukelele chords from a very old community song book and enjoying the songs when I was about 11....then my sister took me to a folk club!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 10 May 07 - 04:59 AM

I think I was born liking folk music, I was 60 years old last December and I seem to have known one particular song all my life, I must have heard it on the radio when I was very young, and it was probably sung by The Weavers, ' So Long It's Been Good To Know You. ' It was many years later before I knew who wrote it, and I'm still a big fan.

eric

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:18 AM

I first heard folk songs sung at my junior school in the late 50s. I now know that the songs we heard, and were required to learn, had been collected by Cecil Sharp, mainly in Somerset, in the early part of the 20th century. I loved those old songs but I hated the music lessons and the rather fierce martinet of a music teacher.

A few years later I started going to my local folk club and heard some of those songs, and similar ones, sung in a style that was closer to that in which Sharp must have heard them (ie. unaccompanied and with a regional accent). The fact that these songs were being sung in the relaxed atmosphere of the back room of a smoky pub, and not in a rather intimidating classroom, helped as well. I was hooked then and have been ever since.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: guitar
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:23 AM

My sister Margaret gave me a record by the corries, and that was it, Punk rock oot the windae, now I sing anything within reason including some punk rock songs at the folk club.

tom

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Shaneo
Date: 10 May 07 - 06:49 AM

From school , back in the 60s Irish songs were thought in schools.
Not any more .
I didn't really get the ballad bug 'till I heard Tommy Byrne sing
'For Ireland I'd Not Tell Her Name'
That was thirty years ago and it has never left me.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: mrmoe
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:03 AM

Eric Andersen, Patrick Sky, David Blue, etc.....in the mid-60's I discovered that chicks dig singer/songwriters.....I don't suppose that this is what got me hooked, but I must confess it got the love affair started......and I've had a guitar in my hands ever since....

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:07 AM

'Eric the Red' - 'So Long It's Been Good To Know You', wasn't that the theme they used to use on a Radio Luxembourg programme where they used to smash records if they didn't like them, I think it was called 'Smash Hits'?

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Crane Driver
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:14 AM

Folk music did.

Andrew

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:21 AM

My babysitter Althea Grass, around 1942-4 -- she sang me "Billy Boy," "Lavender's Blue," "Polly Wolly Doodle," and a few other things I'd no previous idea of.

A man who visited my grandfather when I was about seven and to my startlement sang me "The Cork Leg."

My grandfather also had a few Carl Sandburg Musicraft 78s: "I Don't Want to Be Buried in the Storm," "I'm Goin' Away," "I Ride an Old Paint," and especially "Jesus Won't You Come By'm By." The religious message missed me entirely but the strange horse Macedoni and Sandburg's brooding way of singing became part of my imagination.

My parents, who had a fund of silly pop and not-quite-folk songs, usually in bits and pieces sung around the house, like "Where Do Mosquitoes Go," "Mairsy Doats," "Yes, We Have No Bananas," ""Where Do You Work-a John," "Quartermaster's Store" (sic) and the "In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia" cow parody.

Then, about 1949, a skiing/partying friend of my parents', Harrison Taylor. She was from the New York area and sang quite a lot of Burl Ives-type songs. "Blue Tail Fly," "Barbara Allen," "The Fox," "The Foggy, Foggy Dew," "Molly Malone," above all "Buckeye Jim," which (along with a few John Jacob Niles songs like "Venezuela") opened up to me the mystery that makes folk songs infinite.

This led me to a few of Burl Ives' early recordings. I was hooked. I started on my father's old college ukulele and mother's college mandolin, and after a year pestered for a guitar.

Bill Bonyun, mentor and friend, about 1950 sang a concert in the neighborhood and later one at my school. He was kind enough to visit my house, taught me chords, told me about his mentor Dick Dyer-Bennett and taught me some of his songs, sang "Three Craws" and a lot of other things.

That, and the Weavers' "Tzena Tzena Tzena" and Pete Seeger's debut LP "Darling Corey" that same year, finished the job. I was no longer fit for normal civilized suburban music forever. Before long I was scarfing up ballads and songs from books and listening to Library of Congress field recordings and finding people who knew obscure ditties, and ... The rest is definitely not history.

Bob

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Grab
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:45 AM

Initially my folks, although I never knew what they sang was folk music. Then learning guitar at uni using the Russ Shipton books, and buying some of the CDs to find how the songs went - that got me into Tom Paxton, Leonard Cohen, Don Maclean and Dylan. And then moving to Cambridge and the warm welcome from people in the folk clubs there.

Graham.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: kendall
Date: 10 May 07 - 07:58 AM

Buryl Ives, Pete Seeger, Wilf Carter

Bob Coltman, I'm trying to get in touch with you but had no success, can you contact me via e mail? [e-mail] ?

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:12 AM

Hi Jim Martin, I can remember ' Smash It ' but not the theme tune, I do remember they had various ways of smashing records though.

It also comes to mind that we had traditional singers in the family, albeit by marriage, my Uncle Donald was a mandolin virtuoso who set me on the way to playing it, but his sister in law Isabel was a genuine traditional Scots singer, I always loved her singing, much to the derision of my elder brother, she also had two very beautiful daughters.

eric

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: muppitz
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:14 AM

Folk music was injected into my system while still in the womb, my mother has had the habit for many years and we regularly have to go to focus groups (Folk Clubs) and share our methadone (Beer!) to get us through it.
I swear I came into this world singing "Smuggler" by the McCalmans!

muppitz
x

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:26 AM

Folk songs in school and then the Spinners and Steeleye Span.

I got away for quite a few years but finally got pulled back in in 1999 after taking guitar lessons and finding that I could sing a bit. A recommendation to try the local folk club finished the process.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:55 AM

...The Dubliners

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:55 AM

I'd just got the hang of three chords on the guitar at a time when pop music got really weird and phsychadelic, and I couldn't play any of it. So I was looking around for something I could play with my three chords, and discovered "The Burl Ives Book of Australian Folk Songs" inmy local music shop. That led me to the Spinners' TV show, Radio 2's Folk on Friday, and eventually (when I was old enough to go to pubs) the local folk club run by Geoff and Pennie Harris.

Subject: RE: What got you hooked on folk music?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:02 AM

Kingston Trio, Limeliters, Pete Seeger, et. al.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)