This should set folk music back 100 year

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 03:14 AM

Oh, I see - they're Canadian. Ah well...

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 03:48 AM

Yes, Suibhne, that's IT exactly. The real stuff, like this.

There IS a difference, isn't there?

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 years
From: Genie
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 10:47 AM

Ah, yes, EJ, a bit o' grit does help, but it ain't the clothes that give that. We don't expect "folk" singers to dress in 18th C garb to add "authenticity" to sing Child ballads. If a 1960s college student wore a v-neck sweater and carried a stack of Sociology texts, that was probably pretty unpretentious.    (And I'd add that Mimi Farina's attire in that last clip looked pretty early-'60s collegiate to me too.)
But I agree that the musical styling of most of the "folk revival" was heavy on the "pop" flavor.      

Love the Ian and Sylvia clip. Another example of songs not always needing instrumental accompaniment.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: GUEST,Edthefolkie
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 10:52 AM

It's the juxtapositions (as somebody mentioned earlier in the thread)which make you cringe. That and the producers.

I suppose some genius thought ah, Legendaires, song, hobos. Let's get my brother the dancer to dress up as one and get the group to clamber over old railroad cars. That should do it!

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Stringsinger
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 12:44 PM

This from Adam,

It's an insight into how the music biz hypes the "folk market". It's "The Mighty Wind"
in action. Joni Mitchell called it "The Starmaking machinery". It drops names,
ties in with technology (which we all know advances society) and quotes the
"significant" taste setters. In short, Hollywood meets their idea of folk music.
____________________________________________________________________________________

The girl in the Legendaires is Debbie (Graf) Burgan: recorded her first album at age 14. Several singing groups later, she became the female vocalist for the Los Angeles based folk group "The Lengendaires" with Jeff Tonkin and Michael Alley. They were one of the hottest folk groups in the L.A. San Gabriel Valley (winning the 1965 Hollywood Bowl Battle of the Bands "Vocal Division"). The L.A. Times described their sound as "folk rock" and hailed them as "fast becoming one of the entertainment industry's hottest new performers." At the request of President Johnson and former President Eisenhower, they performed at the People to People Fiesta at the New York World's Fair, then appeared on the Art Linkletter Show, Hollywood Talent Scouts, and Regis Philbin Show, (in addition to performing on many other local television programs and at folk clubs in the Los Angeles area). The Lengendaires were one of the first groups to appear in music videos produced by the Debbie Reynolds Production Company. The videos were played on a machine similar to a juke box, called the Scopitone, and could be found all around the United States. The Legendaires eventually signed a recording contract with Mercury Records, and began recording with Mike Curb (later to become California's Lieutenant Governor). Through Jeff Tonkin, Debbie met future husband Jerry Burgan who was in another popular folk group "The Ridgerunners." When the Ridgerunners signed to record for A&M Records, they changed their name to We Five and moved to San Francisco. Soon after, Debbie put her own recording career on hold; and, moved to the bay area to marry Jerry. Debbie began arranging music and singing with Mike Stewart and Jerry in 1964 (when Beverly Bivens was unable to perform, or rehearse) while still working with The Legendaires. She officially joined WE FIVE as the lead singer in 1968 and can be heard on four albums: Return of We Five, Catch the Wind, Take Each Day As It Comes and the Folk Rock Revival Sampler

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Stringsinger
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 12:47 PM

"Legendaires: a flu-like sickness contracted on cruise ships brought in by The Mighty Wind, overdone choreography featuring thrusting hips, many thighs in too short skirts, bouncy little steps, over exaggerated arm motions and bubble hair."

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Ron Davies
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 02:11 PM

That's perfect.   Is that yours?

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 02:31 PM

Firstly, folk music should be set back a hundred years...maybe even a way more. What passes for folk music today really isn't. Much of it is really good music, but not necessarily folk.

Secondly, was what the Legendaires or other bubble-gum folk groups did worse than the Weavers backed by the full might of the Gorden Jenkins Orchestra? Even an ill wind does some good; being blacklisted saved the Weavers from themselves.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 02:51 PM

Sorry, I still can't see why it should be necessary to mock a style of singing which no longer exists (except for modern-day parodies).
We're all so much cleverer and more sophisticated than people in 1965,aren't we?
Or do we just like to think we are?
Every generation thinks it has a monopoly of what is good and true and right.
You can bet that, forty four years from now, very clever and sophisticated people will be laughing at us and our ways.
There'll probably be websites (if such things still exist then) paying tribute to the hilariously old-fashioned DVD and showing examples of the very silly things we simple minded suckers used to watch.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 03:07 PM

[i]Sorry, I still can't see why it should be necessary to mock a style of singing which no longer exists (except for modern-day parodies).
We're all so much cleverer and more sophisticated than people in 1965,aren't we?
Or do we just like to think we are?
Every generation thinks it has a monopoly of what is good and true and right.[/i]

I actually think every generation makes their own embarrassing mistakes by going along with the fads and fashions of the day. It's only with time it becomes clear what is of value and what will endure. And that is tradition, or if you prefer: the folk-process. In the long run it will absorb what enhances it and what suits it, the spurious will be discarded.

And that aside, it can be very refreshing looking back at where you've been, cringe and realise how wrong you were, and laugh it off, in hope you've learned something along the way.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 03:08 PM

Sorry I had the bulletin board code again there instead of HTML, that quote should have been italic.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Paco O'Barmy
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 03:12 PM

I agree with the last two posts.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Amos
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 03:38 PM

PEte,

I agree with your thoughtful perspective. Hell, even Pete Seeger made some embarassing recordings back then.

BTW, I recently discovered he pplayed a mean mandolin, which I hadn't heard before. (This is Pete with Jack Eliot and Malvina Reynolds doing Woody's Rag).

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Amos
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 04:03 PM

Some of the pretty music from that era had legs, just as it was. Judy Collins probably never wrangled a pony in her life, but it is highly likely she fell in love more than once. That fact alone lends all the voice she needs to this classic of the era (Someday Soon).

A

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 04:11 PM

Incredibobble! I'd never heard of The Legendaires until this thread. And it's not as if I was living in a cave during that time. I was out performing in all kinds of venues.

But I guess I was traveling in different circles. . . .

The "embarrassing mistakes" of that era were not made by everyone. What the Legendaires were doing was actually a someone exaggerated idea of what some—not all—people thought folk music was all about. But this was promulgated by the commercial interests and groups like the Legendaires, and many others, were more interested in commercial success than they were in the music itself. Did they really know any traditional folk songs?

In the meantime, there was a substantial "underground," you might say, who were genuinely interested in traditional folk songs, and in singing songs they learned from books by the Lomaxes, Sandburg, Sharp, and other collectors, and from field recordings or from singers who had, in turn, learned the songs they sang from field recordings. Were these folks interested in commercial success? Oh, yes! BUT—not to the extent of corrupting the songs by "prettying them up" or using them merely as vehicles for cheap jokes (which groups like the Kingston Trio and the Limeliters often did).

At the time, there were people who recognized the $hallowne$$ of performers like the Legendaires and the material they performed for what they really represented. Cranking the money machine.

This is not to say that they were not good singings and musicians. But trying to characterize what they did as "folk songs" was just plain phony, not to mention deliberately deceptive.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: M.Ted
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 08:44 PM

How to you know whether you're "prettying up" a song when you've learned it from a book?
And the idea that there is some special integrity in attempting to imitate a field recording, or attempting to imitate someone who is attempting to imitate a field recording is a bit dubious. A good imitation is patronizing, and a bad one is an opportunity for shadenfreude.

As to the cheap jokes, well, dumb jokes were the grease on the wheels of the folk revival--so pick it, Wilson!

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 03:50 AM

The "embarrassing mistakes" of that era were not made by everyone

Ofcourse not and neither did I suggest that. But every period has it's own fads and fashions that, at least to the casual onlooker, define he look of the time.

The core, that what is enduring, is not so much in the popular eye.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Stringsinger
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 12:18 PM

The important lesson for me is that the folk music endures despite it's commercialization by those who wanted to cash in on the fad. It endures the music business.
There is a kind of minor music business that takes place when personalities are able
to find audiences in coffee houses or concert venues playing folk songs. Folk music
endures of this realm as well though in all fairness,there are those who are motivated to perform folk music because they see its value of itself and not just as a vehicle for reaching an audience.

If Pete Seeger or Joan Baez reach an audience and stay in touch with the actual folk music,
then this is a great thing because it raises the consciousness of the audience. They don't have to be authentic representatives of a traditional folk music to do this. In a sense, they are unwitting or maybe conscious educators. Folk music appreciation is not relegated to a
"butts in seats" approach to concertizing for commercial gain but as kind of a mission based on true appreciation for the idiom. In this way, it parallels the jazz artist.

The only detractors from this view as I see it are those wanting to cash in on a "cash cow".
That's how I see the Debbie Reynold's Legendaires.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 03:14 PM

"If Pete Seeger or Joan Baez reach an audience and stay in touch with the actual folk music, then this is a great thing because it raises the consciousness of the audience. They don't have to be authentic representatives of a traditional folk music to do this. In a sense, they are unwitting or maybe conscious educators. Folk music appreciation is not relegated to a 'butts in seats' approach to concertizing for commercial gain but as kind of a mission based on true appreciation for the idiom. In this way, it parallels the jazz artist."

Once again, Frank puts it where it's at.

M.Ted, as to "prettying up" a song, one can learn a song from a book and simple sing the words and tune straight without "prettying it up." By "prettying up," I was referring to screwing around with the tune and/or diddling with the words—generally hanging tinsel on the song. The books I mentioned and the many others like them by the Lomaxes, Sharp, and other collectors are especially good because they usually give good notes on the songs (a "provenance," so to speak). I don't see that singing a song straight, without trying to impose any gratuitous styling that is not implied by the song itself is "prettying it up."

Nor did I say anything about "imitating" what one hears on a field recording or any other recording. Once again, one learns the words and tune from a recording—and ignores the individual mannerisms of the singer. I've learned many songs from the records (and the song books) of Richard Dyer-Bennet, but I hardly imitate him. For one thing, he's a light, lyric tenor and I'm a bass-baritone. And although I think he does a marvelous job on art songs such as "The Joys of Love" (written by Giovanni Martini) or "So We'll Go No More a-Roving" (a poem by Lord Byron that Dyer-Bennet set to music), and quite a good job on a lot of English folk songs, I, personally, think there are some songs he should have left alone. But that's just my opinion.

And I've learned a few songs from the records of Dave Van Ronk, but I'm not about to try to imitate him. For one thing, I think I'd wreck my voice if I tried.

I've learned songs from the recordings of people like Burl Ives, Susan Reed, Cynthia Gooding, Ed McCurdy, Guy Carawan, Andrew Rowan Summers, and many others, not to mention learning songs from people in person. And I don't try to imitate these sources, nor do I try to impose any style or mannerisms upon the song other than what simple comes naturally to me (and I am, perhaps, unaware of).

I agree that imitating, or trying to imitate, the singing of someone on a field recording is patronizing. The singers on field recordings sing straight out, with whatever characteristics and mannerisms that come to them naturally. Out of respect for both the singers and the songs, I don't try to mimic those characteristics and mannerisms. As alluded to above, I probably have some of my own that I'm not aware of. I take a very dim view of the kind of folkie who has a naturally very nice sounding singing voice who, because they are singing folk songs, try to hide that natural quality of their voice by roughening it up and singing in regional dialects that are not their own. There's a lot of that going on, and I think that is patronizing—and downright phony.

Do I use regional dialects? Yes, if it is an integral part of the song. If the word is "ain't," I don't change it to "isn't." I don't change "goin' to Montan" to "going to Montana." And I don't see how one can sing a Scottish song such as "McPherson's Farewell" without using a Scot's dialect because the song would sound weird without it. The only alternative would be not to sing the song, and I'm not going to limit myself that way, since I can do a pretty creditable Scots dialect (it may be in the genes). One needs to use a little taste and good sense.

If you try to correct the grammar or Anglicize the dialect in most regional songs (as folk songs generally are), more often than not they will simply end up sounding pretty peculiar! But this does not mean that one is "imitating." One is using elements inherent in the song itself.

As to "cheap jokes," I do sing humorous songs. And reaching for humor, on "The Frozen Logger" (a funny song to begin with), I took to singing all but the first verse in a thick, Yogi Yorgesson Swedish accent and got many laughs with it. But—when I sang it that way for James Stevens, the man who wrote "The Frozen Logger" (he was a guest on a television series I did in 1959), he cracked up, said, "I never thought of it quite that way. Great! Keep doing it like that!" So, with the approval of the writer, I stand by my bit of whimsy. Cheap joke? I don't think so. To me, it seemed sort of inherent in the song, and Stevens thought so too, once he heard me do it that way.

But that's the song. I do not take a serious song and screw around with it. Example:   in one recording of "Tom Dooley," the Kingston Trio sing "I met her on the mountain, and there I took her life. I met her on the mountain, and stabbed her with my Boy Scout knife!" Aw, c'mon, guys! That's just cheesy! Cheap joke!

There are two quotes that I ran into early on that have made up my credo for the way I do traditional folk songs:

From Rolf Cahn—
The most ticklish question still results from that awful word "Folk Music", which gives the erroneous impression that there is one body of music with one standard texture, dynamic, and history. Actually, the term today covers areas that are only connected in the subtlest terms of general feeling and experience. A United States cowboy song has less connection with a bloody Zulu tale than it has to "Western Pop" music; a lowdown blues fits less with Dutch South African melody than with George Gershwin.

Most of us agree in feeling as to our general boundaries, but more and more we search for our own particular contributions as musicians within these variegated provinces. There doesn't seem to be much point in imitating—what, after all, is the point of doing "Little Moses" exactly like the Carter Family? Yet it seems vital to convey the massive, punching instrumentals and the tense driving, almost hypnotic voice of the Carter Family performances.

One the one hand, there is the danger of becoming a musical stamp collector; on the other, the equal danger of leaving behind the language, texture, and rhythm that made the music worthy of our devotion in the first place. So we have arrived at a point where in each case we try to determine those elements which make a particular piece of music meaningful to us, and to build the performance through these elements. By continuing to learn everything possible of the art form—techniques, textures, rhythms, cultural implications and conventions, we hope to mature constantly in our individual understanding and creativity in this music.

###

And Richard Dyer-Bennet said—
The value lies inherent in the song, not in the regional mannerisms or colloquialisms. No song is ever harmed by being articulated clearly, on pitch, with sufficient control of phrase and dynamics to make the most of the poetry and melody, and with an instrumental accompaniment designed to enrich the whole effect.

Frank, I would be very interested to hear what your opinion is of these two quotes.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 03:30 PM

is pete seeger left handed?I noticed he picked up his cup of tea in his left hand,on the dick and marina clip.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 03:31 PM

sorry, dick and mimi clip.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: GUEST,Tom franke
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:03 PM

I think it is important to consider the music independent of the videos to some extent. The performers rarely control the video,. I think the genre of music videos is mostly silly, and the genre really got started in the 60's, although it later grew when cable enabled channels like MTV (in its original format) to play music non-stop. There had to be something to watch (it was tv, after all). They found ways to do what television commercials typically do: Keep attention with lots of movement and (frequently) scantily clad women (this is when Madonna and others made underwear outerwear). Generally, the videos (regardless of decade) just shoot the performers in a bunch of different locations and then mix them up in the edit. The locations are often idiotic--performers on trains, fake hoboes, etc. I saw one where a guy was playing an electric guitar in a rowboat. Generally the ones I find tolerable or even good are ones that either use the video to convey the song's story (when it has one), or the ones that are simple concert or performance videos. Some of the videos linked in this thread are really bad and made worse by the passing of time. Don't discount the possibility that general, non-folk, audiences get this. I remember my daughter las a teenager laughing at stupid videos with her friends--and they were not just the ones intended to be funny.

Here's an example of a music video where the video really adds to the song:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFowNFvmUxw. However, most are visual drivel--just the thing to keep attentive viewers (usually teenagers) absorbed while they do their homework so that they will be there for the frequent commercials.   

Most of the videos linked here are performances excerpted from that largely defunct genre known as "variety shows." The Legendaires video seems to be an early version of the modern video, which got its real boost, in my opinion, with the Beatlles, who were among the early perpetrators of this sort of thing. (Just this morning I saw the video of "I am the walrus." It was really bad.) I remember not lparticularly Iiking these early music videos, but I also remember that they seemed pretty creative or at least original at the time--just as light shows and other psychedelic claptrap did. It definitely seemed a break from the kind of staged performance in the Debbie Reynolds video. Today both seem embarrasingly artificial. I think in the late 60s they would have seemed very different.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: M.Ted
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:22 AM

Tom Franke's point is an important one--for these videos, and most videos, the performers don't have much to say about the final product. And, I don't much think that anyone that took folk music very seriously took any of this stuff very seriously, even then.

Since Tom posted a very compelling video, let me match that with one that moved me-from October, 2004--Eminem's Mosh

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 02:12 AM

Quite an astute political thinker, that Eminem, huh?

The Legendaires video at the beginning was a study in how folk music, like any other form of music, is certainly not immune from topical marketing, which is what the designation "Pop" in music stands for in my opinion. It is the sort of thing that is more easily identified in retrospect, since the essence of the music is strong enough to survive topical marketing and render it silly from the vantage point the years bring. What Suibhne's video of the Ian and Sylvia piece shows is that work done well, where substance supercedes Style, survives.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 07:25 AM

am I allowed to be a little critical,of Ian and Sylvia.
they are much more preferable to any of the other videos[imo]and are excellent.
a very minor criticism, for example at 1.01,the quietening sounds prearranged almost orchestrated.[almost a classical approach]
it sounds like they might sing it the same way every time.
but the harmonies are excellent.,and they are two very fine singers,with a good general understanding of traditional singing
one of the advantages of solo unaccompanied singing is that there is complete freedom for the solo singer to perform differently every time.

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: PoppaGator
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:29 PM

Don Firth's post of 3:04 yesterday got me thinking about "imitation" of traditional singers.

One of my greatest musical interests is the blues in all its traditional and modern forms, and one of my greatest pet peeves is to witness a performer who presents his/her rendition of old-style folk blues by dropping a beat or two at the exact same point in a given song, or (worse) at the exact same point in every verse, every time they play it.

For many many years, I found it virtually impossible ever to stray from a strict four-beats-to-the-bar, tweleve-bars-to-the-verse format. Only recently, after 40+ years experience, have I loosened up enough to occasionally allow myself a "hiccup" and throw in a 3=beat or 5-beat measure when it feels right ~ and it does NOT feel right to do so at the same point in the verse every time around.

These little variations are evidence of a certain looseness in one's approach to performance, and when they are real rather than imitation, they are not "built into" a repetitive arrangement, they occur at different and seemingly random times and places, or not at all, according to the performer's whim.

Those who slavishly follow a "classic" old recording in order to produce a note-for-note duplication are missing the point, especially in regard to these rhythmic irregularities that occur in so many folk/blues artsits' work. Those old original guys did NOT perform their songs the exact same way every time ~ at least, that is my firm belief. Any given recording is just a sample of how that person sang the song on ONE random occasion.

I've seen many examples of folk-music sheet music where single measures in 5/4 or 3/4 time appear in a song most of which is transacribed in 4/4. In a few cases (as when the irregular rhythm occurs in a repeated chorus), the bit of eccentric time is actually part of the song. However, quite often, it's a transcription of a

Subject: RE: This should set folk music back 100 year
From: M.Ted
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:51 PM

I just want to amplify on PG's point about the fact that the blues "old guys" didn't play or sing a piece the same way every time, because my favorite dead horse to beat on in this never ending discussion is that, once you take the music out of its home environment, no matter how fastidious you are about "authenticity", it stops being "traditional" and becomes something new.

"The Blues" as practiced by the "old guys", was a process of extemporaneous composition--they had a whole collection of couplets, lines, licks, bass runs, floating verses, rhythmic patterns, and song fragments that they used to highlight, amplify, and comment on the pieces that they were performing, depending on the responses of the audience. It was a dialog with the audience, and it spoke to a common experience, shared by the audience, who responded, on a word to word, line to line basis.

The thing is that all music (and all performing arts, for that matter) is a dialogue between the performer and the artist. We can play blues from now to Hell and Gone, but we'll never be part of the community that it came from. The best we can do is to take what we find worthwhile and portable from the tradition, and make it part of the community that we are a part of.