Boston's Club 47 - Where it started

Subject: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Vern Ela
Date: 06 Dec 99 - 07:06 PM

Just happened to read some of the messages regarding Boston's Pete Johnson. I never had the privilege of meeting the man, and I probably pre-date him by several years. I remember so well, going to the Club 47 in the early 60's, and seeing some of the greats before they became so well known. The Charles River Valley Boys, Eric von Schmidt, Bonnie Dobson, etc.

Just wonder how many still remember the original club on Mt. Auburn St. (number 47, of course), before they moved it over by the 'Coop'. I'd sure love to hear some of your memories. I think some of those folks are still around.

Cheers

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: bunkerhill
Date: 06 Dec 99 - 10:17 PM

Does it count if you were a high school kid singing "Dirty Water" and wishing you were at the 47?

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Midchuck
Date: 06 Dec 99 - 10:41 PM

I was only at the old location once, but I was at the Palmer Street location probably almost weekly from Fall '64 until Spring, '67. I think I was in Law School during that period, but that part is not as clear.

I normally went every time the Charles River Valley Boys, or Keith and Ringer, or Dick and Mimi Farina, or Tom Rush, were playing, if I could. That added up to quite a lot.

My favorite memory is the time Doc (that's Doc Watson, if you aren't a flatpicker) was there, and I got a front row center seat, which put my face about 6 feet directly in front of his guitar. He was playing "Brown's Ferry Blues," and after one run I muttered, "That can't be done." But he heard me, and said, "Yes, it can!" And did it again.

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Night Owl
Date: 06 Dec 99 - 11:05 PM

I remember seeing a very young, VERY nervous Bill Staines playing the opening set for Utah Phillips, and Utah encouraging Bill, on stage, to stick with his music, predicting that he was "going places...."

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Barry Finn
Date: 09 Dec 99 - 10:33 PM

Hi Vern Ela, I was to young for the original 47 but did make it over to Palmer St to see Paul Butterfield & Co. just before it took on it's next reincarnation as Passim's. It was quite a while before I headed back to Passim's till my musical tastes changed from blues to folk. I was also to young for the Plough & Stars but that never stopped them from serving me at 16 & never stopped me from hearing Spider John (actually at that tender age I found Kernoer more interesting than beer. Matt Talbot's in the South End was another bar where us underage teens could get served drink & get to here folk/blues music. Barry

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Sourdough
Date: 11 Dec 99 - 01:36 AM

I remember The 47 well. I was there the first night Doc Watson appeared, not long after coming up from North Carolina, courtesy of Ralph Rinzler. I think it must have been early on Doc Watson's first tour because he seemed genuinely surprised and moved by the warmth of the reception he received. Word had gotten out that a wonderful flatpicker was going to be at The 47 and the place was full. He certainly did not disappoint. However, in the middle of "Sittin' on Top of the World", a string broke. DW didn't miss a 16th note. He just refigured the fingering and played the rest of the showpiece on five strings.

I thing DW had been feeling kind of concerned about what sort of reception he was going to get in Cambridge. He was on the literal edge of Harvard and he may have thought that any audience here was going to be stuffy and cold. Well, most of the people in The 47 that night were guitar players of one or another level of ability but more than most audiences they appreciated the musicianship that they had just seen Doc Watson do around that broken string and at the end of the song, there was enthusiastic applause and stomping of feet. This was clearly not a reserved audience but a highly enthusiastic one.

Looking back after all these years, I can't be sure that my memory isn't restaging the event to some extent but I remember there being a choking quality to Doc Watson's voice when he spoke, as though he was trying to keep from sobbing over the warmth of the reception he was getting in this far nothern, cold, Yankee outpost. He tried to say something in the way of explanation. What he said was, "I busted a why-ar."

That's when we really started applauding and cheering. It was quite a night.

Sourdough

Some others seen at the Club 47 Charles River Valley Boys Jim Kweskin and his Jug Band Lisa Kindred Tom Rush SD

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Eisenstadt
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 03:36 PM

Paula Kelly and a friend started up the Club 47. Friend departed and Paula ran it herself as a club, membership card $1, because she presented live music. If not a "club", cops could close her down and, finally, did after she hosted a civil rights meeting.

Anyhoo, I am writing to ask if anyone knows and will tell me the whereabouts of Paula Kelly. Her dear friend Betsy Siggins who is on the board of Club Passim, the successor to Club 47, does not know where Paula is. She and I would very much like to find out. I do hope she is alive as she would be in her 70s now.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Mike Eisenstadt, aka Cousin Mike chez Hillbilly at Harvard
Austin, Texas

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Michael S
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 04:02 PM

This past week, NPR broadcast a 7-minute piece tracing the 50-year history of Club 47/Club Passim. You can listen or read a transcript here .

Michael Scully
Austin, TX

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Peace
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 04:17 PM

Worth reading, Eisenstadt.

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: GUEST,Marymac90
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:25 PM

I saw Steve Goodman there in 1975 when it was Passim--a
great show. During one set, a couple student-aged guys
mooned us all through the window! Steve just kept right
on going!

I read the NPR transcript--Thanks, Michael S. One point,
perhaps irrelevant to the thread: It said that in 1963, the landlord of Club 47 was said she was tired of "all the hippies"
on her sidewalk, and the club would have to move. Can anyone remember clearly whether the expression "hippies" was in use in 1963? I would have thought it might have been coined in maybe
1966 or thereabouts... Beatniks, or Beats, would certainly
have been in use then. There was that girl-group record (can't
remember WHICH girl-group) "South Street", in which they sang
"Where do all the hippies meet?" I can't date that song, but I would imagine they were singing about African-American hip cats
who were hanging out on South Street in Phila. before it, and Society Hill, were gentrified, and South Street was
commercialized.

Please forgive the thread creep.

Marymac

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Barry Finn
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 01:08 PM

Hi Mary, hope as is well with you, been quite a while


The song "South Street" was by the Orlons (1963) was on a 45, I remember the flip side had "Don't Hang Up", they also make a hit of "Wah Watusi", loved their stuff.
I was attending West Point Military Acd. must've been around 64', I fled & ended up in Philly, it's the 1st time I saw what was to be called "Hippies" (can't remember if they were called that at the time though)

Thread creep ended, sorry

I would've had my 1st intro to Passim's not long after I came home, maybe 67 or so when I started attending the Newport festivals.

Barry

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: GUEST,Marymac90
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 12:53 AM

Hello Barry, nice to see you again too!

Does anyone know when the expression "hippies", meaning countercultural young people, came into the vernacular?
Is it at all likely that the landlady of Club 47 kicked
them out of her building, saying that she didn't want
"hippies" hanging around on her sidewalk?

Marymac

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Charley Noble
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 08:46 AM

From the HIPPIE DICTIONARY:

"Hippie" a member of a counterculture that began appearing in the early 1960s, which expressed a moral rejection of the established society. Derived from the word hip, meaning roughly "in the know," or "aware." Numerous theories abound as to the origin of this word. One of the most credible involves the beatniks, who abandoned North Beach, San Francisco, to flee commercialism in the early 1960s. Many of them moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, where they were idolized and emulated by the young University of San Francisco students in the neighborhood. The beats (the hip people) started calling these students "hippies," or younger versions of themselves. Actually, the counterculture seldom called itself hippies; it was the media and straight society who popularized the term.

I would have placed the use of this term in the late 1960's but then I was never an early slang user.

Barry Finn at West Point Academy? Well, that does blow my mind!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: GUEST,Marymac 90
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 09:20 AM

Thanks, Charley!

Anybody else have recollections of whether "hippie" was a
term that would have been used in Boston in 1963? 1966 was
the "Summer of Love", wasn't it? So the term would have
been in common use by then. But 1963 was (mostly) before
JFK's assasination, before the Beatles were known in the US,
etc.

Marymac

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Barry Finn
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 09:56 AM

A diffrent West Point (West Point Boys Military Academy) Charlie though it was a prep point for those thinking of a military future. At 14, so it would've been 1965, I was field stripping Machine guns & practicing with live ammo. I shutter, it's no wonder I became a hippie as soon as I got home. I didn't stay long, it just wasn't me.

Sorry for drifting again

Mary, you're off by a year, the "Summer of Love " was 1967, I missed it by a year & ended up in Haight-Ashbury in 68'. The term was widely in use by then but I can't think of when I 1st heard it, though it was well before that.

Barry

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: MissouriMud
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 11:22 AM

I first saw the original Club 47 on Mount Auburn Street as a 12 year old back in late 1959. I was visiting my brother at Harvard for the weekend and he pointed it out as we passed it on the way to a nearby music shop to buy my first banjo. My recollection is of it being a very small, unimpressive looking, hole in the wall - you could pretty much see it all from the front windows, except they had posters all over much of them. It looked very small and cramped inside without much of a stage of any type. They were having a benefit that night to raise bail to get Jackie Washington or some other local favorite out of jail so a lot of good sounding performers were scheduled, but the names are all lost to me now.   Unfortunately I couldnt stay around for the concert as I had to catch a train back home.   A few years later I did catch Tom Rush playing, but it might have been at the new location. I remember thinking he looked very thin and hungry - but he sounded great.

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: bobad
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 11:45 AM

From Wikipedia:

    Hippie (etymology)

Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, the principal American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, argues that the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip, whose origins are unknown.[1] The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in 1940,[2] in his stage name "Harry the Hipster". Hipster was often used in the 1940s and 1950s to describe jazz performers. The word hippie is also jazz slang from the 1940s, and one of the first recorded usages of the word hippie was in a radio show on November 13, 1945, in which Stan Kenton called Harry Gibson, "Hippie".[3][4] However, Kenton's use of the word was playing off Gibson's nickname "Harry the Hipster." Reminiscing about late 1940s Harlem in his 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X referred to the word hippy as a term that African Americans used to describe a specific type of white man who "acted more Negro than Negroes."[5]

Although the word hippie made isolated appearances during the early 1960s, the first clearly contemporary use of the term appeared in print on September 5, 1965, in the article, "A New Haven for Beatniks", by San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon. In that article, Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term hippie to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from North Beach into the Haight-Ashbury district. New York Times editor and usage writer Theodore M. Bernstein said the paper changed the spelling from hippy to hippie to avoid the ambiguous description of clothing as hippy fashions.

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Mark Ross
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 12:19 PM

The word HIP comes from "on the hip" a term relating to the smoking of opium. You lay down on your side holding out the long-stemmed pipe to be lit.

Mark ross

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Michael S
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 12:37 PM

I'm glad there's a thread on Club 47 (and "hippie" deserves a thread too). I'm passing this thread on to Millie Rahn, a folklorist and the archivist for Club Passim. Millie's very knowledgeable about the heritage of Club 47/Passim and may choose to pass this to others who can add lore. She's not, as far as I know, a Mudcatter herself.

I'm always interested in the ripple effects that things have. Most of you probably know of Rounder Records, the Massachusetts label with maybe 3500 rootsy albums to its credit. Rounder may not exist if it weren't for Club 47.

Ken Irwin and Bill Nowlin, two of the three Rounder founders, were Tufts students from '62 to '66, the height of the commercial folk boom. They got their musical education at 47. They always perceived the Club as having an impenetrable inner circle, so they tried to take in as much of the milieu as they could from the audience. While standing in line outside, Nowlin used to listen to people talk about trad and revival records, and was always struck by the knowledge of the crowd.

Between live sets, the Club would play recorded music. One day, enjoying the recorded fiddling they heard, they asked what was playing. It was a live Folkways LP recorded at the Old-Time Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. They had never heard of fiddlers conventions before, but later hitched down to NC numerous times to check out the show. Irwin says that Union Grove is "what really did it for me," with regard to his love of old-time music and bluegrass. Probably in 1967, they encountered banjoist George Pegram, who was competing at Union Grove that year. Nowlin took his photo. In 1970, a new Pegram album became Rounder's first release, with Nowlin's photo as the cover shot.

Influences are everywhere, but Rounder and its thousands of albums are clearly linked to the presence of Club 47.

Michael Scully
Austin, TX

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Barry Finn
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 02:46 PM

One of the most enjoyable repeating evenings/events spent at Passim's, for me was (lI believe long after it had change from the Club 47) what was called, not offically, the Peter Johnson Hoot Nights. Peter would round up defferent area local talent or passers through & they wouuld perform a couple songs each. It was always an interesting evening. I don't rememeber when this started or when it staopped but I seem to remember it happening during the mid 70's & I can't remember if it was done as a benifit. Maybe someone else can add more to this part of it's history?

Barry

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: curmudgeon
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 03:36 PM

I began spending a lot of time in Boston in 1962 and moved there in '66. The "Beats" who referred to themselves as "hip" hung out around "Coffee Corner" om Huntington Ave. in Boston, and Central Square in Cambridge. There were all night cafeterias with cheap eats and coffee. These people were into jazz; they were not folk fans, trad or otherwise. Harvard Square was too rich for their blood, as was Charles Street.

"Hippies" with the requisite bells, beads and other acoutrements first appeared in the late Spring of '68. By the end of that summer, Boston Common was overflowing withflower children and the term "hippie" came into its own. Since I was there though, my memory may be less than perfect - Tom Hall

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:27 PM

I remember Peter's Hoot Nights - which, in order for me to do so, means they had to have been happening in 1970-1972. When I went to my first one the whole folk scene was thriving and well-established, so it must have been going for awhile. One Hoot was held in one of the coffeehouses in Charles Street (name? I only remember The Turk's Head: what was the other one nearby?) and another out in Cambridge Somewhere. I also recall a young, nervous Kate McGarrigle doing a solo gig in a church basement armed only with an accordion (great party afterwards). Peter and his friends turned me onto The Coppers and Peter Bellamy and The Young Tradition and any number of other fine acts I subsequently came across when I moved to Britain. Wonderful days, those...

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: curmudgeon
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:50 PM

The weekly hoots were at The Sword In the Stone, a block or so down from the Turk's Head. There was one night I was running the hoot whan a young lad named Livingston Taylor came by. He sang some originals and a couple by his brother James, and was very well recieved. Of course at that time, no one had heard of either of the two - Tom

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 07:47 PM

My friend Beth played a support set for Livingston Taylor when he did a gig at McLean's (mental hospital where both he and brother James spent some time) in 1968 or 69. If my memory is right, I think McLean's had some sort of resident youth community, for whom this concert was being put on. I went along for the ride - it certainly didn't feel or look any different from an ordinary coffee house event except that they all lived there. (Susanna Kaysen, who wrote the memoir Girl Interrupted based it on her stay in that same facility.) I do clearly recall one of them asking me if I was a new inmate!

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Charley Noble
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 09:04 PM

We would take occasional safaris to Boston from our college in Maine, generally for blues concerts at Jordan Hall but sometimes to get together with Mel Lyman when he was in his mellow Woody Guthrie phase. Oddly enough much of what I remember is like some kind of slide show: flash, flash flash! We would generally end up at Elsie's for sandwiches before heading back up to Maine. Alas, Elsie's is no more!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: GUEST,Passim Archives
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 05:35 PM

Hi, this is Elizabeth, Millie Rahn's assistant in the Passim Archives. We were grateful to have discovered this thread thanks to Michael S.
If you'd like to read more about the Club 47, a Cambridge, not Boston, institution, it's covered extensively in Eric Von Schmidt's and Jim Rooney's book, Baby Let Me Follow You Down. Freshly-printed third edition copies are for sale downstairs at our Palmer Street location.
As some of you may know, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Club's opening. In celebration, we've hosted several events, including a seven hour Hootenanny featuring musicians such as Al Kooper, The Charles River Valley Boys, Keith & Rooney, Carolyn Hester, John Nagy, Jim Kweskin, Geoff Muldaur, and The Silverleaf Gospel Singers.
WGBH recently released a radio broadcast that Brad Paul did on the Hoot—from the show and from his interviews with artists. Check out the WGBH website [www.wgbh.org] for 45 minutes of the 58-minute broadcast (on Sept. 6) The last time we checked, Geoff Muldaur was at top of page; further down, under 'multimedia,' is link to the web broadcast.
Millie has worked steadily to acquire a historical marker for the old Club's site. In January, then-mayor Ken Reeves and our own Betsy Siggins unveiled a plaque from the Cambridge Historical Commission at the Club's original location at 47 Mount Auburn Street.
On a side note, to "MissouriMud:" a Boston Herald article from our archives indicates that Jackie Washington was held in police custody in 1962.
Peter Johnson did indeed run Hoots in the early '70s and also ran Living Folk Concerts, one of the first organizations to bring British and Irish artists to Cambridge. Unfortunately, despite extensive efforts, we've been unable to locate Paula Kelley, co-founder of the old Club. However, Joyce Kalina, Paula's then partner, was able to attend Joan Baez's 50th "return concert" at Sanders Theater in March.
Regarding musicians at McLean Hospital, Boston Globe reporter Alex Beam wrote a book called Gracefully Insane.
Our archives are thriving due to the continued interest of musicians and folkies such as yourselves, and to the generosity of recent donors. We would love to hear any Club recollections directly. We are also always on the lookout for former patrons who might be willing to donate calendars or recordings relating to the Club. Please send any memories or inquiries to [e-mail].
Thanks very much!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Barry Finn
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 05:58 PM

Thanks Elizabeth, for the leads & all. I will have to set aside the time to listen to WGBH's broadcast. Although I wasn't a real frequent club goer, over the many decades Bob & his wife always treated & greeted me by name & as if I was a guest in their living room. I have many fond though foggy memories of so many great shows. I don't think I've been in much since their passing on the club, maybe I can turn that around, I'm getting a bit glassy eyed as I think back.

Just as an aside Peter Johnson has in the past few years recently revived his 'Living Folk Concerts', he is doing very well & he's a bit older, as we all are, so he's not running as many concerts as he did in his younger days but he does put on shows every so often.

Thanks again
Barry

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: GUEST,Marymac90
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 02:49 AM

Thanks to all who did some research or shared some memories on
the use of the word "hippies". It does sound unlikely that the
landlord would have complained about hippies on her sidewalk in
1963.

I'm glad to hear that Peter Johnson is still around, and still putting on occaisional concerts. I remember the ones he put on
in an old Masonic Lodge, which at that time in the mid-to-late
70's was called the Joy of Music or Joy of Dance Center, or something like that. I remember seeing Ola Belle Reed there,
among others.

Marymac

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 14 Aug 08 - 05:55 AM

My memories of the term "hippie" pretty much accord with what's been said above. I grew up in central California, and San Francisco (which local people referred to simply as "The City" - e.g. we're driving up to The City tomorrow) was the nearest heart of culture. First there were beatniks who hung out in North Beach and wore a lot of black and white and quoted abstract poetry - their visual image stands out in my mind as being striking contrasts of pale and dark, though it's hard now to separate from it the items which later became journalistic clichés: bongos, berets and the like. They drank espresso and said things like "square" and "cool". The word Beatnik pretty much morphed into a catch-all for anyone outside the social mainstream (if you were being respectful you called them The Beats) so it was probably "beatniks" on her sidewalk the lady was complaining about. That certainly would have been the case in my home town. If we'd had any.

Then - in what seemed like an eyeblink - they seemed to blossom into colour - wooops, I mean color - and acquire beads and bells, much louder music, and expressions like "head trip". I remember driving through The Haight with - of all uncool things - my parents in 1965 and even my mother knew to call them Hippies. The phrase was starting to percolate around my (very conservative) high school by then, so people seem to have known the term, at least where I was, which was the west coast. There was a fairly instantaneous musical revolution too - one day it was the Beach Boys, and the next...

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Marcia Stehr
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 01:06 PM

I loved the Club 47. It was different than the clubs in New York.
There was a warmth and cozy-ness.It must have been a combination of the space and people which made it so wonderful.

I am working on a book about Geno Foreman. I'd love to hear from old friends.
Peace and love,
Marcia Stehr (Marci Foreman)

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 06:11 PM

Even I sang at Passim's- must have been early '70s, and there I met Jim Rooney, who a few years ago married a longtime best friend of mine, Carol Langstaff. This wonderful nutty couple WINTER in Ireland. George and I visited them there in the 1990s, heard and joined in on the most wonderful music parties, and one day the four of us "borrowed" a car belonging to a friend of Jim's who had parked it for the season at Jim & Carol's house (was this friend John Prine?...can't recall exactly...) and toured all round for two days, just listening and playing music and seeing sights. Isn't it marvelous where a chance meeting at Passim's can lead one?
Enjoy all your good memories!    Jean

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: MartinRyan
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 06:42 PM

Jean

Jim is still wintering in Ireland, as you may know, and still making music.

Regards
p.s. And it may well have been John Prine's car - another Clare/Galway sometime resident!

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 08:24 PM

Someone remind me again what the difference is between winter and summer in Ireland...?

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: MartinRyan
Date: 19 Nov 08 - 06:48 AM

Less rain - but I've forgotten wheather/weather that's the summer or the winter!

Regards

Subject: RE: Boston's Club 47 - Where it started
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 08 Jul 15 - 09:47 AM

There is a documentary about CLUB 47 available on DVD:

For the Love of the Music - the Club 47 Folk Revival
Produced and directed by Todd Kwait and Rob Stegman
Ezzie Films, 2013 105 minutes

The DVD contains additional interview footage, and is R0.

Has anyone discovered the whereabouts of Paula Kelly(Kelley) ???

Best wishes, Thomas.