The ‘60s folk revival was the second wind of a movement that started before the Great Depression, which itself was actually an echo of the oldest music in our country’s musical legend. If you missed my first episode on folk, from July, 2021 “Folk Music Stood For America”, I talked about songwriters like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, as well as a number of folklorists like Adam Lomax. These artists and butterfly collectors spent their lives capturing the authentic, but vanishing sounds of our heritage – played by musicians who had learned the songs the way the people who taught them had, like a hand-to-hand passing of a torch. Songs were passed down through family members and neighbors in many colors and varieties - including blues, country, gospel, folk, bluegrass, Cajun, tejano, zydeco and Native American music. That was the theme of our very first two episodes, from January, ’21. Maybe you’d like to check those out?
One of the most important distinctions between the two folk music waves was that in the second revival, it was much more common for artists to play their own songs.
Song to Woody – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is probably the most transcendant in this achievement. During his career, Dylan has composed over 500 songs, and they’ve been covered by over 2,000 bands and musicians. At the same time, it’s a point of division between folk ‘purists’ who wqere into the historic nature of the music, and the ‘hipster’ crowd that grew out of the Greenwich Village scene.
Even within the song-writers, there were those who still clung to the Appalachian or Cajun roots music that came before, just writing new lyrics on top of traditional songs, and guys like Dylan and Phil Ochs, who were truly crafting something altogether new.
In both the first and second folks waves, many of the musicians were heavily influenced by the times and events that lived in. During the first folk revival, the most important social issues included the Great Depression, and the Oklahomoa Dust Bowl. In different ways, both of these catastrophes laid waste to the dreams and scapped together fortunes of the hard-working American people. Overseas, political revolutions had overthrown ancient monarchies, the latest one being Russia’s Romanov dynasty where powerful winds of change had driven the half starved and long-neglected Russian peasants to revolt, and whose actions were spurred on by idealoges like Marx and Lenin.
Tear the Fascists Down – Woody Guthrie
Folk musicians like Guthrie and Seeger saw the obvious similarities between what had just happened in Russia, and the plight of millions of dispossessed American workers and farmers who’d lost everything at the hands of capitalist money barons. In fact, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger both suggested that it was folk music’s political nature that made it popular with American youth. It was more than just music; it was like a radical newspaper – something that ‘spoke the truth’ in ways that other media, and even polite conversation just veered away from.
In the WW II year, Wood Guthrie had a radio show called “More War News”. He sang a song on that show to describe what was happening in Poland, following Germany’s invasion. The lyrics went like this:
“I see where Hitler is a-talking peace Since Russia met him face to face— He just had got his war machine a-rollin’, Coasting along, and taking Poland. Stalin stepped in, took a big strip of Poland and gave the farm lands back to the farmers. A lot of little countries to Russia run To get away from his Hitler man— If I’d been living in Poland then I’d been glad Stalin stepped in— Swap my rifle for a farm…Trade my helmet for a sweetheart.”
The music put what people knew was important up-front-and-center, in ways anyone could understand. To get the whole story on what happened during those years though, you’ll have to listen to The first folk revival was nearly KO’d in the late 1950’s during the Red Scare/ Communist Witch Hunt of the McCarthy hearings. The paranoia and anxiety that madhouse created pretty well made folk music a threat in many parents’ minds. Radio programmers and DJ’s stopped playing the music and folk went dormant until a safer form of it became more popular.
Masters of War
The second folk revival that started in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was, again, another social movement bent on change, but this time, the causes were different. The 1960’s have been romanticized in a lot of ways. It’s difficult today to still feel the thrill, and electric charge of what Beatlemania must have been like, or to experience the ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ pitched emotions that led to student riots and slain college students at Kent State, but they were very real. Folk music was at the heart of it all. Just like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie had demanded better treatment for workers, and economic assistance to America’s poor, the second folk revival rallied people behind Civil Rights, Equal Rights for women, and an end to the war in Vietnam war. A chorus of new musicians, were inspired by, and in turn inspired social change. Brave young kids, like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Barry McGuire, and Joan Baez – as well as a few old-timers from the first wave - gave voice to a new generation of Americans who dreamed of better things and better days.
Tom Dooley – Kingston Trio
Critics and historians date the ‘60s revival back to 1958, and the song we’re listening to now, by the Kingston Trio, called “Tom Dooley”. It’s such an Important track that NPR included it in their Top 100 Musical Works of the 20th Century list! The Kingston Trio had a very professional sound, and a clean-cut look that was miles away from the hard-bitten, rugged, desperate sound and feel of Woody Guthrie or even the milder Pete Seeger, Guthrie’s long-time partner and close friend. The ‘Trio’ made folk safe again, and college students were playing their records at home and in their dorm rooms. Folk was making a come-back. But the thing that really brought folk music back to the forefront was a record released by a guy who was a sort of musical curator named Harry Smith.
Old Lady and the Devil
In 1952, Smith released his "Anthology of American Folk Music," and the "rediscovery" down South of wrinkled old blues singers like Mississippi John Hurt, who could still play the blues with riveting self-revelation. The “Antholoogy” was the well spring of nearly everything Dylan, Baez, and all of the other '60s folk groups did. It was a set, that included original blues, folk and country tunes recorded during the Depression Era
Ignited by the music that the “Anthology” brought back in focus, a younger group of poets and musicians set out on their own to give new life to this music. One young woman from Staten Island, NY, named Joan Baez began attracting attention for her soulful, singing and delicate guitar playing. Her self-titled fist album was a set of traditional Scotch, English, and Irish folk songs, recorded across four consecutive evenings, in a single take each. I’m playing you her verson of Wildwood Flower, a song recorded decades earlier by the Carter Family, which I also included in episode 8, Country Music Blazed a Trail. It’s interesting to compare the two versions.
Baez remembered the recording of this album in a 1983 Rolling Stone interview she did with Kurt Loeder and she said, “It took four nights. We were in some big, smelly ballroom at a hotel on Broadway, way up by the river. We couldn't record on Wednesday nights because they played bingo there. I would be down there on this dirty old rug with two microphones, one for the voice and one for the guitar. I just did my set; it was probably all I knew. Just put 'em down. I did "Mary Hamilton" once, that was it. That's the way we made 'em in the old days. As long as a dog didn't run through the room or something, you had it.[7]”. Even now, unbelievably sixty years away from the albums’ release date, this music is still haunting, huypnotic and beautiful. Her voice verges on being operatic. In 2015, the album was selected for induction into National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress for special recognition and preservation as one of the sound recordings in over 130 years of recording history that has "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation's audio legacy".
Compare Joan’s sound with another young folkie who released a first album in the same year. From a nowhere place called Hibbing, Minnesota,
Girl From the North Country - Dylan
a 22 year old named Bob Dylan , - we’re listening to his song Girl from the North Country, from “the Freewheeling Bob Dylan.” but going under the name Bob Dylan, had earned a contract with Columbia Records and across two evenings recorded a collection of 13 songs, 11 traditional folk songs and 2 originals, which lit the fuse to Dylan’s long, illustrious career. A review in Billboard published shortly after the album’s release said, “In the April 14, 1962 issue of Billboard magazine it was highlighted as a 'special merit' release, said; "(Dylan) is one of the most interesting, and most disciplined youngster to appear on the pop-folk scene in a long time" and "moving originals such as "Song to Woody" and "Talkin' New York". Dylan when he finds his own style, could win a big following."[1. Huh…. You think there’s anything to what this critic is saying? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see….
Even today, Dylan’s latest releases are still being acclaimed by rock critics. Earlier in this episode, I played “Song for Woody” for you, from his Bob’s first album - one of just two originals on the album. It’s a special song, because it was written for Woody Guthrie, when Dylan traveled from Hibbing to New York City to visit his ailing hero. By that time, Guthrie was hospitalized with consumption and slowly dying. The meeting was a loving passing of the torch from the leader of the first folk revival to the soon-to-be leader of the second. Dylan wore the crown uncomfortably though, and as we’ll talk about today, it wasn’t very long before he took it off in a pretty dramatic way.
You’re listening to the American Song Podcast, today’s episode, “The Second Folk Revival – A Passing of the Torch.”
Early in Dylan’s career, Joan Baez was by far the more popular musician, and their two styles were very different. You can hear it in the samples I’m playing for you. Joan’s album was entirely composed of the English/ Scotch folk ballads, but Bob’s album is a mix of traditional folk songs, like the House of the Rising Sun – which Joan also included on her first album – and a number of blues songs like Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave is Kept Clean”. You can hear Jefferson’s original version of that song in episode seven, from April ’21, The Duality of the Blues. The delivery of their songs could not be more different either. Compare Joan’s otherworldly singing with Bob. Back in 1999, almost forty years from those early Greenwich Village days, and almost 25 years in our rear view mirror now - the music critic Tim Riley wrote about it and he said, "[but] even when his reach exceeds his grasp, he never sounds like he knows he's in over his head, or gushily patronizing … Like Elvis Presley, what Dylan can sing, he quickly masters; what he can't, he twists to his own devices. And as with the Presley Sun sessions, the voice that leaps from Dylan's first album is its most striking feature, a determined, iconoclastic baying that chews up influences, and spits out the odd mixed signal without half trying."
Both Baez and Dylan came out of Greenwich Village in the early 1960’s. In the ‘50s, the Village had been ground zero for the Beat movement – dominated by beat poets and novelists like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs. They captured the essence of their generation in a way that was similar to what Hemmingway and Fitzgerald did for the Lost Generation. Here’s Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road on the Steve Allen Show in 1959.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53OJZb9w0BA)
The Beat poets and authors paved the way for the greatest voices of the Boomer generation, most importantly, Bob Dylan, who would one day be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Beats also attracted a whole scene around them, and the epicenter was located in Greenwich Village, New York. But as the 1950’s faded out of view, the Beat Poets were gradually replaced by 2nd folk revival crowd who were attracted to the bohemian clubs that the beats had left behind. This bohemian, eclectic pot pourri – where beat-inspired jazz musicians played with the folk artists in exotically named hangouts like Café Flamenco, The Commons, Gerde's Folk City, The Gaslight, Café Bizarre, Café Wha?, The Bitter End, Café Figaro began in these simple clubs but in the next few years would capture the hearts and minds of the Boomer generation.
Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village – He Was a. Friend of Mine 1961.
That was a 20 year old Bob Dylan singing there. A lot of people think that it’s one of his early originals. Actually though, it’s a great example of the whole folk movement. Alan Lomax recorded a black inmate named Smith Casey playing it in 1939. In 1961, Rolf Cahn heard it in the Library of Congress and recorded it himself, and Dylan picked it up and recorded it for his first album.
So, Greenwich Village had all the elements needed to birth another chapter in the story of America’s music. The music industry was between Elvis and the Beatles, and thus poking around for different sounds. The Beat movement of the '50s had left the Village littered with small music venues and hangouts. One interesting point that Kerouac and Dylan shared in common was an ability to write in extended bursts of brilliance. On the Road was written on a single scroll of paper, in an incandescent blaze of creativity. Just as remarkably, In Dylan’s first year as a recording artists, he produced three unforgettable songs that still seem relevant in many ways, and which, in their time, were unifying forces for the most important social movements of the era, including Let Me Die in My Footsteps," "Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind." (last verse Blowin in the Wind here)
Like the Beatniks, the 60’s folkies were committed to social change, the three major themes were the war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s movement. The songwriters, and their hangers-on often got together, either in the small clubs with their 4 x 6 stages or in each other’s apartments, to argue strategy, work on songs, swap gossip and at the end of the day, more often than not, get lucky.
Morning Dew – Bonnie Dobson at Folk City, 1962
That was the folk singer, Bonnie Dobson, singing Morning Dew at a Village Club called Folk City, in 1962. Folk City was a small joint known for its funky decor, a wide-open door and an audience murmur that lessened rather than stopped during performances. Folk City was the place where Dylan had his first paid gig, opening for John Lee Hooker on April 11, 1961. Besides Dylan, the tiny club opened doors for Peter, Paul and Mary, Richie Havens, Judy Collins, Jose Feliciano, Phil Ochs, John Phillips and Lou Gossett Jr., among others.
Greenwich Village, like Folk City, was a kind of breeding ground for ideas, songs, dreams, and relationships. The Village Voice photographer, Fred W. MacDarrah was a photogrqpher for a paper called The Village Voice at the time, and he’s said, "There weren't strict divisions between writers, dancers, poets and musicians. Those in the avant-garde grouped together, living the same neighbourhoods, supporting each other's work by attending concerts, openings, readings and hanging out together.” These early years of the 1960’s were like that too – the country still felt relatively quiet and peaceful. America hadn’t been plunged into the really dark, violent, protest-filled years yet.
Simon & Garfunkel – Silent Night….
No nightly body counts on network news, no assassinations, no napalmed villages or self-immolating Buddhist monks. In ’62, it felt like the youth movement with it’s idealism might actually have a chance to work. If you had a guitar and a song, and if you could find a restaurant, bar or club with a stage to perform from, and if you were good, you might be able to make a living doing it, in many places around the nation.
The Village wasn’t the only place with a growing folk music scene. Other cities soon sprouted their own folk scenes, like Cambridge, Ohio, Chicago, Toronto, Coconut Grove, Berkeley, San Francisco, where Flower Power would rise in just a few short years, Los Angeles, Boulder, Colorado, and Woodstock, NY with the massive concert at Asgur’s farm just a few years into the future. Max Yasgur
In our episode on Rock' n 'roll, I talked about how – at the end of the 1950’s and the deaths of some of Rock’s early pioneers – it looked like rock’s flame was going to flicker out. For a little while, folk music looked like it might be the musical force to give voice to the idealism of the young Boomer generation. Folk artists were stepping forward in communities all over the nation, and from many different cultures, as we’ll see in the next episode
You’ve been listening to the American Song podcast, and I’m your host, Joe Hines.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to stop over at my Facebook page, americansongpodcast.facebook.com where you can find all the references used in this episode, as well as episodes 18 and 19 that are ready for you to keep learning about ‘60s folk music. I’m looking forward to sharing more with you again soon!