Educate me on the "Big Folk Scare of the 1960s"

[Murphy Slaw]

Wasn't nearly as scary as the great bubblegum scare that was to follow...

[PeteCady]

Originally Posted by robey

The best account of this time is Dave Van Ronk's "The Mayor of MacDougal Street".

And the best paragraph in that entire book is:

"This particular afternoon, the venue was the Cafe Wha...Manny Roth, the manager, had recently instituted a policy of daytime hootenannies, with Fred Neil presiding. When we arrived, Fred was on stage with his guitar and up there with him, playing harmonica, was the scruffiest-looking fugitive from a cornfield I do believe I had ever seen..."

(The Nobel Prize for Literature was quite a while later.)

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by Murphy Slaw

Wasn't nearly as scary as the great bubblegum scare that was to follow...

There are certain phases that we are glad to see fade into oblivion. However, they never leave us on youtube!

Tony

[KevWind]

As noted it was more or less connected to the residue of the McCarthy
era, and was not limited to Folk music. Many late 60's Rock artists were labeled as "commies" as well

[TomB'sox]

OK folks, this thread is borderline political and contentious. It has been a very interesting discussion of the troubled times of the 60's, but lets keep it on track as to the music and the artists of the time. It can not venture into politics or other AGF forbidden topics as per the rules: "Highly contentious discussions will not be allowed on the forum"

Thank you,

TomB'sox

[Kerbie]

I lived through the period, but didn't really get to experience it musically until much later. They were indeed turbulent times for the country. In addition to allowing a lot more people to hear great folk music, that movement sorta ushered in a blues revival too. Granted there was a good deal of money involved, but without that era, I may never have enjoyed the great music of a guitarist like Mississippi John Hurt, one of my favorites to this day.

[Murphy Slaw]

Originally Posted by PeteCady

"This particular afternoon, the venue was the Cafe Wha...Manny Roth, the manager,...…….

Manny Roth was David Lee Roth's uncle. As I recall, and according to Wiki, he owned the Café Wha.

Van Halen did a gig there when they kicked off the "Different Kind Of Truth" tour.

[Wade Hampton]

No, you wouldn’t have experienced the music of Mississippi John Hurt and probably not Doc Watson or Flatt and Scruggs, either, Kerbie - it was Yankee college kids and serious New York City folkies who provided the fervor and knowledge base that funneled their energy through events like the Newport Folk Festival. That festival and similar ones like the University of Chicago Folk Festival and others gave a platform for those performers like those I mentioned and many more.

At the time bluegrass had just about run its course as a commercially viable branch of country music, but the Folk Revival not only rescued it from commercial oblivion but opened it up to a much wider audience and helped turned it into the cultural phenomenon that it remains today.

So far as I’m aware, there was no such thing as open air “bluegrass festivals” in the 1940’s and 50’s. Those started as a direct outgrowth of the Folk Music Revival. Young Yankee musicians didn’t used to play Bill Monroe or Earl Scruggs tunes back then, either - bluegrass music was strictly a regional endeavor before it got exposed to a much wider audience.

This greater appreciation for bluegrass wasn’t entirely due to the folkies taking an interest; having Flatt & Scruggs on the Beverly Hillbillies and the Dillards on the Andy Griffith Show had an impact, as did having Earl Scruggs’ banjo instrumentals on the soundtrack of the hit movie “Bonnie and Clyde.” (My best friend bought a copy of the soundtrack album, which had Earl blazing away at “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Flint Hills Special,” interspersed with snippets of dialogue between Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and J. Michael Pollard. Whenever there was dialogue we’d groan and get up to lift the needle over to the next piece of music...)

Those TV shows and movie soundtracks exposed many more people to bluegrass music, but if it hadn’t been for the folkies presenting bluegrass music at their festivals first, it’s questionable whether those mass market outlets would have followed.

The mass market bombshell that firmly planted bluegrass in the larger cultural landscape was the release of the three record “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a dazzling array of bluegrass and old time country musicians. Bill Monroe refused to take part because the guys in the Dirt Band were long haired hippies, in his opinion, but he soon came to regret that imperious decision as he watched the album elevate the careers of everyone involved.

But not him...not immediately, anyway. But as there became more and more interest in bluegrass, he benefited as well.

The release of that album was in the early 1970’s, well past the peak of the Folk Revival, but the fact that it could even take place at all was a direct result of the influence that the Folk Music Revival had on millions of musicians in the US and around the world.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Steve DeRosa]

I was born on the Lower East Side, and while I was still in a stroller (mid-50's) my parents would walk to Washington Square Park on Sundays to catch the poets/speechmakers/musicians; I guess you could say I got in on the ground floor - acoustic (no longer exclusively "folk") music was a strong influence as I was learning to play, and I continued to frequent the Village through the early-80's (played my last gig there in '94 - only time I shared a stage with the late Jack Hardy, captured on a Fast Folk collection). As several prior posts have suggested, although styles have changed the Folk Revival laid the foundation for later genres of acoustic (and non-acoustic - I was in Washington Square Park when "Grandfather-of-Punk" David Peel was recording live in '67) music - and it could be argued that coffeehouses/open mics (still with us over six decades later) would never have seen the light of day...

[Don Lampson]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

No, you wouldn’t have experienced the music of Mississippi John Hurt and probably not Doc Watson or Flatt and Scruggs, either, Kerbie - it was Yankee college kids and serious New York City folkies who provided the fervor and knowledge base that funneled their energy through events like the Newport Folk Festival. That festival and similar ones like the University of Chicago Folk Festival and others gave a platform for those performers like those I mentioned and many more.

At the time bluegrass had just about run its course as a commercially viable branch of country music, but the Folk Revival not only rescued it from commercial oblivion but opened it up to a much wider audience and helped turned it into the cultural phenomenon that it remains today.

So far as I’m aware, there was no such thing as open air “bluegrass festivals” in the 1940’s and 50’s. Those started as a direct outgrowth of the Folk Music Revival. Young Yankee musicians didn’t used to play Bill Monroe or Earl Scruggs tunes back then, either - bluegrass music was strictly a regional endeavor before it got exposed to a much wider audience.

This greater appreciation for bluegrass wasn’t entirely due to the folkies taking an interest; having Flatt & Scruggs on the Beverly Hillbillies and the Dillards on the Andy Griffith Show had an impact, as did having Earl Scruggs’ banjo instrumentals on the soundtrack of the hit movie “Bonnie and Clyde.” (My best friend bought a copy of the soundtrack album, which had Earl blazing away at “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Flint Hills Special,” interspersed with snippets of dialogue between Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and J. Michael Pollard. Whenever there was dialogue we’d groan and get up to lift the needle over to the next piece of music...)

Those TV shows and movie soundtracks exposed many more people to bluegrass music, but if it hadn’t been for the folkies presenting bluegrass music at their festivals first, it’s questionable whether those mass market outlets would have followed.

The mass market bombshell that firmly planted bluegrass in the larger cultural landscape was the release of the three record “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a dazzling array of bluegrass and old time country musicians. Bill Monroe refused to take part because the guys in the Dirt Band were long haired hippies, in his opinion, but he soon came to regret that imperious decision as he watched the album elevate the careers of everyone involved.

But not him...not immediately, anyway. But as there became more and more interest in bluegrass, he benefited as well.

The release of that album was in the early 1970’s, well past the peak of the Folk Revival, but the fact that it could even take place at all was a direct result of the influence that the Folk Music Revival had on millions of musicians in the US and around the world.


Wade Hampton Miller

I grew up listening to "Okie Music", as C&W, was called in California. My revelation with "Folk Music", was a multi LP set, called, "The American Folk Box"... Can't remember when it was released, late 50s, or early 60s? It was a great compilation work...

Once I heard the Kingston Trio, I was hooked!

Don

[Wade Hampton]

My sister started with the Kingston Trio, then switched her loyalty to Joan Baez as soon as Baez became prominent, because Baez was female and had an impressive vocal range. She even ironed her wavy natural blonde hair so it would be as straight as Baez’s, but then when Peter, Paul and Mary came along she stopped ironing her hair because she then had a natural blonde female singer to emulate. She no longer wanted to look like a paler version of Joan Baez.

As soon as the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show I started combing my hair into bangs, but that’s as far as I took it trying to emulate any singers. The only prominent blond male musician to emulate back then was Brian Jones, and I didn’t want to look anything like him! Which is probably just as well, the way things turned out.

It’s funny how much these superficial things like hair color matter to kids, but matter they did.


whm

[Teleplucker]

There is a current FB game about listing 10 influential albums that influenced you. I was in my early teens and had been playing guitar for a couple of years. I also was reading Rolling Stone magazine. I doubt that I understood much of the political discourse, but reading the record reviews helped introduce me a world of music that would otherwise been hard for me to find.
I'm pretty sure that a review of "Will the Circle be Unbroken" convinced me to purchase that record.The solo acoustic guitar version of Both Sides Now played by Randy Scruggs on that record opened my ears to a lot of new possibilities for what a guitar could sound like. I had a couple of friends that I played music with and they really enjoyed Bluegrass, I was competent enough to play along with them so they let me join in. That led to a lot of fun times but Bluegrass sound never grabbed me like that version on Both Sides Now and Merle Travis' playing Cannonball Rag.

I know that's a little off topic from the "folk revival" I was a little too young to remember much of that but as Wade says, the folk revival paved the way for "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" which introduced acoustic (folk) music to millions of new listeners.

[Murphy Slaw]

When Scotty Stoneman and the White brothers (Clarence and Roland) played the Ash Grove in Hollywood in 1965, one of the members of the audience was Jerry Garcia.

Way ahead of the curve...