Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals (The Oxford Oral History Series)

273 Pages·2010·1.94 MB·English

by  David King Dunaway

SINGING OUT

S I NG I NG
OU T
An Oral History of America’s
Folk Music Revivals
(cid:2)
DAVID KING DUNAWAY
MOLLY BEER
1
2010
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunaway, David King.
Singing out : an oral history of America’s folk music revivals
/ David King Dunaway, Molly Beer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN978-0-19-537834-4
1. Folk music—United States—History and criticism.
2. Folk songs, English—United States—History and criticism.
3. Oral tradition—United States. I. Beer, Molly. II. Title.
ML3551.D832010
781.62’13009—dc22
2009034127
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Frontispiece: Collector Anne Warner records Frank Proffi tt, source of the Kingston Trio’s
fi rst hit song, “Tom Dooley,” in Pick Britches Valley, North Carolina, 1941.
Photo by Frank Warner, courtesy of the Frank and Anne Warner Collection
This book is dedicated to all those who have heard a good old song,
found its lyrics, and sung it to themselves or anyone else.
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Contents
Foreword by Pete Seeger ix
Introduction by David King Dunaway 1
1
I NEVER HEARD A HORSE SING IT! Defi ning Folk Music 7
2
EARLY COLLECTORS 17
3
MUSIC FOR THE MASSES 29
4
GREENWICH VILLAGE: 1940s 49
5
AM I IN AMERICA? The Red Scare 76
6
FOLK BOOM 107
7
MOVEMENT MUSIC 137
8
FOLK-ROCK 151
9
NU FOLK: The Music Changes, but the Beat Goes On 168
10
THE POWER OF MUSIC 189
Notes on the Interviews 199
Biographies of Interviewees 202
Notes 211
Bibliography 226
Discography 231
Index 243
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Foreword
Pete Seeger
Singing Out is a story of the links in what I think of as one of the world’s
most important chains, namely the chain of people’s singers. I’m proud to
be one of these links; I hope there are many more links to come. I’m glad
there’s a book about such links.
People give me too much credit because they’ve heard me. They don’t
know about people like Alan Lomax, or Woody Guthrie, and a whole lot
of other people. Not to speak of Francis Child, or Cecil Sharp, and so on.
And my father. I just happen to be the link that they’ve heard of, so they
think I’m the daddy of it all. Of course this is not true. I look upon Woody
Guthrie and Lead Belly, and Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan, and countless lesser
known people as more links in this chain. I look upon poet Taras Shevchenko
of the Ukraine, and that fellow in Paris back in the thirteenth century—the
Romantic poet, who lived with the lowlifes of Paris, with the cutthroats, and
thieves—François Villon. We’re all part of this chain. People who use poems
and songs to help turn people’s heads around. In one way or another. I’m still
working on it in a thousand ways, and I hope this book can be a contribution
to it. I think that songwriting and singing as an art form have generally been
looked down on more than they should be.
People think, well the symphony’s on a high plane; the novel’s on a high
plane; but I quote Béla Bartók, who said, “A song is just a short form that’s
on just as high a plane of art as anything else.” And I’d like to encourage
more people to be songwriters. I’d like it if everybody in the world thought
of singing and songwriting as part of their life, just as much as cooking or
eating, or tossing a baseball, or swimming. It’s something creative you do
with words and tunes and friends.
I decided I would be a musician in 1940, when I came back from that
summer having supported myself singing in saloons. I’d spent the whole
summer. I’d hitchhiked around, came back in good health. I hadn’t had
to write home for money, or to telephone home from jail. (Slept in a cou-
ple of jails.) I decided Alan Lomax was right: maybe I’d better stick with
music. I was really enjoying it. I knew I’d never starve as long as I could
pick a banjo. It was quite a victory.