Rare Bob Dylan Recordings from 1963: A Collaboration with Gil Turner

Bob Dylan & Gil Turner – “Farewell”


Gil Turner – “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”


Broadside holds the honor of being the first magazine to publish Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962. It was standard practice of Broadside for editors Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen to invite local songwriters to Broadside’s “office” (really their small apartment in New York City) and capture their songs on tape, so that Sis could transcribe them both lyrically and musically for the magazine.

Folk singer Gil Turner (M.C. of Gerde’s Folk City) was responsible for bringing Phil Ochs, among others, to the magazine. Ochs became, along with Malvina Reynolds (of “Little Boxes” fame), the most prolific contributor to Broadside. In a rarely heard Broadside tape, Turner provides backing harmony for Dylan’s “Farewell,” a song based on the traditional ballad “Leaving of Liverpool.”

Dylan sometimes shied away from recording his songs directly for Broadside (perhaps since he had already recorded most of them for Witmark, his music publisher at the time). Instead of singing them into a tape recorder, he would often get his girlfriend Suze Rotolo to hand in lyric transcription sheets. Gil Turner performed Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” in January 1963 to give Sis and Gordon an idea of what the song sounded like. The track would not be released until that May on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Turner at one point sings the wrong lyrics, but quickly recovers by re-singing the second verse.

As good as these songs are, they would have meant little to the Broadside editors sitting across the room. Sis and Gordon were serious proponents of topical songs with social messages and using the magazine to promote exclusively this form of songwriting. When it came time to release songs on Broadside compilations, more topical selections from Dylan such as “Ballad of Donald White,” “Only a Hobo,” and “Talking Devil” were used. Rather than risk the ire from his record company, Dylan was listed under the pseudonym “Blind Boy Grunt.” As it stood, the songs “Farewell” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” were left on the cutting room floor. The latter was destined to become an American classic but at the time was simply another great song from the 22-year-old songwriter. Of Dylan’s songwriting, Turner said: “I feel about Bob Dylan's songs very often that Bob is actually a kind of folk mind that he represents to all the people around. And all the ideas current are just filtered down and come out in poetry.”

Folk Music: The Basics

by Ronald D. Cohen

In 1962 Sis and Gordon launched Broadside, a topical song magazine, which quickly published Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Frederick Douglas Kirpatrick, Eric Andersen, Janis Ian, and so many others. They also issued a number of Broadside albums, in conjunction with Folkways Records, and continued to publish Broadside until 1988, although it lost much of its market and influence after the 1960s.

Sis Cunningham was involved as a performer, songwriter, and promoter/publisher of folk music and topical folk songs beginning in the early 1930s. She was a seminal figure in promoting women's music, and her achievements (along with her husband Gordon) have been crucial in stimulating and promoting singer/songwriters for countless decades. She died on June 27, 2004. The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine, a survey of recorded songs that appeared in the magazine, was issued by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 2000. The five CDs, with 89 songs, along with detailed liner notes, received two Grammy nominations, and serves as a monument to Sis and Gordon's vital role in promoting topical songs. Their book, Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography, was published in 1999, a wonderful story about their lives and hardships.

Millennium Folk: American Folk Music Since the Sixties

by Tom Gruning

Folk Music Magazines

Before 1962, Sing Out! magazine (whose predecessor was People's Songs) was the only folk music publication on the market. From about 1962 to 1972, a publication called Broadside was put out by the joint efforts of Seeger. Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, Gordon Friesen, and Gil Turner. This mimeographed publication was designed to put out the songs of the folk music movement (Eliot, 1979), and included the publication of some of Dylan's earliest material (McKeen, 1993). It also included articles about various protest movements, concerts, festivals, record reviews, and more. (Neff, "Media Usage")

Neff's account of the folk music periodicals that marked the genesis of popular folk movements in twentieth-century America suggests that these publications had a limited commercial appeal and consequently a limited economic scope. In a conversation in September 2002 with Sonny Ochs, sister of popular 1960s folksinger Phil Ochs, she commented about the appearance of these publications in contrast to current folk music periodicals. Ochs stated that in the early 1950s when Sing Out! was in its infancy, it was decidedly "unglossy." Likewise Broadside reflected its folkie ideological conceptual backdrop in its simple, underwhelming appearance. As the new face of folk began to emerge in the late 1980s and 1990s, publications that had informed earlier folk music enthusiasts changed in appearance, and new publications surfaced to fulfill the needs of a changing marketplace. As popular culture seemed to broaden the base of a postmodern politics of image, the landscape of folk publishing bowed to the pressure. Glossy, full-color publications replaced the mimeographed statements of the older folk's ideals, and a new contender began to rise in stature.

Gordon Friesen: Interview with the FBI, 1945

GORDON FRIESEN was telephonically contacted at his residence at 353 East 84th Street and requested to appear at the New York Field Division Office for interview. He was interviewed on March 27, 1945 after the purpose of his requested appearance was made known to him. The following is the record of questions put to and answers made by GORDON FRIESEN:

New York, New York
March 27, 1945

By Special Agent Thomas M. Corbett:

Q. What is your full name?

A. GORDON ELMER FRIESEN.

Q. What is your present title and position?

A. Well, my present title is Script Editor with the Master Radio Desk in the Office of War Information.

Q. What is your local address?

A. 353 East 84th Street, New York City.

Q. Are you at the present time a member of the Communist Political Association?

A. I am not.

Q. Have you ever been a member of the Communist Political Association?

A. I have not.

Q. Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever attended meetings of the Communist Political Association or Communist Party?

A. I have attended several meetings of the Communist - I have never attended any meeting of the Communist Political Association. I have attended several meetings of the Communist Party. Yes, Sir.

Q. Can you tell us the date of the last meeting of the Communist Party you attended?

A. I don't recall exactly the date. I once attended the Communist Party meeting at Madison Square Garden. I think it was the - I'm sure it was the fall of 1942. I remember there was snow falling so it must have been late in 1942. I don't recall, but I think Mr. EARL BROWDER spoke, but I don't remember exactly if he did.

Q. How many meetings of the Communist Party have you attended?

A. Well, I attended a meeting, I don't recall whether it was a Communist Party meeting or an event staged by the "Daily Worker", in Detroit in the summer or fall of 1943, at a place called Graystone Gardens, I think. It was around the corner from where I lived at the time. In both instances they were open meetings and I was, I wanted to see what was going on.

Q. Are those the only two occasions at which you attended any Communist Party meetings?

A. They are the only occasions I can recall offhand. In the spring of 1941, I think it was the latter part of March, I went to Oklahoma City from my hometown in Weatherford, Oklahoma, in the western part of the state, to become chairman of what is known as the Political Prisoners Committee in order to do publicity work and help in the defense of, well they were, I think there were nine people charged with their criminal syndicalism. Four of them were tried. In each instance each either admitted or it was fairly well proved that they were members of the Communist Party. One of them was openly the State Secretary of the Communist Party in Oklahoma.

But the charge was, well the principle for which I came to their defense, there were very few people in Oklahoma who would do it, was that of selling books. They sold MARXIST literature as well as a lot of other stuff. The Oklahoma County Police, if I remember right, confiscated - the Oklahoma County Sheriff confiscated some ten thousand books, and I went to their defense and became Chairman of the Political Prisoners Committee.

Q. What was the entire name of that committee?

A. I think that is the entire name of it, the Oklahoma Political Prisoners Committee.

Q. Was that connected with the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners?

A. No, it was purely a local committee.

Q. What was your interest in this committee, Mr. FRIESEN?

A. Well I had, I had what I considered more or less of a liberal background, and before I assumed this position, which took me before the public eye as chairman of this committee, I went into it rather thoroughly and the issue to me did not seem to be one of Communism at all. The people who were prosecuting this case there had a book burning in which a certain [...], conducted a book burning. I forget where in the hell it was, but it was out on Eastern Avenue in Oklahoma City in rodeo grounds or something, and his forces raided this book store which the Communists ran on East Grand Avenue and piled his books up and set fires to them. Well, in my mind it was exactly and precisely the same damn thing that was happening in Berlin. The books which were burnt, were burned, were by the same authors and same titles, and I looked further into it and this [...] who was conducting the G-- d--- thing had the background of the Silver Shirts in California, had been associated with the Party, and the guy who was pressing the charges was an Assistant County Attorney by the name of [...] who was connected with the Coughlinites, who in my mind along with [...] were trying to institute Fascism into countries which were interrelated, and not a question of Communism at all but a question of Fascism.

Q. Were you compensated for your activity in that committee?

A. I was not compensated to any great degree, no.

Q. By whom were you paid for the compensation you did receive?

A. The committee appealed for funds in order to carry on the defense, and from these funds I received enough to just keep alive. There was no set sum whatsoever. I wrote a pamphlet for them.

Q. What was the title of this pamphlet?

A. The name was "Oklahoma Witch Hunt".

Q. Did you receive any payment resulting from the sale of that pamphlet?

A. Well, I received a certain sum for writing it. It was considered more or less freelance work on my part.

Q. By whom were you reimbursed?

A. I was reimbursed from funds taken in by the Oklahoma Political Prisoners Committee. We had a number of contributors in the bulk of the state of Oklahoma. People who were afraid to get out in the public eye and make their names known, but were prepared to contribute funds in order to carry on the work we were doing, which they were convinced was a defense of the American Bill of Rights, the violation of which in this case might ultimately lead to Fascism.

Q. Have you ever registered to vote as a member of the Communist Party?

A. No, I have not.

Q. Did you ever sign a petition for Communist Party candidates?

A. I don't recall that I ever did. During that time in Oklahoma, I was answering your question, I did attend a number of Communist Party meetings because people we were fighting for were Communists and I wanted to find out what in the h--- they were up to and so forth. I don't recall where, but I did attend several of them.

Q. Did you distribute any Communist literature?

A. No, I never did.

Q. Have you ever written any Communist literature?

A. No, I never have. However, I wrote this pamphlet called the "Oklahoma Witch Hunt" to which I signed my name, and which I was thoroughly convinced was the right thing to do at the time, and which I am still convinced was right.

Q. Do you have anything further to say concerning the questions I put to you? Any statement you would like to put on the record?

A. Well, I think I pretty well stated my position, at least during that particular period, and it is added because of the convictions I held before I went to Oklahoma City to take up the defense of the Communists, and convictions which I maintained ever since. In fact, I quit a secure job in Detroit and turned down more money in order to come to New York City and work for the Office of War Information for basically the same convictions. The whole thing is a fight against Fascism, and somebody's got to do it.

I would like to add, the Oklahoma fight was all four of these people were convicted in very short order. However, the Oklahoma State Court of Criminal Appeals reversed these convictions on virtually the same grounds on which we fought for them. I think they were exactly or more or less the same. All four of them are free at the time. Two of them are in the Army, one of them in France, and the third one, there were three men and one woman, [...] are both in the Army. [...] is in France. [...] was registered as a psycho-neurotic 4-F because he made the mistake of taking his examination in Oklahoma where the old prejudices still apparently played a dominate part in his case. Otherwise, I think he would have been in the Army for the past sixteen months. The point I was trying to make was that the Oklahoma Court of Appeals upheld the same things I was in their employment for.

/s/ Gordon E. Friesen

April 10, 1945 - I have never in my life advocated the overthrow of the U.S. Government by force and violence nor have I ever belonged to any organization advocating such. -- Gordon Friesen.