Saturday, 31 October 2009
Friday, 30 October 2009
Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography
By Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen
Edited by Ronald D. Cohen
Foreword by Pete Seeger
Perhaps best known for Broadside, the influential magazine they founded in 1962, Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen have long been renowned figures on the American left. In this book, these two dedicated social activists - Sis the folk musician and Gordon the radical journalist - offer a spirited account of their personal and political odyssey. The story is illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings.
Born into poverty in rural Oklahoma, further shaped by the hardships of the "dustbowl" Depression years, Sis and Gordon were already committed to radical causes when they met and married in 1941. A short time later they moved to New York City, where they befriended Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Sis joined the folk protest group the Almanac Singers, and Gordon continued his work as a journalist.
Although blacklisted for their political views during the McCarthy era, Sis and Gordon persevered and eventually launched Broadside, which they continued to produce for almost twenty years. The magazine was instrumental in promoting the careers of many singer-songwriters, publicing the first works of such artists as Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sinate-Marie, and Tom Paxton, as well as the works of more established figures, including Malvina Reynolds and Pete Seeger. Indeed, Broadside helped give birth to a musical revival that energized the country and forged a vital link between the folk music of the 1930s and 1940s and the urban folk revivalists of the 1960s and 1970s.
Excerpt
By the fall Phil Ochs became a contributor, and throughout most of 1963 we hardly put out an issue that didn't contain one or two Ochs songs.
[...]
Phil Ochs started coming within a few months and continued to come long after we discontinued the monthly meetings. He always visited us when in New York after his move to California; he still put his songs on tape for us, and Gordon and I taped long interviews with him, which we transcribed and printed in Broadside. We later recorded some of the conversations on L-P albums through Folkways Records. He spent a lot of time with us during the summer and into the winter of 1975, talking hour after hour about being under surveillance of the FBI. Phil was quite ill, so we taped none of this. But later we confirmed what he said by sending to the Freedom of Information Act for a report on him and receiving over four hundred pages.
Edited by Ronald D. Cohen
Foreword by Pete Seeger
Perhaps best known for Broadside, the influential magazine they founded in 1962, Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen have long been renowned figures on the American left. In this book, these two dedicated social activists - Sis the folk musician and Gordon the radical journalist - offer a spirited account of their personal and political odyssey. The story is illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings.
Born into poverty in rural Oklahoma, further shaped by the hardships of the "dustbowl" Depression years, Sis and Gordon were already committed to radical causes when they met and married in 1941. A short time later they moved to New York City, where they befriended Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Sis joined the folk protest group the Almanac Singers, and Gordon continued his work as a journalist.
Although blacklisted for their political views during the McCarthy era, Sis and Gordon persevered and eventually launched Broadside, which they continued to produce for almost twenty years. The magazine was instrumental in promoting the careers of many singer-songwriters, publicing the first works of such artists as Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sinate-Marie, and Tom Paxton, as well as the works of more established figures, including Malvina Reynolds and Pete Seeger. Indeed, Broadside helped give birth to a musical revival that energized the country and forged a vital link between the folk music of the 1930s and 1940s and the urban folk revivalists of the 1960s and 1970s.
Excerpt
By the fall Phil Ochs became a contributor, and throughout most of 1963 we hardly put out an issue that didn't contain one or two Ochs songs.
[...]
Phil Ochs started coming within a few months and continued to come long after we discontinued the monthly meetings. He always visited us when in New York after his move to California; he still put his songs on tape for us, and Gordon and I taped long interviews with him, which we transcribed and printed in Broadside. We later recorded some of the conversations on L-P albums through Folkways Records. He spent a lot of time with us during the summer and into the winter of 1975, talking hour after hour about being under surveillance of the FBI. Phil was quite ill, so we taped none of this. But later we confirmed what he said by sending to the Freedom of Information Act for a report on him and receiving over four hundred pages.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin' - Lyrics/Chords
by Bob DylanAs published in Broadside ("The National Topical Song Magazine") #39 - February 7, 1964
Lyrics/Chords:
G Em C G
Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam
Em C D
And admit that the waters around you have grown
G E C G
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
Am D
If your time to you is worth saving
C G D
Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone
G D G
For the times they are a-changin'
Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again
Don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin
And there's no telling who it is naming
For the loser now will be later to win
'Cause the times they are a-changin'
Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call
Don't block up the doorway, don't stand in the hall
'Cause he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
'Cause the battle outside, raging
Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
'Cause the times they are a-changin'
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
'Cause the times they are a-changin'
The line it is drawn and the curse it is cast
The slowest one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
© 1963 Witmark Music
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Monday, 26 October 2009
Pete Seeger - A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
An unlikely Dylan cover by Pete Seeger. First, a live version:
A studio version, where Seeger again puts his own spin on the song:
A studio version, where Seeger again puts his own spin on the song:
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970
By Ronald D. Cohen
For a brief period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, folk music captured a mass audience in the United States as college students and others swarmed to concerts by the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. In this comprehensive study, Ronald D. Cohen reconstructs the history of this singular cultural moment, tracing its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century.
Drawing on scores of interviews and numerous manuscript collections, as well as his own extensive files, Cohen shows how a broad range of traditions - from hillbilly, gospel, blues, and sea shanties to cowboy, ethnic, and political protest music - all contributed to the genre known as folk. He documents the crucial work of John Lomax and other collectors who, with the assistance of recording companies, preserved and distributed folk music in 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of Left-wing politics and the rise of the commercial music marketplace helped to stimulate wider interest in folk music. Stars emerged, such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, and Josh White. With the success of the Weavers and the Kingston Trio in the 1950s, the stage was set for the full-blown "folk revival" of the early 1960s.
Centered in New York's Greenwich Village and sustained by a flourishing record industry, the revival spread to college campuses and communities across the country. It included a wide array of performers and a supporting cast of journalists, club owners, record company executives, political activists, managers, and organizers. By 1965 the boom had passed its peak, as rock and roll came to dominate the marketplace, but the folk revival left an enduring musical legacy in American culture.
Excerpt
Broadside attracted many new singer-songwriters. Via Ohio State University. Phil Ochs arrived in the Village in mid-1962 and participated in his first Folk City hootenanny in July, doing more country than folk, but he soon moved into protest music. Gil Turner brought him around to the Broadside meetings and he became a regular. When the editors called for a song about James Meredith's troubles at the University of Mississippi, Ochs responded in November with "Ballad of Oxford, Mississippi." Ochs, Dylan, and their colleagues developed an intense and sometimes competitive fellowship. Josh Dunson described one stimulating taping session at the Friesens' in Broadside no. 20, with Turner, Dylan, Seeger, Ochs and Happy Traum. Dylan sang "Masters of War" followed by "Playboys and Playgirls Ain't Gonna Run My World," then Ochs did one about striking miners in Hazard, Kentucky. "We were all out of breath without breathing hard," Dunson concluded, "that feeling you get when a lot of good things happen all at once. Pete expressed it, leaning back in his chair, saying slowly in dreamy tones: 'You know, in the past five months I haven't heard as many good songs and as much good music as I heard here tonight.'"
Moe Asch, who early on gave Broadside financial support, suggested issuing an album of songs by the regulars under a new Broadside Records label. Ochs, Turner, Matt McGinn, Seeger, Peter LaFarge, Mark Spoelstra, Happy Traum, and Dylan (aka "Blind Boy Grunt" because of his Columbia Records contract) gathered at the Cue Recording studio to cut the sides for Broadside Ballads, which appeared in late 1963. Five of the fifteen songs were Dylan compositions, starting with the New World Singers' performance of "Blowin' in the Wind."
For a brief period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, folk music captured a mass audience in the United States as college students and others swarmed to concerts by the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. In this comprehensive study, Ronald D. Cohen reconstructs the history of this singular cultural moment, tracing its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century.
Drawing on scores of interviews and numerous manuscript collections, as well as his own extensive files, Cohen shows how a broad range of traditions - from hillbilly, gospel, blues, and sea shanties to cowboy, ethnic, and political protest music - all contributed to the genre known as folk. He documents the crucial work of John Lomax and other collectors who, with the assistance of recording companies, preserved and distributed folk music in 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of Left-wing politics and the rise of the commercial music marketplace helped to stimulate wider interest in folk music. Stars emerged, such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, and Josh White. With the success of the Weavers and the Kingston Trio in the 1950s, the stage was set for the full-blown "folk revival" of the early 1960s.
Centered in New York's Greenwich Village and sustained by a flourishing record industry, the revival spread to college campuses and communities across the country. It included a wide array of performers and a supporting cast of journalists, club owners, record company executives, political activists, managers, and organizers. By 1965 the boom had passed its peak, as rock and roll came to dominate the marketplace, but the folk revival left an enduring musical legacy in American culture.
Excerpt
Broadside attracted many new singer-songwriters. Via Ohio State University. Phil Ochs arrived in the Village in mid-1962 and participated in his first Folk City hootenanny in July, doing more country than folk, but he soon moved into protest music. Gil Turner brought him around to the Broadside meetings and he became a regular. When the editors called for a song about James Meredith's troubles at the University of Mississippi, Ochs responded in November with "Ballad of Oxford, Mississippi." Ochs, Dylan, and their colleagues developed an intense and sometimes competitive fellowship. Josh Dunson described one stimulating taping session at the Friesens' in Broadside no. 20, with Turner, Dylan, Seeger, Ochs and Happy Traum. Dylan sang "Masters of War" followed by "Playboys and Playgirls Ain't Gonna Run My World," then Ochs did one about striking miners in Hazard, Kentucky. "We were all out of breath without breathing hard," Dunson concluded, "that feeling you get when a lot of good things happen all at once. Pete expressed it, leaning back in his chair, saying slowly in dreamy tones: 'You know, in the past five months I haven't heard as many good songs and as much good music as I heard here tonight.'"
Moe Asch, who early on gave Broadside financial support, suggested issuing an album of songs by the regulars under a new Broadside Records label. Ochs, Turner, Matt McGinn, Seeger, Peter LaFarge, Mark Spoelstra, Happy Traum, and Dylan (aka "Blind Boy Grunt" because of his Columbia Records contract) gathered at the Cue Recording studio to cut the sides for Broadside Ballads, which appeared in late 1963. Five of the fifteen songs were Dylan compositions, starting with the New World Singers' performance of "Blowin' in the Wind."
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