H IL LIN I S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. \W 4 If. OF TIE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FEB 2 1962 Vol. 2, No. 2 November 3, 1961 JIMM IE DRIFTWdOOD COMES to C FMUS NOVEMBER 17 CONCERT PROFESSOR FLANAGAN LAUNCHES The Campus Folksong Club will CLUB SEMINAR SERIES present Jimmie Driftwood, "The Backwoods John Flanagan, English Dept., Troubadour" in a concert of Ozark folk opened our seminar series with an music on Friday, Nov. 17, 8 p.m. in informal talk on the colorful pageantry 122 Gregory Hall. of Belgium. Driftwood has been described as a Tuesday, Nov. 7, 4 p.m., Doyle composer, educator, singer and collector, Moore, Art Dept., will speak on "Ameri- and all of these he certainly is. He can Folk Instruments." He will supple- is as much at home in the school room ment his talk with slides and some as he is on the concert stage or before musical instruments that aren't "store- the microphone in an RCA recording boughten." studio. He taught in an Ozark 8-grade, Later this semester, Henri one-room school before he finished high Stegemeier, German Dept., will talk on school, and he also worked as a princi- "The Grimm Tales" and Joseph Gusfield, pal, a superintendent of an independent Sociology Dept., will take up problems school system, and a remedial reading in "Urban vs. Rural Folklore." expert. All seminars are in the YWCA Aud. The ballads that Jimmie collects and composes reflect the history of our GUITAR-BANJO WORKSHOPS country--songs like "The Battle of New Instrument workshops sponsored by Orleans" and "The Tennessee Stud." the Club got off to a damp but spirited Jimmie has sung in Carnegie Hall, start on Oct. 28 with 20 people. Classes at the Newport Festival, at the Univ. currently in progress include beginning of Calif., and on the campus of his Alma and intermediate guitar and banjo. Mater at Conway, Ark. RCA has released If anyone is interested in learning five Driftwood LP albums: "Battle of to play a folk instrument, this is a New Orleans," "Wilderness Road," "West- great chance to do so in an economical ern Movement," "Tall Tales in Song," manner. There is still time to join "Songs of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb." one of the classes. Beginning and inter- At his Nov. 17 concert Driftwood mediate guitar classes are held in 114W will sing pieces ranging from British English Bldg. at 3 and 4 p.m., respect- ballads to "Old Joe Clark,1m and will play ively, on Sat. Banjo classes are at his homemade guitar, the "pickin'-bow," 1 p.m. on Sat. at 506 N. Wright, Champ. and his old banjo "in a minor key." For Total cost for the lessons which the first time in any concert Jimmie has will run through Dec. 16, is only $3.50. agreed to play his mountain fiddle. Tickets for the concert are $1.25, AUTOHARP NEEDS and may be purchased at the Illini Union Autoharp welcomes editorial and box office or from members of the Club. technical assistance. Nuff saidl1 CURTIS JONES CONCERT ---a review by Dick Adams--- Curtis Jones is a blues singer in the tradition of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, and Lightnin' Hopkins. His is not the slick, polished performance of the concert stage circuit. The music, Jones explains, "just comes from inside of you." His playing and singing have all the rough- ness and country charm of a true untrained folksinger. "Blues," he says, "is something teachers can't teach in school. It ain't readin'...it ain't writin'. It has its own feelin'. It's all soul. I found myself sad and lonely so many times, I just have to let the feelin' out somehow." And it comes out in lonely lines: "Woke Up this mornin' and found my baby gone...Oh, baby, I'm so alone...I love my baby, but my baby don't love me." Unlike Leadbelly and other blues singers, Jones left the guitar at an early age and turned to the piano. ("When I got to Dallas, I wanted that money...and the piano, that's where the money was. The guitar's a lot easier, though. If I'd of knowed what I was gettin' into, I never would've switched.") He's never heard of people like Sonny Terry or Brownie McGhee, and he doesn't consider him- self a folksinger. If anything, he recognizes a kinship with jazz, and identifies with jazz greats like Count Basie and Cab Calloway--men he met in his own Texas- Kansas City--Chicago wanderings. But whatever the label, his music is a pure form of that amalgam of folk music and jazz known as "the blues." Jones' appearance here last Friday night before the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club was his first before a college audience in twenty-five years. In the mid-30's, he once played for a small group at a rural college in Arkansas. Most of his dates recently have been in night clubs, and that accounts for the strange variety in Friday's program. "I try to please the people," he says. "I want to give them what they want to hear." That's why jones' personalized bluesy versions of "Begin the Beguine" and "Canadian Sunset" rested rather uneasily alongside "Lonesome Bedroom Blues," "The Rock 'N Roll Special," and "Pine Top Boogie." But the traditional blues and boogie-woogie numbers, led by the driving rhythm of the lefthand on the low piano octaves, were the ones that really appealed to his listeners. "Why didn't you play "Stag-O-Lee" and stuff like that?" someone wanted to know after the concert. "Heck," Jones said, "I can play that sort of thing all night. But I didn't know they'd go for it." The people who handled his latest LP record album (Prestige Bluesville 1022) know what the folk market will go for, and what it won't. The number we heard as "The Rock 'N Roll Special" appears on the album re-titled "Midnight Special," so as not to frighten the folk and blues fans away. At the age of 54, and after twenty years without a really appreciative or attentive audience, Curtis Jones appears well on the way to a fruitful second career--this time as a "traditional folksinger." * * * * * * * * * The Campus Folksong Club plans future free concerts. Dates are to be announced in Autoharp, The Daily Illini, and the town press. JOSH WHITE TO APPEAR Josh White, universally acclaimed folk singer, will appear in a STAR COURSE extra concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday, December 6, in the University Auditorium. Tickets will be available in the Illini Union Box Office. White, who is known for his unique guitar style and interpretation of ballads, blues, work songs and spirituals, served a long apprenticeship learning to interpret life through song. No one tawght him how to sing. No one taught him how to play the guitar. He was born to a young Negro preacher and his wife in Greenville, South Carolina, and christened Joshua Daniel White after the biblical warrior. His family was poor, his father ill, so White at the age of seven got his first job leading blind Negro singers from one street corner to another. He lived surrounded by poverty. His blind masters, bitter with their own fate, were brutal. But their very cruelty, White says, contributed to his progress as an artist, for by changing masters he came into contact with all the great street singers of the period, people like Blind Joe Taggart, Blind Blake, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. When he was 11, White played second guitar on a record with Blind Joe Taggart in Chicago. Three years later, whe he returned to his familyts home, a record scout found him and offered him $100 to go to New York for a recording session. His mother said he could go if he pr-mised to sing only spirituals, no blues, for to religious Southern people, blues were "sinful". White agreed, but after cutting 16 sides in New York, he ran out of spirituals. So he recorded a few blues under a pseudonym, "Pine Wood Tom." Church groups praised the spirituals, but the blues records established his reputation as a singer. White got some radio jobs in New York and sang in church concerts. At one such concert he met his wife-to-be, Carol. Shortly after, White cut his right hand on a milk bottle, injurying his hand severly. He took a job operatigg an elevator and slowly nursed his nearly paralyzed hand back to health. After four years he was playing engagements in Greenwhich Village and smart East Side supper clubs. He made history at Cafe Society with his blues numbers and set a precedent at the Blue Angel by keeping it open through the summer season. White also won a following of intellectuals through his ballads of the Negro South. After White had set unusual records in England on radio programs, he returned to the states and made three movies: "The Walking Hills," "All That Money Can Buy," and "Crimson Canary," He also played on Broadway in "Lower Depths" and "How Long Till Summer." JOSH WHITE, SINGS UNIVERSITY AUD. DECEMBER 6 8: P M FOLK MUSIC FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS It is not generally known to new folksong enthusiasts that the Library of Congress has recorded much folk music. The music, in phonograph record form, is available to the general public on both 78 and 33 1/3 rpm discs.