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.

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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. It is also available on tape. The preface to the current record catalog explains the history and nature of the collection:

THE ARCHIVE OF FOLK SONG of the Library of Congress was established in 1928. Through the efforts of many curators, the collections have grown to bo world famous. They now include over 16,000 discs, reels of tape, wire, and cylinders containing more than 60,000 different songs and ballads, fiddle tunes, harmonica and banjo pieces, and other indigenous American folk music. In addition to material from the United States, the Archive also houses folk music from many areas of Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. The collection of records has been largely made in the field with portable recording equipment. The Library of Congress cooperates with many institutions, universities, colleges, and qualified individuals in providing them with tapes for recording experiments. It strives to maintain a central repository of significant materials by duplicating the collections assembled by others as well as through its own initiation. Field trips are frequently made possiblea through grants -in-aid from cooperating uni- versities and institutions where the expenses are not borne by the individual scholar. Almost every region of the United States is represented in the Library's collection of field recordings. Special encouragement is given to the establishment of archives in each state, in order that scholars may have locally available the materials of their own region. These regional archives are normally housed in the library of a state university. The field recordings of the Library of Congress are an essential part of the cultural heritage of the American people. Their collection and preservation afford scholars, folklorists, and the general public an opportunity to study, to appreciate, and to absorb the traditions of America that are preserved in song and dance,

This catalog of phonograph records in entitled: FOLK MUSIC: A Selection of Folk Songs, etc. This excellent catalog is obtainable upon remittance6of-5 to: i Recording Laboratory Music Division Library of Congress Washington 25, D.C.

To date more than 60 Long Playing 12" records have been released from Archive field recordings. These albums contain descriptive brochures edited by outstanding American folklorists: Alan Lomax, Ben Botkin, George Korson, Charles Seeger, Aichard Waterman, Frances Densmore, Bertrand Bronson, etc. The scope of available discs is seen in a sampling of album titles: "Anglo- American Ballads," "Songs of the Sioux," "Child Ballads Traditional in the United States," "Sacred Harp Singing," "Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners," "Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks," etc. THE MYSTERIES OF A HOBO'S LIFE

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I took a job on an extra gang, Way up in the mountain, I paid my fee and the shark shipped me And the ties I soon was counting. The boss he put me driving spikes And the sweat was enough to blind me, He didn't seem to like my pace, So I left the job behind me.

I grabbed a hold of an old freight train And around the country traveled, The mysteries of a hobo's life To me were soon unraveled. I traveled east and I traveled west And the "shacks" could never find me, Next morning I was miles away From the job I left behind me.

I ran across a bunch of "stiffs" Who were known as Industrial Workers. They taught me how to be a man -- And how to fight the shirkers. I kicked right in and joined the bunch And now in the ranks you'll find me, Hurrah for the cause -- To hell with the boss And the job I left behind me.

This parody is from the pen of T-Bone Slim, Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World) poet, songwriter, and columnist. It can be found in the current (1956) Twenty-ninth Edition of the IWW Little Red Songbook. Like pieces by Joe Hill and Ralph Chaplin, "The Mysteries of a Hobo's Life" is intended "to fan the flames of discontent." The music above is from John Walsh's singing of the well known Irish and American folksong. N TKIC R*)AD

•*i• letters from former members **

DICK KANAR -- Boulder, Colorado -- Oct. 18, 1961

... I caught a bus from St. Louis to Hays, Kansas. You may have wondered why I went to Hays; there is a college there. This, however, turned out to be a worth- less choice. The school at Hays is a small one and one which is not used to bearded people. Anyway, to go on, it was an all night bus ride, with very little sleep. The following night I slept in a laundromat and then in the morning left for Denver. This was an all day ride and I got there around 10:00 in the evening. I decided to go to Boulder and didn't get there until 2:00 in the morning.

In Boulder, I was pretty well stuck. I tried to sleep in a park, but it was just too cold. I found another laundromat (for a change) but I was unable to sleep there because of piped-in music played very loud. Around 11:00 in the morn- ing I telephoned Professor Fishman (Economics), but he wasn't home. I went to the U. of Colorado Union and promptly fell asleep. Sunday I met Bill Becker's friend, Dave Wood, who is a pretty good guitarist, and a very nice guy. Monday I unsuccessfully tried to find a job. Tuesday I dug ditches for four hours and made $5. I really needed it by that time, because I was out of money, out of cigarettes, and almost out of Bugler tobacco. Luckily, the Fishmans were feeding me, and very well I might add.

- TT ---- - Wnwiesday nighu I went tIo ite Colo-i.. U. folksong club me They are only about one step above the "Channing-Murray set sing stage." They have a slight chance of improving; their dent, has some good ideas and he was very anxious to hear wh had done at Illinois. Thursday I went to Colorado Springs using what I had left of the $5 I had made on Tuesday. I went to the ranch (recommended by a folk fan I met in Boston but George Norris, the owner had no work for me. He was abl me for a few hours--ten to be exact. He paid me $15 and I 1

DAVE HUEHNER -- San Francisco, California -- Aug. 28, 1961

... Well as you can see we (Warren Leming and I) made it. and a half weeks ago we drove over the Bay Bridge in my old looking like two migrant workers who had stuffed all their worldly goods into a space far too small and headed West. T trip out was uneventful as the car ran fine and all we did w the scenery. That is with exception for the side trip we took to Okemah, Okla. We spent a day looking around the town with Bound for Glory in our hands trying to find places Woody mentions. At the cemetery we ran into an old-timer, Lawrence Payne, who remembered the Guthrie family quite well. I have a few pictures of the town and one of the family houses.

Dave & Vera Fredrickson let us pad out in their garage in Berkeley for a week and were a great boon in introducing us to people on the folk scene around Cal. The word I get around Cal is that all the "folkniks" from Illinois seem sharp and have a deep interest in folkmusic. This, I feel, speaks well for the Campus Folksong Club. As for San Francisco I think it's the greatest town in America. The more I see of it the more I become infatuated with its' houses, people, feelings, contrast and movement. What I dig most is that this is the only city I have come across that doesn't seem to dominate the individual. I feel free here, which I could never find in any other American city. It's great' ... A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FOLKLORE IN PAPERBACKS --continued from previous issue-- --compiled by Joe Zderad--

Chase, Richard. AMERICAN FOLK TALES AND SONGS. illus. Signet Kay (New American Library) KD340, 1956. $.50.

Here is an excellent book! If you are just now becoming interested in folklore, or if you're an old hand at it, Mr. Chase's sampler of Anglo-American lore is one of the best investments you can make. It covers an immense area of America's wit and wisdom -- tales, songs, ballads, jokes, games, hymns, customs, dances, even tombstone inscriptions -- yet there is a wealth of detail. Get it

Lynn, Frank. SONGS FOR SWINGIN' HOUSEMOTHERS. Chandler Publications Co., 1961. $1.95.

Words and music to more than 300 songs, ranging from "Abdul bulbul amir" to "Zum gali gali," are presented in this paperback. Besides songs for swingin' housemothers, there are also songs for linguists (lyrics in foreign languages), serenades, blues, drinking songs, calypsos, sea songs, spirituals, and a good handful of just about everything else. The quality of the book suffers (perhaps due to the quantity of songs), in that the elite type print is not ideal. There are handy indexes: titles, first lines, subject phrases.

Marais and Miranda. FOLKSONG JUBILEE. Ballantine F432K, 1960. illus. $.50.

Josef Marais has gathered 52 songs from all over the world for this gener- ously illustrated collection, including a goodly number of African Veldt songs for which Marais and Miranda are internationally known. Each song has a brief prose introduction in addition to the words, music and guitar accompaniment. Mr. Marais "has set his songs to music written especially for the guitar which is also easily adaptable for the piano," and many of them include his own translations. Some of the songs are happy, some are sad; all are enjoyable.

Nettl, Bruno. AN INTRODUCTION TO FOLK MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES. Wayne State Univ. Press (W.S.U. Studies No. 7), 1960. $2.50.

The title is an accurate one, and 32 musical examples supplement the text. As stated in the preface, there is "no overall survey or summary of (American folk music) ... in its entirety. The folk music of non-English-speaking groups has been especially neglected in attempts to survey the field. This volume is intended to fill in that gap. ... It does not pretend to be definitive nor to present new material ... (its) purpose is to introduce the layman to the great variety of forms and cultures represented in the folk music in this country."

Silber, Irwin, and Ethel Raim. AMERICAN FAVORITE BALLADS; TUNES AND SONGS AS SUNG BY PETE SEEGER. Oak Publications, 1961. illus. $1.95.

This book offers about 80 of Pete Seeger's all-time favorite American ballads, music and words, as he likes to sing them. Each song has a brief prose introduction, usually a source credit, by Pete himself. A discography and a page of guitar chords are included in this well-edited volume. Good cuts and illus- trations carry out the musical themes.

-- to be continued-" FOLKLORE SEMINAR 1i_

THE CAMPUS FOLK SONG CLUB

PRESENTS

Nov. 7 A. Doyle Moore Dept. of Art "American Folk Instruments"

Dec. 5 Henri Stegemelar 7 Dept. of German "The Grimm Tales"

Jan. 9 Joseph R. Gusfield Dept. of Sociology "Urban vs. Rural Folklore"

AT THE Y.W.C.A. AUDITORIUM ON TUESDAYS AT 4 PM