For Folksong in America

Project for Folksong In America Cheryl Hudson May 2.5, 1973 Fo 134 8:1600°. u '3.,:<.: ! .· '· When this project started, .the plan was to interview several people, in their early twenties or so, ·who played guitar and sang. A primary reason was to find out if one could generalize about them as a group, to see if they had gone through similar "stages" of doing things musically as they had progressed, well, maybe not progressed, .but at least stages they had . gone . through since they learned _to ·play. The original intentions had been to interview people ranging from amateur to· rather professional, but this pr9ved to be slight- ly over-ambitious. People were not as easy to get ,and interview as I had anticipated, and being excited about the project, I had undere~tlmated the amount of work involved. Perhap~ 1t is · just. as well, for' it ended up that there was enough material to work wt.th, but not· so much as at throughly overwhelm me. I interviewed four people, and then also ui:~ed . m;}[se.lf and my experiences·, as well as the knowledge I have of other people who were not interviewed. George Murphy was the first person I talked with. He is neither an excellent guitar player, nor does he have the stereotype "good" voice, but he has, at many . times, played around at coffeehouses and more nightclub type places for money. Cathy Johnson was · the ne~t person interviewed. She was the least proficient, musically. She plays mainly b8:sic chords and does not sing well (does no.t hit notes right on pitch, or hold J t~em there). She has played publically, but only for those in 2 81..60005 her residential area where she first went to college. She has never gotten paid, and does not plan to ever get p~id. Then Bob fl{arrington, he is a rather proficient guitar player and from what others have told me, an acceptable singer. He has just recently started performing publically and had gotten paid for some of this, Lastly I talked with Jeff Futterman, who is the most professional of all. He plays the best, sings very well, and has performed the m~$t and; gotten paid more often than the others. He is the only one who has gone so far as to study gui't;ar at a music school. And just recently, came out as one of several performers on a locally (University of Maine coffeehouse) produced al~um. Myself, I play moderf:ltely well and sing with less expert~c.e . than I play with. I have performed some, but never gotten paid, and ~ever plan to get paid. The other people that I am taking into consideration are good friends that play, or used to play guitar, and various other acquaitances I hRve made in the time since I first started pa.lying and became aware of guitars. (~hat was about seven years ago.) The rough list of questions that I used to help me through '•' ' . the interviews is in the back s~ction of this paper along with the diary, the transcribed interviews, and the notes taken when talking to .Jeff. In looking over the information, it appeared that generaliza- tions were possible, but that there were certain divisions into groups according to sex, and the age at which the person learned to play guitar, 3 . 8160006 Geroge and Jeff both had started to play when they were about twelve ~ears old. Each had been given an acoustic sic string guitar by someone in the family and had started to learn the contemporary music of the rimes Del Shannon, and the early Beatles for example. They were mostly self-taught, learning songs from records or books, figuring out songs they knew already, and learning by occassoihally watching someone else play. In junior high, they got into electric guitar. They each played in a band doing music like the Trogs, or more Beatles. Here they first started performing tn public, playing for free at ·1ocal dances. When they got to high school, each returned to mainly acoustic playing and they started doing the contemporary folk music: Dylan; P~ter, Paul, and Mau_; anct Simon_.. and Garfunk~ for example. At this point, the extremely close parallel starts to break. From here, _Jeff got into music like that of Nell .IQJ.m&-~nd James Taylor, and some of his own music in this same style. He was interested 1n guitar enough so that after his first year of college he left tc attend Berklee School of Music to study jazz guitar. He stayed for a year, and then decided that he did not like the music business. He prefers to play what and when he wants to. He has continued to play a lot and per~orm . for money. At this time he is still into Neil Young and James Taylor, but also more into his own compositions. From the year at Berklee there is a distinct jazz influence in much of his playing. George meanwhile, did not get into the same people. He started doing more pylan, Tom Rush, some Leonard Cohen, some blues. Most recently there has been more of a country music style about him, doing music of Kris Kristofferson an4 Doug Kershaw. He has 4 81.60007 never studied music, and also never got into doing a lot with writing his own songs. He has not performed as extensiv~11 , as ~ _ Jeff; but has gotten paid many times. It seems clear here, that these two people who started at the same age both went through parallel stages. They grew up in dif ferent areas, at no time when the two are 'Spoken of as '!,they" was it meant to imply that~~orge and Jeff _grew up together. What I found with them does seem to flt in with what I know of other guys who learned at aout the same age and time, especiaily the stage of playing electric guitar for - a while, and then returning to acoustic. Bob Harrington is a different case. He did not start to learn to play unt~l he was nineteen. ·Starting at this age, he never went through the folk stage, nor does he show interest in electric guirats. He started right into music like that of Loggins and Messina; Crosby, Stills and Nash, and especially that of Neil Young. He ha.s not taken lessons, but was taught to play by a friend, and so is less self-taught than.Jl.eor~_ and _Jeff. He ~tarted performing, and getting paid some within less than a year from when he started learning. Although he became proficient more quickly than _Jeff and ~ge, he has not had the experience with as wide a range of music as they have. It seems tha the other people I know that also learned when they were about this age, or older (my two rocmmates for example) were also tau~ht a lot by those that they knew who played, and like Bob, none of them had pre~iously played any other instrument. At the time that they learned, they had seen many others play, and also had friends who 5 8160008 played. In comparison, both the males and the females who learned when they were about twelve had played other instruments already, did not know others who played guitar, and they mostly taught them selves. With Cathy and I, our stages are somewhat parailel to those of Georg~ and Jef!~ but also divergent, and I think that this is because we are females. We both atarted at about twelve years of age, with a guitar that some one in the family had given us, Each of us, like George and _l_eff, had played another instrument previous ly. We both got into "f'olk" music, Joan Baez, :pete Seeger, and then into . Simo~ and ~arfunkle, Peter Paul and Mar y, Judy Collins and Jqni Mitchell. I also got into Wylan, and Ehil Ochs, and then later ~ell Young and James Taylor. Neither of us ev~r took lessons or has gotten paid for a performance. But both of us have perfor med at different times. Cathey does not do any music of her 0wn and I have only started to, In comparison to George and Jeff, we have performed less and stayed more trad1tionaliy and folk oriented than they. It seems here then, that why and how people learn to play varies with age. And what they learn varies with both age and sex. · It was interesting~ during the interviews, to see that some people clearly perc1eved the stages they had gone through, whereas others did not appear to become aware of these stages until we were talking. Many things, though, that I had never ~hought about be fore, like the types of divisions bdtween groups that appeared, now seem so obvious. It seems to be a case of actually seeing what 6 8:160009 is there instead of just looking at it. One other thing that I was interested in during the interviews was the concept of professionalism. I wanted to know what they thought make a person a profession~l. Generally they agreed that if someone gets paid, and makes a living from their music, then they are professionals. But there are differences between professionals. There are some who make a living and are not really competant players, and there are others who ~re competant (and sometimes cannot make a living.) An example given of a non profess1onalrprofessional was Jamie Brockett.

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