Double-Barrel Beautiful Together and Recorded at Town Hall
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MUSIC ments – zither, I think. After hearing Susan, I Columbia Studio A, New York City, Sept. 29, 1961: (l-r) became interested in folk instruments, and I Bruce Langhorne, Carolyn Hester, Bob Dylan, Bill Lee started playing guitar. “I had an old Silvertone my dad got at Sears. My fingers bled, I’m telling you. It was very hard to play. Then I got a Martin. I think that one got stolen when my apartment got broken into in New York. But I carried guitars many a mile, to towns I played. And it’s a very lonely occupation, a daunting experience to go to a new town where basically you’re it. You’ve gotta fight the loneliness. It was like that when I moved to New York in 1955.” Hester enrolled in the American Theatre Wing to further her career in the arts, but that was mainly to appease her mother, now living back in Texas. Her mother heard a radio interview with a regional vocal trio named the Roses and decided to find out if they knew anything that could help her daughter. “My mother found out about Norman Petty in Clovis because she’d called the radio COURTESY OF CAROLYN HESTER station, and they told her about him. So she wrote him a penny postcard, and he called her! She said, ‘Do you audition local talent?’ which was funny because Buddy was local tal- ent. That’s how I met Buddy and Norman. My first album was on Coral, and Buddy was on Brunswick, both part of Decca. “My first album was recorded in 1957 and came out in 1958, Scarlet Ribbons. I recorded other albums, then Norman and I got back Double-Barrel Beautiful together and recorded At Town Hall. In fact, I imported George Tomsco of the Fireballs to How Carolyn Hester of Waco rose to the height of the folk revival, play guitar for me at Town Hall, too. Norman wheeled a tape machine into Town Hall in gave Bob Dylan his break, and lived to tell the tale 1965 and recorded me, so that’s one of the BY MARGARET MOSER few live concerts by a female folksinger from that era. We had a terrific time.” “The events which led up to [recording for Finding her true voice in singing, she fell in Scarlet Ribbons Columbia Records] were very unexpected. … with a crowd that admired the Weavers and “I was born in 1937, so this reces- John [Hammond] had first seen and heard the king and queen of folk, Pete Seeger and sion feels familiar,” begins Carolyn Hester, Folk Music Fad me at Carolyn Hester’s apartment. Carolyn the late Odetta. chuckling on the telephone from her home At Town Hall was still several years in the was a Texan guitar-playing singer who I knew Hester quickly became the Texan sweet- outside Los Angeles. future in the waning weeks of September and played with around town. She was going heart of the folk rodeo, and by 1958, she’d In 1937, The Hobbit first appeared in print, 1961, when John Hammond brought Hester places and it didn’t surprise me. Carolyn was recorded Scarlet Ribbons with Norman Petty the Hindenburg exploded, Amelia Earhart into the studio to record her Columbia eye catching, down-home and double barrel at his famous Clovis, N.M., studio. There vanished, the Marijuana Tax Act became law, debut. The session was key for Hester, her beautiful. That she had known and worked with she befriended an ambitious local teen by and Robert Johnson recorded his last songs. third recording, and one her prestigious Buddy Holly left no small impression on me and the name of Buddy Holly and was pleased Waco was her birthplace, yet her music-loving sponsor hoped would surpass Joan Baez, I liked being around her. Buddy was royalty, when he accompanied her on some of the parents moved more than once during her a lovely young soprano with a three-octave and I felt like she was my connection to it, to recordings. Her third LP range who was the other female the rock-and-roll music that I’d played earlier, appeared on the prestigious Hester quickly became the Texan sweetheart voice of folk. Carolyn Hester to that spirit.” Columbia Records label, was a critical hit already, but it – Bob Dylan, Chronicles produced by the estimable of the folk rodeo, and by 1958, she’d recorded was Bob Dylan that made the John Hammond, who took Scarlet Ribbons with Norman Petty at his recording historical. Carolyn Hester’s life resembles a great note of Hester’s harmonica “Extremely magnetic, he was woven mandala, the Sanskrit word for circle, player and soon signed the famous Clovis, N.M., studio. There she different-looking from every- never-ending and overlapping music with life young Bob Dylan. In 1964, befriended an ambitious local teen by the one else,” states Hester. “I and people. Within its intricate design, the the Saturday Evening Post grew up around people named past is thick with threads of ancient ballads put her on the cover. name of Buddy Holly. Boogerweed and Doak – Bob and long-forgotten tunes worked into the The music of Hester’s didn’t look like any of those. He modern consciousness. All elements flow over generation flourished in the mid-1960s, mor- childhood. A choir scholarship paid for sing- was thin, rather small, very, very pale. He had and under one another with organic grace in phing into folk rock when Dylan plugged in at ing lessons, and during a Dallas high school long fingernails on his right hand to pluck the the mandala’s remarkable marriage of math- Newport in 1965, dear old-school Seeger trying production, Hester’s performance of “The guitar. He had great power onstage. He was ematics and art. to pull the plug. The British were coming, and Kerry Dance” impressed a PE teacher, who really different. It’s vital for the young to real- By mere association, Hester resides in a times were a-changing. introduced the aspiring vocalist to the music ize the power of their own ability. golden aura. She arrived in New York City Hester married composer-musician David of folksinger Susan Reed. “Bob started with a pencil and a piece in 1955, ready to study theatre, because it Blume in 1969, and four years later, she “[The teacher] brought me an album of of paper.” pleased her mother to “know where I was released her third self-titled LP, this time for Susan’s, and I took it home and listened to it. Hester’s decision to surround herself with at least part of the time.” Instead, she tum- RCA. It was the last time Hester would record It was the first time I’d heard a woman in folk musicians was innovative, and her Columbia bled into the nascent 1960s folk movement. on her own until Texas Songbird in 1996. music, and she was playing her own instru- CONTINUED ON P.66 64 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E DECEMBER 19, 2008 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m.