H I L L IN S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

PRODUCTION NOTE

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. umber 24 March 20, 1965

D.K. WILGUS TO SPEAK HERE APRIL FIRST -. 4 APR 19 Seminar Chairman April Appelquist has announced the Campus Folksong. ub's irst public folklore lecture for 1965. D.K. Wilgus, from UCLA's CenterP iete tudy of Comparative Folklore and Mythology, will appear on the Urbana campus on hursday evening, April 1, as a guest of the Club and the Humanities Division. is topic is: "The Commercialization of Folk Music," (100 Gregory Hall, 8 p.m.).

Professor Wilgus is known as a leading academic student of hillbilly music. is interest dates from his undergraduate days at Ohio State, from which he raduated in 1949. He was one of the first folklorists to realize that hillbilly usic is a legitimate part of folksong tradition, and he has built his reputation n his profound understanding of southern Appalachian musical styles. It is nteresting to note that from 1950 to 1960 Dr. Wilgus was on the faculty of estern Kentucky State College, an institution well situated geographically to erve as a point for collecting so much of the music on which modern American cholars depend. An interest in hillbilly music implies an interest in commercial ecordings, so it is no mystery why Wilgus is reputed to own one of the finest lollections of such discs in existence.

Professor Wilgus also serves the cause of traditional music studies in many )ther ways, such as holding numerous posts in the American Folklore Society. He ,spresently the record-review editor of the Journal of American Folklore. Club embers realize the help he has given this organization through his critiques >f our recordings. He is the treasurer of the John Edwards Memorial Foundation aid a former editor of the Kentucky Folklore Record. Undergraduate students in )articular are fans of Dr. Wilgus, because of the ease of manner and the clarity if thought which he brings to his lectures and discussions. At the same time, •is reputation as a singer and instrumentalist renders him authoritative on roblems of style which cannot be handled adequately through research alone.

CURRENT MARCH EVENTS

March 25, 8 PM, University Forum, The Auditorium

ALAN LOMAX, "FOLKSONG AROUND THE WORLD"

March 21, 8 PM, Club Membership Concert, 141 Commerce

DBRAY* BROTHERS BLUEGRASS CONCERT THE CAMPUS FOLKSONG CLUB presents oUe o rass

QOOWITH THEOGO

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U (C) - I.) - - - a - - DUTIES 141 COMMERCE BUILDlNG~ Saturday© March 27@~8pm

members free * new members welcome ROBERT PETE WILLIAMS

The word "sad" is a hard one to define. It can stand for any one of a dozen other adjectives, such as unfortunate, unjust, pathetic, tragic, dreary, etc., and each one of these words can be used to describe whole complexes of involved mental and psychic states. It comes as no surprise, then, when we discover that most people think that the blues are "sad" and that, because they are "sad" many people stay away from blues and blues artists; these people feel that listening to the blues will make them come away from their concert feeling rotten.

Robert Pete Williams is an excellent place for the listener to start overcoming this semantic hurdle. For his blues, and the blues-related tales and songs with which he supplements his performances, are not "sad" in any depressing sense. He takes situations which are "sad" and renders them almost maddeningly delectable by a combination of musical and narrative techniques which prove him to be a master of the blues idiom. The most patent technique is Williams' talent for keeping up a running tension between form and content. His guitar work is a haunting, dirge-like succession of beats and drones, but above this he imposes his voice and his words, which are wry, satiric, chuckling, and, like almost all blues, full of puns and allusions. This contrast between what is and what ought to be keeps the listener involved with the music and the musician. It makes listening an important and compelling experience.

Tension and contrast dominate Williams' work at every step. His most personal achievement is his beat and his droning discords--repetitive yet always new. It is an achievement of a high order when a performer can take a very basic set of patterns and repeat them almost endlessly and alter them very sparingly, yet derive from them a vast set of musical impressions and then convey these impressions successfully to his audience. The last is the acid test of Williams' talent. Merely using the tension between "sad" guitar picking and humorous word is not a victory in itself; it is a device. The catalyst needed is art--in the hands of a capable artists. Williams proved that he is just the artist who can get away with it.

Williams' talent did not escape the 200 or so Club members who listened to him on the 12th of February. It did not escape those 80 members who joined the Club at the door to hear him. He achieved a rare victory in communicating with his audience. There is, I would suspect, some definite material now available for a blues-appreciation movement in Urbana. Some of the members of the audience were moved to tears by Williams' performance. Yet all of them were moved to laughter by his rendition of "The Ugly Blues," the lament of a man who looks in the mirror and finds that he cannot stand himself. An artist who can cover such a range of emotions has surely carved himself an empire in the world of music, and Williams can now stand assuredly as lord of his own special fief.

That territory which he occupies and commands is a little world of the down- and-out man who not only has not lost the ability to laugh, but who has elevated that talent into his number-one weapon and who has set it to music besides. Williams' in this respect reminds me of those Scottish bawdy ballads which take a beautiful, haunting melody and scale--and then mix it with an earthy, unabashedly sexual story told in clear-cut descriptive terms or in wit-stricken puns of almost devastating power: you open with a refined and delicate motif that suggest no- bility at every note--then, suddenly, you're rolling in the hay playing slap-and- tickle with the upstairs maid and calling all the players and all the moves by their proper names. The contrast leads to a great and satisfying demolition. Williams has all the tools of the Compleat Blues Singer--the shadowy past of poverty, color, discrimination, crime, sexual misadventure, and artistic sensitivity. But he adds something more--real creative and interpretive artistic power. He joins his voice, his guitar, his glands, and produces art that immediately grips an audience and compels it to participate. It is for this that he will be remembered by our Club, and it is his talent which will ultimately lead to the interest in blues which our Club has for so long tried to cultivate.

-- F. K. Plous, Jr.

SONGS FROM SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS AND POPULAR SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME

(Tom Kines, ed., N.Y.: Oak Publications, 1964, 4p2.b5)

Songs From Shakespeare's Plays and Popular Songs of Shakespeare's Time is a songbook which can tempt even the most frugal of folksingers. Many of us have learned the wisdom of not buying songbooks, because they often contain not fresh airs but pages of overworked popular folksongs. The collection worth our money seems rare.

This new book is both a relief and a fancy--for several reasons. The songs are full of delight and flavor and are not widely known; they constitute a fascinating reminder of the age of Shakespeare; the authenticity of the songs is guarded by care in presentation; and the book is of convenient and useful size. One of the most beautiful songs included is Thomas Ford's "Since first I saw your face," from the year 1607, a love song with an elegantly simple melody and perfect lyrics.

Editor Tom Kines has written a thoughtful introduction, explaining his aims and procedures in the selection of the songs. He suggests that the reader try the tunes with their harmonies as given, in order to acquire a taste for the harmonies of Shakespeare's time. The suggestion is an intelligent and tasteful approach toward full appreciation of any type of music from outside our immediate culture, and it establishes Mr. Kines as a wise and dedicated patron of the aesthetic in music.

With this book you will find your love of folk music easing you into a love of Shakespeare and the Shakespearean age.

--John C. Munday, Jr. ROBERT PETE WILLIAMS' "JESSE JAMES"

On the weekend of February 12-1l, I visited the University of Illinois to hear a concert by Robert Pete Williams. It was a good concert; I had never heard him tell stories before, and I liked the way he laughed. I stayed with Archie Green and his family, and on Saturday Robert Pet and two boys from the U. of I. came for lunch. After lunch Robert Pete played a couple of songs for Mrs. Green, as she had not been able to go to the concert: among them was a new one we had never heard called "Jesse James." It was a blues song, but it told fragments of a story too. Archie called it a blues-ballad.

Jesse James, in the song, is "the baddest man that I know." Archie asked Robert Pete later in Hitler wasn't "badder," but Robert Pete made a distinction between war men and bad men. When asked why he wrote the song, he said that he was just thinking about bad men. He named several outlaws besides Jesse James-- Sam Bass, John Dillenger--but said that Jesse James just seemed to be the best one to write a song about. Robert Pete described to us how he felt; he was sitting alone, just thinking about bad men and particularly Jesse James, so he began to pick out chords on his guitar and to sing about it, to get it off his mind. "Oooh, Jesse James; Oooh, he's the baddest man that I know." It sounded like a real blues beginning, as he began singing "Oooh" and then adding words.

Apparently he learned of Jesse James' life almost entirely from a movie he saw some years before he wrote the song, though he had heard of the outlaw as a child from his father. He described several scenes from the movie very vividly, acting them out as he told the story. He told us how Jesse James shot his mother by ac1ciden +La, tr YCinJ .Lt. to kill ... aman 4,. who*V IS'S w.TlafsWV fi.he4 5n hC i-n wh 4" hi o bT.rToher*. From tbTn o.n - Jesse and his brother became outlaws. The way in which Jesse died seemed to impress Williams very much, and he showed us in detail what happened. Jesse was hanging a picture of his mother above the mantle--here Robert Pete picked up a magazine with a picture on the cover, looked at it lovingly, and placed it on the wall above the fireplace, then took it down to look at it again. He held it delicately; his movements were almost feminine as he showed us how much Jesse loved this memory. Jesse wanted to hang it high on the wall, so he stood on a stool--and Robert Pete reached up, standing on his toes, to show us how high. A friend of Jesse's wanted to shoot him and appeared in the doorway behind him with a gun. The friend's hand which held the gun was shaking so hard that he had to steady it with the other before he could shoot--Robert Pete acted this out also, his face taut and deter- mined, yet doubtful and frightened at the same time.

Robert Pete was rather bitter about Jesse's friend shooting the outlaw. After singing the song once more he told us how he could get one of Archie's friends to beat up Archie if the friend were bribed. As another example of how your friends can do you wrong, he told us how Governor Huey Long (Robert Pete comes from Louisana), was killed by one of his friends. Long had even taken precautions to have only his friends near him.

We taped "Jesse James" and a conversation with Williams just before he left. I thought the song and its origin were interesting, particularly as Robert Pete had never heard the traditional outlaw ballad. His own song was old in style-- blues--but modern in development since it stemmed from a recent movie.

--Margie Kirkham Indiana University "Jesse James" transcribed by Bruce Hector from a tape by John Schmidt, 2/13/65.

Oh, that bad man Jesse James, He's that baddest man I know, That bad man, bad man Jesse James. Oh Jesse James, he's the baddest man that I know.

Ohh, Jesse James, He's the baddest man I know, That bad man, that bad man Jesse James.

Oh, he killed him a man And robbed a passenger train, That bad man Jesse James.

Oh, why he took to bad, Jesse's mother got killed By low-down railroad man, Causing poor Jesse James to get bad.

Ooh, he got rough, Poor Jesse James, Frank too. Well, he got the gun And to the forest did he to, Jesse James, Jesse James, Oh, bad Jesse James...Jesse James.

Oh, then they traced him Trying to run poor Jesse James down. Jesse James...Jesse James.

Oh, its lots of people think that poor Jesse's dead, But you just can't ever tell 'bout that bad man Jesse James. Well, they never did capture That bad man Jesse James.

Well, after everything settled Jesse James came out. Oh, went to some of his friends house, Looking at his mother's picture upon the mantle piece, That bad man Jesse James.

Hmmm, then I saw one of his own dear friends Taking poor Jesse James life. Jesse James...Jesse James

A fascinating element in folksong scholarship is the realization that our own fresh discoveries are frequently based on earlier research and formulation. I learned the term blues-ballad from D.K. Wilgus some five years ago on a field trip to Celina, Tennessee, while he was searching for several local murder ballads "lost" in a Negro-Indian mountain colony. In Sing Out (January, 1965, page 65) Wilgus indicated his surprise on finding that he had not coined the term, but that it had appeared in print as early as 1925: Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folksongs, Harvard University Press. Miss Scarborough attributed "blues" ballad to W.C. Handy in his identification of "Loveless Love--Careless Love" (page 266). Can any reader of Autoharp find earlier usages of blues-ballad?

-- Archie Green

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE RISE IN POPULARITY OF FOLK MUSIC IN BRITAIN

The article below is the revised text of a paper presented at a Campus Folksong Club Seminar on April 25, 1964. The seminar involved taped examples which illustrated the talk. A tape of the talk and its musical examples is deposited in our Club tape collection. Brian Goodey, the author of this paper, is a graduate of the University of Nottingham and is at present an assistant in the Department of Geography at Indiana University.

In adopting this title I hope to make it clear that statements to follow are not only a personal view but are also unsupported by the written word or by reference to other persons. My experience on the fringe of folk music has spanned the last eight years and coincides approximately with the period which has come to be known as the "revival". My introduction to folk music stems from skiffle which is, itself, a product of an earlier revival--that of New Orleans Jazz. In 1961, Ewan MacColl wrote:

It is sometimes easy to forget that the popular revival of folksong in Britain is little more than ten years old. Even before this, of course, there were enthusiasts committed to the task of winning popular recognition for traditional music and folksong. It was the skiffle movement, however, which finally broke down the barrier of public indifference and, as a result, we are now witnessing an intensive bout of popular music-making, the like of which has not been seen in these islands since Elizabethan times. 1

Skiffle and the Traditional Jazz Revival

Skiffle provides a convenient starting point for a discussion which will indicate some of the themes of songs, singers, clubs, and recordings in Britain. One recording, Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line is usually assumed to be the beginning of the "skiffle era" and though there were groups singing in London jazz club intermissions prior to its release, this recording probably deserves the pioneer status. Tony Donegan (the name "Lonnie" was, I believe.. borrowed from Lonnie Johnson) was banjoist with Chris Barber's Jazz Band and a skiffle session was included in a 1953 Royal Festival Hall Concert given by this group- As I recollect, Digging My Potatoes, Rock Island Line, and John Henry were the three numbers performed by a group consisting of guitar, bass, and washboard with the addition of piano on one number. The Glasgwegian-Tennessee accent heard hardly did justice to the Negro material used, nevertheless a remake of Rock Island Line was produced in the Decca studio and it was this take which precipitated the first major "fad" in British popular music.

Traditional jazz, later abbreviated to "trad", or as the purists would have it, "New Orleans Jazz", had become very popular in the late forties and early fifties, and while modern jazz was late to be accepted there had been a royally patronized traditional jazz concert at the Festival Hall in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations. 2 The bands performing were a fair cross-section of the jazz revival. 3 Front-lines generally comprised a trumpet, trombone, and clarinet backed by a banjo, bass and drums, with the addition of the piano or the duplication of front line instruments on some numbers. At this time material was derived largely from recordings available from America and hence was limited to early jazz numbers, standards, or the occasional "copycat" performance of Bunk Johnson or George Lewis material.h Features outlined above appeared in the skiffle phase of the folk music revival. To succeed, groups simply had to consist of two or three--"three chord trick" guitarists, a tub bass, and washboard. Such a line-up became sacred, and though seldom the instrumentation of major recording groups, any deviation from this norm was regarded as heretical. The same was true of material. The amateur or semi-professional group slavishly copied records released by the professionals or of the better-known American singers such as Leadbelly and Broonzy. One feature of the skiffle phase which was not repeated in the jazz revival was the fact that skiffle was uniquely British--the closest parallels to the sound in America were the recent jug-bands which, themselves bore little resemblance to the early jug or washboard groups.

Skiffle Groups

Skiffle was possibly the first musical style to receive immediate attention from the large British recording companies--a dance called the "Creep" was very popular in the early fifties but was spread via the dance halls rather than by records. Although this development came in the days when the 78 rpm shellac disc was still the standard teenage purchase, a large market emerged after the style had been exposed on the BBC's5 "Skiffle Club" and "Guitar Club" radio programmes, and later on the TV's "pop" package, "Six Five Special". Exposure led to a snowball effect with groups forming at schools and at youth and factory clubs--there was no shortage of work with clubs in urban suburbs opening specially to house them.

These Clubs attempted to copy the enforced poverty of the early jazz clubs and stimulated the coffee bar atmosphere which has persisted through later turns of teenage musical fancy. Most of the groups should not be included in any credit we are to give to skiffle in creating urban interest in the folk-- song. Many amateurs were so derivative as to be ignorant of the fact that numbers performed ever originated in America. Many, performers, too, were solely interested in commercial propositions and introduced fancy garb and electrical equipment as the public taste appeared to dictate. Such "playing to the crowd" was to occur later in the jazz revival; for example, the bowler-hatted "Mr. Acker" Bilk was once a George Lewis devotee. Perhaps the most important groups in spreading American material were those which were formed within jazz bands-- notably those of Ken Colyer and Chris Barber.

The jazz band skiffle intermission died much more slowly than did the commercial groups who relied on the whims of the mass teenage market rather than the jazz appreciator. When Donegan broke from Barber to form his own group, Barber replaced him with Johnny Duncan who came from Tennessee. Duncan played acceptable mandoline and introduced the white element into a style which had used mainly Negro material. Duncan's high pitched voice in such numbers as Mama Ain't Dead and Linin' the Track was not appreciated by audiences to whom the supposedly essential Negro sound of revival jazz--and hence of skiffle music--was most important. Johnny Duncan, although they did not realize it at the time, was for many an introduction to bluegrass style; he had a background of Appalachian sacred and dance music, the influences of which were later to appear in his "Bluegrass Band" recordings. His most popular record was Footprints in the Snow (a Carter family song) and these later recordings employed a fiddle.

Another group which employed a fiddle and the last to be mentioned, was the "City Ramblers"--the suffix "Skiffle Group" or "Spasm Band" being added depending on the nature of the booking club. Russell Quaye, a teacher and artist, had been singing for some years previous to the time that he assembled his band. The line-up included Quaye on quatro and kazoo together with from three to six persons playing guitars, washboard, harmonica, trumpet-mouthpiece, tub bass, fiddle, and mandoline. They recorded for the Topic (Worker's Music Association) lable and they made real efforts to uncover songs from varied written and oral sources and not from recordings as so many other groups had done. The range of instruments used meant that the early jazz numbers (Sister Kate and Boodle-am-shake) and those associated with the Chicago washboard bands could be included in programs with English traditional songs, union songs, calypsos and music from other European traditions. Quaye's group, which has functioned spasmodically since the days when it had its headquarters in the Skiffle Cellar in Soho, showed the range of material available, the range of presentation possible and at the same time, managed to draw a large body of support.

I have dwelt on skiffle for though it is often referred to, little has been written on it in America. Moreover, Brian Bird's book Skiffle, published in Britain, was written at a time when the movement could not be placed in correct historical perspective.

The Rise of Popular Folk Music

Towards the end of the era an extended-play record appeared by "The Ramblers" on the Decca lable. The personnel included Ewan MacColl, Alan Lomax, Peggy Seeger, Isla Cameron, John Cole (a harmonica player who appears on MacColl and A.L. Lloyd discs issued over here), Bruce Turner on clarinet, and Jim Bray on bass. The latter two musicians were members of the Humphrey Lyttelton Band, a pioneer traditional jazz group which had turned by then to the mainstream style. Turner was actually deputising for Sandy Brown, another jazz clarinetist who appears on Johnny Duncan and Jack Elliott albums. The recording, and later song booklet, by this group included traditional materials collected by MacColl and Lomax ("When I Was Single") as well as songs written by them ("Oh Lula" "Hard Case" and "Dirty Old Town").

The Ramblers were not a club performing group, but the skiffle era did allow a number of singers to develop. Many of the more commerical figures lat r turned to popular music forms ce.g., Adam Faith= but a few concentrated on sing- ing in the folk idiom. The recording companies, having been made aware of the market for folk material, began issuing American recordings by many of the more popular singers. Folkways albums began to filter on to the collectors' shelves and more material became available for copying. One important group of this period included Jimmie McGregor (guitar and mandoline) Robin Hall, Steve Benbow and Roy Guest (guitar/vocals). Their material was initially drawn from fairly popular fields but later the Scottish element, McGregor and Hall, who had been with Quaye, began to introduce Glasgow street songs; gradually each performer built up a large repertoire and group numbers became fewer. At this time folksong clubs were few and the most important part of the London scene was Royal Festival Hall or suburban Town Hall Concerts. Casting my mind back I can remember Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan, Roy Guest reading Dylan Thomas, Robin Hall reading and singing Burns, Spanish flamenco and Elizabethen ballads--all included in Festival Hall concerts.

Another major feature of the scene were the Saturday night "hoots" at the Ballads and Blues Club in Soho Square. Here, MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Lloyd, Fitzroy Coleman (who had appeared on experimental recordings of the Grant- Lyttelton Paseo Band), Steve Benbow, visitors from the provinces, and audience all took the floor. With the proliferation of artists in recent years together with a certain degree of ethnic-folknick splitting, such informal gatherings do not seem to occur any more. The club calendar column of the MELODY MAKER, a musical newspaper cross between BILLBOARD and DOWNBEAT would have a few folk club advertisements scattered among the mass of jazz clubs. Alexis Korner (guitar) and Cyril Davies (harmonica/vocals) had a weekly session called "Blues at the Roundhouse". Kornpr is an expert on the blues, a member of the early Colyer skiffle group, and host to the occasional blues visitors to London. In 1963 Korner founded a "rhythm and blues" band known as Blues Inc. which relied heavily on Muddy Waters material and was the first of several bands to play the Marquee jazz club in London. The intermission group on my first visit to the club was the "Rolling Stones" who still rely heavily on the early R. and B. singers such as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley.

The growth of clubs led to certain degree of commercialization. The jazz clubs had folk sessions on Sunday afternoons; one group, "The Thames-Side Three", produced a Weavers-like sound but also allowed each member to branch out into his own field. Redd Sullivan, ex-merchant seaman, drew his material from the sea, clater to appear with Korner's band=. In contrast "Long" John Baldry was a blues enthusiast with one of the first twelve string guitars heard in the clubs. "Sitting-in" might produce anything from classical guitar duets to attempts at bluegrass. In Britain, country music has a very different following from folk-music. There had long been established Country Music societies but these had to rely on recordings for there were few American visitors, outside air base concerts, and though a few club performers did attempt to do country material the English accent seldom rings true in an Appalachian or Western context.

Collectors and Traditional Singers

So far I have talked about commercial or amateur singers who are the result of the revival and who have little traditional basis. What of the traditional singer? The English Folk Song and Dance Society is the major organization in England working actively in the folk song and dance field. In Scotland there is the School of Hiberian Studies with Hamish Henderson at its head and in Wales and Ireland there are similar organizations. In England, too, the English language departments of many universities have concentrated on local or manuscript material. At Nottingham, for example, a large volume of manuscript ballads from the University collection has been produced but there seems to have been little effort to produce a complete catalog of collections. In reworking the Nottingham material in 1963, I found several songs which were not on the files of the E.F.S.D.S. in London and undoubtedly there are many Country Record Offices and private collections with unnoted material. The inter-war lull in collecting activity is surprising when we consider that such a solid foundation was laid at the beginning of the century by Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood, Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughn-Williams and many others who covered much of the country, noting down song and dance and publishing their findings in the E.F.S.D.S. magazine.Sharp, of course, was also a pioneer worker in America and it is sad to relate that many of the collectors who revitalised the search for traditional material in England have been American. Lomax is outstanding in this respect and long before there was any large following for such material he produced a series of BBC radio programs, called, I believe, "The Singing English." Jean Richie and others also came for collecting visits and it is their work which helped to stimulate the rash of material now available on record in the British Isles. Results were not slow in appearing. A label called Collector, which had released material by many of the emerging English singers noted above, included recordings by Bob Roberts and other traditional singers among its first release. Roberts is a good example of the type of person who has retained the traditional material. At one time there was a heavy sailing barge traffic around the coast of East Anglia, grain was carried from the river wharves of the wheat areas to London, and fuel and other supplies made the return journey. Though there are still sentimental barge races in some of the estuaries most of these vessels have given way to the quicker and more direct road and rail routes. Roberts still operates his barge, however, and with the help of one crewman continues to journey between Pin Mill in Suffolk and the Port of London. Being a very open character he became known to several collectors who noted his songs, recorded him, sat him in a broad- casting studio and more important, obtained contacts through him. The public house ("pub") is the meeting place of rural areas and a number of singers were discovered and gradually contacts widened inland and a considerable amount of material was hence obtained.

Similar contacts have allowed collection in mining communities, Northern fishing villages and other rural areas. Today Topic and Folkways, as well as many minor labels, have such recordings on their lists and several family groups make occasional visits to London for E.F.S.D.S. sponsored concerts. In addition there has been increased interest in folk dancing and especially the "Morris" dance with rural teams revived and urban teams started.

Today we have reached a stage where the awareness of a folksong heritage is increasing and young singers are wandering into rural areas to collect and return to sing in urban clubs. One controversy which arises is the "written in the style of" type of song, which is very common in England. Whether or not songs written today can be classed as folk songs is a matter of continual debate but one experience has led me to believe that such material is legitimate folk music.

Nottingham--A University Club

About two years ago we began a club at Nottingham. We flourished on University clientele but being in town we also attracted the local C.N.D. (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and leftist elements. One day a young miner sat in at the club. As far as I can remember he never sang anything but original songs, ranging in subject from Lady Chatterly (D.H. Lawrence was born locally and the setting for his novels were in the immediate areas) through pit ponies to the current garb of his own "mates". His guitar training was from records--bluegrass to rock and roll--and his tunes were as original as his lyrics which often introduced local dialect. Folk songs? At Nottingham the club which began in town had a regular group of three, working together on some numbers and doing solo work. Again there were guests and sit-ins from other performers. The range of material covered was wider than that which appears to be performed in American clubs, and though by no means typical, we ranged in one evening from Roumania dances on the mandoline, through psuedo-bluegrass to Appalachian balladry. We were running in com- petition with two other clubs. One imported artists from London but was mainly interested in material derived from American recordings and the other, held at a cooperative arts center, was run on the basis of a "hoot" with a regular group of performers on stage as well as guests from the audience.

Eventually, pressure was placed on our club to move to the campus--this coincided with the Joan Baez craze--and we duly moved onto the campus, developed committees, and red tape, and began to hold weekly sessions. I have reason to believe that a similar process occurred in other provincial universities. We were also running in competition with the University folk-dance society which had a folksong off-spring. This group included the more ethnic ent usiasts who were good instrumentalists and covered mainly English material. The campus club built what was considered a good membership (about 3 percent of the campus) but had insufficient funds to run anything but club sessions. Parkinson's law operated and singers developed to fill clubs' needs. At the beginning a few singers had to hold the whole evening; a year later there were usually more performers than time would allow for. Some intermural sings were arranged and there was the occasional sortie to London in order to gather new material.

Club Material

In conclusion I propose to comment on a few songs which formed part of one night's program at our club. This program should not be regarded as typical of all clubs but will, I hope, serve to illustrate some features and themes involved in the material sung by the English urban folk-singer in 1962-3.

The immediate source for Captain Kidd was a recording by Steve Benbow on the Collector label. Benbow's Folk Four was a feature of the scene for some time and broadcast regularly on BBC and more surprisingly on Radio Luxembourg.7 The song, which has appeared in SING OUT is sung to the tune of "Admiral Benbow" and appears in many forms in the British Isles. It gave rise to a number of wartime songs concerning "Captain Hall", whose contents were hardly suitable for folk song clubs where the line between the ethnic and the obscene is clearly defined.

Only recently did I learn that "The Banks of Marble" was written by Les Rice and that our probable source was a recording by Pete Seeger. Like so many songs which are sung in English clubs the source was easily and con- veniently forgotten, especially when the words were changed so that recognition of the original became difficult. This also provides another thread common in American as well as English urban folk music, the leftist labor connection.

"The Bells of Hell", which tells no story and has little message derives from a phrase in the Bible and was, I believe, a university song though not well-known. In the mid-fifties the Theatre Workshop, which is an "off-Broadway" or rather "off-West End" theatre in Stratford (London) produced The Hostage by Brendan Behan. The play is set in Ireland at the time of the "troubles" and concerns the killing of an English soldier while a hostage to the I.R.A. Behan, whose death was greeted by unfortunate obituaries throughout America, has been criticised for using songs in his plays as a cover for his lack of dramatic technique. His plays, and especially the Hostage were nevertheless successful and the songs from them became well-known; the technique was later used to a lesser degree by other so-called "kitchen-sink" writers. 8 The use of traditional or traditionally-styled material is nothing new: Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare and Gay all used traditional lyrics in their plays. "The Bells of Hell" ends the play, which also includes a satire on the English Establishment, "The Capitains and the Kings", and a doubtful rhyme concerning homosexuals "When Socrates in Ancient Greece".

With various versions and various sources, Jug of Punch is an Irish song which I first heard on an H.M.V. album which was released under this title and included a number of traditional British singers. This song was from the McPeak family, one of the rediscovered families referred to earlier, with their home in Northern Ireland. They have recorded and travelled in England and in 1965 came to the U.S.A. Records maintain the primary source for traditional material, supplemented by SING and SING OUT. Though many younger singers do perform long unaccompanied narrative ballads, reception is not good and songs like Jug of Punch are heard more often due to their "catchy" tunes and choruses which allow audience participation.

Geordie received club attention only when the Joan Baez recording became available and it is her version that is usually heard in the provinces. There had been a recording made by Shirley Collins, sometime assistant to Alan Lomax, in the early fifties but it was released on an obscure label and was not sung around the clubs. Thus, many "folknicks" listen to such English songs but except for the mention of British locations would not be aware of the fact that they were part of our tradition. Outside of singers and amateur folk- lorists there is little interest in the source of songs or their place in social history; it is possible that a similar statement could be made concerning the American folk music public at large.

It is interesting to note that Eric Bentley recently wrote an article for SING OUT7 on Bertolt Brecht for we often sang his Cannon Song. This selection, an American translation of the German, originates in the "Three- penny Opera" and raises several points of interest. Brecht's material was often in the form of social comment; his productions, involving music in drama as well as full opera, were full of songs which had meaning for at least part of their audience. Some stand out of context with a message for today. The Cannon Song, Mack the Knife, and Alabama Moon are examples which have been sung in the folk clubs; in similar context are the songs of the Spanish Civil War which are also fairly widely heard having been published in Italy and released on Folkways. Brecht himself recorded some of his own songs accompanied by harmonium, more recently Bentley has recorded songs by Brecht on Folkways.

The Family Man, H-Bomb's Thunder, and Five Fingers are examples of the material produced around the C.N.D. and related peace movements. The C.N.D. possibly draws the same type of support as the Civil Rights moves do in America and hence there is criticism of the beatnick-jazz-folk music-leftist symbiosis which appears to exist in the public mind. The marches in England employ a wide range of music forms, the folksingers often being "out-blown" by the New Orleans-style marching bands which have appeared in recent years. The songs have one essential difference from the marching band material--they are new and written for the purpose of describing and pointing to the errors of society. Their area is not the family, the rural locality, the mine, the factory, but the world. Are writers of this type of material doing what the rural singer did two or more centuries ago?

It has been evident that this is a personal view by an untrained observer and participant. I have found it very easy to write at length on the subject now that I am cut off from current events but I have tried through the process of narrative, to point to some themes which might serve for further discussion. One theme touched upon could certainly be discussed--when is a song a "folk song?"

Some of the new paths of special interest to me are the connection between jazz and folk music, the sociology of the folk music following and the dif- ferential definitions of folk music in Britain and America.

Postscript March 14, 1965

Reading over my seminar draft of a year ago I have few comments to add as I have not yet returned to Britain to substantiate or change my opinions. Reports suggest that the scene is certainly still active with an increased flow of American artists, and especially blues singers, for British concerts. Little appears to have been done towards a sociological study of the revival-- something on the line of Newton's The Jazz Scene 1 0 is long overdue. In the discussion following the seminar the Beatles raised their well-covered heads and I suggested that they represented a truly British form of popular music. The proliferation of such groups, many using British material has supported this view. Possibly such numbers as Ferry Across the Mersey will find their way into the clubs. In the opposite direction I heard recently a "popped-up" version of MacColl's Dirty Old Town.

FOOTNOTES

1. P. Seeger and E. MacColl, eds., Songs for the Sixties (London: Worker's Music Association, 1961), p. 2.

2. A.L. Lloyd, ed., Come All Ye Bold Miners: Ballads and Songs of the Coalfields (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 19$2), 144 p., was also produced for these celebrations.

3. Included were Humphrey Lyttelton, The Saints, The Crane River Jazz Band, Graeme Bell's Australian Jazz Band and Joe Daniels. LK Johnson had been brought out of retirement to reform a band to play in the old New Orleans style; Lewis who is now regarded as the "Dean" of New Orleans musicians, was clarinetist in that band. For fuller details see: Samuel B. Charters, Jazz New Orleans 1885-1963 (New York: Oak Publications, 1963, 173 p.).

5. BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation); the Corporation was also quick to support folk music--the series of MacColl-Peggy Seeger radio ballads were but one example of their efforts. See a note by Pete Seeger, SING OUT, Vol. 14, No. 1, February-March 1964, p. 71.

6. Their bible appeared to be R. Vaughn-Williams and A.L. Lloyd's The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 19597, 128 p.

7. As BBC is state controlled, the commerical station, Luxembourg, has to beam from Europe and its contents are usually strictly "pop" music. I gathered that several "pirate"- stations in ships have also developed in the last two years.

8. "Kitchen-sink" drama was the journalistic term for a new wave of social realist plays by Osborne, Pinter, Arden and others which have appeared since the mid-fifteis at such theatres as the Theatre Workshop Royal Court.

9. Eric Bentley, "Bertolt Brecht: Songwriter," SING OUT, Vol. 13, No. 4, October-November 1963, pp. 35-39.

3.0. Francis Newton, The Jazz Scene (Harmondsworth: Penguin Special, 1959), 295 p.; a well-received analysis of the recent pop-music industry is Peter Leslie, FAB, the Anatomy of a Phenomenon (London: 1965).

i'o

9- 4-

V

i 'L

ON j BLUESI"ftL*U* E[^Z-, TO Z

Robert McCoy: BARRELHOUSE BLUES AND JOOK PIANO. Vulcan 2501.

Jimmy Walker and Erwin Helfer: ROUGH AND READY/Boogie Woogie for 4 Hands. Testament 2202.

Nearly three decades ago, boogie woogie pianists Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade "Lux" Lewis played in Carnegie Hall in the now-famed "Spirituals to Swing" concert overseen by critic-producer John Hammond. The period brought the height of mass exposure to the trip-hammer rhythms of boogie piano, and every quater of the music industry leveled its sights on the public's pocketbook. Tommy Dorsey had an orchestral hit with his version of Boogie-Woogie, and classical pianist Jose Iturbi made a brittle, percussive recording of an odd composition by Morton Gould, Boogie Woogie Etude. Before the '40's ended, the craze had run its course. Boogie was exciting, but the limitations of its form and endless recorded reminders of those limitations scuttled the music for most of the public.

On his disk of vocals and instrumentals recorded for Pat Cather's Vulcan label in 1962-63, Robert McCoy, one-time performer on American Record Co. issues of the 1930's, recalls a measure of the boisterous enthusiasm of barrelhouse piano as it once was played. McCoy's technique is rough and occasionally falters but the Birmingham performer is impressive (vocal interjections, aside) in a rollicking Bye, Bye, Baby and handles the standard Going Down Slow, expertly and convincingly. The disk is available from Vulcan Records, 314 Windsor Drive, Birmingham, Alabama.

For their debut on Testament, Jimmy Walker and Erwin Helfer have assembled a program of two-piano and solo keyboard performances. The best of these, the title piece, Rough and Ready and Makin' the Changes (two pianos) and Fringe Benefit (Helfer), are reasonably sturdy documents of boogie woogie piano. On the whole, the disk is mildly successful. Neither Walker's technique (some parts of Walkin' with Walker flirt with a digital disaster) nor his ideas prove to be more than minimally qualitative. The album is made interesting, on the other hand, by Helfer's contributions. His solos uncover not only a reasonable keyboard proficiency but also a sense of tartness and asymmetry through which provocative harmonic voicings are developed with dramatic effect.

Listeners who somehow may have escaped boogie woogie in its hey-day but whc are curious about the art as practiced by Ammons, Johnson, and Lewis will find samples of their work on a discontinued Harmony LP (7104) BARRELHOUSE, BOOGIE WOOGIE, AND BLUES. And well-worth searching for is another out-of- print Harmony LP (7006) AN ART TATUM CONCERT, which contains Tatum-Pole Boogie, a marvelous spoof of the redundancies and cliches of boogie woogie. Big Joe Williams, Jimmy Brown and Willie Harris: BACK TO THE COUNTRY. Testament 2205.

Big Joe Williams, Johnny Young, James and Fannie Brewer, Otis Spann, Mary Ross, Avery Brady, John Granderson, Jimmy Brown and Bill Jackson: CAN'T KEEP FROM CRYING/Topical Blues on the Death of President Kennedy. Testament S-01.

Although Big Joe Williams may consider BACK TO THE COUNTRY the "best recording he has made," many persons will sadly regret it. Few tracks in this set escape the doleful atmosphere nurtured by the most inelegant fiddling, that of Jimmy Brown's, heard on blues records in many a season. When Brown substitutes the guitar for the violin, a much more cordial meld of voice and instruments emerges. Vocals by Brown on a half-dozen numbers (including a dismal version of See, See Rider) are singularly undistinguished, except for a gem, Woody Woodpecker. Williams is heard to best advantage on the up-tempo Shake Your Boogie and Put on Your Nightcap. Harris provides an adequate harmonica accompaniment during the session.

An anthology of tributes to the late John F. Kennedy, CAN'T KEEP FROM CRYING includes a series of performances by a group of (largely) Chicago-based singers and instrumentalists of widely varied styles. Musically, the disk maintains a high order and provides glimpses of the alternatives available to the composer of topical songs. Particularly moving are Avery Brady's Poor Kennedy and Mary Ross' gospel-like President Kennedy Gave His Life. Pianist-vocalist Otis Spann's tribute is a somber, minor-hued Sad Day in Texas and that of the Brewers', I Want to Know Why, an appealing recitative sung to the composers' clear guitar accompaniment.

*** ** . * ** - * * *.

Jesse Fuller: JESSE FULLER/Greatest of the Negro Minstrels. Folk-Lyric 126.

The many faces of entertainer Jesse Fuller are revealed amply in this collection of songs ranging from the ragtime days' Bill Bailey to Fuller's San Francisco Bay Blues. As Harry Oster points out, Fuller draws on Negro folksong, ragtime, ministrelsy, Tin Pan Alley, and jazz. Nonetheless, he remains convincing, whether bustling along in side show fashion to his own guitar, kazoo, harmonica and 'fotdella' (a home-made, six-string foot bass) accompaniment or playing the guitar knife-blade style, as on a superb Old Cincinnati Blues. Preacher Lowdown (who advises passers-by: "When I pass this hat around/If you want to keep from sin, drop a nickel in") is a comic song in the tradition of the popular show, and Long as I Can Feel the Spirit is Fuller's version of a spiritual familiarly known as Every Time I Feel the Spirit.

In the breadth of his repertoire and poise as a showman, Fuller calls to mind the late Willie McTell, who, as did Fuller, absorbed the spirit of road show and street entertainment and remained equal to the challenge of endowing a variety of song-and-story materials with the particular inter- pretative and dramatic emphases due them (cf. BLIND WILLIE McTELL/Last Session, Prestige/Bluesville 1040).

* * *-; * * * * 4* * * * -k Jelly Roll Morton (w/the Red Hot Peppers): STOMPS AND JOYS. Victor LPV-$50.

One of RCA Victor's Vintage Series reissues, STOMPS AND JOYS contains 16 numbers recorded by Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers between 1928-30. All are group instrumentals except Don't Tell Me Nothin' 'Bout My Man and I Hate a Man Like You, in which Morton accompanies blues singer Lizzie Miles, and Seattle Hunch, a solo piano excursion.

The disk is a delight from beginning to end. Whatever legends have attached themselves to Morton, he was a pianist, composer, and leader of brilliant gifts and imagination. Here, he boils along masterfully, prodding his men into spirited solos, pulling the ensemble together in occasional moments of raggedness, and superintending the performance of a fascinating group of Morton originals, including Low Gravey, Strokin' Away, Primrose Stomp, and Fickle Fay Creep.

Trumpeter Ward Pinkett, present on eleven of the numbers, is revealed a top- deck instrumentalist capable of bristling solo and ensemble work. Omer Simeon's liquid clarinet is heard on Boogaboo, Shrevenport Stomp, and Mournful Serenade; and famed 'growl' trumpeter Bubber Miley, who played with Duke Ellington during 1926-29, is present on Harmony Blues, Little Lawrence, and Pontchartrain.

Victor's remastering has been faithfully accomplished, and quiet surfaces and bright sound characterized this reissue, so much so that on Fickle Fay Creep, two dramatic drum rolls by Bill Beason may be heard behind the opening tuba statements with which Bill Benford sets the mood of the piece.

AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE...

On another Victor Vintage disk, SMOKY MOUNTAIN BALLADS (LPV-507), two early blues performances by the Carter Family, Worried Man Blues (1930) and The East Virginia Blues (1934) appear. The album is notable, though, for its inclusion of original recordings by Uncle Dave Macon, the Dixon Brothers, and Wade Mainer groups.

The 'new sound' of Charlie Oyama, Pete Apo, and Dick Shirley, whose first album for Capitol is NEW SOUNDS/The Travelers 3 (T-2207), turns out to be sleek and assured, with not so much as a single guitar beat out of place. The trio swings through Fuller's San Francisco Bay Blues, shifts down for Brandy Wine Blues, and reaches an expressive high, when still more stops are pushed in, with Turn Around.

Stan Kenton, who earlier produced a STAN KENTON . TEX RITTER I program for Capitol (T-1757), has moved to another world with his latest Capitol disk, KENTON/WAGNER (TAO-2217), for which, annotator Noel Wedder explains, Kenton has written "venturesome arrangements that reflect with precision the detail of Wagner's superbly constructed themes." In truth, Kenton's arrangements whet one's appetite for pre-Kenton Wagner, on the one hand, and pre-Wagner Kenton, on the other. Rarely has Wagner received the exceptional recorded sound which Capitol's engineers provide here and only occasionally, in recent years, has Kenton curbed the upper register abrasiveness of his bras-es as he does here.

-- Ronald C. Foreman, Jr. FETE STEELE CONCERT AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY

On January 6, Page Stephens, President of the Wabash College Folksong Club, Archie Green, and I visited Bloomington, Indiana, to see Pete Steele perform before an audience for the first time in years. Steele was making a rare public appearance for an Indiana University Folksong Club membership concert. He brought along his wife to sing with him during the first half of the concert, but because they did not practice together, she did most of the singing during that half.

Pete is a large jovial man with a "pot-belly" and "monk" haircut, which means to say he has no hair on the top of his head. Both on and off stage he has a wonderful, personal warmth which makes him very likeable. This warmth, however, did not seem to come across in his songs because of his vociferous banjo which covered up the words of songs. This problem was increased by the lack of an amplification system during the first half of the concert. At the intermission, after hearing a number of complaints from everyone around me of the poor amplification, I went up on the stage and turned the mike on. The mike being off seemed to be an unnecessary blunder on someone's part, and I silently thanked God for John Schmidt, who keeps such things from happening to us.

Some of the songs that Steel played and sang were: "Hard Times," "Boston Burgler," "Ellen Smith," "Pretty Polly," "Old Joe Clark," and many of his well-known banjo pieces, such as "Coal Creek March." Most of these songs, except for the latter, were played in G tuning.

Besides fixing the mike in the intermission, I got to talk to Pete's very pleasant wife, Lillie Steele, and she told me a little about her husband.

Pete started learning the banjo at the age of six from his fiddle- playing father who also made Pete's first instrument. (Pete told me at the party later that he also plays the fiddle but I did not have the pleasure of hearing him do so.) Back in the days when he was growing up, everyone would get together in the kitchen on Saturday night and play. Today he never picks up the banjo, and the concert was the first time that he had played in a long time.

I enjoyed the concert very much, regardless of the problems, and I had a very good time later at the small party where I heard, for the third time (at my request) Pete play "Coal Creek March."

Pete is now 75 years old, but it has not slowed him down at all; or in his words: "I can jump any ten rail fence--as long as eight rails are lying down."

Pete Steele can be heard on an excellent LP: Pete Steele, Folkways FS 382.

--Jont Allen FOURTH ANNIVERSARY FOLKSING PRESENTED TRADITIONAL FORMS

Reprinted from Daily Illini, March 2, 1965

The fourth anniversary folksing of the Campus Folksong Club Saturday night was an unusual program for a contemporary college campus--a program almost entirely devoid of the political protest song.

It was a program of country music and unusual instruments, of "folks" from Southern Illinois and white college students interpreting traditional blues.

The single performer, Art Frankel, junior in LAS, who offered the audience the music of Bobby Dylan, evoked an audience reaction that seemed to reflect familiarity with the composer rather than a true appreciation of the performance.

The same audience appreciated the sincerity of country performers like fiddler Stelle Elam of Brownstown, Ill. who still plays square dances in her home county.

Many of the performers were old favorites of the Club and obviously put on their very best for a group they felt personal ties with. In fact they even brought along friends and neighbors to hear the concert and in some cases to perform.

The well-received local gospel singers Lloyd and Cathy Reynolds brought their friends the Saunders to sing for the Club.

Lyle and Doris Mayfield, well known to folk song fans on this campus, added their nephew Ronnie to the act and the young man played the wash tub fiddle in an enjoyable home grown band that included Lyle and the slide whistle, and his youngest son Layne, wearing a too large bowler hat, on the wash board.

The Mayfield's son David made his solo debut with an instrumental piece his grandfather had taught him. The piece was small and quiet and very restful. The boy had a very clear voice and amazing polish for one so young.

Doyle Moore, professor of art, who has long done most of the Club's handbills and posters and the covers for the record albums "The Green Fields of Illinois," brought the group the unusual sound of the autoharp, remarking that if 12 string guitar was well received this ought to be three times as good with its 36 strings.

The country theme, which has been a strong point of the Club since its founding, extended to the student performers. The trio of Fritz Plous, fiddle; Victor Lukas, guitar; and, Preston Martin, banjo were obviously college students who enjoyed country music and not imitation country musicians.

--Barb Whiteside DI News Editor CFC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Spring, 1965

Officers

President John Munday, 201 N. Lincoln, U., 365-2593

Vice-President Marcia Sayers, 910 Wardell Hall, U., 332-4487

Treasurer Bill Becker, 106 E. John, C., 359-1060

Recording Secretary Carol Palmer, 234 LAR, U., 332-2866

Corresponding Secretary Judi Munday, 201 N. Lincoln, U., 365-2593

Committee Chairmen

Archives Bob Mullen, 301 S. First, C., 333-2170

Autoharp Fritz Plous, 1116 W. Hill, U., 367-6149

Concert Bruce Hector, 1004 W. California, U., 344-3574

Extention Jont Allen, 708A S. Sixth, C., 344-1423

Folksing Vic Lukas, 1116 W. Hill, U., 367-6149

House Management Chuck Scott, 910 W. California, U., 344-1643

Membership Barry Porter, 49 Maplewood Dr., U., 367-0104 (Lincoln Trailer Park) Publicity Janice Wilson, 107 W. California, U., 365-1187

Radio & Television Ernie Ruby, 1101 W. Illinois, U., 332-4283

Record Production Bob Koenig, 176 Townsend Hall, U., 332-4040

Sales Geoff Batchelder, 418 Forbes Hall, C., 332-109O

Seminar April Appelquist, 206 E. White, C., 356-1593

Social

Tape, PA, & Photo John Schmidt, 1109 S. Second, C., 352-1668

Workshop Tom Silver, 1101 W. Illinois, U., 344-4839

Faculty Advisor

Archie Green, 611 W. Indiana, U., 367-7083 ILIR Library, 504 E. Armory, C., 333-2380 ON THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FOLK FESTIVAL

There is little doubt that for the majority of Mid-western folk fans the University of Chicago Folk Festival is the high-water mark of the musical season. This prodigy of staging and production involves a multitude of activities and engages the attention of U of C students throughout the year, demanding time, energy and money so that artists may be booked, advertising put together, halls secured and publicity dispatched to all points for the enlightenment of the public.

Those of us who have worked at putting together a concert featuring a single artist at Illinois can only imagine the tribulation suffered by the U of C people, who book not one, but as many as a dozen acts, all of whom have other engagements elsewhere (engagements which will yield more money, too). In addition, the U of C Folklore Society presents not only concerts, but workshops for instrumentalists, lectures by folklorists, a folk dance, a hootenanny (ugh, that word, again 1), and interviews with the performers. Realizing that it will be a year before another collection of artists can be convoked in the same place, the U of C students try to squeeze as much activity as possible into the smallest space of time.

For all of the above activities are completed in a three-day weekend in mid- winter. On Friday night the campus bursts into action with the first concert. Saturday morning the workshops and the lectures are under way. On Saturday afternoon the blues concert (last year it was hillbilly) occupies everyone's time, and, after a short break for supper, the hall is again filled for the evening performance, which lets out around midnight. By ten-thirty in the morning the workshops have begun again, followed by lectures, the hootenanny and the folk dance. A rushed meal, if you've got the money, and you're back in Mandel Hall for the final performance.

The astute observer will notice from the above that scheduled activity stops around midnight and resumes in the middle of the next morning. This is a fact, but a deceptive one, for it implies that all activity then ceases. Nothing could be further from the truth, for the end of a concert is merely the signal for the beginning of a party, and a party has to work up momentum before it's of any use to its participants. The result is that the majority of the out-of-towners coming to Chicago for a good time don't even get any sleep by the time the festival is over. There is too much to be done, and too little time to do it in.

The tract will not attempt to deal with artistic matters, such as selection of artists and genres, etc. On considering the difficulties of artist-selection most of us will, I think, grant that the U of C does a tremendous job; if a lapse in taste occurs in one year it will probably be remedied in the following one. And every one of us carries with him some memory, some great moment experienced on the Midway. When I first heard George Armstrong blow the bagpipes, when I first heard Tom Ashley and Doc Watson do the "Coo-Coo Bird," when I first heard Hobart Smith and Almeda Riddle--I knew I was hooked on the U of C Folk Festival, and each spectator probably has some similar association which brings him back year after year, an association so powerful that even the absence of his favorite performer does not deter him from coming; he hopes for a new magic moment, a new performer who will infect as the old one did. And with a slate of a dozen or more per- formers the mathematical probabilities are in the listener's favor, for on each concert program there is at least one performer who alone is worth the price of admission. So the students (and adults too) keep coming back, and the festival is assured of further success, as long as the same policies of management are adhered to. Underneath all this praise the reader has doubtless detected an urge to criticize, to carp, to kvetch at the U of C folk festival. Correct. There are some practices traditional at the festival which call for review, and with all due regard to the people who run the Folklore Society--for they are people of great imagination and daring--I must enter a demurrer or two as to the management of the festival.

First, the squeezing together of all these activities into three days: A weekend is mandatory for the holding of such an affair, but the volume of goodies scheduled for the weekend is so enormous that no one can see or hear everything he desires. This is a shame for people who have come long miles to be at the festival. It is also extremely hard on the performers, many of whom are quite aged and cannot be expected to stand the strain as do the resilient bodies and psyches of students. Even Archie Green, who is usually a bundle of energy and enthusiasm, returns from the festival in a state unfit for human consumption. Students returning on Sunday night usually cut classes Monday morning or just abandon Monday entirely. A whole weekend without sleep not only takes the student out of circulation after his return to academia; it actually interferes with his enjoyment of the festival while he is in Chicago. There is no time to rest, to enjoy a meal in comfort, to perform one's matutinal ablutions or observe any other amenities which make people agreeable to one another. Hence, tempers are a bit raw and the overall enjoyment of the festival undergoes some attenuation.

Second, the timing of the festival is unfortunate, to say the least. A glance at the meteorological records for the last 50 years will show that the end of Jan- uary and the beginning of February is the period when Chicago's weather is at its most inhospitable. Of the five U of C folk festivals I have attended the last four, and each has been a meteorological horror. For practical purposes the Midway might have been transported bodily to the shores of Baffin Bay or the Anadyr Peninsula. For the student who travels a long distance by car the dangers are myriad: icy highways, unplowed side streets that make parking difficult, blizzards that force you off the road entirely, engines that freeze up, blinding sunlight, car heaters that do not heat, und so weiter. Once safely in Chicago, the traveler's troubles are not over. Since student budgets are notoriously thin, hotels are usually out of the question; putting up with friends is the usual answer. This means padding out on couches in stuffy, overheated and yet drafty apartments. It means imposing on friends who should never be asked to perform such a service. It means cadging meals because it is too cold to go out. It means shivering and quaking with cold. It means discomfort in the car, since as many as six or seven passengers will be sitting next to one another bundled into enormous coats, trying all the while to keep from bumping into the instrument cases that litter every spare cranny of the Volkswagen, the Renault, etc.

And speaking of instruments, have you ever considered the tuning problems involved in carrying a delicate and expensive stringed instrument from an outdoor temperature of -l~0 F into an indoor temperature of, say 800?. Once inside the humidity drops to approximately 3 percent; the results on a 300 dollar guitar or an unappraised violin are disastrous. Joints split and crack, strings pop, rosin turns to stone. The performer himself needs an hour with his fingers spread on a radiator before he can even play a scale.

And all of this is narrated by a writer born and raised in Wisconsin, where the howling blasts descended upon us from the ice-scarred surface of Lake Michigan, just one block away. What must the effect be on visitors and performers from more benevolent climes--our Mississippi blues singers or Tennessee farmers? It's a hell of a way to welcome them to Chicago.

And the irony of it all is that for six months or more Chicago has a delight- ful climate and indeed, is a delightful city to be in. A more easy-going, relaxed festival, with the schedule spread out and the weather more favorable would enable the visitors and performers to make the most of their time in Chicago. The nobility of the lakefront, the clamor of the Loop, the idyllic forest preserves-- all suggest themselves as possible opiates for the jaded traveler. Even if one cannot leave the U of C campus there is plenty to contemplate: the Midway in spring, summer, and fall is a long and tranquil island amid the traffic; the shops and restaurants of Hyde Park are easily accessible to those without a car; the buildings of the University are infectious in their dignity; words like "groves of Academe" and "ivy-covered walls" are not metaphors in Chicago, but facts, and to those of us from the Great Urbana Desert they are pleasant and relaxing facts. But none of this is to be discerned on the 29th of January.

The management of the U of C festival has proved itself equal to the task of organizing and operating a large, costly, and somewhat bulky affair in a smooth, business-like, and yet hospitable manner. Although the festival is undeniably large, it does not present an impression of bigness for its own sake. Its simple black-and-white advertisements, the austere grandeur of its Gothic surroundings, the simplicity of the concerts--all belie the immense work and the grand scale on which such an event is conducted. And this achievement is worthy of the highest commendation in a country where nothing is so simple that it cannot be commercial- ized all to hell and back.

Yet even more pleasing effects could be obtained, it seems to me, by choosing a more tolerable season for the festival, and by either stretching the time-span by another day or else deleting some of the content which now strains the 2h-hour day to the bursting point. The desideratum here is, of course, to present a festival which is not only aesthetically satisfying, as the present version is, but which can be enjoyed at a more leisurely pace, i.e., really enjoyed and soaked up by the soul. It should be a festival which not only traditional music fans can be proud of, but one which will attract more of the general public and which will bring much needed credit to the Midwest, to Illinois, and to Chicago as centers of traditional studies and appreciation. What the University of Chicago has already done toward this end is so dazzling as to make criticism almost unthinkable. Still, there are those of us who, even in the depths of slumber, retain the letch to kvetch, and articles like the above are the inevitable result. It is hoped that the reader will exercise that benevolence which this author has abandoned and will take this tract seriously to heart, in hopes that even the great Univer- sity of Chicago Folk Festival will strive for further improvement in the future. For those of us who love traditional music there can never be too much of it, nor can it ever be presented too pleasingly.

--F. K. Plous, Jr. JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE REVIEWS CFC 301

All three LP's issued by the Campus Folksong Club continue to receive good reviews. Below we reprint from the JAF, Volume 78, January, 1965, p. 91.

American White Tradition:

A genu-ine working cowboy singer of interest to the folklorist and worthy to be featured on a commercial recording is surprising indeed. If not the "discovery," at least the introduction of Glenn Ohrlin can be credited to members of the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club, and from his concerts at Purdue and Illinois, December, 1963, stems The Hell-Bound Train (University of Illinois, Campus Folksong Club Records CFC 301). Ohrlin, now settled on an Ozark ranch, is a genial young veteran of Nevada ranching and the California-Florida rodeo circuit. His repertoire, performed in relaxed, laconic style, shows remarkably little influence of modern eratz cowboy song; "Bull Riders in the Sky" is Ohrlin's parody of what he calls "a fake cowboy song." The contents of the recording are of the same general nature as the Lomax and Larkin collections, includ- ing more strictly cowboy tradition such as "Trail to Mexico" (B13), productions of western poets such as "Walking John," and regional songs like "Dakota Land." Ohrlin continues to bag songs from Ozark neighbors, the source of his "Waiting for a Train" version of "Ten Thousands Miles from Home" (H2), which seems to predate the form recorded by Jimmie Rodgers. And Ohrlin is the kind of a yarn spinner who can render a personal experience like an antique tale. Full transcriptions of texts and tunes are provided, and the annotations by Archie Green and July McCulloh are scholarly models. The editors conjecture that the puzzling "My Home's in Montana," known else- where only in a two-line introduction to a variant of "The Cowboy's Lament," may have come from a school book. Quite possibly, as there is in the unpublished collection of Leonard Roberts a duplicate text and tune secured from Kentucky school children in 1958. Are there other Ohrlins on the rodeo circuit?

--D.K. Wilgus Record-Review Editor

WESTERN HORSEMAN'S REVIEW

The February, 1965 (Volume 30) issue of Western Horseman carries a fine note on The Hell-Bound Train by Dick Spencer in his column, "Brush Poppin'." Thanks to his friendly words the Club has received orders for the album from California, Maryland, Texas, and Alberta, Canada, as well as points between.