American Folk Music and the Mass Media, 1933-1959 Kirstin Ek New
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“A Precipice Between Deadly Perils”: American Folk Music and the Mass Media, 1933-1959 Kirstin Ek New York, New York M.A. Music Education, New York University, 2006 B.A. Music, Cornell University, 2004 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music University of Virginia December, 2014 ii Copyright © 2014 Kirstin Ek All Rights Reserved December 2014 iii Table of Contents List of Examples iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 1. From Canons to Fields: Shifting Frameworks for Understanding American 9 Folk Music Through 1959 2. A Craze in 3/4 Time: The Weavers, “Goodnight, Irene,” and the Commercial 52 Folk Music Phenomenon 3. The Common Man Meets the Matinee Idol: Harry Belafonte, Folk Identity, 124 and the 1950s Mass Media 4. Frontierland Animated: “Johnny Appleseed,” “Paul Bunyan,” and Walt 163 Disney’s Audio-Visual Construction of Commercial American Folk Culture Conclusions 218 Bibliography 222 iv List of Examples 1.1 Table comparing Francis Child’s, Cecil Sharp’s, and John Lomax’s respective folk 11 music collections 1.2 Frontispiece to Negro Folk Songs As Sung By Lead Belly 32 1.3 Lyrics to the Capitol recording of “Western Plain” 45 2.1 Melodic comparison of “Union Maid” and its melodic predecessors 61 2.2 Select versions of “Goodnight, Irene,” from Lead Belly through 1950 82 2.3 Lyrics to Lead Belly’s 1933 Angola Prison recordings of “Goodnight, Irene” 84 2.4 Lyrics to Lead Belly’s 1934 Angola Prison recordings of “Goodnight, Irene” 85 2.5 Introduction to Lead Belly’s 1934 recordings of “Goodnight, Irene” 86 2.6 Lyrics to Lead Belly’s 1935 recordings of “Goodnight, Irene” 90 2.7 Lyrics to “Goodnight, Irene,” as recorded by the Weavers with Gordon Jenkins and 97 his Orchestra 2.8 Violin introduction melody from the Weavers & Gordon Jenkins’ 1950 version of 103 “Irene” 2.9 Decca ad for “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” and “Goodnight, Irene” from Billboard 108 Magazine, June 17, 1950 2.10 Frank Sinatra ad from Billboard Magazine, July 22, 1950 113 2.11 Frank Sinatra ad from Billboard Magazine, July 29, 1950 113 2.12 Weavers ad from Billboard Magazine, July 14, 1951 115 2.13 Weavers ad from Billboard Magazine, July 21, 1951 115 2.14 Ziggy Talent ad from Billboard Magazine, November 11, 1950 119 3.1 “Cotton Fields,” from Belafonte at Carnegie Hall 131 3.2 “Jamaica Farewell,” from Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, vocal and bass line 149 3.3 The vocal lines of the choruses from “Jamaica Farewell” and “Iron Bar” 150 4.1 “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” first verse 180 4.2 “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” lyrics 181 4.3 Lyrics from the beginning scenes of the Davy Crockett serials 183 4.4 “Johnny Appleseed” and “Paul Bunyan” storybooks 191 4.5 “Heroes’ pages” from the “Johnny Appleseed” storybook 194 4.6 Storybook imagery from previous feature-length, animated Disney films 196 4.7 “Paul Bunyan” storybook pages 198 4.8 “The Lord Is Good to Me” lyrics, A-section melody, and B-section melody with 207 harmonic landmarks 4.9 “Pioneer Song” lyrics 209 4.10 “Apple Song” melody 212 4.11 “Paul Bunyan” verse 214 4.12 “Paul Bunyan” Chorus 214 v Acknowledgements I would like to thank the faculty of the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia, who created an incredibly diverse department where any student is fully supported to pursue just about any musical interest. Without the following faculty members, this project would not be possible: my committee chair, Scott DeVeaux, my committee members, Richard Will, Karl Hagstrom Miller, and Jack Hamilton, and I’d like to extend a special thanks to Michelle Kisliuk. Thank you, as well, to Sarah Culpeper, Vilde Aaslid, Matthew Jones, and Geoffrey Philabaum, my colleagues at the University of Virginia whose support and friendship have truly made this journey fun. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at the Juilliard School. Thank you to Monica Thakkar for her support, understanding, and humor, and to Katie Baltrush for her unbridled enthusiasm for musical scholarship and practice. I would especially like to thank Jacqueline Schmidt, whose encouragement and mentorship throughout allowed for me to complete this project. I feel very lucky to work with such a caring and creative group of people every day. To Lori Sexton, who is not only one of my oldest and dearest friends, but is also someone who I greatly admire. Lori, I marvel at your intelligence and work ethic, and am so proud of how you have harnessed your gifts. Thank you for being my friend and a vi patient sounding board as we undertook (and now completed) this journey together on separate coasts. Without my family, this project would not have been possible. To my parents, Bill and Vicki, my sisters, Courtney and Amanda, and my late grandfather, Frank: you have always believed in me, no matter what, and your never ending supply of silliness and good food have always kept me close to home. Thank you for everything! To my husband, Seth Sarelson, who has taken this journey with me. Seth, your intellectual curiosity and love of music are contagious. Your work ethic has inspired and motivated me just as your unwavering love, support, and humor have fueled me through this process. This dissertation is for you. 1 Introduction American folk music from 1930-1959 can be divided into two forceful, yet contradictory currents. One was the folk revival, governed by what we might think of as “traditional folk ideals” distinct from modern life – isolation, antimodernism,1 and the pastoral – and defined by its separation from popular culture and economic gain. Examples of the folk revival include the ideologically driven music of the Popular Front during the 1930s and early 1940s, and the institutionally supported published collections of John Lomax, and his son, Alan’s, efforts with the Library of Congress and the Office of War Information. Folk revival giants of the era like Pete Seeger and his Almanac Singers supported folk music because it could mobilize the masses, everyone and anyone could participate, and it promoted a contemporary sense of American identity centered around the “common man,” as exemplified by the dusty Okie, Woody Guthrie, and the southern, black convict Lead Belly. In other words, folk revivalists promoted the movement as free of charge, powerful in that it was available to all during a time of economic hardship. Nevertheless, this folk revival was not a product of “the folk” (however much it celebrated and promoted “the folk”), but was actually driven by an in-group of intellectuals (like Lomax and Seeger), propelled by academic, artistic and political ideals. 1 T.J. Jackson Lears describes “antimodernism” as a response to citizens looking for a sense of “weight” in their cultural heritage as industrialization, intellectualism, and urbanization pulled them from what they felt were “earthy,” “natural,” roots. In defining the folk arts of the past, citizens would discover what was important to their present and find a more rooted sense of individual and national identity. T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 2 A very different sense of “the folk” participated in mass culture and was created through the intervention of amplification and recording technology. Mass media like popular magazines, radio, recording, and later television and film disseminated folk music and numerous interpretations of American folk identity. In this sense, folk music affected mainstream commercial entertainment as folk tunes topped the pop charts and as folk artists headlined radio programs, television variety shows, and starred in big- time Hollywood films. This kind of folk music was affected by, but not driven by the traditional ideals of the folk revival, and it openly participated in mainstream economic and cultural markets. The folk revival aimed toward intellectual ideas and ideals (including politics); the more popular folk music was open to as much of the mainstream as possible. Mass media popularization split the folk music field into what Pierre Bourdieu would categorize as an autonomous field in which success was measured by artistic prestige and understandings of authenticity (the folk revival), and a heteronomous field in which success was measured by economic prosperity and mainstream fame (popular folk music).2 Folk music’s infiltration into the dominant, money-driven, music- production power structures and processes challenged the revivalists’ folk ideals. Not only was this new folk music being produced in ways antithetical to the hand-made, spontaneous, and “natural” methods so cherished by revered folk collectors and 2 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed,” in The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randall Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 29-73. 3 scholars like Francis Child, Cecil Sharp, and Johann Gottfried von Herder, it also opened the music up to new audiences who would evaluate it using different standards of prestige. Rather than the more abstract criteria of authenticity, sincerity, and antimodernity, the new heteronomous field measured prestige using criteria like record sales, income, media exposure, and the Billboard charts. Although the folk revival has monopolized scholarly attention thus far, mass- mediated folk music was a huge force between 1930 and 1959. Pete Seeger and the Weavers achieved unprecedented commercial success through their collaboration with Decca bandleader, Gordon Jenkins on their recording of “Goodnight, Irene,” a tune attributed to folk music monolith, Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Lead Belly).