Crack! (Neil Rosenberg)

Wherein George Lyon talks to Neil Rosenberg and we get to listen! l first met Neil Rosenberg in the summer of 1967, when he was teaching a session at the University of Texas.It was at a party at a professor'shouse; probably all the folkies who were left in Austin (following the Beatlesl Dylan blitz of 1964-65)could fit in that living room. WhenI got there, he wasplaying guitar backup to someone's old time country song.At my turn, I played oneof thosepseudo-Indian raveupsmany of us werefond of then, using a modified dulcimer tuning on my guitar. I was astoundedto look up and seeNeil had brought his guitar acrossthe room and was playing along with. I say "astounded"because I really didn't know what I was doing and couldn't imagine that anyonewould beable to figure out what I didn't understand myself! This wasn't the blind leading the blind; it was the sighted following the blind! Werethere a tape of the evening,I suspectit would show that his seconding was lnore interesting than lny leading. At the end of the summer he invited me to attend the annual conferenceof the American Folklore Societyheld that year at Indiana University, from which (as you will see)he was in the processof earning a PhD. After that, he was in Newfoundland, and, though we kept touch intermittently, we eventually lost contact.He never did send me a copyof the Homegasdisc (some tapesof which he'd played for me during the summer),for which I neverforgave him. Nevertheless,I followed his careerwith interest and admiration, particularly noting the publication in 1985of Bluegrass:A History (U lllinois F), which remains the lnajor work on the subjectand, I gather,has become a cultural artifact itself, being usedby bluegrassfans as a handy autograph book,carried to festivals for that purpose.A portion of Rosenberg'scurriculum vitae is available at http:1 I www.mun.calfolklorelfacultylrosenberg.ht ml. George: This interview was an experilnent: we conducted it entirely on email. It began during the year of Pete Seeger's 80th birthday, so I began with questions about Seeger's influence because by now I think of Neil as a banjo player, not a guitarist. Other questions followed, either spurred by his previous responses or by my own interests. Eventually, the material was chopped and reordered, and I realized some new insights were needed, so more questions were put, and round and The CanadianFolk Music BULLETIN de musique folklorique canadienne 2 round it went. I think what you 'vegot is After that I got too self-consciousabout reasonablycomplete and coherent(though we songwriting. I didn't particularly care for most of decidednot to repeataspects of his life and work the new stuff that was coming out in the revival that are coveredelsewhere, sources are given in the context.I was into old songs.I did continue to text and footnotes).I don't know whether this make up tunes and have done so ever since then. methodof interviewing would work with everyone, Both of the CrookedStovepipe CDs have but I enjoyedworking on it (hopenothing got left instrumentals of mine on them. I've got a lot of my out in all the revising and re-sending!);I think own banjo, guitar, and mandolin tunes that I hope you'll enjoy reading it. I'll find time to record someday. I sing, though not Neil: I was born in 1939in Washington my own songs,with CrookedStovepipe and have state; we moved to Berkeley when I was twelve. sung with every other bluegrassband I've been in. My dad was working as legal counselfor a I learned a lot working in the various housebands researchinstitute in San Francisco,sponsored by at Bill Monroe'sBrown County Jamboreeduring the trucking industry. My parents choseto live in the 60s. Berkeley becauseof our family's intellectual, arts, I was introduced to folk music by my father's and liberal/socialist interests. Many of their older sister Ted (Teya)Newkirk, who was a social friends were University of California ("Cal" to worker and what we would have called, back then, everyonelocally) faculty membersor connectedin a "bohemian". She'dhung out in North Beachin other ways to the U. the 30s,had been married to a communist, was a I attended Berkeley High. At that time lesbian, and she had a collection of folk records (1954-7) it was big, the only public high schoolin that included the Almanac Singers.As a teenager town, and had quite a diverse student body in in Seattle she'dbeen a literary pal of Mary terms of class, ethnicity, and origins. In somekind McCarthy's, and McCarthy wrote a good of survey in 1956or '7, it was ranked as one of the descriptionof her in one of her last books,an top 40 high schoolsin the US, and I think I got a autobiographicalessay that first appearedin the goodeducation there. And met many neat people. New Yorker. OnceI becameaware of it, folk music My folks encouragedme. When I was 14 they was all around in Berkeley in the early 1950sin let me drop the violin, which I'd been studying recordstores, on KPFA, at parties. My dad played sinceI was seven,but required me to take folk the tenor guitar, (four strings only, like a uke) and guitar lessons.But I think that the formative at about the sametime as I got interested he thing was that my peer group was into all of this started learning somesea chanties like "What stuff. We were teenagebohemians, hanging out in Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor." the Cal campus fringe scene,going to North Thesedays I generally tell peopleI've been Beach,having big music parties at a cabin in playing banjo for forty years. When I was sixteen RedwoodCanyon (in the hills behind Oakland) on or seventeenyears old I went to a concertby Pete weekends,playing on the Midnight Specialat Seegerin my hometown of Berkeley, California. KPFA, playing folk music in schoolconcerts. I'd beeninto folk music 3-4 years, playing the The guitar teacher that I found when my guitar then. (I still play the guitar did a lead break parents insisted that I take lessonsafter d~opping on "Park Avenue Blues" on our secondCrooked the violin was a woman in her 30s named Laurie StovepipeCD a coupleof years ago, for instance.) Campbell.She taught voice and guitar, and part of But I'd only recently learned about the five-string what she had me do was compose.I was 14. First I banjo when my classmateand musical partner, set a bunch of OgdenNash poemsfrom a volume Mayne Smith, got an old Stewart 5-string. I titled, I think, Parents Keep Out, to music.! And rememberseeing Seeger's manual on playing the then I started making my own words. By the time banjo at his houseand listening to Seeger's I was 16 I'd done a bunch of songs.My mother records,all of this beforethe concert,which was took me into a local recording studio and made certainly a turning point in my folk music acetateswhich were sent to selectedrelatives for educationas it was for many peoplein the mid- Xmas gifts. My first song was about hot rods, fifties. Prior to that, I had perhaps not even "FoggyFlatz Blues," and my secondabout teenage noticedthe 5-string banjo, if I heard it, becauseit partying, "What a Blast We Had Last Night." didn't soundlike a tenor or plectrum, which I Then I did hear Guthrie and wrote a few in would have recognizedsince we had a few Eddie somethinglike his mode,but this was well before Peabodyrecords at home. the singer-songwriter thing, which started to Mayne cameto Berkeley in 1953when his happenin the early 60s. I wrote my last songin father, Henry Nash Smith, took over as head of 1957during my first semesterat Oberlin, about the English Department at Cal. So he'd been breaking up with my girlfriend back in Berkeley. raised on folk music, and it was his enthusiasm that fully drew me into the scene.He'd had guitar The Canadian Folk Music BULLETIN de musiquefolklorique canadienne 3 lessons from one of Henry's students, Gene is what I'm doing right now, in a sense: in The Bluestein, and Henry knew the Lomaxes.2 Mayne Bannerman Park Band, a St. John's group, we do had Pete Seeger records. After I began hanging all kinds of European stuff. out with Mayne I decided I wanted to quit my In the fall of 1957 I started college at violin lessons, and I moved from playing the uke to Oberlin, in Ohio. Eventually I majored in History. appropriating my Dad's guitar (a nice old I chose Oberlin largely because (1) Mayne was Washburn) and adding the bass strings to it. going there, and we were musical partners and (2) Mayne later did an MA in Folklore at I'd read about the folk music scene there in Sing Indiana, the first academic study of bluegrass, in Out! magazine. I was rooming with Mayne, and 1964, then went to study folklore at UCLA.3 He there were a lot of others on campus who had dropped out to become a songwriter. In LA he banjos, so I was immersed in banjo music. This played in bands and sessions with great musicians was where I first heard of bluegrass. The like Ry Cooder, David Lindley, and Taj Mahal; Folkways album that Mike Seeger produced, Linda Rondstadt recorded one of his songs.

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