At the height of the
folk revival
in the early '60s, three movers and shakers --
Ralph Rinzler
(a member of
the Greenbriar Boys
folk
group),
John Cohen
(of
the New Lost City Ramblers
) and
Israel "Izzy" Young
(owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village) -- presented a number of
traditional folk
concerts in New York City under the umbrella of the Friends of Old Time Music. Among the now-legendary artists they brought to the city, some for the first time, others for the first time in decades, were
Doc Watson
,
Maybelle Carter
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys
Roscoe Holcomb
Dock Boggs
and
Mississippi John Hurt
, whose song
"Coffee Blues,"
including the phrase "lovin' spoonful" and performed here, provided a future New York
rock
band with their name. The 14 concerts in the series, which took place between 1961 and 1965, were recorded by
Peter K. Siegel
, who produced and annotated this three-CD boxed distillation of highlights from the events. For fans of the kind of pure, unadulterated
music that flourished on campuses and at
festivals during those years before
Bob Dylan
discovered electricity, the set is a rejoice-worthy find.
Folk
music at that time encompassed not just the stereotypical guitar-strumming troubadour carrying a message, but also raw
blues
, Appalachian
ballads
, kickin'
bluegrass
gospel
and other strains of roots
Americana
, and the performances heard by the fortunate big city audiences were honest, moving and, most importantly, devoid of outside intervention or corrupting influence -- most of these artists were shell-shocked to be playing to appreciative audiences in a place like New York City after decades of toiling for the locals down south. The songs proffered by these musicians, of poverty and jail time, hard drinking and mining disasters, were not contrived but, true to the
process, familiar tales handed down via the oral tradition, or written anew to add to it -- many, like
Jesse Fuller
's
"San Francisco Bay Blues,"
"Foggy Mountain Top,"
Monroe
"Shady Grove"
"Rising Sun Blues"
(aka
"House of the Rising Sun"
), have long been accepted as staples of the American
repertoire, but were relatively new to mainstream audiences at the time, regardless of their vintage and their familiarity in the rural regions that birthed these performers.
Friends of Old Time Music
is, of course, a valuable historical document but, better than that, it's a rewarding listening experience. This is the real item, the sound -- in excellent fidelity, incidentally -- of America's treasured heritage peeking out from its longtime hiding places -- 53 of the 55 recordings have never before been released -- and fanning out across the land and into the permanent cultural fabric. ~ Jeff Tamarkin