 
 
We've taken you through the Payola Trial, Timothy Leary and a recap of
the local talent that would build the national music scene from 1960 to
1962. We're slowly creeping upon John, Paul. George and Ringo, and the
local bands following in their wake, the Ramrods, the Remains, the
Argonauts, etc. The 60's begin to evolve into a force which propelled a
generation, a national attitude of major importance. So lend us an ear for
the first part of this decade's episode as we watch the relay race of
generations in which beatniks pass the baton to the rebelling baby
boomers.
In the event of a nuclear war, the survivors will envy the
dead.
It's 1960
The older boomers begin to reach puberty in record numbers. The Cold
War is being fought with such intensity that the minds of teenagers as
well as adults count air raid drills and fallout shelters as common
currency. Kennedy defeats Nixon in his presidential bid and then faces off
with Nikita Kruschev, leader of the Soviet Union. THE BOMB WAS ABOUT TO
FALL - but which country would drop it?
Not only were falling bombs everyone's nightmare, but over in Southeast
Asia, the government was falling into the hands of communism.
People didn't know much about Vietnam, but they were fearful that Laos
would fall. And then, the Soviet Union just might decide to come and get
us next.
The beatniks and the folkies, or folkniks, began to protest U.S.
government propaganda, which they deemed scare tactics used to escalate
weapon development and bucks for the Pentagon. They began to take this
protest into clubs, an unheard of entertainment development. "Ban the
Bomb" became a frequently heard cry.
This marks the entrance of popular music into politics, a trend that
will snowball into a national movement for the baby boomers, and will
influence every corner of U.S. culture.
Don't bogart that joint, my friend
Along with political protest and rebellion, the new movement turns to
drugs to free their minds and rebel against the every day tedium of the
repressive 1950's. Against a backdrop of conformity, the concept of
individuality, doing your own thing, and therefore, experimentation drugs
and lifestyles began to look damned good to a generation brought up to
believe everyone was supposed to lead unnaturally cute little lives like
the Cleavers and Ozzie and Harriet.
The #1 song on WMEX in 1963 was Puff - The Magic Dragon," a direct
metaphor for marijuana, recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary. Although many in
the know about drugs undoubtedly caught on to its meaning, most Americans
undoubtedly sang along with this song unruffled by drug awareness. Indeed,
the beauty of the song lies in its simple resemblance to a nursery rhyme
tune. And mass drug use was years away.
The same year, David Van Ronk, a leading folkie from Greenwich Village,
paid a visit to a Brandeis coffee house. At the end of one song. he
shouted, "Try marijuana, the THINKING MAN'S cigarette."
Doors of perception were opening in many people's minds. It became
increasingly obvious to those capable of questioning what they were told
that the U.S. government was not always telling the truth about the Cold
War. The political skepticism of the decade began to swell: people grew
tired of U.S. governmental scare tactics about the bomb and communism.
Oh yes. And the black man.
Four score and a couple of years after slavery had been abolished, the
black man was still looking at the back of the bus, and was still
segregated from whites. Coin operated laundries in the South still had
machines marked whites only and that did NOT mean the color of your
clothing!
But black music was exploding through the national scene, dominating it
in a parallel to national politics. The civil rights movement picked up
steam. Blacks began to sit anywhere on the bus, began to sit in at lunch
counters in the South which prohibited them, causing a national sensation.
In 1963 Boston, WILD was THE black station and if you were hip,
regardless of white or black, you'd tune into WILD Man Steve and catch the
latest Motown contemporary black hit. The Miracles, featuring Smokey
Robinson, and Martha and the Vandellas were examples.
Thus, at this point, black participation in U.S. white culture
straddles two decades. Remember that in the late 1950's, censorship
targeted sex and race, the former, Elvis' pelvis, the latter Frankie Lymon
dancing close to a white woman. The 1960's encountered censorship when
music supported not only sex and integration but expanded political
consciousness and freedom for all groups, a direct outcome of the folkie
movement.
What form did the early 60's censorship take? In March of 1963, Pete
Seeger and the Weavers were kept from appearing on Hootenanny," the first
national television folk singing programs, because of his radical
political beliefs (he was blacklisted In the fifties by the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee for leanings toward humanitarian
socialism). Though he still was popular, this did hurt him, preventing the
major national prominence he deserved. The Byrds went on to become more
famous than he with their version of his song , Turn! Turn! Turn!
Censorship couldn't stop everyone in this movement, however. A regular
of Cambridge's Club 47, Bob Dylan, walked off the set of the Ed Sullivan
show when its employees tried to stop him from playing Talking John Birch
Society Blues which took swipes at both segregation and the military.
A few months later, he debuted at the Newport Folk Festival.
And on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King lead marchers, including Bob
Dylan and Newton citizen Joan Baez, to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington D.C. to deliver his famous I had a Dream speech. Baez and
Dylan lead a sing along following his speech. Busloads of Cambridge
activists were there to help them out.
It won't happen here
Malcom X, another leading black activist. visited Boston's WMEX radio
station for an interview with talk show host Jerry Williams in 1964. The
station was than broadcast from 70 Brookline Avenue, next to Fenway Park.
As John Garabedian, currently starring on V66, Boston's new music
television station arrived for his all night shift as disc jockey, he met
the Boston police lined up on rooftops over the station with shotguns
ready to fire. Someone had threatened Malcom's life.
Club 47, etc.
The people who
were involved in the historic Cambridge folk scene are too numerous to
acknowledge each person's contributions in this space. But it is important
to understand how, along with Greenwich Village, Cambridge spawned a form
of music that, in all its forms and translations, was probably the most
influential of the entire decade, as well as the early 70's.
Of the Cambridge folk scene and Club 47, Tom Rush said, "The 47 was
already going when I arrived at Harvard in the fall of '59.It was very
much of a hangout place. People had their motorcycles in the basement and
such. It was a very marginal operation. At that time, in '62 maybe
everybody was just hanging around, you know. The Cambridge scene was quite
different from New York. The New York scene was much more commercially
oriented. The Boston scene was more a bunch of guys getting together and
playing for the hell of it, partly because there wasn't any money to be
made in Boston as there was in New York."(from an Interview with Rush by
Andy Fischer, printed in The Real Paper Earbook II, May 16, 1973).
Three people stand out as the most notable examples of local
contribution to the national folk scene, among them Tom Rush, Joan Baez,
and Jim Kweskin.
In early 1958 there lived on the West Coast a family by the name of
Baez. Its father landed a teaching job at MIT and so that Baez's packed up
and moved to Newton, where Timothy Leary would unknowingly join them in a
couple of years.
By 1959, their daughter Joan had enrolled in Boston University's drama
department. She quickly left theatre, however, for the bigger lure of the
folk music revival. In a two year span, she moved from the Club 47 in
Cambridge to national prominence and great popularity.
Some of the first clubs over to see and hear beautiful long haired Joan
sitting on a chair were local coffee houses Golden Vanity, the Ballad
Room, and of course, Club 47 at 47 Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square.
She quickly moved on the Newport Jazz Festival in 1959, which warmly
received her. Record contract offers poured in but she declined all of
them. Upon her return to the festival in the following year, she picked up
on an offer from Vanguard Records. In October of that year, Folksound
USA, a national CBS television show, featured Joan, coinciding with the
release of her self titled album, Joan Baez.
In 1961, she toured colleges and concert halls extensively. Her voice's
purity and cool, yet emotional intensity, converted many new people to the
Folk Movement. In the fall of 1962, with three albums on the charts at the
same time, Joan Baez appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.
The importance of Joan Baez's success lay in the fact that she was one
of the first popular singers to fight for civil rights and non-violent
demonstrations against US involvement in Vietnam.
She also linked up with romantically and musically with Bob Dylan, who
allegedly wrote several songs about her. (She wrote about him in Diamonds
and Rust"). Together, they were possibly the most influential couple of
the decade, sharing concert bills and songs and politics. Later, their
romance became what appears to be a lifelong friendship.
Recommended listening: Farewell Angelina, Blessed Avenue, and
One Day at a Time, all on Vanguard.
Another prominent figure in the Cambridge order of rule was Now England
native Jim Kweskin. After making a major contribution to the (folk?) scene
as a solo artist, he put together an all-star line up called, of course
the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. This group single handedly brought good
timeyness back into folk music, something lacking from the Dylan Baez and
Peter Paul and Mary genre, which had become a very serious, sincere folk
music scene. Reviving ragtime and blues music, the band covered forgotten
gems of every genre imaginable.
The band's lineup seemed to almost constantly change, but an impressive
group passed through its ranks. There was Jim Kweskin on guitar and
vocals. Then Bill Keith, former banjo player for Bill Monroe Blue Grass
Boys (Bill Monroe is considered the father of Blue Grass). Keith also
played steel guitar. Geoff Muldaur played lead guitar and did vocals while
also doing his own solo albums on Vanguard in 1963. Bruno Wolf, a.k.a.
Little David, was soon replaced by Maria D'Amato who married Geoff and
became the famous Marla Muldaur (Midnight at the Oasis). She sang and
played fiddle for the J.K. band. Richard Greene later took over the fiddle
(he was in Blues Project and Seatrain). And, later on, Mel Lyman played
harmonica for the band. Lyman was a self proclaimed god-figure who began
his own authoritarian cult on Fort Hill. This psychedelic guru also
founded a controversial newspaper, the Avatar, which was a
predecessor of Boston's countercultural weeklies, The Real Paper
and The Phoenix. He is credited with breaking up the Kweskin band.
Kweskin became a disciple and member of Lyman's commune on Fort Hill.
Before its demise, the Jim Kweskin Jug band played constantly to sold
out shows over a six year period and will pop up again in our series.
A Portsmouth, New Hampshire native, Tom Rush slipped into the
coffeehouses of Boston and Cambridge during his stint at Harvard in the
early sixties.
He enjoyed many different styles of music, and his work was built on
elements of classical, blues, and jazz as well as folk. In late 1959
through 1963, his performances grow in importance until Prestiege Records'
Paul Rothschild scooped him up in a signing rampage through Cambridge that
collected all the folkies that Vanguard missed out on.
Prestiege released his debut album, Got a Mind to Ramble in December
of 1963. He proved marketable and went on to popularize the work of three
unknowns in future albums: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and James Taylor.
His album Circle Games, for example, brought Mitchell's song the same
name to national prominence. At the same time, it was one of the first
pop concept albums to be put out and also heralded his outstanding No
Regrets.
For further reading about this time period, we suggest you find a book
that we couldn't locate but that many people recommend: Baby Let Me
Follow You Down by Eric Von Schmidt. It is about the general Cambridge
folk scene and Club 47.
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