Folk music has an interesting past in, American popular music. in terms of our discussion, we're going to think about Folk music as it emerged, in the late 1950s, into the 1960s as a kind of Folk revival. Next week when we talk about, the Beatles and the British Invasion, we'll often talk, we'll also talk about a style, a kind of Folk revival they had in the UK which we never really experienced here called Skiffle. In fact their folk revival happened a little earlier than our folk revival did. Theirs was already going in 1957 with Lottie Donegan and the Rock Island Line here with us and the Kingston Trio and other folks like that. It isn't until 1958 or 1959 that we really get started. Now in this country, folk music had certainly been popular before the late 50's when we have the folk revival. But what we want to talk about here is how this folk revival constitutes one of the first splits in this new youth market that we're going to see. Remember that the idea is that during the 55 through 59 period, what was demonstrated was that there was a youth market at all. That is a market for youth records as opposed to basically just any kind of mainstream pop record. And you shouldn't expect that people like Frank Sinatra and some of the more traditional musicians weren't continuing to sell records while rock 'n' roll was going on. I mean, rock 'n' roll was one part of the market, but it wasn't the entire mainstream pop market. Anyway, that, that was, that youth market was already a kind of a split away from the, the mainstream pop market. Now, within the youth market, there's a split, where the teenage kids, the high school kids, maybe the preteen kids, and the college age kids, who used to be fans of Elvis Presley, and now have moved on to college, and were interested in putting their childish things behind them, and impressing everybody with how, dog gone serious they were and Folk music, is in many ways one of the places that those folks went. Now, a lot of other college kids got involved into jazz and they liked jazz a lot. Jazz, was of course the music of the beat generation, beat poetry. A lot of people got interested in classical music, as well. but folk music was a kind of music that you know you could sort of if you are a man, stroke your beard to, and sort of think about the importance of the lyrics and the kinds of things they were saying. It dealt with more serious issues and more sort of serious problems in the world than teenage love and romance and ideal boyfriends, and this kind of thing. a kid goes off to college, wants to be taken seriously. starts to read Niche and grows a little beard, smokes a pipe and wears a sweater and all of a sudden wants to be taken seriously. And folk music sort of really fit that pretty well for these kids. There's a, a real appeal to populism. The idea in folk music that you know, we're sort of all in this together. We're all equals. There's a real kind of non-commercial emphasis. Although it turns out that folk music as a popular style is just a commercial as every other music when it comes to actually selling it. But the image is that it's not commercial and it's often socially conscience or even activist at a certain kind of way. Now the roots of folk go back to the 40s and into the early 1950s. With people like the Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, writing music that was really about social problems and a kind of an approach to everybody sharing in things together, this land is your land, this land is my land. But, and some of those early songs are tunes like The Weavers, Good Night Irene, which was a number one hit on the pop charts in 1950 or On Top of Old Smoky, a number two hit in 1951. But with the rise of McCarthyism in this country and the seeking out or trying to flash or flash out all the possible communist or communist sympathizers in the country. Right, wrongly, or whatever way you make thing about that. A lot of folk musicians were, were under scrutiny, because they were seen as communists or communist sympathizers. And that was sometimes true, actually. It wasn't always true of everybody, but it actually was true. I mean, some really did believe in communism. but that tend to sort of put a damper on their ability to sell records to a mainstream pop audience. So, there's a kind of a silence that happens in folk music at the, at the, into the 1950s. And when folk music starts to revive in the late 1950s, it really stays away from political issues. the most important group in this part of this vocal revival is a group of out San Francisco called the Kingston Trio. they take their name, the Kingston Trio from this fascination we had for calypso music at about the same time Harry Belafonte sing singing tunes about a Jamaica Farewell, or the Banana Boat song, the Day O song, that kind of thing. and so Kingston was kind of, you know, kind of in the air and kind of a hip thing to do, so they were the Kingston Trio, even though their music had nothing to do with calypso music or Jamaica. anyway, their approach, three guys singing and playing acoustic instruments, guitars and banjo, singing in harmony, producing very professional performances that never really seemed really professional. They almost give, give the image of just three guys that could be anybody that picked up these instruments and they're just sort of singing and playing. But if you listen to the recording, you'll see there's an awful lot of production, an awful amount of talent and an awful lot of thought to the arrangement that goes into them. A good example is their big number one hit from 1959, Tom Dooley, which is a traditional song 19th century song that deals with a murder and this kind of thing, but it doesn't get into issues of of, of of civil rights or, or social economic problems, or issues or politics or anything like that. It deals with these kinds of serious issues from a historical perspective. Which is kind of safe to do at the time, because like I say, there had been a, a big scare with the McCarthyism thing. the, the Kingston Trio were on Capitol Records, out of Los Angeles. And in the period between 1959 and 1965, had ten singles in the top 40. they were very, very big during this period. And when somebody thought of, what is folk music? In the period before the arrival of Bob Dillon and Roger McGuine and all these guys with folk rock in 1965. Folk music probably meant, either the Kingston Trio or a group we are going to talk about in just a minute, Peter, Paul and Mary. It's important for us to realize, that somebody like Bob Dillon, didn't really have a professional performing career, even though he did records, he wasn't really sort of star of a performer until 1965. So, folk music really meant The Kingston Trio. in, in many cases, they were very, very successful. other groups of note that are sort of similar to the Kingston Trio would be the Highwaymen, the Rooftop Singers, or perhaps most importantly, the New Christie Minstrels. All of these groups very polished, happy kind of folk sound that stayed way clear of any kind of controversy of political affiliation. if you're interested in the whole scene around that, there's a fantastic movie by Christopher Guest, called A Mighty Wind, which takes a kind of a satirical view of all this. But much of like a lot of those Christopher Guest movies, much of what's in there is a pretty accurate representation of a lot of what went on. Even if the characters themselves are, are sort of, you know, comedic, and not, not accurate representations of anybody in particular. let's talk about Peter, Paul, and Mary. Here's a group that, really, like the Kingston Trio were really at the top of this, of this Folk Revival. formed in Greenwich Village in 1961, for a long time, in the early 60s Greenwich Village was the home of folk music, and so they came out of that Greenwich Village, scene. were put together on purpose to have a vocal trio. and had a whole series of hits, If I Had a Hammer in 1962, Puff The Magic Dragon in 1962, and Blowin' In the Wind by Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan of course, nobody would have heard Dylan sing that song. the version they would've known would've been the Peter, Paul and Mary tune. of course Dylan at the very beginning of his career was more of a songwriter then a performer. So the point I really want to drive home with regards to this folk revival, is that while we think of people like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, as being important folkies during the 1960s, that really doesn't happen until the second half of the decade. The beginning of the decade it's really about this sort of milder more commercial form of folk music, which all the same is posing itself as not being very commercial characterized by groups like The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary. As far as Bob Dylan is concerned it, it's probably worth considering that during these years when these performances by these other groups, like the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul, and Mary; were so polished vocally, and and so arranged, somebody like Dylan, with the voice of his, and the harmonica playing and all that, was thought of as really too amateurish for prime time. I mean, it was fine for coffeehouses in Greenwich Village and for people who were folk enthusiasts, but it just really wasn't polished enough to be part of the folk the folk music as it was understood in the first half of the decade. So Dylan was largely relegated to being a very talented writer of songs that other people performed. Now as folk begins to unfold into the decade and to 1963, 1964, it's increasingly involved with the civil rights movement. In fact, the famous I Have a Dream speech that was done by Martin Luther King Peter, Paul and Mary Dillon, Joan Baez, all those people were there, sort of locked, holding arms at the Lincoln monument, when he did that speech. And so, this return back to politics starts to make it's way into folk music, as the 60s unfold. First, through the civil rights movement and then through the protest movement around the Vietnam War. It isn't long before we get to 1967 and 1968 and folk music. Is right back to its sort of politically concerned the politically concerned kind of attitudes that it had back when it got in trouble with the, the, the McCarthy folks back in the 1950s. So there's this period of of neutrality, and then a sort of slow move back to getting involved with social issues. Well let's move on now to the, the next the next lecture, and consider what happens to Rockabilly during this period, and consider these Rockabilly popsters. [BLANK_AUDIO]
