Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald - Book Review

Reading Elijah Wald's Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan & the Night that Split the Sixties (Dey Street/Harper-Collins Publishers, 2015, 368 Pages, $28.99/13.00) reproduces in wonderful, eye-opening detail the environment of the Newport Folk Festival during July of 1965 when Bob Dylan appeared on stage on Sunday evening fronting an electric band, sang three rock songs, and the world changed. To place the momentous events of Newport into the social and political climate of the times, Wald provides extensive mini-biographies of Pete Seeger, the guru of folk music and the old left in America, and Bob Dylan, the voice of an emerging youth culture and rock generation that continues to this day. For fifty years, rumors and myths have swirled around that evening about what Dylan intended and how Seeger reacted to the situation. In this carefully researched and extensively annotated account, Wald weaves an exciting and involving story about clashing cultures and long term outcomes. For students of folk music, rock music, and the emergence of Americana, this book is must reading.

Pete Seeger, by the time the Newport Folk Festival rolled around in 1965 was the leading light in the midst of a great folk revival that had been growing for years, centered in Greenwich Village in New York City. His career, in which he had traveled throughout the country supporting radical causes, unions, and civil rights had focused on finding wonderful local folk performers and bringing them to New York and to Newport to perform. During the sixties, Newport was featuring groups like Peter, Paul and Mary, individuals like Joan Baez, Jean Ritchie and southern gospel groups like the Staples Singers, as well as African dancers. Seeger emphasized the singing, playing, and sharing of folk music as a way to build community and discover connections. There were four major strains in folk music, identified by Wald. Community music making was encouraged, as young people played, sang, and danced together, often at summer camps and festivals. The preservation of songs and styles associated with particular regional or ethnic traditions. As such, rural black blues singers and gospel groups, as well as white rural mountain fiddlers and dance callers, or singing preachers were all a part of this movement. Peoples' music was to be celebrated in performance and introduced to those who might otherwise not hear it. Finally, there was the growth of a professional performance scene, represented by people like Josh White, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Seeger himself, whose enormous skills before large audiences brought comfortable middle-class people together to hear and sing about his radical causes. Not all of these strands were fully compatible.

Dylan emerges from the myths and legends of who he is and what he stands for as an intensely private person determined not to be pigeon-holed or stereotyped into a particular role or image while always seeking to express himself through his distinctive poetry and style. By 1965, Dylan was no longer Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota, but his legend wasn't yet fully formed either. He had tried to create a new self through what can only have been lies he told about himself, yet his musical wanderings brought him to Greenwich Village in 1961 when The Village was a boiling pot of poets, writers, singers, songwriters, beatniks, and political radicals sharing their music and ideas. It had been such for decades. Dylan, awkward and unformed, always something of a loner, fit in and thrived in this environment, hanging out and performing in the small folk,blues, and jazz clubs and bars that proliferated there. He honed his skills in front of growing audiences, releasing his first introductory self-titled album in 1962 and by his first performance at Newport in1963, as a guest of Joan Baez, had four albums out. He was writing and singing folk and protest songs which were bringing him acclaim and leaving him uncomfortable as he worked to forge a new musical and personal self. His transition from folk singer to rocker was becoming inevitable, and the Newport Folk Festival scheduled for July 1965 was the venue to unveil it all.

The Newport Folk Festival had been established in 1959 as an offshoot of the already established Newport Jazz Festival. It quickly became a showplace for introducing folk performers from around the world as well as emerging recording artists. The design of singalongs, workshops, and concerts reflected Seeger's priorities and, in many ways, established a pattern for succeeding festivals. By 1965 it was attracting a youthful audience which had experienced the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was becoming embroiled in the war in Vietnam. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had both appeared in America and the British Invasion was well underway. In the chapters detailing the events of 1965 at Newport, Wald carefully dissects myth and legend from what he can verify. He carefully notes that the memories of those involved have changed over time. Even Pete Seeger had included elements in his memory that may or may not ever have happened. Films of the time have been clipped and re-arranged to create the environment the film-maker wishes to promote. By reviewing every piece of film, each newspaper review and account, by interviewing all the principals still available, and carefully stitching together the events of Dylan's appearance on stage with a Stratocaster in hand and backed by members of the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Wald provides what must become the definitive version of this event that he describes as the moment that split the world. Seeger was the past, Dylan the future.

Elijah Wald

Elijah Wald has been a musician since age seven and a writer since the early 1980s. He has published more than a thousand articles, mostly about folk, roots and international music for various magazines and newspapers, including over ten years as "world music" writer for the Boston Globe. In the current millenium, he has been devoting most of his time to book projects, including volumes on such disparate subjects as Delta blues (Escaping the Delta), Mexican drug ballads (Narcocorrido), hitchhiking (Riding with Strangers), and a broad social history of American popular music (How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll). (from Wald's web site)

Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan & the Night that Split the Sixties(Dey Street/Harper-Collins Publishers, 2015, 368 Pages, $28.99/13.00) by Elijah Wald captures a central era and moment in the development of the America we live in now as he develops the idea of moving from a period of relative comfort, peace, and middle-class self-asssurance towards a youth oriented culture roiling with rebellion and discontent. The book is extensively annotated. Wald recreates a world I was peripherally on the edge of. I saw Pete Seeger live in concert in Houston Hall at the University of Pennsylvania in the early sixties, Josh White at the same place. The early sea chanty recording of the Almanac Singers was in my home's record library. The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Oscar Brand were part of my musical education. I only saw Dylan a couple of times, both in this century, so, for me, this extremely useful volume puts a period into perspective. Its detail and exhaustive research is combined with a writing style making it both persuasive and highly readable. I supplemented my reading by listening extensively to Dylan's recorded work up to 1965 on Spotify. I read Dylan Goes Electric as an electronic galley provided by the publisher through Edelweiss on my Kindle App.

Pete Seeger 1919 - 2014

We lost a great American today. Pete Seeger influenced generations of American youth, standing for peace and justice for all across the generations without regard for carefully nuanced positions or polls. He followed his conscience and often served as the conscience of the country. Much will be written and shown about Pete Seeger over the next few days and weeks. I'd like to spend a little while writing about what he meant to me during a time when he spoke to a generation of American youth who needed to hear what he had to say.

My earliest memories of Pete Seeger, although I didn't know it was him at the time, was his reedy voice singing "The Golden Vanity" and "Blow the Man Down" with the Almanac Singers on a little remembered collection on 10" 78RPM records from the 1940's. The Almanac Singers, which included Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays, are probably better remembered for their collections of Union Songs. Here's their rendition of "The Talking Union Blues" recorded in July 1941, coincidentally, the month I was born:

Talking Union

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I sang and played this song when I was in high school, along with a couple of other Woody Guthrie talking blues, including "Talking Guitar." I owned an LP record of "Talking Union" by Pete Seeger. His loyalty to the labor movement during the late 30's and into the 40's earned him an investigation by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and probably cost him millions of dollars, while cementing his reputation as an American of both conviction and courage.

Pete Seeger was a dynamic, arresting solo performer. I saw him twice during the sixties. Both times were at Houston Hall at the University of Pennsylvania. The first concert was with my friend from Westtown School, Tom Satterthwaite. The second time I went with my girl friend Irene Mulford, to whom I've now been married for nearly fifty years.  As a solo performer, Pete would walk out onto the stage alone and start to sing...no introduction, just Pete.  Here are some clips of a live concert in Australia in 1963. While it's part of a larger advertisement for a complete live concert. This is how I remember seeing him for the first time, perhaps a year or two earlier:

Excerpts from 1963 Australia Concert

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Later I bought all the Weaver's albums as well as Pete's banjo instruction recording, which, sadly, I no longer own. When the folk revival really got going, Pete was banned from TV until the Smothers Brothers forced CBS to allow Pete to sing his anti-Vietnam War song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on their hit show.

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The only time I ever met Pete Seeger was at the 1979 edition of his Great Clearwater Revival Festival near his home in Beacon, New York, a festival dedicated to restoring the Hudson River by cleaning out the industrial waste.  I was the newly appointed headmaster of a small Quaker prep school in Poughkeepsie, where Pete had appeared several times in benefit concerts. It was a job I wasn't well prepared for and I lasted less than a year there. Meeting Pete the summer before school began remains a highlight of that year for me.

Seeger's greatest success came, perhaps, with The Weaver's. Here's a clip from a 1951 concert catching them at their dynamic best. The group was a huge hit until the HUAC investigation, which, among other things, killed this ground breaking popular folk group.

The Weavers in Concert

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My memories of a young, vital Pete Seeger are alive and real. I decided not to see the declining Pete at his 90th birthday show at Merlefest a few years ago, so I retain the earlier pictures in my mind. Take your own trip around YouTube to find lots of Pete Seeger through the years, listen to him on your favorite streaming vehicle, and get to know him better. You'll find the journey worth your effort.

Pete Seeger 1919 - 2014

 

What Makes Popular, Popular? - Essay

The following essay is a lightly edited re-posting of my monthly column on the Welcome Page of the California Bluegrass Association. As always, I look forward to your comments here, on FB, and on other forums.

I watched The History of the Eagles film with huge fascination on Showtime a few weeks ago. Beyond the interpersonal conflicts, the lifestyle of a rock band, and the nostalgia of so many songs I remember with pleasure from the 70's despite my not having been a fan, the film scratched an itch that's been bouncing around in my head for months. There was lots of talk about defining themselves and refining themselves into the band they wanted to be. The issues revolved around the balance in their sound between their influences – country, rock, and even, yes, bluegrass. Although many of the issues that surrounded their breakup in 1980 involved money and power, their sound was also an issue. The second part, which involves the Eagles reunion in 1994 and continued success as a touring band, seemingly healed from the ravages of the 70's, shows a mellowed group of men performing for audiences who look to be former fans grown older and soberer, but no less enthusiastic. The story of the Eagles continued popularity and resurgence raises the issue for bluegrass of “what appeals to whom, why?”

The question comes up in many conversations. A friend (both real and cyber) posted this on her facebook page. “Loving me some Looney Toons on Cartoon Network!! Now this is what cartoons are supposed to be!! Bugs, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd... it just don't get no better!! :D” Now what would my kids and their kids think about this choice? I remember our sons watching Speed Racer and the Rocky & Bullwinkle show in front of the big box that introduced color television into our home back in the seventies. Despite the powerful influence supported by the world of the Disney park system, I suppose these two programs and their many imitators represent “real” cartoons to them more than the products of Disney and Warner Brothers, first consumed by me in movie theaters as the brief images preceding Saturday morning serials. Were the cartoons along with Buster Crabbe, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry the “real” westerns, or just what hit me at the right time? How did TV change my perception from the movies that still dominated when I was quite young? My ninety-five year old mother-in-law looks to Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's great 1934 film “It Happened One Night” as what “real” movies are all about. Should I discount her admiration for these films, or incorporate them into my understanding of where they fit into a larger whole? Why do Andy Griffith's mythical creations of rural life resonate so strongly among today's bluegrass fans?

I've written often about Daniel Levitin's assertion in his influential book “This Is Your Brain on Music” that the music we bond with in our teens, during our rush to puberty, is the music we love for life. For me this means the songs and music of the 1940's group The Almanac Singers which included Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Their social conscience and re-creation of sea chanty's and cowboy songs later morphed into The Weavers and then into increasingly commercial material like The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters, and The Chad Mitchel Trio who eventually were swallowed by television into an easily forgotten piece of fluff called Hootenanny. Of course there were other influences, too (Gilbert & Sullivan, Toscanini, Paul Robeson, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Patti Page as well as Vaughn Monroe (who can forget Ghost Riders?) who entered my consciousness, but heavy doses of rock music weren't there for me. Our forty-three year old son Alex has a whole other set of musical choices which influenced him (The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, The Clash, etc.) but study and looking back towards the antecedents of the music he most likes have introduced him to Robert Johnson, and Old and In the Way, which brings us back to the influence of bluegrass music on the larger musical awareness of Americans. It's almost in our genes, and those with questing spirits will always find it. Plato attributed the following statement to Socrates, "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" So what has changed?

Bluegrass has always had a troubled relationship with its antecedents: blues, folk, mountain music, gospel, rock and roll, western swing, and more. It grew out of country music expressing the yearnings and longings of people who moved to the great necklace of industrial areas hung around the Great Lakes. They longed for the fields, farms, and, yes, mines they had left behind them in their search for a better life during the depression and into the increased prosperity of the Second World War. But today's standout musical groups are much more influenced by the music that succeeded Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and Flatt & Scruggs. They have innovative bluegrass bands as well as other music bouncing around in their heads. So the LRB, IIIrd Tyme Out, Gibson Brothers, Balsam Range, as well as Carl Jackson, and Larry Cordle reflect not only the country music they love, but the music that grew from the originals. They have found new and creative ways of expressing this.

No, it's not country any more, not any more than what Merle Haggard and Buck Owens were doing out in California when they created a new sound in reaction to the Eddie Arnold, Chet Atkins and Jim Reeves with their violin backed wailings reflecting Nashville's understanding of country was country music. It came to be called the Bakersfield sound, and it reflected the yearnings, memories, and eventual triumphs of thousands of Okies who had pulled up stakes in the high plains and moved west only to yearn for the values and life which they dreamed had existed before their overworked land turned to dust. Nor any more than the singing and song writing of Johnny Cash, rescued from the cotton fields of Arkansas by the Army or Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings, discovered in the same sounds found in rock and roll a music they could create that provided work and sold records for them. They weren't outlaws, they were professional entertainers, nurtured in the bars and honky tonks of Texas who discovered a sound that sold millions of records.

The pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman writes that everyone hates the Eagles, except the millions of people who bought a hundred million of their records to popularize the vibe and feelings they found on the beaches of California. Larry Cordle's great song “Murder on Music Row” strikes a responsive chord with many who find the changes away from a music they loved to be abominable. But the murder will be remembered and treasured by others who attached themselves to the music that replaced the victim Cordle so lovingly describes. Murder on Music Row is always being committed as new, young, vital musicians seek to find a voice that exemplifies their sensibility, their understanding of the world they live in and to express it effectively. They seek to find a voice for themselves and their times, find an audience and make some money doing it. Then there come copiers, clones, and interpreters who are never as well-regarded or remembered as the originals until they become a cliché rather than a new voicing, only to be replaced again. That's what happens with art, and perhaps all matters of taste and commerce as they interact. Mozart is still there, but who remembers Salieri. People rioted at the Paris Opera in 1913 when Stravinsky premiered his Rites of Spring. Punk and Hip Hop have left many followers of rock to mourn its loss. Fans will continue to be outraged as “their” music falls into memory and nostalgia, but there's always more to come, most of which isn't great, but some of which will help to form the great stream of consciousness we call the art of music.

Toshi Seeger: Guest Blog by Michael Johnathon

Toshi Seeger, Pete Seeger's wife died a couple of days ago. She was an impossible to replace cog in the efforts for peace and understanding Pete has engaged in for so long. Michael Johnathon is the founder of the Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour. where he supports and promotes bluegrass music as well as folk music. My interest in bluegrass begins with years of listening, playing, and singing Pete's material as well as the music of his influences, particularly Woody Guthrie. This piece is re-posted as a guest blog from Michael's personal blog.

 

Toshi & Pete

It took me a day to reflect before I could post this. 

Yesterday TOSHI SEEGER, wife and companion of Pete Seeger, passed away.

She was at his side through every song, every trial, every book, every project ... every log he chopped and every child he fathered ... she was there. She was an eye witness to American music history. She knew Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson and Leadbelly. She marched with Martin Luther King. She heard Bob Dylan perform for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival and she was there when he turned electric. She sat in her kitchen cutting vegetables while Pete and some friends mused about how neat it would be to build a big wooden sloop that would sail the Hudson and bring people to its shore and help clean the river up. And while others rolled their eyes and scoffed, Toshi helped Pete organize the benefits it would take to raise the money and actually build the Clearwater.

And she was there when it sailed for the first time.

Toshi was an artist at heart but her life with Pete turned her into a manager, organizer, visionary, motivator and champion. And she worked hard at it. She navigated the oddities of Pete's thought process and the personalities of his friends. Artists are indeed an odd lot at times.  You have to be gentle and tough at the same time. Joan Baez said it best, to be married to Pete Seeger a woman would have to be a saint ... and Toshi ain't no saint :)

Even married to arguably the biggest folk icon on the planet, Toshi was a humble worker. Instead of taking her position of importance as the queen of Pete's world, Toshi would most likely be seen under a tent in the heat of summer cooking strawberry shortcake in a wood oven and serving it to folks during the Clearwater Sloop Festival.

I remember sitting in their home one evening in Beacon, their home along the beloved Hudson River. In the kitchen was a big bowl full of salad, in the air cosmic conversation and a couple of banjos being passed around. As we were leaving later that evening Pete got up and started washing the dishes. Toshi looked at him, sighed and said, "You can stop that now, they're leaving."

She was always blunt, to the point. Never shy about cutting trough Pete's veneer but loyal to the bone none-the-less. I liked her. I admired her. I wished I had someone just like that supporting me. 

And I wrote a song about her in the Woody Guthrie opera.

Toshi had been sick the past few years, Pete's health surpassing hers as time rolled on. Last time I talked with Pete, we were on the phone for nearly two hours and the American Masters PBS special was brought up. I told Pete one of the things I liked abut it was the attention it gave to Toshi and how nice it was to see him doting on her. Pete called out to Toshi and said, "Michael liked the American Masters film because of how nice it reflected on you!" Toshi grabbed the phone from Pete and said, "I was just being a good wife ..." and then handed the phone back to him.

Classic Toshi.

To place it in a single sentence, there would be no Pete Seeger had there not been a Toshi. I wonder what it is like for Pete to lose this friend of so many years. I wonder what it is like to watch your soul mate wither with age and leave. I wonder what it's like the next morning to wake and realize she is gone, the space in the bed next to you is empty.  The dress she wore, the little items she loved on the book shelf and the children who reflect her life in their eyes are without her spirit and touch. I'm sure, like any couple married for so long, they wondered about this moment. They talked about it, thought about it. Dreaded it. Wondering who would leave first and what it would be like.

And the clock ticked, and the days rolled by and the earth spinned 'round and the moment came. And now it's done.

"To everything, Turn, Turn Turn ... there is a season, Turn Turn Turn ..."

And such is time. Such is life.
mj