2006FOLK MUSIC
PART A - PETER YARROW IN A 2006 INTERVIEW DISCUSSES ABOUT THE EARLY NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL, HOW MUSIC WAS A BIG PART OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND ABOUT THE FOCUS OF THE 1960'S, CHANGING MUSIC, TRADITIONAL FOLK MUSIC, DYLAN GOING ELECTRIC, COMMERCIALSIM.
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2006 interview with Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary about the focus and intentions of the Newport Folk Festival in the 1960's
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Peter Yarrow
(live)
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Murray Lerner 02:58
By the way, I still want to when I had to show an attendee right, yes. And you weren't there and you suddenly showed up like 15 minutes before. How's he going to find anything to say? It was one of the best introductions I ever heard. Peter Yarrow Oh Thank you. Murray Lerner: It really was. I wasn't, I said that. You have a quick mind for that. It was very good and then you played uh I forgot. Uh you know, Blowin in the Wind. Peter Yarrow 03:37 Blowing in the wind. Right. Right. Exactly. Okay, are we rolling then? Okay. And then so we have to have glad to the degree possible. Okay, now running out of memory. Yeah. Right. Yea yea the guitar will stay. |
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Peter Yarrow 04:11
One of the dilemmas of the Folk Festival that was it strength, but also proved to be a source of contention, was the fact that there was an enormous emphasis on the recognition of traditional artists. Okay, there's, there's noise. Okay. One of the strongest aspects, and most important, and valuable aspects of the Newport Folk Festival, also proved to be (background talking). The Newport Folk Festival had one very important strength and purpose that was met. But in the process of focusing on that purpose, and in the process of meeting that goal, it there were some real problems that emerged that made a certain amount of controversy. But it was a dialogue that had to take place. And it had many ramifications. The fact of the matter was that the Newport Folk Festival was very dedicated to establishing and recognizing Traditional music forms, that to one degree or another had been kind of been relegated to the area of academic interest by people who were especially focused on them or wanted to study them. But the truth of the matter is that the real acknowledgement of our history as people in America in terms of recognition of the value of the cultures that had come together to make what we were, what our music was, what our art was, was a very important thing for America, to embrace. Part of the roots of the kind of pushing away of the other, whether it was African American, or whether it was southerners, by northerners, whatever was I think, allowed to continue because there was very little respect for the art forms that had been created by the those people that were not considered important or valuable. |
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Peter Yarrow 07:02
Case in point would be, for instance, the Georgia Sea Islands. Georgia Sea Islands, had an extraordinary tradition of music that had been kind of snuffed out by the arrogance of gentrification. And there was no real continuation of the pride of what the Georgia Sea Islands' music was about. However, the Newport Folk Festival brought the Georgia Sea Island folk singers, Georgia, however, the however, the Newport Folk Festival brought the Georgia Sea Island singers, which was a gospel group. And they knocked everybody out. But in addition to that, at the end of the first year, we took some of the money that we had made because it was a 501 C 3, it was a charity. And we said, let's make a festival in the Georgia Sea Islands to honor the music of the Georgia Sea Islands. And to this day, it is extraordinary music and known 1000 times more broadly than it was after it, it had been kind of repressed and side barred. |
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Peter Yarrow
It's also true that you had somebody at the first or second festival, i'm not sure which, Mississippi John Hurt. He was an amazingly vital, warm, performer with roots of blues and country. But, and he was African American, but had no audience. I remember that he emerged as the start of the first Folk Festival. And I remember that Newsweek or Time caught it. The international stage that was presented for music, of a traditional variety, I mean, straight done by the people who had grown up in a homogeneous ethnic society and we're singing that way. This was the great task of the Newport Folk Festival. The recognition of the Moving Star Hall singers and the recognition of Lightning Hopkins. And, you, there are people today who are into the blues, who know about these singers who never would have really learned about them, because they would have only been hearing contemporary forms. So that was very important. The other piece that was important was the The reliving of the cross pollenization of music that took place there, that recapitulated history. For instance, the forms of country music, and rock and roll emerged from the, the coming together of the country music tradition, and the slave songs, the gospel music that was brought over by the slaves from Africa. Interestingly enough, the slave the gospel songs were always about heaven and Jesus, etc. But there was there was a it was a masked form. It was also about yearning, for justice, for freedom. The presumption was in the songs that would only happen after their death. But slowly there evolve this kind of American revolutionary theology in the music where it was apparent that these songs had been talking about freedom now, for generations. For instance, the song that Pete Seeger and the Weavers taught us all , Follow the Drinking Gourd, that was a kind of a secret song saying this is the how you get to the north. It says, Peter performs song. |
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Peter Yarrow
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Yarrow performs parrt of a song Pete Seeger and the Weavers made popular. The lyric "The river bank would make a mighty good road" appears in the African American spiritual and Underground Railroad song, "Follow the Drinking Gourd," which was popularized by Pete Seeger and The Weavers.
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Peter Yarrow
And that the drinking gord of course was the Big Dipper, they followed it to the north, on the Underground Railroad. And so these songs all of a sudden, thekids that were alive, were so important in their own time were once again being revitalized, and seen and understood by 1000s, 5000, 6000, 7000 people who never, never would have come to see them perform were it not for the folk Renaissance that, in its popular modality was personified by Peter Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Judy Collins. We were the ones that brought in this audience because we were making very, very top of the charts, albums and singles. And so we were able, and of course, Pete Seeger was the lifeblood of all this and the Weavers who had really given us the wind in our sails, and the heart and the sensibility of the combining of music and activism. |
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Peter Yarrow
They they were doing it but it was, it was it was the contemporary people who were bringing in the unknowns, who all of a sudden were being discovered by people who loved the music of the Peter Paul and Marys and the Pete Seegers and Judy Collins now. What a great gift to all of us. And we on the board were very, very proud that these traditional artists were being not only understood, but honored and appreciated. And and as I said there was the synthesis that was beginning to be understood when you had Joan Baez singing with Earl Scruggs and Lester Flat. And you began to think about the fact that there was this synthesis of musics that had made America the progenitor of ultimately what became the blues, gospel, rock and roll. And the gift of America, unspoken was right there. That we had the diversity we had the richness of background to produce this and we were proud. Now we were proud not only of the fact that that music had been produced, but proud that the spirit of recognition of that music was the tradition, the great tradition of what the 60s was producing. The 60s was not about drugs, the 60s was not about long hair, it was not about dropping out, it was the 60s was about a search for authenticity of life. How can we interact so that when a man and a woman or a young man or women meet, they're not recapitulating, some silly scenario that they saw in some Hollywood movie, where the man is chasing the woman and the woman is acting coy and ultimately, they have this dream of leveling and have happily after, after ever after. And then at 50, the man goes fishing, and he gets his hair a little gray, and the woman stays in the kitchen the whole time. I mean, we were talking about that we can now we have to wait for this to be picked up. Okay. What we were talking about was, for instance, in this case, a man or woman having a peer relationship, women inherently being respected for who they were, not being viewed or treated as objects. We were living it at that festival, there was a sense of egalitarian fairness and mutual responsibility and respect that allowed a certain evolution away from the male dominance that was so prevalent. It wasn't immediately perfect, but it was inherent in the kind of respectfulness and egalitarianism of the festival. Another case in point, even more important for the festival was that we were living the reality of Blacks and Whites together. Nobody was up there in the first festivals in 1960 maybe it was 61. But 60 was 61, or 62. Nobody was saying, in the early festivals, look at us. We are an emancipated group of people. we're living it, It was inherent in the fact of what folk music was about, but then come 1963 with the March on Washington. And later, of course, with the Selma Montgomery march in 65, there was a sense of urgency about living authentically, that the music was able to encourage and reflect. We were living a lie in this country, when we were saying, with liberty and justice for all, when, when I was a teenager, an |
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Peter Yarrow
When, when I was a teenager, and in college, you couldn't go to our nation's capitol and be welcomed with an African American, and a White person at a lunch counter. Blacks could not use the same water fountains or bathrooms. Marian Anderson, a great opera singer at the Metropolitan could not sing at our Constitution Hall. That's the name of the hall. And there was a lynching once every three days. Now, how could we say, with liberty and justice for all? What all? Please tell me. Peter Yarrow 19:20 We were not only a divided society, we let had a part of our country that was in an apartheid kind of circumstance, not quite slavery, but inconceivable that we could look at ourselves and we're a good country when we're doing this, right. So the natural evolution of the Civil Rights Movement was very much wed to music and when we had the integration of Blacks and Whites at the, at the Newport Folk Festival, we were living it. But at a certain point, it went beyond just saying, well, guess what, it's inherent in the music. We had become dedicated activists to saying this nation cannot consider itself a moral nation, unless it actively says this must happen with the Civil Rights Act. And indeed, when the the Freedom Singers came to sing at the Newport Folk Festival, there was a big controversy about how we were going to acknowledge the fact of our having this philosophical point of view. And George Wein ever, here he is married to an African American, but he wanted it to be incorporated in such a way that it wasn't super in your face. |
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Peter Yarrow 21:16
But many of us absolutely took the other position. We wanted to use the platform of the Newport Folk Festival, as a way to absolutely proclaim that we were dedicated to this alteration. And I remember singing, We Shall Overcome on stage with Pete and Joni and Bob Dylan, and The Freedom singers, and Peter Paul and Mary, and Theo Bikel. And there may have been others, but it became just like, the marches. For a moment, we were saying, not just this is about music, and let the awareness and the heart of it inspire people, we are saying this music is a powerful tool for organizing. However, there were problems with it because part of what we were also saying is that the face of this music, the mechanism of this music was highly, highly personal. The the big bad word was commercialism. Commercialism meant that you had given over your integrity to the business interests of the world. And so it was when Albert Grossman took Peter Paul & Mary to Columbia, and they said, Oh, that you sing wonderfully. But these songs that you're singing, we're going to have to change the repertoire. And we'd like to make a deal with you. |
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Peter Yarrow 23:05
And remember they had made a record with the Brothers Four called for called Greenfields. That wasn't a folk song, you know, we were singing folk songs. And then we started to sing the songs that were not written for money, written by the Pete Seegers, by the labor union origanizers, whatever. And then, of course, Bobby Dylan, who was this fountain of compulsivity of heart and soul and refusal to be a part of any kind of business interests, and he was protected from all the business interests by Albert Grossman. Not very well understood. But Albert made deals with these commercial interests that said, you will not tell these people what to sing. You will not tell these people what those album covers are to look like you will not tell these people you can only give away your songs for use on this charity in a limited degree. You will not even tell them when they have to have a record delivered. What you are going to do is allow them to be artists. Well, what was so precious about this was that we distinguished ourselves from those people who are commercial. In many ways that were valid. Yes, the songs were written from the heart. And they mostly were anonymous. But you you can't, we all knew you couldn't take Vic Damone or or Bing Crosby and say, :"How many roads can a man walk down", it doesn't work. Nor could Bobby Dylan go, "Strangers in the night..." They were two worlds totally apart. |
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PETER YARROW TALKS ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF ACOUSTIC MUSIC IN THE NON-COMMERCIAL FOCUS OF FOLK MUSIC AND WHY WHEN BOB DYLAN PLUGGED IN AND WENT ELECTRIC HORRIFIED PEOPLE - DISCUSSES THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BOB DYLAN PLUGGING IN AND PLAYING ELECTRIC GUITAR IN A ROCK BAND AND HOW THAT WAS SEEN AS A BETRAYAL TO THE FOLILES
Peter Yarrow 25:17 And one of the aspects that separated the world was the fact that folk music was shared acoustically, not electrically. So acoustic music was identified as the music of our consciousness, the music of our commitment, and distinct from the music that had copped out by virtue of the fact that it did not use electric instruments, and which depersonalized it, because you couldn't sit there in a room, sitting around with, you know, drums and let you know. PETER YARROW DISCUSSES BOB DYLAN WHEN HE PLAYED ELECTRIC AT NEWPORT IN 1965 Peter Yarrow 26:02 So it was that when Bobby went electric, whether the music was good, bad or indifferent, was not the nature of what horrified people. What horrified people was that he had apparently, because they said, if you're going electric, you've copped out, you have betrayed us, you are Judas. Because all the things we want to do with the civil rights movement, all the things we want to do in terms of fairness, and justice and living authentically, with a sense of really being true to some value system, and not just giving lip service to the whole idea of justice and fairness, is inherent in the acoustic nature of this music. Peter Yarrow 26:58 And this was it was an arbitrary distinction to one degree or another, because, of course, there is music that is very, very meaningful and valid and important, that uses you know, electric instruments, take the Staple Singers, for instance, Pop Staples. I mean, it's crossover, it's question of how it's used. But the truth of the matter is that, that caused a storm. And we know from those of us who were aware of the history of what was going on that the anger and the sense of betrayal was profound. |
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Peter Yarrow 27:52
And, in the story of that, was the story of the kind of controversy that is part of people searching for the best possible way and sometimes missing it. In fact, that particular festival in which Bobby went electric, was being run by Allen. Um Alan Alan, Alan Lomax, that festival when Bobby went electric was run by Alan Lomax, who had, it was on the Board, and he had the prerogative of doing something that Pete supported. I think I would have objected to it, but I don't think I was at the meeting where it was decided. So because it didn't make any sense to me at all. Allen said, like a dodiestic exercise, we're going to pull the names out of the hat, and that's the order in which they're going to perform. And this will defeat the whole idea of the star system. Now, in theory, that's just fine but the truth of the matter is, if you're looking at the, at the development of any dramatic sequence, whether it's in a book, on the theater, in a concert, what you do is you build it to something that increases the sense of excitement between the audience and the performer. Or the reader in a book or the or in a theatrical piece, you move toward the catharsis and that's where you would put your bobby Dylans, the people who had where, whose presence was anticipated, and it would broaden in the crowd. Now, my job was to tell, what my job was. My job was to invite each year, Paul, and Mary. Paul is known Paul Stookey and Mary Traverse, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Bobby Dylan. And that had been the case from the beginning when I was on the board. |
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Peter Yarrow 30:12
So it's my job to go up to Bobby and say, Hello, Bobby I went to his tent where he was warming up or hanging out with the band, and say, Bobby, you're going on at three o'clock in the afternoon or something like that. Or maybe it was later, because I think it was dark at that point, but it was getting dark, but there was still three or four hours left of of the festival camera moves in on Yarrow's face to CU Peter Yarrow 30:54 So when, it was my job to go to Bobby and say, Bobby, this is, you're you're not going to be closing the show, not by a long shot. And he said, that's crazy he said, people are going to be really upset about that. Number one, it was disrespectful. Because the one thing that we did know, was that if you're first on the bill, you close the show, and that's the tradition. And that was that was a way of showing your you've, you brought a lot of these people. And the point was the point he was making that a lot of people who were not aware of the way they were programming, which was coming for the last few couple of hours or three hours would miss him. And they'd be really angry, they say, but I came to see Bobby. well, I said Bobby, I can't do anything about this. Uh He said, I'm really you know, and I'm just fed up, you know I'm just going to sing three songs, and get off. I said, I really think that's a terrible thing to do. You gotta, if you're going to sing those three songs with the band, people look at it. They'd be affronted, you know, go out and sing a couple of songs acoustically and just say, I've been experimenting with this form, and I'm finding it wonderful and I want to share it with you. And that's that, well, God knows, Bobby was never one to be watched to suck up to an audience or anybody you know. And he was very upset about this, as this is my recollection and and he got on stage. Now remember, in those days, we did not have monitors. Yeah, they just didn't have any monitors. |
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Peter Yarrow 33:05
Today, the monitor system is so acute that they put these little speakers in their ears, and they have, it's highly complex. And each performer has a different mix. And that's so they can stay together. The other reality is that it's mic'ed in such a way that the mics have a very tight pattern. So only what's right in front of them is heard and then this far away, you're not gonna get hurt so much. And from the sides, it's called rejection, rejection of the sound, rejection of the field. So the amount of leakage was awful. And that meant that you could hear the drums on the vocal mic and separating it out, was impossibly difficult. And they didn't have monitors so they were kind of flying by the skin of their teeth to get their sound together. The first two songs as far as I'm concerned, were just garbled out. Why do I know because I mixed the sound for pretty much the whole festival each year that was, you know, I was producing records and I knew about sound. And it sounded great. And I loved it, you know, and sound is something that I was passionate about, and I would run up and do an intro and whatever. I did a lot of the intros the audience was aghast. First of all sounded horrific. Don't be fooled when you hear Maggie's Farm which was the only one that really sounded okay. And it was it was it's a great song. But the remix on that was just that, a remix. With today's technology that could separate the sounds from each other and create something so that it sounds reasonable. So in the Scorsese film on Bobby, it sounds okay, it did not sound like much. So number one, we have Bobby breaking the one of the cardinal rules, don't cop out, don't portray the the sensibility of what it is that brings us together. Because if it's acoustic, it's for justice and peace and, and blacks and whites together. If it's electric, you sold out. And you'll do anything with Peter, Paul and Mary, and I'm going back to that for a second when Columbia Records said, You've got to change your repertoire, the repertoire they wanted to change was, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? If I Had My Way, 500 Miles, If I Had a Hammer, that's the repertoire they thought was not so good. You know, Albert Grossman took us a place to a place where it was barely a company. And we could have all the prerogatives we wanted. It was a little a little studio lot. That was a company that was very much in the red, called Warner Brothers Records. |
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Peter Yarrow
Anyway, back to Bobby. The audience was outraged. The reason you couldn't hear their hooting and catcalling. And in ways was that the microphones were picking up from the stage. They weren't picking up the audience at the time. I ran up on stage and I got my guitar as Bobby was coming off stage. And he said, what have you done to me? Because he did feel that I was responsible for taking care of him. I invited him I was to make sure that he was treated with respect. I was representing the Board of Directors. And I let him down and I got on that stage. And I said here take my guitar and come back out and I told them, he would be back out. And he did come back. But I felt that we'd let him down. Now is a combination of the foolishness of Alan Lomax's idea that was well then, but it was a foolish idea. |
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Peter Yarrow
And just something that happened and I wasn't around Pete Seeger, I don't know if he was irate or not. So I can't I can only tell you about the things that I knew about. But I do know that you have to look at it as the cup half full. Here was a demonstration at one of the main places in the world, where we were saying, the 1960s has produced a sense of, of acceptance, of caring, it's expressed it personally and musically. And the people are so passionate about this. That if somebody appears to stray from being a believer in what we're about, it's a heartbreaker. That's the kind of passion that fueled the Civil Rghts Movement. That's the kind of passion that sold that. So that's the kind of passion that fueled the civil rights movement ,that fueled the anti war movement, that fueled the the the generations of movements that have proceeded from it. Peter Yarrow So look at it just in isolation. It was an odd rejection of the main poet of the entire folk revival, folk Renaissance. One that failed to look at the substance and judged based upon the style, the dress that he was wearing. I don't mean the female dress I mean, how he was dressed. That's all it was. But looked at in context. You have to say, you know, we cared so much. This was our heart and soul and right or wrong we felt betrayed. In the meantime, Albert Grossman went up to Alan Lomax and said some series of words to him, telling him how inept and disgraceful the festival was based upon Alan's input. And the two of them started punching. Now these were big guys, and they rolled in the dust hitting each other. |
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Peter Yarrow talks about the fist fight between Albert Grossman and Alan Lomax at the Newport Folk Festival after Dylan went electric:
Peter Yarrow See, Albert was a scrapper. But he was a scrapper for for things he believed in it, he was, by the way, not highly political. He always felt that we as artists had a right to do what we wanted with our career, to destroy it if he so desire, but we needed to be protected so our artistry would be real. Now, here's another reality about the Newport Folk Festival that you should know. At a certain point, I felt at a certain point, I felt that the contemporary performers, at a certain point, I felt, here's another aspect of the Newport Folk Festival you should know about. At a certain point, I felt that the contemporary performers were coming up in the ranks, who are singing, not as emulators of a traditional style like the New York Lost City, Ramblers. These were college educated guys who were singing in the style of people who were not their culture, not there. But that was legitimate. That was a wonderful thing to do. But for Peter, Paul and Mary, for Joan Baez, for the Weavers for Pete Seeger, for Judy Collins, we were singing as ourselves, we were part of what the folk process is about. We were saying, in our own lives with the musical influences we have, this is the way we hear the music. And in doing so, we provided a bridge for people to understand the music that they couldn't understand in its raw, original, ethnic, traditional state. |
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Peter Yarrow 43:11
If you had played Mississippi John Hurt for the vast number of people that understood it later, they would not have gotten it perhaps. Same with Bob Dylan in the beginning, they couldn't hear, they Oh, he can't sing. Because to sing, you had to sing with a pretty voice, that meant sing. The truth of the matter was that I went to the Newport Board meeting and I said, you know something? This isn't right. We are, it's good that we're celebrating all these traditional people. And certainly that was Pete's thrust. But I think it's really wrong, not to recognize wonderful new singers and songwriters, at that point, who are coming up in the world, who had no place on the festival, because they weren't big enough to draw the crowds. Nor were they important enough in terms of the ethnicity of the music to be asked. I said give me a concert, so that we can at least acknowledge them. I'll book it. I'll host it. And it's, we'll call it the New folks concert. And to that, people like Buffy Sainte Marie invited, Tim Hardin. |
| 01:44:33 2673.81 |
Peter Yarrow
And to that concert, people like Tim Hardin, Buffy Sainte Marie. God, there were so many people let me think, let me try and remember who they were. Okay, Eric Anderson, Buffy Sainte Marie Tim Hardin, Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Oh, God, I can't even remember the number of of people, the Blues Project who were they? I don't think they were on the New folks but they, let me translate so I give you at least Yeah, the the new emergent singer songwriters were invited to the New Folks concert and it was there that they started to be acknowledged so that there were people who were singing in the vein of Peter Paul and Mary and Judy Collins, etc. Who were beginning to get the recognition Peter Yarrow 45:52 Are you going ? Okay, sweetheart, thanks. Okay, now, if you're going to talk you better be uh. Oh he is text messaging. Okay, thanks. All right, I got it. Okay, here we go. guitar in right position and. Peter Yarrow 46:13 Okay. Okay. So I felt that it was really inappropriate and unfair, that people who were contemporary singers and singing as contemporary singers rather than in the folk traditional genre, were not being recognized in terms of the new voices. So in order to have them find a place at the festival, the newport board acceded to my request to having a concert on Sunday afternoons called the New Folks concert. |
| 01:46:53 2813.32 |
Peter Yarrow 46:53
And new people were invited to perform by myself, because I was out there meeting them all the time. And that would include Buffy Sainte Marie, Eric Anderson, Tim Hardin, Jim Kweskin Jug Band . Blues {roject. Many, many artists found their first platform for their recognition. They too needed encouragement, they too, needed to be given the gift that Mississippi John Hurt was given. But there was a tension between those people who really felt that the valid folk music was that which was sung in the traditional way, and those who felt that it was valid to sing it with today's ears. From myself, from my own perspective, the way to acknowledge validity in folk music, because there's a cross pollen pollenization , of musical styles when radio came in. There were no ethnically pure musical forms anymore. Everybody was hearing other people's music. And so I think it's a matter of taste. And it's a matter of feeling. |
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End Part A Interview with Peter Yarrow
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