HI L L INO SUNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

PRODUCTION NOTE

University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign Library

Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007.

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Number 33 &0414 April 15, 1970

MIKE SEEGER HERE TONIGHT

April 15, 8:00 p.m., Lincoln Hall Theater

Mike Seeger was born in New York City in 1933 and has lived most of his

adult life in the Baltimore-Washington area. His father, Charles, a musicologist,

and his mother, Ruth, a composer, became interested in folk music in the early

thirties, and sang folksongs informally with their four children, Mike, Penny,

Peggy, and Barbara.

In addition to this family circle, Mike Seeger's education consisted of

listening to hundreds of Library of Congress field recordings as well as to

early commercial records of southern mountain music. Albums by his brother,

Peter, also were daily fare at home. Mike began to play the guitar in 1951,

followed by the banjo, mandolin, fiddle, dobro, harmonica, autoharp, and dulcimer.

In mid-1958, John Cohen, Tom Paley, and Mike Seeger formed the New Lost

City Ramblers, whose style was based on old-time American string bands. Since

1962, when Tom Paley was replaced by Tracy Schwarz, the group has expanded its

repertoire to include unaccompanied ballads as well as more modern bluegrass

selections. Also, the Ramblers have become the leading performer-spokesmen

for traditional country music in the United States. The group has recorded many

albums for Folkways. Seeger has recorded four excellent solo albums on Vanguard

and Folkways.

Over the past ten years, Mike Seeger's tours have included folk festivals,

college concerts, and coffee houses in the United States, Great Britain, Canada,

Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. He has been active in such important scenes

as the Newport Festival and the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American

Folk Life.

Perhaps Mike Seeger's most memorable contribution will prove to be that of

folksong field collector. He has worked with such great artists as Dock Boggs,

Elizabeth Cotton, and Ernest "Pop" Stoneman to produce LPs of tremendous

significance--documents of our nation's traditional heritage.

CONCERT REVIEW

Buell Kazee at the U. of I., March 21, 1969

The problem of the "folk" esthetic is a ubiquitous one. When the so-called"folksong revival" was at its height, the scene in this country, at least, wasa confused one, from the scholar's point of view. The situation was unique; forthe first time, "folk" music and "folk" song made up a not inconsiderableportion of the popular cultural scene. The obfuscation and nit-picking whichfollowed, not only in the halls of Academe, but in the midst of the masses,resulted in no concrete definitions. But the value of that period to all trulyinterested parties cannot be discounted, at least in one sense, to wit: theconfusion of the period drove home to many people the realization that all artmust be judged in terms of its proper esthetic. That is, it is inappropriateto judge a "folk singer" in terms of "pop" esthetic. Similarly, it is equallyinappropriate to judge a "pop" singer in terms of the esthetic of "folk" society.

This is not a terribly profound comment, but neither is it trivial. Thebattles have raged back and forth in the academic journals, in SING OUTI, andmost vehemently in the Campus Folksong Club. Folk song "purists" derided JudyCollins as being "un-ethnic" and "not traditional." Kingston Trio enthusiastsscorned the music of, say, Leadbelly, as being "unpolished" or even "crude."

Who was (and is) right? The answer: neither group; both the "purists" andthe "commercialists" went to extremes in their accusations, and both factionsneglected to objectively consider the criteria upon which their esthetic was based.

Buell Kazee, who performed in concert for the Campus Folksong Club onMarch 21, 1969, has caused a great deal of local commentary in terms of"esthetics." The problem is this:

Mr. Kazee is a singer of "folk" material; that is, material that has cometo him through the slightly mysterious process of "oral tradition," and Mr.Kazee is also a very intelligent and well educated man who has had, among otherthings, formal voice training.

Even to those who did not see Mr. Kazee here in Champaign on March 21 theproblem is obvious. Is Buell Kazee a "folk singer?"

Mr. Kazee has been compared with Richard Dyer-Bennett. That, I feel, is anunfortunate comparison. Both men sing "traditional" songs, and both men areaccomplished instrumentalists, and both men have trained voices. Yet I wouldunhesitatingly pronounce Buell Kazee a "folksinger" and Richard Dyer-Bennettan "art singer of folk songs." The difference is this: Buell Kazee is notonly singing traditional material, he is moreover performing material which isspecifically in his own tradition; Dyer-Bennett, on the other hand, is repro-ducing something from a tradition not his own. Simply put, Buell Kazee is afolksinger because he is a "folk," and Richard Dyer-Bennett is not a folksingerbecause he is not a "folk."

Now, all of this seems mighty familiar. So far this article is a restate-ment of the "ox-driver" argument. That is, "if you are not now and never havebeen an ox-driver, and you sing a traditional song of the ox-drivers, are you afolksinger?" The answers to that question are as varied as the answerers. Manyvery learned men, confronted with this question, have thrown up their hands indespair and said, "It depends." The argument proper has never (at least, not to

my satisfaction) been settled. What has come out of discussions of that argumentis the very important and germane point that ox-drivers, singing their ox-driver-song, should be judged according to the stylistic esthetics of their own tra-dition, and other men, singing the ox-drivers song, should be judged estheticallyin terms of their own traditions.

Having gotten all of this seemingly picayune business out of the way, Ishall proceed to the main thesis of this article, which is that Buell Kazee,judged in terms of his own traditions and his own proper esthetic, is a greatmusician and singer, and that he demonstrated that greatness fully on the even-ing of March 21, in 141 Commerce West Hall of this campus.

Mr. Kazee began his program slowly, having informed the audience that "itoften takes half an hour or so. You can't just sit down and do this..notproperly."

After a number of ballads and slow songs, Mr. Kazee played some of the morelyrical and lighter songs. Still, the high point of the evening, for myselfat least, was "Lady Gay."

A number of people in the audience pointed out later that many of Mr.Kazeets tunes were unfamiliar to them, though the song texts were old favorites.I noticed "different" (to me) tunes to both t Sporting Bachelors" and "The RowanCounty Crew," but it should be once more pointed out that Buell Kazee sticksstrictly to his own traditions. The tunes he sang are the tunes he learnedwhen he was a boy.

Just one word about the banjo styles involved: Mr. Kazee utilizes what manypeople call "frailing." (That is, downpicking with the fingernail, then a brushacross the strings, and then the striking of the fifth string with the thumb.)However, Mr. Kazee does not think of his style as frailing. (He told me thatfrailing was a different way of playing, but he did not explain it further,)

There is at least one aspect of Mr. Kazee's banjo playing which is (as faras I know) unique. Occasinnally he brings his thumb over to hit one of the insidestrings, that is, the second or thrid string. This is found frequently in the"double-thumbing" style, but Buell Kazee is the only man I have ever seen picka string with his thum while the thumb is moving upwards. While up-picking withthe thumb-nail is the logical extension of a frailing style, it is extremelydifficult to do. Banjo players who pay close attention to Mr. Kazee's techniqueshould note the distinctive flavor of this unusual fillip.

The concert proper ended with an impromptu collusion of Buell Kazee and TheGirl in the Blue Velvet Band. As a member of the GBVB, I found that to be a realpleasure and a marvelous experience; Mr. Kazee is the finest old-timey banjopicker I have ever had the pleasure to accompany.

Though I have indicated my own enjoyment of the Buell Kazee concert, allreaders of AUTOHARP should form their own opinions. Those who missed the concerton March 21 should strive to hear Mr. Kazee, somehow, somewhere. The LP albumBuell Kazee (Folkways FS 3810) is a good start. He is a great man and a greatperformer, and he deserves the attention of all who are interested in traditionalAmerican folksong.

-- Tom Adler

POLK FESTIVAL OF THE SMOKIES

May 28, 29, 30 1970Civic Auditorium--Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Dear Friends,

You are cordially invited to attend the second annual "FOLK FESTIVAL OF THESMOKIES," to be held in the Civic Auditorium, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on May 28,29, 30, 1970, sponsored by the Folk Life Center of the Smokies, Inc., and directedby Jean and Lee Schilling of Cosby, Tennessee.

The Festival, founded by Jean, received national recognition last yearthrough the facilities of the National Educational Television Network, whichbroadcast nationally a two-hour, color, videotape of the Festival as a part of itsseries "Sounds of Summer." As a result, letters of acclaim were received fromall parts of the country, from California to Maine. In Boston, Massachusetts,this videotape of the Festival was shown every night for a week.

This year the three day Festival will feature Janette Carter, daughter ofA. P. and Sarah Carter, "The Original Carter Family;" Frank George playing the;hammered-dulcimer, bagpipes, fiddle, and fretless banjo; Glenn Ohrlin, authenticsinger of traditional Western songs; Elizabeth Cotten, who at the age of tenwrote one of America's most famous folk songs, "Freight Train;" Frank Proffitt,Jr.; John and David Morris; the Berger Folk; Anne Romaine; The LeFevre Family;Hank Arbaugh; Sparky Rucker; The Pinnacle Mountain Boys; The Blue Ridge MountainDancers; Roger Bellows; The Pisgah View Ranch Square Dancers; Jim Cope; Andy King;Hal McGaha; The Highland Dancers; Danny Brown; Red Rector; Rutherford CountySquare Dancers; and Jean and Lee Schilling.

Many other fine traditional singers, dancers, and musicians are expected.Additional information for performers and volunteer workers may be obtained bywriting the Festival Directors. Competitions will be held Thursday night withjudges selecting the Folk Festival Champion Guitarist, Fiddler, Folksinger,Dulcimer, Banjo (two classes), Autoharp, Mandolin, and Harmonica Player. Hand-crafted trophies will be awarded. No electrified instruments or drums will beallowed. Special matinees during the Festival will present the "World on aString" Marionette Show from Raleigh, North Carolina. These clever marionetteswill do some old time "Clogging and Fiddling" in an original script written byShirley Gold and Celest Bennett.

The Festival will be held during a time of the year when the mountains areparticularly lovely. Campgrounds will be open and several motels will be offer-ing off-season rates for Festival-goers. The "Mountain Manor Motel," across fromthe Civic Auditorium, will be the Festival housing headquarters. Room reserva-tions for the Festival may be made by writing to Mr. Henson, Mountain Manor Motel,Gatlinburg, Tennessee 37738.

BOOK REVIEW

Blues People, by LeRoi Jones

In today's music, we find many references to the blues, from Bob Dylan's"Subterranean Homesick Blues" to Perry Como singing "Bye Bye Blues" to MuddyWaters' record entitled "The Real Folk Blues." An analysis of blues is likelyto be a complex problem, as LeRoi Jones would certainly acknowledge. In hisbook Blues People (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1963), he approachesthe problem from a functional and developmental viewpoint, tracing the historyof both the blues and the American Negroes from the first days of slavery tothe present.

Jones never gives a definition of the blues more formal than the subtitleof the book: Negro Music in White America. He does not classify the blues

in the context of other music forms (i.e., by examining melodic or harmonicpatterns, etc.) because he feels that the relationship between the Negro people

and the blues is so intimate that reference to the people is required for any

definition. The very same music sung by another people in a different culture

would not have been blues--and likewise, the Negroes would never have developedfrom a congregation of captive Africans to a people with a distinct and pro-ductive culture had they not experienced the emotions and reactions that areexpressed in the blues.

Blues was the slaves' first expression of their identity. With the deporta-tion to the New World had come a complete upheaval of their family system and

the suppression by the slave owners of most expressions of African culture.

Music was one of the few traditional means of expression that was permitted to

survive since it had no concrete product or artifact which could be destroyed.But the music was necessarily changed to fit the new conditions of slave life.Old African songs about hunting or fishing had no meaning to people who spenttheir lives in the cotton fields. African religious music and rituals which

concerned gods or spirits embodied by natural objects were forcibly replaced

by hellfire and brimstone Christian beliefs. The intent of this conversion was

to calm the savage passions of the slaves and placate their discontent by

offering them hope for a better life after they die. But only marginally did

the Southerners even recognize the right of the slaves to be saved, since they

were not really people with souls but mere property. Thus with music almost the

only means left them for expression, the Negroes naturally found in it a ventfor their despair and anger, and for their new-found feelings of being individualsin a growing nation of American Negroes.

The early forms of blues showed the influence of African "shouts" which

consisted usually of a rhythmic line sung by a leader and a chorus of people

joining in for the repetition, old Christian humns which the masters taught their

slaves, and work songs which had pronounced rhythmic patterns to fit the rhythmof monotonous field labor. But the content of the songs was soon expanded to

incorporate the deepest emotions of the Negroes as exemplified in the worksong:

"...Oh, Laws, I'm tired,. uuhOh, Lawd, I'm tired a dis mess." (from Blues People, p. 60).

No sooner did forces develop which allowed the blues to express identity and

unity in the suffering of the slaves than did other forces arise which split this

unity and threatened or denied this identity. From the time of slavery when there

was a division between "house niggers" and "field niggers" through and especiallyafter the Emancipation when Negroes began to move to the Northern cities and forma middle class, there was great tension between the higher and lower class Negroes.The situation in New Orleans showed this split extremely well and also showed howthe two factions of Negroes developing separate cultures could contribute muchmore to the broadening development of the blues.

New Orleans was already a city of many foreign cultural influences. Thelighter skinned Negroes of mixed racial descent chose to associate themselves withthe French culture of the city and considered the darker Uptown Negroes to besavages. Yet each group took advantage of the great number of European musicforms and musical instruments to blend with their own music and express theirdesired identity. The Creoles adopted rhythms from French quadrilles and startedtheir own military bands. Originally the Uptown Negroes tried to emulate theseforms also, but they found they were ridiculed and could not be accepted by theCreoles just because they could imitate their music. So they returned to theirold music which was more African-oriented, applying the very term by which theyhad been ridiculed, "jass" (meaning dirty), to the music that was theirs alone.The new instruments such as brass, reeds, guitar and string bass, remained thoughand the blues had moved into an instrumental vein. Later, just before the turnof the century when segregation enforcement became much more strict, the Creolesand Negroes were forced back together to interact while confronting a commonenemy. The accompanying fusion of the Creole virtuosity on the new instrumentswith the Negroes' keen rhythmic sense led to the flourishing of jazz.

Meanwhile in the North, Negro music was also flourishing and expressing thedilemma of wishing to succeed in a white society while still maintaining a separateidentity. The development of mass media had a great impact on the blues. Com-panies saw that among Negroes there would be a ripe market for recordings of"honest" Negro music and within a short period around the 1920's many "race record"companies sprung up to exploit this market. The effect of this was to put theblues in a much more formal and professional context, removing it somewhat fromthe honest personal expression of a people. Certain popular race recording starswho did not usually reflect the traditional blues progression were widely imitatedwhile the country blues were largely ignored. Yet the success of race recordsproved that a cultural form peculiar to Negroes could succeed in a white valuesystem and again added to the people's feeling of unity and individuality.

The growing acceptance, at least on a formal basis, of Negroes in Northernsociety was shown by the rash of white musicians who tried to imitate the Negroblues stars and produced a vast spectrum of approximations and distortions whichthey claimed was the blues. The Negro found himself in the position of leader lfan avant-garde non-conformist movement in music which was soon extended to otherareas of expression because as soon as he developed a music form, the whiteperformers would adopt it to their own expression and the meaning or purpose withrespect to Negro individuality would be gone. This explains the rapid successionof swing, bebop, and funky or soul music that has dominated the musical historyof the past 25 years.

The development of the blues and the development of the Negro people wenthand in hand, each influencing and giving impetus to the other, and striving todemonstrate the right of a people to express itself through its own culture.

-- Laura DavisDecember, 1969

A BLUE SKY BOYS FAN LETTER

November 24, 19686718 Donal StreetEl Cerrito, Calif. 94530

Mr. Archie GreenDept. of "Folk Song and Old Time Music"University of IllinoisChampagne-Urbana, Illinois

Re: "The Blue Sky Boys".Bill and Earl Bolick

1. Camden's Record-CAL 7972. Starday's Record--SLP 257

Dear Mr. Green:

I am writing to you mainly because of the write-up on the Camden Albumwhich I purchased recently, of "The Blue Sky Boys." I was going to write tothe Starday Record Company, but I doubt very much if they would have theslightest idea of what I am talking about.

Mr. Green, have you heard the Starday Album referred to above? I wasterribly disappointed in it, because the "Arranger and Co-ordinator," I guess isthe one who came up with the brillian idea of all the added instruments; andthe outcome is something almost resembles "The Blue Sky Boys," but more in theway of making you feel you are hearing the voices of someone you have listenedto, and grew up with, but it is not "The Blue Sky Boys."

I was disappointed enough when they added that skweeky, skawky violin,after the war, but he's even worse now, then to really do things up royally,they have added the piano, steel guitar, drums, bass fiddle, etc. on this album.Then they have the nerve to state on the write-up, "no effort was made to addany gimmicks to the original and authentic sound of the Blue Sky Boys."

That violin comes in and nearly lands me on the ceiling and with all theadded instruments, they just aren't the Blue Sky Boys anymore.

Maybe you don't agree with me, however you must have been impressed withtheir own original style of singing, one with the Mandolin and guitar only, sincethis is the Camden Album you state that you have done a lot of research on theBlue Sky Boys, along with many others.

Mr. Green, if you know how to get in touch with the Blue Sky Boys, wouldyou mind passing on a message to them, from a life-long fan, since the age of12, so I feel qualified to give my opinion. I am qualified in other ways too,

since I write songs and apply my own melodies "by ear," and it has taken me along time but you'll be hearing my name in the jfield of music in the not toodistant future.

Country music, folk songs, and old time songs have been my big love,when it comes to music; and how I loved to listen to the Blue Sky Boys, TheCarter Family, Chuck Wagon Gang, The one and only, Jimmy Rogers, The StonemanFamily, Grandpa Jones, and a number of others.

Please tell Bill and Earl Bolick that if they will take time to listento what's left of the original Carter Family, they have not changed their styleone iota. Also, The Stoneman Family, Grandpa Jones, The Chuck Wagon Gang;all still retain their original style. Why? Simple. They're smart enough toknow they became well-known and well loved by the way they first startedsinging, and their own individual styles. If the Carter Family or any of themI've mentioned took on 89 different instruments, it is bound to change theoriginal authentic sound, and the people who, like me, have followed and lovedthem all those years would be terribly disappointed. I, for one, do not wantanother album of the Blue Sky Boys unless I can get those that were made beforethe war, because I don't like that blinking violin in it. They were perfectwith just the mandolin and guitar, and just thoese two instruments blendedbeautifully with their voices, which is perfect in tone and harmony.

For a long time, when just listening to them, their voices was so close,it was difficult to know whether I was singing the melody or the harmony, butI caught on after awhile.

Tell them, please, be the Blue Sky Boys again, for me and for all theirmany followers, and for .themselves. Don't sell yourselves short, because thatis what you are doing; and I'll have to add, I felt cheated when I listened totheir Starday Album "Together Again."

Thank you very much,

Sincerely,

Mrs. Shirley R. Judge

++++++++++++

CAMPUS FOLKSONG CLUB RECORDS STILL AVAILABLE

$3.50 to members - $4.00 to general public

CFC 101 Philo Glee and Mandoline SocietyCFC 201 Green Fields of IllinoisCFC 301 The Hell-Bound Train

SONNY AND BR~WNIE IN CHICAGO

It has been said over and over by bluesmen that when you've got the blues,the only way to get over the blues is to play the blues. Both Sonny Terry andBrownie McGhee display so much resilience nowadays that it is hard to believethat so many years have passed since they first began playing and singing theblues.

Recently during a two-week Old Town appearance in Chicago, Sonny andBrownie proved that the blues really can be remedied. The two seemed so happyto be there playing and singing that past troubles disappeared. Sonny talkedabout a time when he was sick, and all his drinking friends deserted him. Herecovered in the hospital and wrote a song, called "When I was drinking"..."theythought I was going to kick the bucket but I sure fooled em." The two playedtogether and also took turns "doing their thing" (a phrase used here onlybecause it is part of Sonny's vocabulary).

Brownie McGhee is a little man possessed of a bad limp, a big smile, anda strong on-stage personality which he never allows to eclipse his partner'squieter one. Brownie's smile-up-at-the-ceiling type of musicianship is hardto ignore; exuberance is his trademark. He answered the question, why do youfellows always sing about whiskey, women, and money? with "it's one way ofstaying out of politics." The real answer is probably hard to get from anyblnesman. Brownie led off with some tunes on his amplified guitar and kazoo-type horn, with Sonny's harp accompanying him. Then Sonny took his turn. Hecame up with some unusual selections, one of which originated in a 1946Broadway show, "Finian's Rainbow." He explained that he had been told he'dhave to play the same song the same way every night, over and over. Reluctant,he asked "how much you gonna pay me for playing the same thing over and overevery night?...Oh yes, I can play it over and over for you." He rambled onlike that between tunes, but we still got a good dosage of low, coarse,bluesy vocals, plenty of hee whoa whups, and a broad, broad smile.

Together the two succeeded in bringing us a good selection of songs, suchas "Long Way from Home," "Custard Pie," and "If you lose your money pleasedon't lose your mind; if you lose your woman please don't fool with mine." Itis good to know that neither has lost any of his talents, and that they seemto be real friends.

-- Linda TealFebruary 1, 1970

+++++++++++++

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN FOLK LIFE

FREE -s-;-- FREE *SSH,- FREE -;-*s* FREE

on the National Mall, Washington, D.C., July 2-5, 1970

INSTRUMENT FADS AND FANCIES

(A loose adaptation of "Fiddle Fads and Fiddle Fancies" by Alfred Sprissler,published in JACOB'S ORCHESTRA MONTHLY, December, 1929.)

You enter a neat and elegant shop, whose furnishings are in walnut, blackvelvet, and plate glass. Repair work is done in an isolated building, into thefurther reaches of which the customer never penetrates. In the finest of show-cases are displayed, under lock and key, banjos, mandolins, and guitars of allvintages and grades. In the glass-topped counter reposes on exhibition anengraved, gold-plated, top-tension custom Gibson Mastertone banjo.

You take your own guitar from its own case and place it on the counter.Before it touches the glass the urbane and exquisitely dressed clerk slides apiece of black velvet beneath it.

"Where did you get that priceless instrument?" he rhapsodizes. After severalmore inarticulate dithyrambs, he finally asks you what sort of artist repairingyou wish done to the priceless instrument. You feel rather ashamed of yourself,after the nice urbane young clerk has called your inexpensive guitar a "pricelessinstrument," to have only an end pin set in it, so you order a new bridge, newtuning machines, and all cracks re-glued.

And when you return for the guitar you receive a bill that causes amomentary fog to settle before your eyes.

Repairmen...pardon...luthiers have learned that a guitar owner, especiallyone who has a suspicion that he has been bilked, wants flattery and is preparedto pay for it. The number of dollars spent yearly on the rehabilitation oftuneless old wrecks is incalculable and worthy of a better cause. A smallfraction of the money expended in the upkeep of one of those senile fourflusherswould buy a fine modern guitar that has the only requisite a guitar needs: agood, full, rich tone that is easily brought out. But should everybody subscribe

to this revolutionary doctrine, we would have no luthiers. However, if one hasa genuine old master in good preservation, and it has tone and playability, nosacrifice is too great for it.

And although the amateur with a fine (alleged) old guitar or banjo goes aconsiderable way to make up the composition of the repairman's paradise, theamateur who wants an old master instrument, and is well prepared to pay forsame, is nectar, ambrosia, and the laughter of the gods to the proprietor of amodern guitar shop. The musicians seeking old guitars are of two general types(though exceptions do exist), one class of which is filled with musicians toolearned to be bilked but who always are; while the other group is made up of mentoo cautious and timid to be caught, yet who inevitably are. And both classes

usually fall before the romance of some weird tale of the guitar's origin, eitherinvented for the particular customer or which goes along with the instrument.

Chief among these stories was the one about the guitar's finder, a famous

guitarist who, vacationing in Kentucky or Tennessee, was rambling about thewreck of a small house up at the end of a "holler." Somehow or other he found

the priceless old instrument down an old well or up in the attic and carefullywiped it off (the guitar, not the well or attic). But the guitarist soonafterward becoming deaf, or blind, or having fallen arches or something equally

terrible, was forced to sell his guitar to a dealer who, after consulting theCollege of Heralds and Sister Ethel (Reader and Advisor), solemnly, and withappropriate ceremonies, declared the guitar to be the free-lance work of anunfrocked Martin craftsman.

The other most popular theme is that of the widow whose deceased spouse wasa wealthy collector of banjos. To the sale of such banjos as he hadgarnered, flocks everyone in ten counties to paw and drool over the banjos andto take advantage of the widow's grief and inexperience in banjo matters.

And yet another popular story is attached to the guitar purchased in 1927by a very wealthy broker for his beautiful and talented daughter, who, afterthe manner of beautiful and talented daughters everywhere, ran off to marrythe man who had installed the iceless refrigerator, thereby ruining anothercareer on the treacherous rocks of romance. Then the disappointed father inmingled desperation and choler gives the guitar away at the absurdly low priceof five hundred dollars. Inasmuch as the remains may be worth forty, one cansee that this form of literary endeavor pays very well.

There is only one gauge to use in buying a string instrument. Price isobviously no criterion, nor is appearance, nor label, and especially not theinstrument's history. The only measure is that of tone and playability. Ifyou can get a good tone ("good" being a subjective and highly personalappraisal) at every location on the fingerboard, and if playability is all thatyou feel it should be, the instrument is a good one. It is worth whatever youare willing to pay for it.

Experts can fix up cars by means of sawdust in the transmission, ether inthe gasoline, and various other aids, so that they may deceive the wariestcustomer into buying a wreck fit only for a soft and comfortable spot on thenearest junk pile. No one can do that to a guitar, banjo, mandolin, orfiddle. It either has the tone or it has not. If it has not, and unlessyou yourself are an expert repairman and know where the trouble is, the chancesare that it will never have any tone. And if, by a rebuilding processentailing the jacking up of the bridge and building a new instrument thereunder,it is forced to undergo a costly set of repairs, it is extremely doubtful ifit will ever be worth a two-hundred ton statue of a dead dog.

-- Tom Adler1968

KNOWN SUMMER CONCERTS(If you know more, please announce them at Folksings)

June 18-21, 1970: Bill Monroe's hth Annual Blue Grass Music Festival,Brown County Jamboree Park, Bean Blossom, Indiana

July 3-6, 1970: Carlton Haney's 2nd Annual hth of July Weekend Blue GrassMusic Festival, Watermelon Park, Berryville, Virginia

September 4-7, 1970: Carlton Haney's 6th Annual Labor Day Weekend Blue GrassMusic Festival, Camp Springs Blue Grass Park, CampSprings Community, North Carolina

JOLLY )LD ROGER TiE TIN-.MAKER MAN

(A letter to the Campus Folksong Club from Dave Steere, graduate student inMathematics)

Dear Sirs:

Enclosed is an old song--not strictly speaking a folk song--which, as far as Ican tell is virtually unknown outside of my immediate family. I learned it frommy father, who learned it from his mother, who learned it from her grandfather.She died at age 88 before 1940. It must be at least 100 years old, though Idon't think it is much older.

It seems such a jolly song that I hate to see it perish. My father is in hislate 70's and fails to remember the words of the verse, although he says itstarts out: "It was jolly old Roger the tin-maker man, who lived in a garretin New Amsterdam . . ." The song is supposed to have three verses, the last oneending with him ". . . stumping around on his stiff timber toe." (Jolly oldRoger had a wooden leg, for some reason; one verse mentions his success with theladies.)

Perhaps the song is not so obscure as I think and someone in your group may beable to supply the missing words. I have looked through the catalogs of oldsongs in the Library of Congress and the BBC, which are in the Smith Library andfind no record of this song. I suspect it is not really early 18th century asit tries to be, but is from some mid-19th century song book.

It can be rendered in various ways, I have written it down in 3/8 because it iseasier to write that way and it comes out as some kind of "Irish Flute" arrange-ment. It sounds better sung in a strong 6/8 rythmn. It probably would go wellwith audience participation in the chorus; especially if the audience were in abar-room. Unfortunately, my sainted ancestors were teetotalers and I was nevertreated to a rendition in the proper style.

Dave Steere1004 South 4thChampaign, Illinois 61820

An excellent collection of recorded songs similar to "Jolly Old Roger theTin-Maker Man" is found on CAEDMON LP 1144: The Folksongs of Great Britain,Vol. III, JACK OF ALL TRADES. This LP collected and edited by Peter Kennedyand Alan Lomax contains twenty-five pieces about jolly tradesmen in England,Scotland, and Ireland.

RECORD REVIEW

The Memphis Country Blues Festival 1968, on London

Sire 97003 (distributed by London), The Memphis Country Blues Festival 1968.If an album is extraordinarily good, or bad, a detailed analysis is hardlynecessary to the potential customer. It's albums like this, however, which aretricky, and on the assumption that our readers, if sensible enough to read Auto-harp, are sensible enough not to buy records out cf mere curiosity, we would liketo indicate for them what they can expect on this record, and then let them decidefor themselves if this record is for them or not. Sire 97003 is a selection ofconcert performances from last summer, issued by somebody eager and shrewd enoughto exploit the names (and talents) of several well-known older bluesmen in arecord market where the demand for older blues styles has still not been anywherenear satisfied, either by the plethora of Race Record reissues or by the latter-day recordings of certain recently relocated artists. An example of what I'mtalking about is provided by one of the singers on this album, the Rev. RobertTimothy Wilkins. Everybody I know, and whose opinion on blues I respect, admitsto being, well, if not exactly awe-struck, then pretty damned impressed on theirfirst hearing of a Wilkins song (for many of us it was "That's No Way to GetAlong," on OJL-5, or its religious reworking "The Prodigal Son," on a VanguardNewport Festival album). For some of us, a Wilkins song is sufficient reason tobuy an entire album; indeed it was just this that drew me to The Memphis CountryFestival. Oh sure, there are other singers on the album, Booker White and FurryLewis who are legends because of their past work and pretty consistently depend-able performers in the present day. And there is exotica, a 102 year old singernamed Nathan Beauregard, plus the relocated Mississippi Race Record artist JoeCallicott. That's a pretty impressive list in fact and one that would seem tohave much of that fascination peculiar to singers who still perform in the styleforty years ago; this should be, apparently, an ideal album for those whose in-terest in White, Lewis, Callicott, and Wilkins has been aroused by the Origin JazzLibrary and Belzona/Yazoo reissues.

But then you submit to temptation and buy the album. You take it home, playit, and find that Nathan Beauregard is a very hale old gentleman--for age 102--and there the fascination ends. You realize--if you know his other records, orbetter yet, have heard him in person--that Booker White had an off night, because,one is tempted to say, he was as demoralized as this reviewer was by theaccompanying washboard player. And so to Furry Lewis. Again an off night,though you do get something from his short selection here that you don't geteither from his old Race Records or the contemporary Folkways and Prestige releases,to wit, an idea of the one man carnival that Furry puts on in front of an audi-ence. Well do I recall him cackling, joking, waving his guitar like a cutlass,and jumping around with a zeal positively unnerving in a one-legged man in hissixties. Here Furry punctuates "Furry's Blues Number Two" with jokes, a littledoggerel, and a guitar solo played with his elbow.

Then you turn the record over and it happens. You forget the lukewarm songson the other side, you ignore the medieval sound quality, and the moronic noteswhich you read in desperation while waiting for the next song and hoping it wouldbe better. With no introduction, on comes Rev. Wilkins playing beautifulelectrified slide guitar in D. Then, when the initial shock has passed yourealize that he is not alone: a marvelous bass player and a maniacal tambourine

player are in this too. And then he sings, not with the odd,.nasal, almost

faggy voice of his old records, but with a darker growling tone in the WillieJohnson tradition, "0, I wish I's in Heaven sitting down." ... I don't with tooverstate my case, reader, nevertheless, comfortable though I am in my paganism,I think if anyone could covert me, it would be Robert Timothy Wilkins.... Thenhe drops down a fret and asks you, over a very blue guitar figure, "What do youthink about Jesus?" and one of his two sons accompanying him asnwers in hisbeautiful clear voice "I know that he's alright" and the song goes on, gettinglouder and faster and ending in a scream. It surpasseth rubies.

Wilkins is impossible to follow, so I suppose it's just as well that thenext two tracks are in a vastly different style, a slow funky ironic style notunlike Jim Jackson's original "Kansas City." Joe Callicott is a fine oldgentleman, his music is very digestible stuff, good though not great (but justhow much of that is going around just now anyway?). The disc ends with BookerWhite again and just about this time the urge becomes irresistible and you liftthe arm and go back to Wilkins. At any rate, consider yourself adequatelybriefed: this album is not for everybody--those for whom it is proper willpresumably have realized that fact by now.

Author lost, 1968

THE BOMBARDE

The Breton had met two of our friends and invited all six of us Americansout to his country house near Brest, France, to show us what a real Breton mealwas like. In January his farm yard was deeply rutted and partially frozen mud,and his stone house, which could have been one or five hundred years old, wasfrigid in the center, very hot near the fireplace, and smoky in between. As wesat down to the first course of mussles, shrimp, clams, oysters, sea snails,and I don't know what else, he started to tell us all about the history andculture of Bretagne. He was drinking customary amounts of "cidre" (usuallybetween four and twenty proof), and by the time his wife brought out the secondcourse of rolled pork intestine sausage, mashed potatoes, and more mashedpotatoes, his lecture was getting pretty interesting. He was a patrioticBreton, and he wanted to be sure his American visitors understood the differencebetween Bretagne and the country which claims to rule it--France.

As his final exhibit, he brought out a record of Breton folk music. Itsounded like bagpipes and drums playing very non-Scotch tunes, but the recordwas scratched, the record player quite incapable of playing at the volume he hadit turned to, and the room noisy. He said the instruments were binious, drums,cornemeuses, and bombardes. I understood that binoius and cornemeuses weretypes of bagpipes, but he couldn't communicate to me what a bombarde was, havingnothing to compare it to. It was a "medieval instrument", a "sort of trumpet,"a "sort of oboe," etc.

A month later I was talking to an English teacher, also a loyal Breton, andI mentioned this curious instrument whose name I had already forgotten. He

caught enough to know I meant bombarde, took one down off the shelf, and senthis wife to bring his reeds. As he was sucking the reed, getting ready to play,wishing he had some cidre (the reed won t t perform to capacity unless soaked incidre; the player generally soaks up a few liters of it too.) He explainedthat he had a hobby of Breton music, and that he was going to play us a songabout a bird. The music, when he started, made me think of a lot of things, butnot about a bird. It was really too loud to hear anyway. It sounded a lotlike a scrathy record of bagpipe music on a forty watt hi*-fi trying to put outone hundred watts in a noisy room. I had to get one of those things.

Down to the local music store, where they actually sold the things. Imanaged to round up twelve dollars for the super delux model made of Ebony(more sonority, the man said) and seventy cents for a reed. Then out to thecountry to practice. The fingering is easy, but blowing through the reed islike blowing through your thumb. After two hours I was a tired, purple skinned,neophyte but sufficiently experienced bombarde player.

The bombarde is a primitive oboe with seven holes and one key, with atrumpet shaped bell and a double reed; about twelve inches long. They wereonce common all over Europe, East Asia, and North Africa, but eventually werecrowded out by more sophisticated instruments. They once came in a variety ofkeys, in soprano, contralto, tenor, bass, and contrebass. The soprano becamea folk instrument in the twelfth or thirteenth century in France, with every-body making his own and no two alike. They were the principal instrument ofmilitary bands; bombarde means cannon. With the advance of more civilizedmusic, almost everyone forgot about these noisy little weapons. The Yugoslavsstill play the sopci, a lower pitched and quieter cousin. The North Africanraita is about as high pitched as the bombarde, but nowhere nearly as powerful.Only the traditionalistic Bretons (to my knowledge) kept the bombarde as it was.

In the fifteenth century Bretagne became part of France, much to the dismayof the natives, Who still dynamite an occasional government building to expresstheir individuality. The French government has done all it can to force them tobecome Frenchmen--outlawing Breton names (no schooling, no social securityunless your name is on the official permitted names roster) and not allowingthe Breton language (old celtic--very similar to gallic) to be spoken in schools.Many Bretons are still potato farmers. Many are moving into Paris and otherbig cities to try to find work. In order to fit in, many try to shed theirBreton "nationality" and become like other Frenchmen. Does the story soundfamiliar?

Well, some are finally organizing to protect their language and culture.Most different countries speak different dialects of Breton, and play differentsorts of bombardes. In South Cornouaille, the bombardes are tuned (if that wordcan be used accurately) in the key of C. They have a brilliant tone, and aregood for dancing. In the area of Vanves, the bombardes are tuned in A, and aresaid to have a more calm sound (less raucous?). They are typically made by oldmen who carve them according to the local tradition. When the old men die, thetraditions may die too.

A Breton named Doring Le Voyeur (whose first name may keep him off welfarerolls some day) had tried to do something about all this. He has designed acompromise bombarde in B and has made reeds commercially available. Mass

produced bombardes can be bought in music stores in most of Bretagne, thoughpeople in other parts of France still don't know they exist (or don't care).There are yearly bombarde and bagpipe "contests" in the major cities of Bretagne,and Bretons in other cities are forming Breton "circles" where they learn folkdances, and how to play the folk instruments. Books of Breton music arebecoming available, with songs sporting titles like An hini a Garan (She whoI love), Va Bouton Koad (My Wooden Shoes), An Oc'h (The Wild Boar), and Bale arGourinerion (The March of the Warriors).

For parades and contests, the players form brigades (bagads) of twelve tofifty or more pipers, drummers, and bombarde players. For small festivities,the couple is traditional--a piper and a bombarde player who improvise freely,and wildly stamp their wooden shoes on the floor in an unheard attempt to makeup for the missing drums. The bombarde only plays half the time, frequentbouts of gasping for air being necessary to sustain the life of the player. (Thecidre is also helpful.) The bombarde and bagpipe play the first phrase together,and then the bagpipe repeats it while the bombarde player recovers. Occasionallythe bombarde will play in harmony with the bagpipe, or an octave higher inunison. The bombarde has a much more intense sound than the bagpipe, and thetwo of them together sound like a whole orchestra (if the word can be applied).The music is overwhelming, if only for its sheer noise. The bagpipe with itsdrones gives the music continuity, and the bombardes, blasting in intermittantlywith all their overtones (including some which really shouldn't be there), giveit a vigor and variety never found in Scotch bagpipe music.

I am trying to introduce Breton music to this part of the country--tryingto find a Scotch bagpiper or two who will "convert" and to get a few more peopleto play bombardes. Anyone who is interested can try to contact me through theCampus Folksong Club (good luck). Bombardes, bagpipes, drums, and music can beordered directly from France. The only manufacturer I have done business withis Lanig in Nantes. They are generally regarded as one of the best. If anyoneis interested, their address is: A. Laurenceau/12, rue Jean-Jaures/Nantes,France.

Kenave I

-- Charles Van ValkenburgDecember, 1969

++++++++++++++

1970 CAMPUS FOLKSONG CLUB OFFICERS

President: Peter Lippincott Treasurer: Linda Teal

Vice-President: Rich Warren Concerts: Goddard Graves

Secretary: Chrissie Clayton Membership: Andrea Friedman

AUTOHARP Editor: This issue, Mary TealNext issue, the position is vacant and

available.

THE PRESIDENTIAL RAMBLE

(A recollection of the Midwinter Festival of Traditional Music, the GrinnellFolk Festival and the University of Chicago Folk Festival, travels, severallunches and the weather of January and February, 1970 as dictated on tape bythe Campus Folksong Club Executive Administrative President while enroute fromChicago to Champaign and faithfully transcribed insofar as possible. All thisis contained herein is supposedly true.)

Wherein Chrissie Spurs

"As I was saying, during the first semester w'e more or less laid low,tried to open up lines of communication with various offices and places wherewe might possibly get some funding. At the end of the first semester, thingsmore or less broke wide open and we got some real fine opportunity to furtherthe cause of traditional music. Hardily spurred by our secretary, ChrissieClayton's impetus to get a Cajun band up here, and from her discussions withRalph Rinzler, director of the Smithsonian Folklore Division, we took asammunition a Cajun Band, which we could have come here for a reasonable price,as well as blues musicians in the person of Bukka White and Shirley Griffithand Yank Rachell.

We took this package, oh and cowboy singer and long time folksong clubfriend, Glenn Ohrlin, we took this package to C.C. DeLong, the Bursar of theUniversity, who is in charge of Star Course and the Concert and EntertainmentBoard. Because we could do all this for a very modest sum of $600, which wasour initial request, whereas most groups start asking him for $6,000, he waswilling to go along with the idea. Not only was he willing to go along withthe idea, but his senior managers of Star Course, ranged from very excited towilling to go along with our plan because it would mean that they could bothplan something and see it happen during their time in office in the Star Courseorganization, something very unusual for them. So we planned our festival andhad everything arranged so that we hoped it would work out to best advantage.

The Midwinter Festival of Traditional Music

We got some publicity on the wires and talked to a lot of people about it,trying to get them to make sure that they'd come and to be part of the festival,get them interested, get student groups who were doing things for studentstogether to do a job. The one drawback of starting this festival, which wedecided to call the Midwinter Festival of Traditional Music, hoping that therewould be a spring one, and possibly another one in the fall, on and on, adinfinitum. The original problem that we saw with this was that it was beingworked out over a semester break and that it was going to be held very earlyin the second semester, on the second or third day of classes. We were some-what concerned that possibly people wouldn't get the word about the Festival,that it would be possibly poorly attended because advertising couldn'tsuccessfully be done on such short notice. We primed the pumps before thesemester break began and went into high gear when the semester started again.

The outcome was highly successful, two packed nights at the KrannertCenter. In order to make the festival work out, a few of us did a lot ofdriving, stayed up late nights, made a lot of phone calls, did a lot of

advertising, and put on some singing events in the Illni Union to help advertise,as well as guide the performers around, making sure they were kept eitherentertaining or entertained during the time that they were on campus. Whilethey did some entertaining, a very conscious effort was made to keep them fromhaving to be (in a sense) exploited as our artists have been in the past bydoing three gigs all over the campus for what turns out to be no money at all.

The first night of our two night Festival, we started off with BukkaWhite, who really got to the audience, turned them on. His playing is extremelyintense, very vibrant and vital, and he has a kind and gentle manner thatbreaks through the barrier of his intensity to the audience. The secondperformers on the first night were the Balfa Brothers from Louisiana, playingsome real footstomping Cajun music and they accomplished nothing less thanbringing the house down. They were fantastic! The music is so exciting, themen are so humble about their music, and yet they really put on the style andperform. Their performance is punctuated by a few of the antics of NathanAbshire, little clog dancing and by the younger of the Balfa Brothers, Rodney.

The third act of the first night was Shirley Griffith and Yank Rachell,bluesmen from Indianapolis. The two of them gave everyone a sort of a shockwhen they showed up late in the afternoon (they were going to do a gig out atone of the men's residence halls and have dinner out there) but Yank Rachellinformed us, out of the blue, that he had just gotten out of the hospital onSunday and he had to have a salt-free diet. We were certainly glad to get thatinformation, didn't really know what we'd do in response to it. I guess he wentahead and ate the rather bland fare out at the men's residence hall in spite ofhis condition. They played out there and evidently put on a pretty good concert,but there were some technical difficulties involved in their concert atKrannert. They kept wanting to turn up their instruments louder and louder,so that they could be heard the way they wanted to, but the vocal mikes andthe p.a. system couldn't handle the power that they wanted to put out; itcouldn't be heard above their instruments. So I tried to convince them, orto just do it for them, to keep the emplifiers turned down to a reasonablelevel, but they insisted they be turned up and the result was a rather con-fused ard vaguely dissatisfying 40 minutes of Indianapolis city blues. Afterpacking Bukka White on the train back to Memphis in the morning, we somehowlived through another day, and on Wednesday we had the second night of theMidwinter Festival of Traditional Music.

The Morrow Plots Scathed

Leading off the second night of the festival, we had a local experimentalstring-band-and-Blue Grass-combination group called the Morrow Plots. Theirstyle is decidedly not Blue Grass, although they play Blue Grass music; partof the problem stems from the rather heavily-sung vocals of Fred Rubin, whicharen't at all in the Blue Grass tradition. If he'd slow down on his mandolin-playing and play some sweet little Blue Grass licks, or even country licks(which are hard to distinguish in my mind) rather than the sort of frenziedmandolin playing that he does, it would come off a lot better. Including thehigh voice of Claudia Gray is a good addition to the group sound, and they'vegot one fine instrumentalist Bob Whalen. As long as their other musician,Roger Taylor, is always playing the guitar, it would probably do just as wellfor Fred to stay on the mandolin. He could tilt his white hat back a littlebit and smile demurely, talk southern, .and possibly come off at least lookinglike another kryptonite Bill Monroe.

The second act of the second night of our festival was Glenn Ohrlin. Hecame out and literally charmed the audience off the edge of their seats. Idon't know if everyone was as wrapped up in his songs and tale-telling as Iwas, because I understand all too well that peoples' tastes in.entertainmentvary widely and that Glenn's performances can't be called exciting in the sensethat you would call Bukka White and the Balfa Brothers "exciting," but he'sgot a style for telling a story--he tells good stories--that are reallyunmatched in my experience.

The Saga of the Little Old Gentleman with the Cane, A Favorite

The third act on our Traditional Festival was the triumphant return ofthe Holy Zioneers, electric gospel group. As usual they were quite nervousbefore going on, but by the time their stint was over and there was some minorconfusion toward the end about whether they were going to take a break or abow. They put on a very exciting performance; the one part of their act thatwas missing from the time that we: had first seen them at the Channing-MurrayFoundation was the older gentleman with the can who really threw himselfinto his performing, and at the time of their first festival brought thehouse down, reduced us all to a stomping and clapping mob...(it goes on)...With the Holy Zioneers, thus ended the First Annual Midwinter Festival ofTraditional Music.

The Sun Sets, but a Vital Club Hopes

Our hopes as a club are that we can make traditional music vital enoughfor our campus and bring in performers that are interesting enough at a pricethat can be borne by the students, that we should be able to put on a festivalof this scope three times a year. Our hope is that we can have the nextfestivals on weekends, and that they can include the usual accompanying work-shops and lectures to help bring greater understanding to the uninitiated inthe field of folklore and folk music. As the sun set on the last night ofthe concert, we had already had offers from various high-ranking deans andoffices with some money and also from the exuberance and joy of the peoplethat we worked with in putting this on (the Star Course Board) that therewould indeed be a spring version of our festival. So the possibilities fortraditional music on the U. of I. campus have been strongly encouraged in thelast couple weeks.

All of us in the club are feeling a great sense of vitality over thesuccess that we had, and we're already hot on the trail of a new group ofperformers for the spring fest. The possibilities that we're consideringinclude (as usual there's some high-powered bickering between the variousinterests represented in the executive committee) but some of the names beingthrown around are, well, the Balfa Brothers are almost guaranteed, if they'llcome, of a return engagement because they'll sell a lot of tickets and wompup a lot of interest for the festival. Other people that we t re thinking aboutinclude Carl Martin and Ted Bogen from Chicago whom we saw at the Chicagofestival, Big Joe Williams from Chicago, all bluesmen. We hope for someballad singers with the possibility of Almeda Riddle or Sarah Gunning or maybeSarah Cleveland, although being from upstate New York, she's slightly out ofour range. We're hoping to find another nationality group string band, likea mariachi band or a bazouki band. Other possibilities include people likeMance Lipscomb, Fred McDowell, Ike and Margaret Everly and in addition wewelcome any suggestions from the slightly numerous but largely lethargicmembership of our club.

(At this point in the transcript the president discusses the April electionsfor next year's officers of the club and recommends with reservations each,Rich Warren, Chrissie Clayton and Goddard Graves for the presidential spot, butthe Autoharp is no soapbox for electioneering, says the heavy-handedlyindependent editor, deleting these upaid political announcements)...So I hope peoplefrom the membership and also from without the membership who are interested intraditional music present themselves to us to make their willingness to workknown.

The Chicago Festival--Clicks and Sags

Other things that I want to rap about include the festivals at Chicagoand Grinnell which came back-to-back just before ours during our semesterbreak.... The Chicago festival is in its tenth annum this year, if that makesany sense, and as usual they had the money and the know-how to put together avery big-looking array of superstars in'the folk field on their bill. The oneswho were there included such names as Bill Monroe, Carl Martin, Roscoe Holcomb,The New Lost City Ramblers, a group of Indians who did dances, a ChicagoBlues-Style band that hails originally from Peoria and undoubtedly many othersthat I'm leaving out at this time. Chicago has its good and its bad points.Since at least this time they tended to start off with bad points and end upmore with good points as the people directly in charge this year got theirfestival legs under them, I'll start with a few of the problems that they hadat the beginning. It was really very instructive to be able to see the festivalsand the performers that we were going to be dealing with, most of them anyway,as they performed at Grinnell and at Chicago.

The first night in Chicago started out with a blues band and I'm not goingto try, nor would I be able to give a precise run down, in order, of theperformers on the two nights, but I'll hit a few of the things that stick inmy mind. The first night blues band got things off to a good start. Theleader, whose name I never really knew, was a very exciting performer, somewhatin the style of Chuck Berry, though his guitar playing is in a more modernChicago blues style, including fuzz and wah-wah attachments to his sound, buthe's included some of the old Chuck Berry tricks of playing behind his head andbehind his back and leaping up to do splits in the air as he's playing. Alsoon the first night was the New Lost City Ramblers who seemed to me to be alittle bit tired out this first night, they weren't quite clicking but therewas one good instrumental number that they did on which Tracy Schwarz playedthe spoons to end off their set. That was a very exciting number and sort ofbrought the idea 6f spoon-playing alive to the audience. The Friday nightconcert was beset with technical difficulties, the worst of which was .thatthe sound system there, which might have cost $1,000 when it was first installedor probably even more, sounded like it had decayed in value to a slowly-writhing $50 heap of equipment. Our seats were reasonably close to the stageand so we got benefit of hearing some pretty good sounds for that reason,but on the whole I'm sure that the sound system didn't carry the day foranyone who was sitting up in the back of the balcony, where we have had tosit on previous occasions in Chicago.

Peter Begins to Lunch A Lot

Due to being located quite a distance north of the Chicago campus, Iwasn't able to get in on all of the workshops that were held on Saturday, butthe ones I saw were very good. One of them was essentially a workshop on blues,which took in both the disciplines of white and black blues. Of course each

musician gets only a very short time to put down his own style of playing onthe strings but it was a very good overview of the blues tradition. I hadlunch with Mike Seeger; after that, workshop, and talked to him about how hemade his living through singing and the sort of things he got to do in additionto just being on the road singing with the Ramblers or by himself. And alsowe talked about the possibility of his coming to the Illinois campus somewherein the end of April. We had talked about some earlier dates than that but wedecided that it would be too much hassle trying to organize things, causethe time that he could come turned out to be very near our Easter break andthere wasn't any point in pushing our luck around the break again like we hadwith our festival.

Peter Gets in Free

The afternoon consisted of talking to various noteworthy people and seeingthe Saturday afternoon concert. I didn't have a ticket for the Saturdayafternoon concert, but I gave the people backstage an official-looking smileand managed to spend the rest of the time of that concert sitting up with theperformers, or backstage taking pictures, or again being part of the scenewhich is very exciting for me. I drove up to the loop after the Saturdayafternoon concert and had lunch withthe club vice-president, Rich Warrenand drove back down.to the Campus to see the evening concert on Saturday. Thisconcert went much more smoothly than the previous Friday night concert, exceptfor the chain reaction catastrophe of Plummeting microphones that must havedone pretty good damage to the WFMT recording mides, the technical side of theprogram went a lot better. Some of the people on Saturday night included theIndian Group again who virtually delighted no one with their dancing--well,I can't say that, they didn't delight me anyway (with their dancing)(at thispoint in the dialog, the assistant transcriber went insane.)

And, I really enjoyed the performance of Ike Everly, playing what could becalled Travis-style guitar, with the funky deadened bass, and Roscoe Holcombhad showed up by that time he was on, singing his strident style; Kilby Snowmade what I guess was an unexpected appearance and did some autoharp numbers.Every performer got to play to his heart's desire, I guess, because theconcert went from 8:30 to one o'clock at night when the musicians' union allbut closed the place down--not literally but as far as the musicians were con-cerned. Bill Monroe came on about midnight and played to one o'clock andthat was the end of the concert. Bill's part was very good. Most of thesongs that they played were shouted requests from the audience. Evidentlythey're playing their music enough that they all know what to expect. There'sone song that they played which is an instrumental, called "Land of Lincoln"--Wow, what a number? It was really fantasticI A new; song that I guess Billand Kenny had gotten together on to write. When I hear that song playing, Ican just picture it being the theme music of some movie in the tradition ofwhat I don't know, but some--while they're giving the credits at the beginning,somebody's going on a motorcycle or in a train or in a car and watching thatold country-side whip by, across the praires of the "Land of Lincoln"--timethat's the music that would fit behind it. After a long and late drive backto Highland Park, and up the coast there, finally turned in about three o'clockin the morning. Was up pretty bright and early the next day, did a littlefurniture hauling, and made my way down to the U of C campus again and attendedsome more workshops although they were a little bit more sparse on Sunday, andsome of them were cancelled, took a lot more interesting pictures, finallypacked myself in the car on a very sunny and beautiful day and headed backto Rockford.

The Grinnell Exodus Complete with Suffering and a Fine Lecture

The Grinnell story is altogether a very different one. On Friday I drovedown to Illinois to register and then the next Saturday morning I took off bymyself to Grinnell, that's a pretty long haul to Grinnell, to be doing it solo.That's over 300 miles I guess. It was pretty slushy and foggy and cloudy andgray, pretty unexiciting, essentially, nothing to look at around the countrysideexcept a gray blur coming at you. Since that wasn't bad enough by the time Igot to Iowa the weather was nothing but pea-soup fog which you could see about100 yards in at best. So I did a little bit of slowing down and on a throbbingglutius maximus I made it to Grinnell and found Grinnell College. I had missedall the workshops in the afternoon except for one that was being put on by oneof the folklorists who has been invited to be with them there at the festival,who was none other than our own advisor, Archie Green. The topic of his talkand the musical examples were designed to lay open at least a portion of thefolk mind and to let the students in on what folk values were. They includedsongs like "Okie from Muskogee" as a final song and old minstrel songs like"Who Broke the Lock on the Hen-House Door," which ranged from highly inflam-matory to something which would make at least some group uncomfortable. Hegave very thorough descriptions of all the songs that he was going to play andthen just- played them right on through and I was very pleased and stimulated byhis lecture, and I wish he had given a similar lecture to our class in folklorelast semester but he assures me now that I'll be much more interested in thefolk song-folk ballad class and that there will be a lot more for me to sinkmy teeth into this semester than there was last semester.

So back to Grinnell: After Archie's talk and a little discussion withsome students and all, we went over to one of the dormitories and had dinner vwthal3 the organizers and performers and folklorists and all, sat sort of togetherat a few tables, and then after dinner there was an informal country musicsession, which was more-less led by Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian and byArt somebody whose last name I only heard once and don't remember, on thebanjo, Ralph was playing mandolin, and Ron Stanford, who organized the GrinnellFestival, played a little guitar. After that, informal session where they tookrequests and the like, it came time for the evening concert, which was heldacross campus. So we wandered off across campus, Ron Stanford and I discussedthe Beatles and that sort of thing on the way over there. The concert had agospel group, that sang unaccompanied, and had some old favorites like GlennOhrlin, Bukka White and the Balfa Bros. As well as a made-up string band withthe same people that were playing over at the informal get-together afterdinner, and Mother Maybelle Carter was.on the program.

The concert was good, but what turned out to be even better was the partyafter the concert, and quite a few of the performers went and played somemusic and there was just a lot of good people getting together playing a lotof really good music. Harry Oster, a folklorist from Iowa City, was reallykicking up his heels and having a good time and Harry's a pretty reserved man,so a lot of people thought it was quite a feat to have him that involved inwhat was going on. Well, 'long about four in the morning, a few of us decidedthat we were tired and ought to head for bed, which we did then and got upagain about nine o'clock, which isn't a great deal of sleep considering thatwe had to drive back to Illinois the next day.

On the Subjest of Breakfast

So we got ourselves off what sleep we could, a little breakfast in themorning was very kindly given to me and the Balfa by one of the students there,and I went over and rounded up Bukka White from Grinnell house where he wasstaying and he had had coffee and a roll and we piled in the great blue wagonand headed off through prairie, no actually it snowed all the way back toIllinois, very delightful weather for driving. Bukka slept a good deal of theway so I imagine he was raring to go when we got him back into town that night.The Balfa Brothers stayed awake and kept me awake and we talked about a lotof things on the way down. It was a pretty good trip, took us about 6 hours,stopped off and had a little lunch in Peoria, and had a little minor cardifficulty in Farmer City but without too much event we got into Champaign-Urbanaokay, that by about 5 o'clock in the evening. We went to Archie's house,Archie wasn't there yet; he had left with Glenn Chrlin and his wife in Glenn'spick-up truck much earlier in the day. But by this time he had still not comein yet. Glenn is noted for not .having very fast vehicles or very practicalones, for that matter. So Archie's wife, Louanne, fed up a very good mealand we watched a little television which had some news on it about Louisiana,which-the Cajuns were interested to see. And then Goddard Graves came overand still no Archie but we decided we better take our guests to the placeswhere they were gonna stay.

Bukka White was all.set up to stay in a fraternity house so we took himthere and then we took the Balfa Brothers over to Bromley (haven't got mybrights on, have I?) where they had very plush quarters. When I got back homeabout ready to imagine doing a little relaxing when right away I get a call,even before I'd gotten home, I'd had a call from Goddard saying there wastragedy at the fraternity so we had to go and rescue Bukka White from somesurroundings that he couldn't quite be satisfied with, including some sleepingin the open air, which they do at this fraternity, we took him back to RichardKorst's house, where he stayed for the rest of his time in town and was veryhappy. It's very important to get men like him among people who enjoy musicand understand him better than the kids at the fraternity do. I imagine thatthey are probably just as delighted to have him out of their hair as well. Sothat's a read-out on the events of the 10 days or so that encompassed thebeginning of the Chicago folk festival and the end of ours. (The tape endswith something like a police siren, and at this point the head transcriberwent insane.)

Greetings,

Your Travelling PresidentPeter Lippincott

PL/mct