Speaker 1 00:00:21 You are listening to Right On Radio, on k ffa I 90.3 FM and streaming Live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie and on tonight's program, uh, Liz Olds talks with Richard Barone, um, who's a recording artist, performer, producer, professor, and as if that is not enough, author of Music and Revolution, Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Barone Unrolls, a freewheeling historical narrative peppered with personal stories and insights from those who were there. Music and Revolution celebrates the lasting legacy of a pivotal decade with stories behind the songs that resonate just as strongly today.
Speaker 2 00:00:59 And I'm Dave. In the last part of the hour, we will be playing the 19 a part, a segment of the 1938 radial play version of a Christmas Carol from the Campbell Playhouse, starring Orson Wells as Ebenezer Scrooge Marvel at Oren's command of the dialogue and the sentiment behind it, and that he was 23 years old at the time, all of this and more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 3 00:01:33 Well, hello, how are you?
Speaker 4 00:01:35 Hi, Richard, welcome to Write On Radio.
Speaker 3 00:01:37 Well, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4 00:01:39 We're talking tonight to Richard Barone, author of Music and Revolution. Uh, do you have that reading we talked about?
Speaker 3 00:01:46 I do have it. Would you like me to read for you?
Speaker 4 00:01:48 Yes, that would be great.
Speaker 3 00:01:49 Okay. By the way, hi to your listeners and our listeners tonight.
Speaker 4 00:01:57 Yes. Yes.
Speaker 3 00:01:59 When I gaze out my window at the townhouses on Waverly Place, they appear almost exactly the way they might have looked in 1961. It makes sense as Greenwich Village has been preserved as a historic district since 1969, but even before that, the village always seemed to hold onto its history, adding without deleting much of it, like a brick and cobblestone computer with unlimited space on its hard drive. Though I arrived two decades after the events of this book tick took place, the music and the memory and the, um, story still lingered. Then in 2016 at the suggestion of music writer Mitchell Cohen, I made an album, sorrows and Promises celebrating the explosive fusion, um, of music and message that occurred here in the 1960s. That led to a deep dive into the era, a series of panel discussions at the Jefferson Market Library, live concerts that included one in Central Park and creating the course Music and Revolution, Greenwich Village in the 1960s for the New School's School of Jazz and Contemporary Music here in the village. Sharing this history with my students and sensing its rel uh, relevance today, through them convinced me to write this book.
Speaker 3 00:03:14 I became immersed in the richness of the era and the location, the many colorful personalities, the lyrics, and the music they wrote, and the unique mixing of genres, particularly in the musical melting pot of, uh, Washington Square Park. But even with all the preparation, I was not ready for the emotional journey that would take place as I wrote. There were many ghosts in the middle of a global pandemic. The village streets were quiet, abandoned so the ghost could roam freely. I imagine them with me watching over me at my desk as I wrote, making sure I got it right with my guitar always next to me so I could strum the chords to the songs I was writing about. That's the only way to really get inside the music and understand it. When I got stuck for words or had a question, regardless of the hour, I would step outside and walk along Waverly Place to the blocks around Washington Square.
Speaker 3 00:04:06 There I found the answers written in invisible hieroglyphics on the streets and buildings. One night, standing in the middle of Wa MacDougal Street and looking up town, I observed that the street was perfectly aligned with the Empire State Building 30 blocks away. In the same same way that Stone hee is aligned with the sun. I often texted with folks singing Superstar Donovan, who while not a villager himself, was a keen observer of the scene and a favorite songwriter among among many that performed here. He gave me invaluable advice reminding me, Ricardo, write about the one, the ones that no one has heard of. That's where your story is. And he was right and it became my desire to illuminate those who are lesser known, but no less interesting. I knew that I wanted to write this book to feature the photograph, uh, sorry. I wanted, I knew that I wanted this book to feature the photography of the legendary photographer of David Garr, whose pictures masterfully captured the beauty and intensity of the Greenwich Village musicians.
Speaker 3 00:05:07 I was fortunate to work with David in the 1990s. We became fast friends and he taught me about the sixties scene and generously showed me his stunning images of that time, many of which illuminate these pages for all that has remained the same in the village. The world of the 2020s is a very different place, still as seriously divided as our society is now. Rolling Stone editor and Anthony de Curtis, who by the way, wrote the forward to this book, reminded me that culture was equally polarized then. Nothing has really been resolved. The word revolution, it's itself once used to describe a class struggle to lead to progressive political change is now sometimes used to describe an opposite movement, to revert to a previous time of restrictions that limit rights and freedoms we're through the looking glass with many tears, laughs and early morning suns coming up. The story you are about to read, to Read Unfolded, it has been a remarkable experience and it is my delight to share with you now. Richard Barone, Greenwich Village, New York City.
Speaker 4 00:06:15 Thank you Richard. Richard, author of Music and Revolution. Let's begin at the beginning. Why don't you give us a little sense of the setting of Greenwich Village. Say, well, this is wide, broad area, but maybe from the late forties through the early sixties, lot was going on. I know, but if you could give us a setting there, that would be great.
Speaker 3 00:06:35 Sure. Well, the setting in in the book, the timeline goes back to 1643. Uh, I, it's always been sort of a unique area. This was, this was once a, um, tobacco field. This whole area were tobacco fields. It was, um, you know, there were Lenape Indians and Dutch traders, and it was, it was an active place, but more rural and, and, um, uh, when, when Manhattan was first settled, it was way down in the Wall Street area. So this was always a little bit apart, uh, from in the early in early days of New York. So mo flash forwarding to, uh, to the era era, you're talking about that in the 1940s there had been a lot of, uh, obviously development from the tobacco fields, but there had been a lot of, um, art and, uh, all of the arts had been, uh, have art and all kinds of artists had settled here in the village through different phases of the 18 hundreds and the 19 hundreds, it was on 10th Street was a, a giant gigantic artist studio, the first of its kind in the world. The, uh, a building that was just designed for artists to have studios in and with glass ceilings for lighting, et cetera. Um,
Speaker 3 00:07:45 By the time 1940s came around, um, the, what you're talking about, Billy Holiday had already performed at the Cafe Society Here in the Village, which was the first integrated nightclub and had sung the one of the most incredible artistic protest songs, strange Fruit. That was in 1939. That to me, is a symbolic beginning, uh, of something that was steamrolling. This, uh, the idea of music and message coming together of music, the power that music could have. The folk singers like Pete Seger, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly were already doing this with, uh, labor rights, labor, uh, songs about the labor and, and, and, uh, the labor movement and, and politics around the world. So it was a hotbed of music and creativity. In the 1940s, the folk revival really got, took hold in the forties with, um, with the Almanac singers later formed into the Weavers by 1950. Um, and there was a folk movement, not just a folk music, but folk dance and folk art that was happening here, which is interesting cuz as things got more modern, there were also people that were looking to the past for inspiration. And that's what a lot of the folk community was doing. I think,
Speaker 4 00:09:03 Uh, there were kind of two waves of the folk revival. Let's talk about the first, the Weavers, Pete Seeger, and I'm especially, uh, want people to know about the House on American Activities Committee and how badly they damaged, uh, some people in the folk music world.
Speaker 3 00:09:19 Yeah, it, it, um, that was, uh, such an unfortunate alternative events when the House Un-American Activities Committee came into play. And, um, a lot of the folk singers that we, we, like we just mentioned, the weavers were, had been, had developed with Pete Seeger's, uh, work over over decades, really. Uh, he had been, Pete Seeger had been working with Alan Lomax and was a folk enthusiast in many, in every sense of the word. Um, and by the time after World War ii, the, the Almanac Singers kind of dispersed, but it was, they reformed with Lee Hayes and, and then later with Ronnie Gilbert, um, uh, and Pete Seger and, and formed the Webers, which were a little more, in a way, I hate to say commercial, but a little more commercial in a way. And certainly in the sense that they had hit records, big hit records, number one, records with, uh, goodnight Irene and, and then a a a string of other, uh, singles.
Speaker 3 00:10:16 But the house, the, the supposed, and I, uh, I think in entirely misnamed House on American Activities Committee, uh, group seemed to wanna squash, uh, all the folk, uh, artists because of their political, whatever political leanings that they had and their connections to, uh, in some cases, the United, the, uh, communist Party of U s A, um, Pete Seeger once told me that he was a member, had been a member in a college because they were against Hitler. They were anti-fascists. And, um, there were the, that that party was also very supportive of labor rights and civil rights. And some people were, uh, had gravitated to it a lot, a lot of the folk singers did. Um, but then they were, they were punished for that. When as things changed, the Communist Party also changed, of course, and evolved and, and, uh, devolved, however you wanna, uh, phrase that.
Speaker 3 00:11:09 But, um, they became, it became a pariah to have been a member. And it had also became illegal in some ways. There, certainly there was, um, uh, a blacklisting of many folk singers and careers were destroyed. One of, some of the few that that actually survived were like Harry Belafonte, who actually was blacklisted, but somehow was able to get to on television and, uh, radio more easily, but others were not. And Pete Seger was, uh, blacklisted for 17 years, really, until the Smothers Brothers brought him back on the air in 1968. So, you know, it's a sad tale and it's in the book, and it's something that I, that's very emotional for me to read about cuz I knew Pete Seger and worked with him and to know how, he must have to think about how he must have felt being on the sidelines as the second wave, which he referred to of the folk Bible really took steam.
Speaker 3 00:12:03 And these artists were everywhere on television and, and folk artists were suddenly accepted. And not only that, but uh, celebrated, um, Pete Seger was not able to participate in, in most, most of that activity. He had to be, um, you know, he was performing just in elementary schools and, you know, summer camps and just very minimal, um, exposure and no, no national exposure at all. So it must have been terribly, terribly frustrating to him. And many careers, as you said, were completely destroyed. A lot of folk singers just ga sort of gave up, you know, it, it, it served a purpose to really squash that movement
Speaker 4 00:12:44 And that second wave that we just talked about. Who would you say were some of the people who kind of were in the beginnings of that? Maybe people who became famous, but also people who did not become famous, but just were a part of the whole, uh, revival.
Speaker 3 00:12:58 Yeah. Well, I really love, I love talking about the ones also that bridged the two, um, waves, you know, like mm-hmm. <affirmative>, Carolyn Hester was a true devotee of folk music as a young woman in high school, et cetera. And she learned about folk music and became such a big fan. And, um, she came to Greenwich Village in the, in the late fifties. She knew Buddy Holly, she was friends with Buddy Holly back in Texas. And, uh, and she kind of bridges in a way, the, the, the two waves. She's not as well known now, but she certainly was at the time, like an the, a star, a folk star, you know, in the late fifties, early sixties. Um, but we can't say that she's a true star of the second generation, because that is really, uh, uh, uh, the, the ones who followed her who, uh, you know, someone like Eric Anderson was in the second wave.
Speaker 3 00:13:48 Um, I I say you could say that Bob Dylan was in that second wave. Uh, but you, I think more importantly in my mind, our Buffy St. Marie, who really started kitchen, came in from Canada and was a songwriter. Um, the second wave is, is noteworthy, uh, in many ways. Uh, but, and mostly, maybe most importantly, because they wrote their own songs. The first wave of the folk revival were really, people do doing interpretations of old songs in the most, in most case, some, some songwriters, Woody Guthrie, Seager Woody, way more prolific than most of the others. But, um, in the second wave, you, everyone was expected to write all their own songs. One of the earliest was, like I said, um, Buffy St. Marie who came into the village when it was still people doing old songs. And she had to, she almost hide the fact that she was playing originals.
Speaker 3 00:14:44 She was a little bit shy, cuz she told me this in several interviews because, uh, that wasn't the thing you were supposed to do, cover songs. And she was doing originals. Tom Paxton told me the same thing. He was writing originals. He was still in the army when he was coming into town, sneaking in, never wearing his uniform as, uh, portrayed in the, uh, uh, Lewin Davis film by the Cohen Brothers. Uh, he told me he would never have been caught dead wearing his military uniform in the village, but he was, uh, stationed at Fort Dixon, New Jersey would come into town and perform at the local, uh, coffee houses. And he wrote his own songs, but wouldn't, he told me he would put them at the end of a set and kind of not really mention that they were originals at first. It's really, you know, uh, it was a, a slow process in a way, even though slow in the sixties meant just maybe several months to, um, a year or two.
Speaker 3 00:15:35 Uh, things moved so quickly then. But, uh, it was kind of a process where original songs became the norm. Uh, Bob Dylan helped with that actually, when he had a Blown In the Wind, which was, uh, one of his early songs. He also did cover songs. He was, he was not one of the first to write, Len Chandler was a name we don't hear much these days, who was very prolific as a af. He was African American and wrote songs right out of the newspaper that were just right out of top the top the subjects that were, uh, in the headlines that day. Um, in fact, he had a radio, I think a radio show where he would play who every week, every day he would perform a song based on the news of that day. So, soak so much creativity and, um, so many, some, uh, unfortunately so many historians focus on certain superstars.
Speaker 3 00:16:22 Mm-hmm. And don't shine a light on these like Len Chandler and the early Buffy St. Marie and the early Tom Paxton and, um, uh, folk artists who I talk about in the book. Like, um, like Paul Clayton, who was, he also bridged the, he could have bridged except he didn't live very long, could have bridged the, the two waves of the folk revival, but was really more associated with the first one. Did not really write, but r but brought old folk songs, which he would sort of adapt. And Bob Dylan learned a lot from him, but he's a name that we don't even know now.
Speaker 4 00:16:58 So many people, we could talk about so many names, but I'm wondering if you would share some about Dave Van Rock and how he became kind of the, well he's called the mayor of McDougal Street, but the kind of the mentor of so many young musicians,
Speaker 3 00:17:13 Such an amazing mentor, and really a long career as mentor in the Village. Um, I should have met him. You know, I live here, I live on Waverly Place right in the middle of the village. I didn't meet him. And it's strange to me as I was writing a book, I was wondering why it was just bizarre, but maybe that gave me this opportunity to study him now. And, um, his partner, uh, who then he married Terry th uh, was one of my best sources for this book cuz she was in the middle of things. She managed many of the artists, including Dave Van Rok, and really filled me in on the personality of this really larger than life character. Very funny and witty, very, very supportive of the other artists, you know, and this, it went on for decades, but he was, he was helping people like when Bob Dylan first arrived, but also when Suzanne Vega came into town, uh, town and also, uh, the, the Roaches, one of my favorite groups, the, uh, sis uh, three sisters, Maggie Terry and Suzi Roach.
Speaker 3 00:18:16 He was, um, very supportive of getting them their start. Um, and a great song stylist. It's his version of, um, the House of the Rising Sun that we think of as the familiar version that the animals covered. And that Bob Dylan's, um, let me just use the word stole from Dave Van Ro, uh, that was Van Ron's version of that song. You can go back and hear Leadbelly's version. None of them sound like the song that we know until Dave van Ro styled it with these rising chords that sort of represent sort of the Rising Sun topic, you know, the title of the song. And that became such a familiar chord progression. But that didn't really exist, that didn't exist in that form until Dave Van Ro, uh, did it and sang it so sensitively, you know, in and in the gender of a female.
Speaker 3 00:19:06 You know, he's like talking about this been the ruin in many poor girl. And, uh, Lord, I know I'm one. You know, that's the way the song should be sung. It's, it's a, it's a characterization. Um, Dylan also did that, you know, sang it that way. He really much, pretty much copied, um, band Wrongs arrangement. He was a very creative song stylist. He didn't write, he wasn't so prolific as a songwriter, uh, Dave Van Ro, but he was a great supporter, um, active supporter of artists, um, mentor to all of them. They all came to him for advice. You know, whether they took it or not is a different story, but they probably always should have, cuz he had very good advice. And he was also a big talking dude when he was, um, when the, in 1969 at the, at the, um, so-called and actually accurately called riots of the at Stonewall. Uh, Dave Enro was one of the few arrests. He was there, um, supporting the L G B T Q community by fighting back, fighting the cop, the cops, and he was arrested, but it took, it took several of them to hold him down. They say a legend has it,
Speaker 4 00:20:19 You know, we're gonna run out time here in about five or six minutes, so I why
Speaker 3 00:20:23 Don't, okay.
Speaker 4 00:20:24 Yeah, it's only half an hour. I wish that we could do more. As a matter of fact, maybe I'll have you back. Uh, sure. I'd love talk about that. Uh, but let's move. I'll fast.
Speaker 3 00:20:35 I'll, I'll keep all future answers very short for you.
Speaker 4 00:20:38 Okay. Let's move way fast forward to social media. How do you think social media has kind of messed up or possibly helped, uh, folk music?
Speaker 3 00:20:49 Well, it's a different time and place. I mean, I think the social media of that era was meeting in person. People would meet at the guitar shops and the Folklore Center. That was the, so the social media was, you know, at the, the, the, the bulletin board at the folklore Center. Um, it just takes a different form. I think we can use social media in a very positive way now, focusing certainly some folk artists, uh, post, and I follow some of them on Instagram. I mean, I, you know, you, I think it's a useful tool. I don't think it, it's not really a game changer to me. You know, I think there's different, you always find a way musicians find a way to, uh, have their own sort of social network,
Speaker 4 00:21:32 This wonderful time of folk music, uh, in Greenwich Village and outside of Greenwich Village too. Uh, the growth, the change, the politics, all that stuff. I'm wondering if in this new world it can happen again, is there a way we can pull it together to have it happen again?
Speaker 3 00:21:51 Well, I I'm always on the mind that anything could happen, you know, and with the right, uh, combination of artist song and, and, uh, and situation, anything could happen. I mean, I do think that the, the idea of music and message is timeless and is useful in any era and can be used and maybe will be depending on what's happening in the world at the time. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm sometimes disheartened. I don't hear enough songs that really address what's happening. They address a lot of personal concerns more than universal concerns. But that doesn't mean that that's always gonna be that way. Trends are always changing. The wheels are always turning. And, you know, the seasons are always changing.
Speaker 4 00:22:32 And, uh, finally, uh, folk music has influenced a large, like you talked about Eros, of course, but Patty Smith, Lou Reed and Development Underground. I mean, how did that move forward? How did they blend together? Well,
Speaker 3 00:22:49 I think the folk music scene that we are talking about in this book and in this, in this conversation, started a ball rolling that has not stopped and really kept going strongly through the seventies and eighties, because a lot of the artists we consider punk rock with their message that really would not probably have happened if not for the folk singers in their outspokenness in the sixties. That was an era where you could, for the first time, uh, our artists were so outwardly outspoken and they used their songs for Message, for Pro Project projecting a message, you know, and I'm talking about with giving credit to the 1940s and fifties artists who really led the way for the sixties. But Patty Smith opened for Phil Oaks at, at the, at max Kansas City. I mean, certainly the East Village or the Ramones came up and started the punk movement. And that's right down the block, you know, that's right in the East Village on, on the Bowery. It's still, it's like Greenwich Village still had a lot of power and it led tune into the seventies and a and in the eighties. And I can tell you for a fact that, that the impact is ha has been felt for decades and still is, is still there.
Speaker 4 00:23:58 Richard Barone, it has been wonderful to have you, and I'm gonna get ahold of you about bringing you back and maybe even talking for a whole hour, maybe even playing some music so that we can, uh, know more about this wonderful time in the world. The, uh, the book is called Music and Revolution, and it also, by the way, has some, you talked about the photographer. It's got some wonderful black and white just intense photographs. It's just full of information and photographs and beauty. And, uh, well, you can tell I'm a little, uh, prejudiced towards the folk music, uh, world. But <laugh>, at any rate, thank you so much for being with us.
Speaker 3 00:24:37 Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And I'm, I'd be delighted to come back anytime you want.
Speaker 4 00:24:42 Okay. We'll do that. Okay. Thanks again. You're
Speaker 3 00:24:45 Welcome, byebye. Happy holidays, everyone.
Speaker 4 00:24:47 You bet. Okay. And now this.
