x asked me to do this week's installment of CWH, and I'm posting it earlier than usual so we might catch some East coast eyes and ears.
Merriam Webster:
Definition of HOOTENANNY
1 chiefly dialect : gadget
2: a gathering at which folksingers entertain often with the audience joining in.
As an old folkie from way back, my hootenanny roots are deep. There was even a TV show called Hootennay which only lasted two years because of a boycott when ABC blacklisted Pete Seeger from being invited on the show.
Even before it reached the airwaves, Hootenanny created controversy in the folk music world. In mid-March, word circulated that the producers would not invite folk singer Pete Seeger, nor Seeger’s former group, The Weavers, to appear on the show. Both Seeger and the Weavers were alleged to have overly left-wing views; in Seeger’s case, he had been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to discuss his political affiliations with HUAC in 1955 – although the conviction had been overturned on appeal in May 1962.
...
To his credit, Seeger encouraged his fellow artists not to boycott but to accept Hootenanny invitations, so as to promote the popularity of the folk genre. Nevertheless, by the end of March three other folk acts had joined Joan Baez in boycotting the show: Tom Paxton, Barbara Dane and The Greenbriar Boys, a bluegrass trio. Some weeks later, Guthrie disciple Ramblin' Jack Elliot announced he, too, was boycotting Hootenanny.
Idiots.
Here's the ABC promo ad for Saturday night. Lawrence Welk even cashing in on the folk theme with "Walk right in"!
Flash forward to 2003 and the mockumentary
"A mighty wind".
After laughing my ass off for the whole movie, the title song actually hits the class war nail right on the head.
"Yes a Mighty Wind is Blowin', 'cross the land and 'cross the sea, it's blowin' peace and freedom, it's blowin' equality".
Jump past the Fleur-de-Kos for some old fashion sing-a-long songs.
"If I had a hammer' at the biggest Hootenanny ever.
Bring the hammer down!
The Times They Are A´Changing
Tom Paxton sings about life on the bum. The audience knows all the words to the chorus.
Some may say the many of the groups around at the time were thrown together for commercial purposes. I say bullshit. Most of the groups at the time were made up of performers who had been paying their dues as solo or duo acts. The line ups changed over time for some as members went on to different career paths and the replacement artists were just as good if not better than the originals. Two examples would be the The Chad Mitchell Trio, which became the "Mitchell Trio" when Chad left and John Denver replaced him. Did you know that the Chad Mitchell Trio recorded "Blowing in the wind" before PP&M?
The Chad Mitchell Trio performs what was the first commercial recording of the Bob Dylan classic other than by Dylan himself. The song had been brought to the CMT by their musical director and arranger, Milt Okun, and the Trio (already famous for its satirical political songs) was eager to record the number, release it as a single, and title what would be their third album after it. An old school producer at the group's Kapp Records label vetoed the ideas, however, maintaining that "no song with death in the lyrics was ever a hit,..."
Okun, however, was also the musical director and arranger for another young and eager folk trio called Peter, Paul, and Mary, and he brought the song to them. PP&M did everything that the CMT had wanted to do with the song. They titled an album "In The Wind," released the song as a single (it sold a million copies and hit #2 on the "Billboard" charts).
The other is The New Christy Minstrels which went through all kinds of personnel changes and was the spring board for Barry McGuire's solo career. They also performed on the sound track of the Movie "Advance to the rear" (all songs written by Randy Sparks). The only movie I know of that had folk music as the sound track! Here they are doing a little history lesson, "Follow the drinking gourd".
The interesting thing about doing this edition of CWH is how there used to be television shows that played this stuff. The Smothers Brother tried to reprise it somewhat and got shut down.