Songs of the Folk Persuasion

Woody Guthrie blazed a trail of American folk song in the 1930’s. His bold adventures established a beaten path for other songsters to follow. My earliest musical memories were spun on a 12-inch turntable with the voices of Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Judy Collins, singing songs of the people. All the commercial stuff was filling 1950’s-early-’60’s radio airwaves with Elvis and James Brown and Fats Domino and crooners like Bobby Darrin and Ricky Nelson, but the folkies struck a deeper nerve with me. In the ’50’s, the Kingston Trio came along, the Brothers Four. Post-world-war 1950’s America was a cornacopia of comfort, convenience and cars. But the European detritus of the Great War had provoked a double-edged paranoia between us yanks who treasured democracy and capitalism, stacked up against the Soviet Russians who, at that time, were determined, along with the Maoist Chinese, to impose communism on the world. So when the 1960’s got cranked up, we found ourselves in a bloody Asian war, trying to keep the Commies out of Vietnam. What had been the Cold War turned hot as our Pentagon and our drafted troops strove to lead Vietnamese soldiers into a war campaign to keep the VietCong commies out of South Vietnam. In our United States, a very energetic anti-war movement took hold of our baby boomer generation. Along with draft resistance, a vigorous protest was mounted with a lot of help from the new, boomer wave of folk singers. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, and many other troubadors took inspiration from Ole Woody and his trail-blazing folk-song protests. They spun the peacenik impulse into a vigorous war-resistance movement. In Cambridge Mass, as in Greenwich Village NY and San Francisco and other places across USA, the counter-culturing folkies sang songs of peace and pacifism. After those fabled 1960’s of anti-war activism, hippiedom and protest, America settled into a sedate ’70’s recovery when all the anti-communist paranoia had relaxed into a late 20th-century cornucopia of comfort, entertainment and prosperity. As I ambled through Cambridge this morning, I stopped to snap a pic of the reknown folkie 47 Club, where Joan and Bob and many others had lifted their voices into anthems of historical folk music. But, by and by, as 20th-century angst spun down to 21st-century twitterism and facebook frivolity, the times were. . . as Dylan had sung. . ”a-changin’“ Now the once-and-future 47 Club moved around the corner. The old place is now a grocery.

And that, my friends, is life as we know it in the good ole USA. Activism settles into consumerism. As time passes, whatever happens, I say, God Bless America! . . . although Kate Smith is no longer with us to lead us in that rousing chorus. King of Soul