Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Monday, August 4, 2025
Sunday, August 3, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes'' Revisited (10)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, John Hammond Sr. recalled, additionally, the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"...It was my son who originally told me that Bobby [Dylan]'s name was Zimmerman, because John was doing a gig out in Minneapolis. He said, `Dad, did you know that Bob's real name is Zimmerman, Bob Zimmerman, and that he went to the University of Minnesota?' And I said no, I didn't.
"Before he was signed...
"He didn't want to be the son of a--of a middle-class hardware dealer in Hibbing, Minnesota. Right?
"And of course, the...really bad thing that Bob [Dylan] and Albert Grossman did that I'll never forgive them for, they tried to get Billy James fired here for the Newsweek piece. And that was miserable, because Billy did more for Bob [Dylan] than anybody you can conceive of.
"...Newsweek wanted to do a cover piece on Bob Dylan, and Grossman wouldn't allow Bob Dylan to be interviewed.
"So...he did his own research then. And found out this whole story on the telephone. They asked a neighbor if they ever heard Bob sing before, and the neighbor said, `Don't you remember? We heard him at his bar mitzvah.'
"Herbert Saul, the music editor at Newsweek, who's a great guy. One of the best journalists in the business.
"...This was done to Grossman. This was done purposely to Grossman.
"...The other thing I always held against Bob [Dylan] was the treatment of Joan [Baez] in that Don't Look Back picture. I think that was a disgrace, because it was Joan who made Bob in England.
"And you know--he cut her right off. I thought that was unforgivable..."
And according to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Joan Baez then told Anthony Scaduto:
"...I didn't really like `Highway [61]' until 3 years after it was written. I was mad at it. You know I was furious.
"I thought it was a bunch of crap...I felt as though he was inching away from being committed. He was...He did leave a lot of us in the lurch..."
As the following excerpt from the text of Anthony Scaduto's interview conversation exchange with Dylan, prior to Scaduto's biography of Dylan being published in the early 1970s, contained in The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan book which U. of MN Press published in 2022, indicated, Scaduto apparently allowed Dylan, himself, to exercise some control over the text included in Scaduto's early 1970s biographical book about Dylan:
SCADUTO: "Okay. Your notes about my book...At this stage I'm trying to see how I can sum you up. Basically, the problem is that everybody around town, all the cats in the Movement, are running around calling you a capitalistic pig who's ripping off the youth culture and say you should be giving your millions...It's pretty much of a campus attitude, among at least among people who are still involved in SDS and, you know the rest of that revolutionary kind of `nonsense'...You know, it's obvious that...these people...now feel you deserted them...This is what they feel about you now...
"The thing is, I want to make it clear that I cannot in any way take Sara and the children out of the book. I have cut it to a minimum...
DYLAN: "Well, I'm known to retaliate, you know.
SCADUTO: "I know you are. But first of all, you can't scare me.
DYLAN: "I'm playing in the big league and I'm sorry, you know...
SCADITO: "...Talking in terms of retaliation, that's being a little...okay, retaliate, man. No, seriously, I must mention Sara and the children. We can kick it around, we can talk it around, and if you've got ideas...
DYLAN:"...I'll tell you if I don't approve of it or not.
SCADUTO: "Okay.
DYLAN: "And if I don't approve of it, I'm past playing games too.
SCADUTO: "Okay.
DYLAN: "But I'm serious about it. And I'm just not going to stand for it anymore.
SCADUTO: "I don't know why you're getting tough.
DYLAN: "I'm just not going to stand for it. That's all.
SCADUTO: Yeah. But I don't really think there's anything you can do. Really.
DYLAN: Are you kidding?
SCADUTO: "I've taken a large step by letting you see the book in advance...And by sitting down with you and saying, sure, I'll knock out Rosemary McCarthy, if you object to that, to what that chick told me, I'm knocking it out...
DYLAN: "Well, that sounds pretty fair. Now this last part here about my wife and my children. I would like to see what you're going to write...
SCADUTO: "You've seen what I've written so far. You have it there...Okay, I'll show it to you when I write it.
DYLAN: "Okay."
Saturday, August 2, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (9)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, John Hammond Sr. also recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"Bobby [Dylan] had just written `Blowin' in the Wind,' and Peter, Paul and Mary had heard [it]...
"...And so, when Artie Mogull at Witmark heard `Blowin' in the Wind,' he said, `Bobby, I want to sign you right away.' Bobby said, `...I just signed a contract with Duchess Music.'...But Artie Mogull, said `Well, here, Bobby, here's a thousand [equal to around $10,000 in U.S. dollars in 2025]. Why don't you go over and see if you can buy back your contract?'
"...So Bobby went over to Leeds, and...Hy Grill was running the office...
"...Artie insisted Hy took the $1,000 [equal to around $10,000 in U.S. dollars in 2025]...
"Bobby got his contract back and signed with Warner Bros....
"...We completed the second album, and this album started to take off, thanks to `Blowin in the Wind,' and thanks to the...work Peter, Paul and Mary had done with (the song). In fact, we put a special sticker on the second album saying `Featuring Blowin' in the Wind.'...
"I had made one goof...in the signing of Dylan. There's usually an automatic escalation clause on the contract. You know, you start at 4 percent, then you go right to percent...When the contract came through...there was no escalation clause...
"So, by the time Bob [Dylan]'s contract was finished with Columbia, which was 5 years later--'66--there was a 1 percent thing which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars [equal to millions of U.S. dollars in 2025], which was being held in escrow...
"...You know, the big initial boost to Bob Dylan in this company was Johnny Cash [who entertained U.S. military troops stationed in Asia, on at least 2 USO tours in 1960s]...He was behind him every which way, and they all knew it. He made it known to Clive [Davis]..."
Friday, August 1, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (8)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, John Hammond Sr. recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"...The executive vice-president of our company [CBS's Columbia Records] was furious because I had not signed Joan Baez...Joan had come up, you see, and [Albert] Grossman was representing her. But just before I was with Columbia, I was with Vanguard Records...So Joan came up--and I was at Newport, you know, when Joan was there...Albert [Grossman] was asking a large advance for Joan. I said, `...Albert,...I'll give you a $1,500 [equal to around $16,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] advance and, of course, top royalties.'
"Vanguard, I understand offered a $3,000 [equal to around $32,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars]. So, she signed with Vanguard. Now this is not for--just turn the machine off for a second.
"...Bob [Dylan]'s first album came out...And so, we had a wonderful publicity guy at that time called Billy James. And Billy and Bob [Dylan] really became very tight. And Billy got Bob [Dylan] full-page spreads in Seventeen and all the Leed publications and made a real character out of Bob [Dylan]. Columbia did a good job in promotions.
"But the first album was a dud...
"...So then, we were working on the second album...Then Bobby came into the office one day and he said, `John, do you know Albert Grossman?'
"I said, `Sure, I know Albert Grossman...' And he said, `Well, Albert has got a deal for me to go over to England and do a pilot for BBC.' And he said, `There's a lot of loot involved'--It was 2,000 bucks [equal to around $21,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars], which I could show you, because I've been lending Bob [Dylan] money...You know $75 [equal to around $800 in 2025 U.S. dollars], $100 [equal to around $1,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars]--things like that, when he needed it. I also got him a publishing deal. Leeds. He didn't have a publisher, and so [to] Lou Levy, I said `Lou, I got a real talented guy here.'...He said, `Send him over, I'll give him a $500 [equal to $5,300 in 2025 U.S. dollars] advance.' So, Bob [Dylan] signed with Duchess Music [an imprint of Leeds].
"He [Dylan] said `What do you think of Albert Grossman?' And I said, `Well, I can work with Albert...If you want to sign with Albert... go ahead.'
"...Turn the tape machine off..."
Thursday, July 31, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (7)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Carolyn Hester recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"...He [Dylan] had Grossman as manager and he had the distribution of Columbia Records behind him..."
And according to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Barry Kornfeld recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's 1960's life:
"...Through the `Don't Look Back' period...success...really...fucked him up a lot and he's insulated himself a lot and surrounded himself with the sycophants who told him that his every fart was `art'.
"...I found that, the singing, as far as singing, I absolutely cannot listen to that whole period. That whining style that he developed I found to be so annoying, really like a fingernail on glass...
"I found a lot of it to be word salads..."
In addition, according to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Izzy Young also recalled the following about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"...He [Dylan] was very competitive. He really didn't look at anybody else. And he would just sort of wait his turn, you know, to sing and sing and then go out.
"Yeah, back at the store [Folklore Center]. Everyone would be playing.
"Bob Dylan was performing--all the time.
"...In `61 he was very competitive about the other singers...
"...He knew how to use people. And when the point came not to use them anymore, he dropped them. And he always was making like it was never for him to say, for other people to say it. He was associated with the Beatles. He never said he was associated with the Beatles..."
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (6)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Izzy Young also recalled the following additional biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"...It was around this time that the blacklist letter about Pete Seeger [in which a group of early 1960s folk music scene musicians protested against Seeger being blacklisted from ABC's Hootenanny television show in the early 1960s]--I was the secretary of that group, and we had a big meeting...And everybody signed. Except Bob Dylan.
"He said, `It doesn't mean anything...'...
"...He was there. He was there. He was at the big meeting [of folksingers] at the Village Gate.
"...He didn't sign. That I can say definitely. Then the second point, where he was supposed to record `Talking John Birch Society Blues' [but allegedly was never allowed to include this on a pre-1965 vinyl album].
"...That song...did go on the album. And...I have the original downstairs.
"First you do the shit, then you can do what you really want to do when you get more famous. And then--so that's the album and then the attack on the Civil Liberties Union. But that came later.
"And still people accepted him as a revolutionary, as the person changing things. Well, because in my mind now I see the pattern...There's no such thing as a person not knowing when he sells out...There's no such thing as a person consciously changing, unconsciously changing...
"...This is how it works...The artist has to start from a point. Eventually they accept you...But the instant you make it into the mass thing, then you have to say goodbye to the starting group, no matter what it is. And that's what the sellout is, really.
"...Making $1,000,000 is what's killing everybody, what's making the wars necessary, that sense of competition with the whole world. And then they're saying life is beautiful, which it is to them...
"Dylan didn't start it, but it really comes after him, like in Woodstock. On one side they're getting, grabbing, grubbing all the money. On the other side they're the `sensitive artists'. Now with Dylan what I found is--to this day the kids will not accept the fact that he's a sellout. I do not understand this..."
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (5)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Izzy Young recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"Now with Dylan, what's happened, the kids refuse to believe that Dylan was a cop-out, and what Dylan really is...I spoke to 500 kids at Rutgers. They booed me when I explained how the movie Don't Look Back is a cop-out. The only person that he's attacked so far in America is the...Civil Liberties Union. That's the only thing he's been angry about...
"...The latest cop-out of Bob Dylan is accepting a doctorate from Princeton...
"...When he wrote `Positively 4th Street,' at least 500 people in a few months asked me if I was the one in the song.
"...It's unfair, and I'll explain why. I'm living in the Village 20 years...I'm one of the representatives of the Village because I've been here.
"But he comes in and uses my resources and everyone else's resources in the Village, and you know, the bars and the clubs, and then he leaves. He gets bitter, he writes the bitter song...You never heard me say what a son of a bitch Dylan was...He's the one that's complaining. He's the one that left. And it's really his problem...
"...Bob Dylan is in exactly the same position now that Carl Sandburg was...In other words, Carl Sandburg's poetry was in the protest magazines of the time, the '20s. You know, `I Am the People, the Mob'...And then when he died, he didn't know anything about Vietnam...
"...In fact, without Grossman I don't think Bob Dylan would exist.
"The sellout is completely engineered by Al Grossman..."
Monday, July 28, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (4)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of an interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Carla Rotolo recalled Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life in NYC and also recalled her initial response to the lyrics Dylan wrote to a song, titled "Ballad in Plain D", that Dylan recorded on his early 1960s "Another Side of Bob Dylan" album, which CBS's Columbia Records then marketed and distributed:
"The song [`Ballad in Plain D'], such an absolute screech. I was going to sue the pants off him [Dylan]. I decided--my lawyer said, don't even bother. Because `parasite', the `parasite' is someone who feeds off somebody. And I was the only person who was working at that time...Bobby [Dylan] of course, he makes me the `parasite' when I was working...It wasn't a nice thing to do, particularly when it was all made up out of whole cloth...
"...I think a good part of his guilt was he couldn't be real. I know it was. And he couldn't sort things out himself at that point, because of where his career was going. Just couldn't get himself out of himself...
"...Dylan needed victims, you know what I mean?...When he was a kid, he wasn't being that mean. As he got older, he started getting very nasty. But when he was first in the city, he was a very sweet kid Just not too articulate...He got tighter and tighter and nastier and nastier...He decided he would pick out your weakness and then suddenly grab it and use it on you. Which is what he did with everybody. Find their vulnerable spot and that was it...
"...I remember him saying once about his `Masters of War' song, for example, saying `it's just a whole big put-on, a whole crock of shit. That's what they wanted'...And I got the feeling...he wasn't befuddled and a confused little kid that he came on as...He was using that befuddled act as a weapon, because it worked..."
Sunday, July 27, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (3)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS campaign has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of an interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Sid Gleason recalled how, between 1959 and March 1961, Woody Guthrie came to spend part of each weekend at her house in New Jersey; and how it was apparently in her house, not at Greystone Hospital, where Dylan first met Woody Guthrie and also apparently listened to many rare Woody Guthrie tapes, during Dylan's early pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"`Bound for Glory' [radio program]...announced that Woody [Guthrie] was out at Greystone Hospital and asked people to write him...I rode out to Greystone...to see Woody....
"...We went out to visit him at the hospital. They allowed us to take him out...He was very alert, except for the fact that he just had trouble expressing [himself] because of the speech problem...The doctor told [her husband] Bob [Gleason] yes, that we could come out and get him and bring him to our home. [But] he had to be back in the hospital by 10"30 or 11:00 p.m.. The next weekend we got him...
"And I started answering his mail then...It was Mother's Day `59...
"...He [Dylan] never made a visit to the [Greystone] hospital. You see, our place was halfway out. They could come out from New York very easy...
"...I couldn't begin to tell you how many times Bobby was at the house and how many times he stayed...
"The story Bobby told us is, many times--I mean many, many times...He told us he had been in a number of foster homes, that he did have parents but he'd been in foster homes all over.
"...He would come out and he'd spend hours going through the tapes [of Woody Guthrie]. Spent hours, literally, for days..."
Saturday, July 26, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (2)
Sixty years ago a singer-songwriter/musician (who, in later years, wrote and recorded a pro-IDF song, "Neighborhood Bully", in the 1980s and, in the early 21st-century, entered into a business agreement with a firm, Victoria's Secret, which the BDS has called for a boycott of), Bob Dylan, was booed by the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of his interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Dave Van Ronk recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"You could say Dylan was always vicious from time to time. This was no lollipop singer, you know. The only trouble about his viciousness, until he became famous, he couldn't get away with it...
"I remember sessions at the Kettle of Fish, where Dylan was especially obnoxious to Ochs...
"The big thing to keep in mind is that Bobby wanted to be a superstar. When he discovered the reality of being a superstar, he freaked out..."
And according to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Terri Thal also recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life:
"...Dylan's two-night stand at Caffe' Gena was not an overwhelming success.
"...The Club 47 in Cambridge refused to hire him...The owner of the Second Fret in Philadelphia...told me, `Why should I hire a Jack Elliott imitation when I can get Jack Elliott for nothing?' Elliott had just filled in at Second Fret for no pay for a benefit.
"I spoke to an executive at Vanguard Records who said he wasn't interested in Dylan..."
Friday, July 25, 2025
60 Years Since Newport 1965: Scaduto's `The Dylan Tapes' Revisited (1)
And in 2022 the University of Minnesota Press published a book, titled The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talking Early Bob Dylan, which Stephanie Trudeau edited, that contained some of the transcribed texts of interviews that writer-journalist Anthony Scaduto did, while doing research for his early 1970s biography of Dylan.
According to the text of her interview with Anthony Scaduto in the late 1960s, Gretel Hoffman recalled the following biographical information about Dylan's pre-Newport Folk Festival 1965 life::
"David Whitaker, my ex-husband, is a phenomenal reader...Bob had not really heard about Woody Guthrie, except as a name that sort of everybody knew--that there was a folk singer named Woody Guthrie. He didn't know much more. And David gave him Guthrie's book to read, the autobiography...
"When I first met Bobby, he claimed he was an Okie...The whole initial set of stories when I first met him was that he was an Okie, that he was an orphan, and that he'd been on the road for years as a piano player. This big thing was that he was a piano player and just starting to play the guitar. That he lived in California.
"...I suppose I learned about Zimmerman within a few weeks of the time that I met him.
"What he said was that Dylan was his mother's name...
"...It was very interesting to watch Bob build the myth, the legend of himself. And he did it, I think, very consciously and very deliberately. Because I can remember having a conversation with him...after he had come back to New York with success...
"...We had a conversation about this character that he was creating. And this was a very explicit story about creating such a character...
"...He said he was building a character that would sell...
"...He had a terrible need to be the center of attention or a star, back in Minneapolis, at the Scholar, or at a party...I just remembered a party where Bobby was playing...He realized people weren't listening closely to him and...he threw down the guitar and really stomped off in great anger..."
Monday, July 21, 2025
Sunday, July 6, 2025
Friday, July 4, 2025
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Monday, June 23, 2025
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Saturday, June 14, 2025
Friday, June 13, 2025
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Monday, June 9, 2025
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, Episode 7: Bessie Jones and Children from the Downtown Community School
https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest07
Monday, June 2, 2025
Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, Episode 3: Rosa Valentin and Rafael Martinez; Elizabeth Cotten
https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest03
Friday, May 23, 2025
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Rounder Records's Concord Music Group-Michigan Retirement System-Israeli Connection
Yet in October 2023, the Michigan Retirement System state employee pension fund--which, as of 2019, owned 93 percent of the Concord Music Group that owns Rounder Records--purchased $10 million worth of State of Israel Bonds--in violation of the BDS campaign's demands.
And most folk music fans of the 1970s who then, historically, purchased some of the vinyl albums of folk music recorded or distributed by the then-Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Rounder Records may have assumed, historically, that Rounder Records was a non-commercially-oriented folk music firm. After all, in its initial mission statement, Rounder Records had characterized itself as "an anti-profit collective."
But, as David Menconi noted in a book, titled Oh, Didn't They Ramble, which the University of North Carolina Press published in 2023:
"In 1971...Rounder...opted to incorporate...The Rounders asked [Bruce] Kaplan to join their collective...He came from a family of some means (son of a high-ranking Zenith Electronics executive), which meant he had the money to fund recording projects that were out of the Rounders' reach...
"Kaplan left in 1972 and formed Flying Fish Records that year--distributed in part by Rounder Distributors...In the 1990s, following Kaplan's...death at the age of 47, Rounder acquired the Flying Fish catalog..."
And by 2000, "Rounder had grown over 3 decades to...holdings of almost $17 million in assets, with annual revenue of $30 million," according to the same book.
Then, despite Rounder Records's founders claiming in their initial mission statement, historically, that Rounder Records was going to be recording and distributing folk music records as "an anti-profit collective," by the beginning of the second decade of the 21st-century, some of Rounder Records's surviving founding members apparently pocketed a lot more money by selling Rounder Records to the then-Nashville, TN-based, for-profit, Concord Music Group corporate media firm. As David Menconi also recalled in his 2023-published Oh, Didn't He Ramble book:
"Concord had started out as a...label...that Rounder Distribution carried. The company evolved...through...mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships. Concord Music Group bought a number of labels and publishing catalogs including Fantasy Records...known for...Creedence Clearwater Revival. Another milestone was Hear Music, a partnership with...Starbucks Coffee Company...
"In April 2010 came...announcement that Rounder Records was...latest addition to Concord's holdings, in a...purchase that would become final in 2013...Purchase price...might not have been as much as the $80 million Concord paid for Fantasy Records in 2004. [But] It was at least enough to make for a comfortable retirement for the Rounder founders...
"Rounder's...founders...had left Cambridge in 2007...moving the operation...Concord moved Rounder headquarters to Nashville to run it alongside the rest of the Concord Music Group.
"Concord...continued merger and acquisitions...By 2020, Rounders was but one of 7 labels in the Concord Music Group, alongside Fantasy, Loma Vista, Fearless, Craft, Kidz Bob, and Concord Records. It was a huge enterprise with more than 600 employees and...holdings including a theatrical division as well as the music catalogs of former Rounder competitors Sugar Hill and Vanguard Records. Annual revenues were north of $400 million...Concord's majority owner was the Michigan Retirement System's state employee pension fund..."
And by 2019, $1.1 billion of the Michigan Retirement System's state employee pension fund's investment portfolio of $61.5 billion had been invested in the Concord Music Group.
In 2025, according to the Concord Music Group's website, besides owning the Rounder Records, Vanguard Records and Sugar Hill music catalogs, the Michigan Retirement System-owned Concord Music Group currently owns the music catalogs of 13 other folk, pop, or classical music catalog labels (including Riverside, Prestige, Sax and Boosey & Hawkes); and its Concord Theatrical division now controls the catalogs of Rogers & Hammerstein Theatricals, Samuel French, and Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, while its Concord Music Publishing division owns or administers (for profit) 1 million published music copyrights.