In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane recalled how she protested against the refusal of the producers of the April 1963 to September 1964 corporate media television folk music show, Hootenanny, to allow U.S. folk singer-songwriter Pete Seeger to appear on their show; and how her protest may have influenced the way some commercially-oriented U.S. folk music people treated her in the 1960's:
"... I was experiencing...in the mid-sixties, already this sense of marginalization from the folk music people because, after turning down [Albert] Grossman [Bob Dylan's then-manager], must have been the word was out. `Oh she’s not real serious about her career or something.'
"Because none of the other managers, entrepreneurs really seemed to want anything to do with what I was doing. And I think also in having--I don’t know--when that “Hoot-N-Anny” business was-- with turning down the “Hoot-N-Anny” show at the last minute. And I did it in a way that I forced them to have a lot of problems….
"But I, you know, once I knew that I wasn’t going to do it, I decided that I wouldn’t just tell them right away. I would wait until the last minute. And tell them so it would cause them a lot of trouble. Why not? If you can do it, do it big.
"So I think...the word went out I was a `troublemaker.' And I was `irresponsible.' Or I was--I don’t know what they would say...So I was feeling further and further marginalized...".
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| U.S. Jazz, Blues and Folk Singer Barbara Dane in 1960 (wikicommons) |
Have you seen Dylan's 1964 poem/letter to Broadside Magazine about that (and other similar situations)?
ReplyDeleteHe wrote: "I mean people like [...] Barbara Dane [...] are the heroes if such a word has to be used here [...] people that can't go against their conscience no matter what they might gain..."
He probably liked how Barbara Dane did a great cover version of the "Only A Pawn In Their Game" pre-1965 Dylan song. Too bad that Dylan apparently failed to confront Grossman about Grossman's apparent role in marginalizing Barbara Dane in commercially-motivated folk music circles and failed to participate in the anti-Vietnam War folk music events that Barbara Dane organized between 1965 and 1975. https://protestfolkmagazine.blogspot.com/2019/02/hip-capitalist-multi-millionaire.html
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