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..."

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..."

How Barbara Dane Protested Exclusion Of Pete Seeger By `Hootenanny' TV Folk Music Show In 1960's

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...".

U.S. Jazz, Blues and Folk Singer Barbara Dane in 1960 (wikicommons)

 

Why Barbara Dane Did Not Sign Up With Dylan Manager Grossman In 1960's

U.S.Jazz, Blues and Folk Singer Barbara Dane in 1960 (wikicommons)

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane indicated why--unlike Bob Dylan--she did not agree to team up with hip capitalist manager Albert Grossman, during the early 1960's folk music boom:

"...Al Grossman was starting to build his stable of people and he brought me to, essentially brought me to the first Newport festival for the purpose of, sort of, you know, let’s see if it’ll fly here. And after that he proposed that I sign up with him. But he laid the cards right out there.

"He says, `look you know you got all this political stuff that you want to do, and you got your children, and you got your family life, and you got all this and you want a career besides.' But he says `you got to decide which it is you’re really gonna do. And, you know, if you make, if you decide it’s really gonna be the career, well, we can do business.'

" And I knew right then and there that we were not gonna be a team…."

Hip Capitalist Multi-Millionaire Musician Dylan's Albert Grossman Connection Revisted

One reason a 21st-century hip capitalist multi-millionaire musician named Bob Dylan apparently was able to personally enrich himself and his individual family during the Vietnam War Era of U.S. history was that a hip capitalist businessman named Albert Grossman was Dylan's manager during most of the 1960s.

Hip Capitalist Businessman-Manager Albert Grossman and Dylan in 1960s

 As Elijah Wald observed in his 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!--Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties:

"Grossman's talents as a promoter were more than equaled by his backroom financial savvy. He seems to have become interested in Dylan during the spring of 1962, and by most reports it was `Blowin' in the Wind' that caught his attention...

"...Folk agents tended to be fans first...which...preserved separation from the commercial mainstream. Grossman was another beast entirely: he had started one of the first folk night clubs, Chicago's Gate of Horn...He was...a...rapacious businessman who enjoyed distinguishing himself...with...displays of wealth and power...In 1962 most people on the folk scene were only tangentially aware of Grossman, but over the next few years he would become widely regarded as the snake in the garden.

"Bob Neuwirth, who was one of Dylan's closest companions in the mid-1960s, has argued that Grossman `invented' Dylan..: `Bob Dylan could not get arrested before Albert came along!...Albert made it possible to have a $50 [equal to around $415 in 2018 dollars]-a week allowance to have enough money to pay the rent.' Dylan had an album on a major label...before Grossman got involved, but the record sold badly, and paying jobs were few and far between..."