Why Did Vanguard Records Refuse To Produce Bev Grant's 1970's Album?

 

Bev Grant and The Human Condition band in the 1970's

In the Spring of 1975, U.S. anti-war protest folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs organized a concert in New York City's Central Park, at which he and other U.S. protest folk singers, like Joan Baez and former Newsreel Movement organizer and post-1975 long-time People's Music Network organizer Bev Grant, performed before tens of thousands of anti-war protest folk music fans; to celebrate the end of the War in Viet-Nam.

Vanguard Records had produced vinyl records of Joan Baez singing protest folk songs during the early 1960's. Yet in the 1970's, Vanguard Records apparently refused to produce a vinyl record album in which radical feminist blues, labor movement and People's Music singer Bev Grant and her band, "The Human Condition," recorded the protest folk songs that she wrote in the early 1970's.

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane (who also co-founded the non-commercially-motivated Paredon Records label that did eventually record a vinyl album of Bev Grant and The Human Condition in the 1970's, titled Working People Gonna Rise!, which included the protest folk songs that Bev Grant had written) indicated why Vanguard Records apparently refused to produce Bev Grant's album in the 1970's:

"Beverly...got signed with Vanguard. Vanguard run by Maynard Solomon. Maynard Solomon wrote a book called, something? What was it? Marxism and Culture. He considers himeself, you know, a political guy.

"And he's the one who put out Paul Robeson's records and Joan Baez and what have you.

"And he said to her: `Come by and bring your--I want your most outrageous, you know--your most political songs.'

"So she brought them over there. And she called me afterwards and said: `Well, he told me to bring my most outrageous songs. But when I got there he said, "`Oh! I didn't mean that far out."'

"So they didn't do a record for Vanguard. Did it for us. Okay..." 

U.S. Music Industry Tried To Stop Production Of Paredon Records' `Palestine Lives!' Album

 

In the 1970's, some executives of the commercially-motivated U.S. corporate music industry apparently attempted to stop the production and distribution of the Paredon Records label's vinyl album Palestine Lives!. As [the now-deceased] former Sing-Out! magazine editor and Paredon Records co-founder Irwin Silber recalled in a 1991 interview:

"...We really came under incredible attack... The music industry, especially in New York, is very heavily...pro-Israel. So, when word got around that we were doing this record, a campaign began to try to stop it. Literally to stop it.

"And the important figures in the music industry called our various suppliers, the people who made the masters, the plates, the pressing: `Listen!  We’re going to withdraw a whole lot of business from you if you cooperate with these people in putting out this record.'

"There really was such a campaign. And I don’t remember exactly how we solved it. But I know, in a couple of cases, we had to go to some outfits other than our usual supply...

"...It really was an insight into the depth of the emotions stirred by the Palestinian question...I mean I knew it. I mean I’m Jewish and you know I know...the community. But it really got brought home. Really got brought home. And it was, in a way, a provocation to the music industry, because of its particular character.

"But I have always felt that the Palestinian issue is sort of one these cutting edge issues, which it’s sort of like crucial litmus test. Because there’s nothing to be gained by supporting the Palestinians. Career-wise or anything else. Just nothing at all...to stick your neck out and get down in the line with them in the United States."

U.S. corporate music industry tried to stop production of this album in 1970's

And in a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer and Paredon Records co-founder Barbara Dane also observed that "somebody made a deliberate campaign calling all of our suppliers and the pressing plant and everybody," in an attempt to stop production and distribution of the Paredon Records label's Palestine Lives! vinyl album.'

Paredon Records Co-Founders Irwin Silber and Barbara Dane

 

 

Why Paredon Records Was Created

 

In a 1991 interview, the [now-deceased] former Sing-Out! magazine editor, Irwin Silber, indicated why the Paredon Records protest folk music recording label was created:

"...Well I guess where we were...talking about why Paredon Records and so on....I tried to look at these things both from the point of view of what our intentions were but also what I think it reflected objectively, independently of what we thought we were all about. When you’re lucky, the two coincide.

"But, and this isn’t just true of an enterprise like a record company. I think this is true of all events in history. People make revolutions thinking they’re going to turn out a certain way. It turns out the significance of that revolution was something that they didn’t have in mind, but what they did was still historically important.

"So that may sound kind of flamboyant. Never the less, that’s the way I try to look at it. And in that sense, Paredon was a reflection of a period in which ideas of revolutionary upheaval were extremely prominent in the world--especially acute in the third world, because I think what the world was experiencing, in Sixties and the Seventies, was the final stages of the overthrow of colonialism. And it’s more like where the bitterest holdouts who would not adapt to the changes, that’s where those struggles were taking place.

"Some of them happened a little bit before we went into business, but for instance the French in Algeria, which also produced an incredible cultural explosion. There was this incredible film that was made, Battle of Algiers. Which, in a sense, was in film the kind of thing that we were doing with Paredon Records.

"That is, it was produced by people who were trying to make a statement about that revolution. They weren’t just trying to document it. And it was propaganda in a sense. But it was propaganda reflecting a real struggle by a liberation movement.

"There was also the whole counter cultural thing and the New Left phenomenon in the United States which began to take an ideological turn toward revolutionary solutions. And that spirit of revolution, whether you wanted to call it the cultural revolution, the counter cultural revolution and so on, that was very much in the air.

"And the rhetoric of...the time, whether it was the Women’s Movement, the Black Movement, the Student Movement, was `Revolution.'

"And this was something that was happening in other Western countries as well, like what happened in France. And then you had the rumblings in the communist societies with the Prague Spree and so on.

"So that was the world cultural climate out of which Paredon came. It had particular, for us, and again I think it was reflective of the movement in the United states, its sort of the touchstones were Vietnam and Cuba.

"Vietnam for, obviously because of the war in Vietnam and the feeling on the part of so many young Americans that this was sort of the absolute damning evidence of the corruption of the system, and gave rise to a whole revolutionary outlook.

"And Cuba because of the particular antagonism toward the Cuban revolution by the United States government and the way in which Cuba had become a symbol of incredible defiance of the American monolith. So there was great identification with Cuba for those reasons.

"And especially among people who couldn’t identify with the Soviet Union. And with the eastern European counties, they’re sort of like, either they thought these weren’t really revolutions, so they were tired revolutions, or, you know, all of the different things that for different reasons turned people off.

"But they could identify with the Vietnamese and with the Cubans. And for a period with the Chinese revolution also.

"But Cuba and Vietnam were very much the touchstones of that movement’s international outlook, and of Paredon Records’ as well.

"And the seeming anomaly is that what we were doing was documenting these movements and at the same time our approach was quite partisan, and very often the two were looked at as mutually exclusive categories. `Well, if it’s propaganda it can’t be documentary' and vice versa.

"But our view was that so long as the movements were real, their propaganda was also real. And documenting what you might (and I don’t use the word `propaganda' in a pejorative sense) documenting what was their genuine cultural, ideological expression was a way of undemonizing the so-called enemies of the United States (the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and anybody else). Because that occurs every time we have to use our armed forces, the enemy has to be demonized and made less than human.

"So partially it was that, and that’s a part of propaganda. Saying `No these are real human beings, with a real culture and genuine expression,' and in the most simplest terms `They’re just like you and me,' one could say, or whatever.

"But that they were the bearers of traditions and of national heritages that were worthy of respect. And that those who would destroy the national cultures were guilty of a kind of cultural genocide.

"At the same time, these records were partisan in that they usually were made in cooperation with a particular political force in these revolutions.

"Now, in the case of Vietnam and Cuba,...there were no rival political forces. But in some of the other situations there were different political groups in different countries, and judgments get made at a certain point as to which groups have a genuinely popular social base and represent the interests of the people.

"And frankly, one of the measuring sticks was the degree to which the United States was antagonistic to these groups. And to the extent the United States would be promoting some groups, like `This was the real liberation... movement,' we, like many other people, would say `Now that’s a contradiction in terms. If the U.S. is promoting it, then there’s something wrong with that group because the interests of the U,S. government and these movements are too much in contradiction.'

"While a lot of this stuff was third world and heavily Latin America, it wasn’t exclusively that. We felt we should do stuff reflecting the different social movements in the United States, and I think a lot of the emphasis there was on Black Movement (we had the interview with Huey Newton, Bernice Reagan, things like that),and women singers, singers like the Red Star Singers and others who were very much in tune with the counter culture but expressed it politically, not just in counter cultural terms. And then we had other material coming from Western Europe and so on.

"So this is, that’s what Paredon represented, and we felt that it was important to do it, that this was part of our political agenda..." 

Paredon Records' Co-founders Irwin Silber and Barbara Dane in 1980's

How Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber Created Paredon Records

 

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane recalled how she and former Sing-Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber were able to create the non-commercially-motivated Paredon Records protest folk music recording label:

"Paredon Records, you know, basically came out of the fact that we saw the need, we saw the fact all these singers existed and nobody knew about each other...So I got the idea we gotta have a record label. And I talked to Irwin about it, and Irwin had had a lot of experience with Folkways...And we were actually perfectly suited team of people...

"...So then the question is how do you get the money to do it. So I was just bending everybody’s ear...A couple years go by. I’m telling everybody this great vision I have...

"And finally a friend of ours, who was also someone who had lived in Cuba for a while and was very sympathetic to the politics of it and everything, brought a millionaire friend of hers over to meet us. And he wants to be anonymous so we’re still not gonna give out his name.

"But he thought this was a great idea and decided he would give us, you know, one stock dividend to play around with....Actually, it was supposed to be an interest free loan, but he never came around to formalize any agreement or collect anything on the loan. And he said don’t contact me; I’ll contact you. And he never contacted us again. And so that’s the end of that.

"So we were actually capitalized. I’ll tell you what we were capitalized at. He gave us 17,000 dollars. Which is about enough to put out half of one record, you know, really. And so we just socked it in the bank and started doing it.

"And the concept we had was that we won’t take any salaries or any overhead. We did it out of the living room or the backroom. I had an extra bedroom just then. I did it out of that room or the kitchen table and Irwin did it out of his little home office.

"And...you know, you go rent studios. Nobody buys a studio. Record labels don’t own studios. That’s a different business. And all the other services could be contracted out...that needed to be done to manufacture something.

"So we didn’t have any overhead. It was no overhead involved except maybe some telephone calls and stationary and, you know, the cost of renting a studio or whatever. And all of the things that were involved with producing it....

"I got to be very good at convincing people to write me an essay....You know, `Okay, you’re expert on this. On what’s going on Ecuador. So write me brief little history of Ecuador today.'

"And getting things like that out of people on a volunteer basis. And when we had to pay, we paid.

"But the thing is the object was to not pay out anymore of this budget. So then whatever income came in, and whatever the budget had to use some combination, you go ahead and make more. So you keep reinvesting it. Each record pays for the next one. Basically that’s the way it is…."

U.S. Jazz, Blues, Protest Folk Singer and Paredon Records Co-Founder Barbara Dane

And in a 1991 interview, [the now-deceased] former Sing-Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber also noted:

"I felt that doing this record label was an opportunity to use skills that I had developed over the years in a way that probably, at that time, were not going to be utilized by anybody else...

"Early in the fifties, I actually started a little record label on behalf of People’s Artists called Hoot-N-Anny Records....They were just 78’s at the time. But I think the Weavers' very first recording was done on a Hoot-N-Anny record. I did the “Hammer Song” and the “Banks of Marble. This is before they were recording for Decca.

"And I don’t know, we only did about a half a dozen such records. And then, in the mid-Fifties, we did the first LP of a live folk music concert. It’s called “Hoot-N-Anny Tonight,” subsequently reissued on Folkways under that title. So I’d always been scrambling for that kind of stuff.

"And then in 1958 I went to work for Moe Asch in Folkways, and over the next number of years worked with Moe...I had very little to do with the actual recording. That’s not my thing at all. So Moe was always engineer, the one who dealt with the performers and so on.

"But I became responsible, ultimately, for everything else relating to the production of a record. In effect, Moe would finish a tape master and turn it over to me.

"And I would deal [with]...the metal master, the stampers, the record pressing company, the printers who did the booklet, the people who pasted up the booklet. I’d edited, one way or another most of the booklets, deal with the typesetting, deal with the artists who designed the covers. Coordinate all of the production, and deal with a lot of the distribution also, and a lot of sales promotion stuff.

"So I learned a lot of different aspects of the record business, which put me in a position to know how to get Paredon off the ground and skip over a bunch of stages that somebody with less experience would’ve had to go through in a very painful way. And, you know, took advantage of that experience.

"We started out using the very producers that Folkways use, some of whom I had brought around to Folkways. But the printers, the pressing plants, the artists, the people who made stampers and so on, we used the same ones. They already knew me from the Folkways days. So that helped us establish some credit. And we knew what we were talking about.

"So we were able to move into production in a relatively smooth way, fairly quick. And then, once we had the records, we were able to utilize the contacts I’d made in terms of distribution--in some cases. I mean a lot of Folkways distributors didn’t--you know-- didn’t know what to do with this type of material."

Paredon Records Coo-Founders Irwin Silber and Barbara Dane 

 

Newport Folk Festival's Exclusion Of Barbara Dane Revisited

 

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 recalled how some commercially-oriented U.S. folk music festival producers--like then-Newport Folk Festival Producer George Wein--apparently failed to invite her to perform at most commercially-oriented U.S. folk music festivals during the 1960's; and during the 11 years that she devoted to recording other protest folk singers or singer-songwriters on non-commercially-oriented Paredon Records' vinyl albums.

"I was never invited back to Newport except once....I’ll give you some documentation about that because it’s kind of interesting.

"But it basically was I went to the festival because I loved the music and I loved the people who perform it.,,So I went several times and just soaked everything up and reconnected with a lot of old friends and all that. But I--outside of being asked to get up and jam on somebody’s set--was never invited back there to sing.

"...I got an invitation one day via Bernice Reagon to be on a workshop...She’d sort of taken note that the festival was getting further and further from its glory days, when everyone stands on the stage and sings `We Shall Overcome.' And now we’re, you know, two three years down the line and...it’s all sort of a sham.

"And so she decided to propose a political song workshop. And it was going to be a one hour workshop, out on the edge of the...You know, in the tent during the day. Not on the main stage and all that kind of stuff.

"But anyway I got a letter inviting me to be on that. And I decided to turn that down because I decided that it was a mockery of the whole deal...I decided that this was made to marginalize...to a one hour workshop....I mean we’re talking...mid-Sixties, later Sixties. And they were going to marginalize it out to that...

"Boil it all down and have a little token thing. And then they can sit back and say `well we did it. Now we did our thing. We had political singers here.' I decided I wasn’t going to be a party to that.

"So I made a big todo about it. I wrote a big long letter explaining why I wasn’t going to do it and sent it to the board. Which then included quite a lot of people in the folk music field. And kinda quite a lot of key people. And then I also sent it to the Village Voice and they printed it.

"And as a result I was never, for twenty years or more--well let’s say dating from the first festival--which was what ’59, the first Newport festival? I was never invited to sing on a major folk song festival. Zero. You know.

"So I began to realize that this was happening. These things sneak up on you. Like this is not blacklisting in the sense of the McCarthy black list. This is, that’s that only term I can think of, is marginalization. You know, you’re just sort of pushed further out..."

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)

 

Did Smithsonian Folkways Partner With U.S. Capitalism In Distributing Non-Commercially-Motivated Folk Music?

Most people who are into listening to non-commercially-motivated folk music have, historically, been anti-capitalist and been against the denial of a fair share of daily U.S. mass media access to anti-capitalist musicians--like Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick and Matt Jones--by the U.S. capitalism's corporate media gatekeepers. And most people who are into listening to non-commercially-motivated folk music have, historically, been opposed to the commodification of folk music for-profit; and also to the exploitation by the U.S. capitalist system's corporate music industry record distribution companies of the folk music fans to whom they market their commodified folk music.

Yet Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has generally failed to focus much on opposing either the U.S. capitalist system's continued denial of a fair share of U.S. mass media daily access to post-1965 anti-capitalist, non-commercially-motivated, non-professional folk musicians who are working-class. Nor has Smithsonian Folkways demanded that the U.S. capitalism's music distribution system be operated in a non-commercial, non-exploitative way that provides U.S. folk music fans with their cultural right to listen to all folk music recordings for free.

One reason might be because the director emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings apparently saw nothing morally and politically contradictory in partnering with U.S. imperialism's capitalist system in marketing and distributing the non-commercially-motivated folk music that, historically,was generally collectively or individually created by anti-capitalist working-class people or anti-capitalist musicians; who, historically, had generally only received minimal sums of money or royalties from either Folkways or Paredon Records, in exchange for recording the albums whose folk music Smithsonian Folkways marketed.

As Timothy D. Taylor noted in his 2016 book Music and Capitalism, "Anthony Seeger, director emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, told me that that label had no qualms about using the capitalist infrastructure of distribution networks to disseminate its music." The Smithsonian Folkways director emeritus apparently told the Music and Capitalism author in 2012:

"At Folkways I always thought I was taking advantage of the capitalist system to distribute a kind of music that was unpopular, by definition...It seemed to me that capitalism and the market system actually was a really efficient way...for anybody anywhere in the world being able to get what they cared about. It seemed to me in principle you could in fact take advantage, sort of ride on the back of the capitalist system..."

Yet, coincidentally, few recordings of protest folk songs written by non-commercially-motivated anti-capitalist U.S. working-class folk musicians  or by members of the People's Music Network [PMN] that were written after 1980, have been produced or distributed by Smithsonian Folkways during the last three decades when it's been partnering and riding "on the back of the capitalist system."