Did` Folk Capitalist' Musicians Make Big Money By Ripping Off Non-Commercially-Created Folk Songs in 1950s and 1960s?

Most African-American and white working-class people and rural folks, who either collectively built anti-corporate movements for radical democratic change and economic equality in the USA or collectively created most U.S. folk songs prior to the late 1950s, never made a lot of money from either their Movement work or their writing of non-commercially-motivated folk songs, which generally reflected the anti-capitalist sentiments and concerns of the Movement.

Yet some "folk capitalist" and commercially-oriented musicians in the late 1950s and early 1960s apparently made a lot of money from their involvement in the commodification of folk music by for-profit U.S. corporate music industry vinyl record production and distributions companies, like Capitol Records, etc. In his 2013 book, Folk Music USA: The Changing Voice of Protest, Ronald Lankford Jr. recalled what happened, for example, after the Kingston Trio recorded "Tom Dooley;" and their version of a traditional folk song about the hanging of a convicted murderer was aired by some radio station DJs in the USA:

"...`Tom Dooley' started generating thousands of dollars in royalties each week...[Kingston Trio members] Guard, Shane and Reynolds discovered that you could make $30,000 [equal to over $240,000 in 2018] a week from the royalties of one folk song...By December of 1959, the Kingston Trio had 4 albums on the Top Ten chart at the same time, giving the green light to major labels...: Folk music could be obscenely profitable...The commercial record labels...confused the public by promoting pop-folk as the real thing...

"...Popular folk performers made money faster than their accountants could find tax shelters to hide it in...The Kingston Trio...averaged between $8,000 and $12,000 [equal to over $65,000 to over $97,000 in 2018]  per show and another $6,000 [ equal to over $48,000 in 2018] per week in record sales, netting...$1.7 million in 1962 [equal to over $13.8 million in 2018] and accounting for 12 percent of Capitol's annual sales. The Limeliters tagged behind, making...$3,000 to $5,000 [equal to over $24,000 to over $40,000 in 2018] per week, though they tried to make up the income gap by singing...for Ford Motor Company and Folger's Coffee. Peter, Paul and Mary received $30,000 [equal to over $240,000 in 2018] after signing with Warner...By 1961, folk music...was...something you invested in like stocks and bonds...The Limeliters...turned `Things Go Better With Coke' into a...hit, and attempted to convince the public of the rich flavor of L and M cigarettes. The Kingston Trio...donned sailor suits and boarded a whaling yacht to sell 7-Up...Schlitz paid the Journeymen $25,000 [equal to over $206,000 in 2018] for a year's worth of jingles, while American Express...also engaged the group to cut an ad..."

Quotations From Pete Seeger: Folk Music vs. Show Business

In his July/August 1974 Sing Out! magazine column (that's included in the book Pete Seeger: In His Own Words which Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited), Pete Seeger criticized the way most music magazines cover the folk music scene for the following reason::

"What's good about folk music is that it is not show business. It should not be show business.

"But the trouble with most `folk music' magazines...is that they tell me what professional performer is singing here, and why that one is better than some other one. And somehow millions of people have gotten the idea that folk music is somebody standing on stage with a guitar in his or her hand. I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with giving such a false impression..."

Quotations From Pete Seeger: On Fame and Celebrity Worship

As the book Pete Seeger: In His Own Words that Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited indicates, during the 1970s Pete Seeger wrote the following about the negative effects of fame and celebrity worship on people in modern society:

"...I feel very deeply that the whole feverish search to get close to `fame' is not only foolish but a symptom of something very bad in modern society around the world.

"Modern technology, mass production, has made some people too famous and has left billions of people feeling that they are unimportant, that they are just cogs in a big machine...This is really false. Everybody is important in this world...

"...I urge all autograph collectors to realize that the kind of fame people get in show business and politics is about the phoniest of all. To be in show business is to be in the professional publicity business. People are hired to send out releases to newspapers and to arrange for TV interviews..."

Quotations From Pete Seeger: On The Movement and The Celebrity Star System

In a May/June 1975 Sing Out! magazine column that was included in the Pete Seeger: In His Own Words book that Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited, Pete Seeger wrote the following about Movement activists' failure to generally fight against the U.S. corporate entertainment media's celebrity star system:

"You ask me, do I know `some big name performer' who can help your cause. Don't you realize that we all have to fight the star system? In this technological society, we have to oppose the cult of personality...

"...Revolutionists have always had to teach the people that some of the greatest talents in the world have no reputation to speak of; they have just been sitting beside us all the time, and we didn't know about it."

Quotations From Pete Seeger: On The 1960s `Folk Music Revival'

In a letter that he wrote to Don West in the 1960s that was published in a book that Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited, Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, Pete Seeger made the following critique of the post-1960s "Folk Music Revival" in the USA and elsewhere:

"...The whole character and definition of the word `folk music' is being warped by the commercial image of the solo professional performer and the publicity surrounding (him or her)--and I think that you are right that magazines such as Sing Out are consciously or unconsciously contributing to this bad state of affairs by continually boosting the names of performers in articles rather than talking about the music and the unknown people who have created it and kept it alive.

"...In our present commercial system the star syndrome is the regular thing and I believe among the biggest victims of it are the so-called stars themselves. I know that I feel a victim of it personally because for 10 years I have tried to persuade Sing Out to play down my name, but it keeps popping up in every issue. I keep sending letters to publishing companies and record companies, but the basic facts of economic life keep running against me and there goes my name up in huge letters. I consented to a normal interview with the Christian Science Monitor and suddenly see a headline, `A Folk Hero Is Born.' What are you going to do about this kind of shit? I can tell you for sure that many times I've thought of quitting the whole music business because of it..."

In a March 25, 1986 letter that was published in the same book, Seeger also wrote the following:

"...In the long run what the human race needs in the way of music is the ability and the confidence to sing a song, whether it is at the fireside, bedside, tableside, workside, sidewalk side, or anywhere side without having to think of it as a `performance.' And none of the `folk revivals' in any country nor any festivals, magazines, recordings that I know of have really attacked the problem and made much headway in solving it...Music seems still to be in hock to the experts, and most of the millions listen..."

And in a December 20, 1986 letter that was also published in Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, Pete also wrote the following:

"What I wanted to do was try and get rank-and-file people singing again, whether parent singing to children or workers singing on the job or friends harmonizing in a car as they drove down the highway. But the prevalence of loudspeakers has defeated me and a lot of others and in the end our `Revival of Folk Music' seemed more like simply starting up another minor branch of the pop music business, especially appealing to middle-class whites..."

`Bloody Minds' protest folk song lyrics from 1967 and 2010

This protest folk song was written in March, 1967, in Furnald Hall dorm at Columbia University to protest the university's institutional membership in the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a weapons research think tank. Last verse of lyrics was added in 2010.

lyrics

Come, you Bloody Minds
Look what I done find
I done did research
IDA exists
Laugh between your walls
Sit behind your desks
Watch your missiles fall
IDA exists.

The value-free school
Your mask we see right through
The weapons of the Pentagon
Their brains procured by you.

Godly Grayson Kirk
On the board he knits
Smokes upon his pipe
While his bombers bite
Problems he assigns:
“How to make men die?”
Professors they plan
Death for Viet Nam.

In ’56 to serve Defense
Five schools they did combine
Four years later
Columbia
It joined the bloody minds.

City slums they rot
Homeless live in lots
Atoms to destroy
They’re your little toys
Oh, they pay you well
To create a hell
Did you see the news?
Twelve children they slew.

A division
Its name Jason
In summer they study
They meet, they talk
They plan, they plot
Counter-insurgency.

Lovers they must part
Lamps they now are dark
Knowledge turned to swords
Kirk sits on the board
Schools changed into guns
For the Pentagon
Students now they learn:
How to make kids burn.

You stand in class
You spout your facts
A noble scientist
But then at night
You join the fight
You do secret research.

Wall Street banks collapse
Workers get laid-off
Laser beams command
Bombs on Afghanistan
Drones built by IDA
In Pakistan they slay
Robot war research
Makes professors rich.

In 2010, scientists again
They do space war research
With DARPA funds in secret labs
They threaten all the Earth.

Murder poor peasants
With the tools you sent
Orphan thin children
Help the junta win
Kill them with your mind
Paralyze their spines
Someday you will die
And in slime you’ll lie.

`Columbia' protest folk song lyrics from 1966

The historical protest folk song, "Columbia," was written in the Furnald Hall dormitory on Columbia University's campus in late 1966 to protest the Columbia Administration's complicity with the U.S. war machine during the Vietnam War Era.
(lyrics)
Oh, educate Columbia Pursue the truth Columbia Exalt the mind Columbia Research and find Columbia And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool." Invite the spies Columbia The C.I.A. Columbia Give them a room Columbia To recruit spooks Columbia And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool." Help the Navy Columbia R.O.T.C. Columbia Teach a course for Columbia "The Art of War" Columbia And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool." Secret research Columbia You'd best not snitch Columbia At campus labs Maybe some bombs? For electronic war Design lasers And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool."