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…."

1971 `Free John Sinclair' Protest Music Concert Revisited: Parts 2 and 3

 

In late 1971, U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs performed with some other musicians (such as Stevie Wonder and former Beatles group member John Lennon) at a concert in Michigan that demanded the release of then-U.S. political prisoner John Sinclair, a member of the early 1970's White Panther Party.

1971 `Free John Sinclair' Protest Music Concert Revisited: Parts 1 and 2

 

In late 1971, U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs performed with some other musicians (such as Stevie Wonder and former Beatles group member John Lennon) at a concert in Michigan that demanded the release of then-U.S. political prisoner John Sinclair, a member of the early 1970's White Panther Party

Did NYC DJ Willie Bryant Play Rhythm & Blues Before Alan Freed?

Before Alan Freed arrived from Cleveland in September 1954 to play Rhythm & Blues on NYC's WINS radio six nights a week, a DJ named Willie Bryant had apparently been featuring Rhythm & Blues on his NYC show since the 1940's. As Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed And The Early Years Of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson recalled in 1991:

"At an uptown rally in a Harlem YMCA, angry Blacks characterized Freed as an outsider who imitated Blacks...The loudest...complainer was Willie Bryant, a local rhythm & blues disc jockey...Bryant...in 1946 became the first Black deejay to host a national radio music program. On local radio, Bryant teamed up with Ray Carroll, a white man, and the pair hosted their `After-Hours Session,' broadcast on New York's WHOM from 11:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. After featuring R & B on the air since the 1940s, however, Bryant and Carroll `couldn't get arrested, ' while the minute Freed hit town his WINS program took off. To Willie Bryant, Freed's eclipse of the Black deejay was simply another example of the racial discrimination he had experienced throughout his long career..."

In his 2000 book, The Covert War Against Rock, Alex Constantine also observed:

"...John Elroy McCaw....was...instrumental in bringing Alan Freed to New York...After the war, McCaw bought a New York radio station, WINS at Seven Central Park West...By the early 1950s the station pioneered twenty-five minutes of....popular crooners of the day, followed by five muntes of news...`Top 40,'...owes its very existence to McCaw, Alan Freed's boss, the entrepreneurial brains behind `big beat' radio...at ease in the closed chambers of Washington's national security `elite.'...John E. McCaw died in 1969. He sired four sons, including Craig McCaw, who has been as influential in the molding of media..."

`A Time To Stir' Film Wins 2020 De Antonio Award

Protest Folk Magazine is pleased to announce that the winner of its Emile de Antonio Award for the Best Documentary Feature Film released in 2020 is filmmaker Paul Cronin's A Time To Stir historical documentary, about the student protests on the Upper West Side at Columbia University in April and May of 1968.

The 2020 De Antonio Award-winning documentary film can be viewed for free on Vimeo.

Emile de Antonio

 

Revisiting IWW's `Wage Workers, Come Join The Union' protest folk and labor song Lyrics

As the 2007 book, The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, noted, the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] protest folk and labor song, "Wage Workers, Come Join The Union," was written by an anonymous worker in the early 20th-century.

And the following "Wage Workers, Come Join The Union" lyrics can be sung to the same traditional folk song tune which the melody of "John Brown's Body," "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Solidarity Forever" songs utilize:

"We have seen the reaper toiling in the heat of summer sun,

We have seen his children needy when the harvesting was done.

We have seen a mighty army dying, helpless, one by one,

While their flag went marching on.

(chorus)

Wage workers, come join the union!

Wage workers, come join the union!

Wage workers, come join the union!

Industrial Workers of the World.

O, the army of the wretched, how they swarm the city street--

We have seen them in the midnight, where the Goths and Vandals meet;

We have shuddered in the darkness at the noises of their feet,

But their cause went marching on. (chorus)

But no longer shall the children bend above the whizzing wheel,

We will free the weary women from their bondage under steel;

In the mines and in the forest worn and helpless man shall feel

That his cause is marching on. (chorus)

Then lift your eyes, ye toilers, in the desert hot and drear,

Catch the cool winds from the mountains.

Hark! the river's voice is near;

Soon we'll rest beside the fountain and the dreamland will be here

As we go marching on. (chorus)