Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  Chapter 12

  URBAN FOLK MUSIC

  • Introduction

  • Blues and Gospel in Chicago

  • San Antonio’s Country and Conjunto Traditions

  • Washington, D.C.

  • Final Thoughts

  INTRODUCTION

  Most people very closely associate folk music with rural areas of the United States and with music performed on acoustic instruments. In the twenty-first century the contra-dance tradition in Nelson, New Hampshire, which has been ongoing since the early nineteenth century, certainly qualifies as a local community event featuring folk music. Likewise southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas has served as the hearth area for Cajun and zydeco music since the late nineteenth century, decades before touring musicians and sound recordings brought the music to eager listeners across the country. Even contemporary cowboy poets and singers—such as Joel Nelson (Alpine, Texas) and Ernie Sites (Wendell, Idaho)—still roam the vast ranches that dot the plains and hills from Texas through California, rarely plying their trade in locations that we would consider to be urban.

  Traditional music and folk-based music, however, is played throughout the United States. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” folk music can be heard from California’s redwood forests to New York’s Staten Island. “The Folk Revivals” chapter, in particular, notes the importance of folk music in large urban areas with New York City functioning as the urban folk music epicenter. Beginning in the 1930s the city has been home to record companies such as Folkways (and, later, Elektra), which documented artists like Dave Van Ronk and Lead Belly, while Gerde’s Folk City hosted early concerts by such important musicians as Bob Dylan and Judy Collins in the early 1960s. Since the mid-1940s a considerable Cajun music community has thrived in the San Francisco Bay area of California due to the migration of residents of southeastern Louisiana seeking steady employment–most notably—in the regions’s huge shipyards.

  “Ethnic and Native American Traditions” (chapter 8) underscores the fact that a variety of traditions, from klezmer music in New York City to native Hawaiian hulas in Honolulu, are integral to the sounds of our cities. A reel or jig heard accompanying an Irish American step-dance competition held in south Boston and the strains of accordion-laced norteno wafting from houses in some sections of Phoenix illustrate traditional music in urban areas. African Americans brought blues from the Piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina to cities from Richmond, Virginia, to Albany, New York. Chapter 9,—“The Hispanic American Diaspora,” features an entire section on New York City with Puerto Rico at its core.

  Folk music is not, and has never been an entirely rural phenomenon, and this chapter accentuates the decades-long importance of traditional music in our urban (and its nearby suburban) areas. Sometimes it involves the interest in a rural vocal or instrumental tradition from which the participants are culturally and geographically far removed. For example, singing from the “Sacred Harp” books—a mid-nineteenth-century musical/cultural phenomenon described in chapter 5—has found venues in many urban areas throughout the United States. You can find smaller monthly and sometimes larger annual sings in Ann Arbor, Michigan, New Haven, Connecticut, Boston, Massachusetts, Denver, Colorado, and San Diego, California. In the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, a local group (currently found at http://www.freude.com/mnfasola/) has been singing monthly at local churches and at the University of Minnesota since 1985.

  These cities, and all other urban areas throughout the country, also support a network of folk music clubs. Since the 1960s, when the popularization and commodification of grassroots music became more common, such clubs have presented a wide range of talent representing an even greater range of genres. Folk music clubs come in many sizes and intents. The planned community of Reston, Virginia, lies some ten miles outside of the Beltway that surrounds Washington, D.C. Since 1985 The Folk Club of Reston-Herndon (“Preserving the Traditions of Folk Music, Folk Lore, and Gentle Folk Ways”) has featured music programs. In addition to a large annual event, they have long held monthly concerts at the Tortilla Factory, a local Tex-Mex eatery. These concerts generally feature a nationally or regionally known folk act (2009 found Gordon Bok, Bill Staines, Garnet Rogers, and Bryan Bowers on the roster) in addition to local artists appearing in a “Showcase.”

  On the other hand are the (hopefully) for-profit clubs that operate in smaller and larger cities and often draw upon a similar range of artistic talent to the monthly concerts put on by The Folk Club of Reston-Herndon. Many of these singer-songwriter/folk-based performers work a circuit of geographically and ideologically similar clubs. A group might perform at Eddie’s Attic (Atlanta, Georgia) one night, move north to Asheville, North Carolina’s The Grey Eagle, and then drive west over the Smokey Mountains to play at the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tennessee.

  The Folk Alliance—founded in 1989—operates largely in the urban realm in the twenty-first century and maintains close philosophical ties among the folk clubs, societies, and the performers who appear at them. According to their Mission Statement: “Folk Alliance International exists to foster and promote traditional, contemporary, and multicultural folk music and dance and related performing arts. The Folk Alliance seeks to strengthen and advance organizational and individual initiatives in folk music and dance through education, networking, advocacy, and professional and field development.” This umbrella organization also holds an annual conference that moves among large cities in the United States. Memphis, Tennessee, hosted their annual conference on February 11–16, 2011.

  This nationwide organization largely grew out of The California Traditional Music Society (CTMS), founded in 1978, which is, according to their Web site, “dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of the traditional Folk Music, dance, and related folk arts of America’s diverse cultural heritage. Our goals are to broaden public involvement with Folk Music, celebrate ethnic traditions, and promote cross-cultural understanding.” Based in Encinitas, California, CTMS largely serves those living in the greater Los Angeles area through a series of concerts, a community music school, and jam sessions featuring bluegrass, Celtic music, blues, and Cajun music.

  Among other topics, this chapter discusses the African American blues and gospel traditions in Chicago and San Antonio’s Hispanic and country music history. Both cities have their post-revival clubs and associations. The Old Town School of Folk Music, according to its Web site, “opened in December of 1957 with its first home at 333 North Avenue. The first five years of the School’s history mirrored the boom in folk music at that time. Enrollment grew and programs expanded. Over 150 students attended guitar and banjo classes on a weekly basis. Folk dancing, and family sing-alongs rounded out the programming. The School also offered concerts by nationally renowned artists. Pete Seeger, Mahalia Jackson, Jimmy Driftwood, Big Bill Broonzy, and Josh White were just some of the many folk music artists who performed at the Old Town School in its early years. The School continued to grow, contributing to and benefitting from the folk revival movement of the 1960s. It developed a special atmosphere of community and camaraderie, and helped to launch some of the brightest artists on the folk music scene: Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Bob Gibson, John Prine, Bonnie Koloc, and the late Steve Goodman all studied at the Old Town School.”

  In addition to this nationally recognized school, Chicagoland boasts several other small clubs or bars that regularly feature folk music. Several restaurants, most notably Abbey Pub and Irish Mill, spotlight Irish music. At least one other venue—the relatively upscale Uncommon Ground—hosts local and regionally recognized acoustic folk artists.

  San Antonio, Texas, has nothing quite like the Old Town School of Folk Music, nor does the city support as many venues featuring singer-songwriters. Each June, however, it hosts the annual Texas Folklife Festival, which features music and dance reflecting the diversity of vernacular cultures from across the state. Long overshadowed as a “music city” by nearby A
ustin, San Antonio is much closer to the Mexico border than the state’s capital and has the largest Hispanic population of any major city in the United States. This proximity to Mexico, as we shall see, gives San Antonio’s grassroots music a particular background and sound.

  But the development of country and bluegrass music in Washington, D.C., stands as the main focus for this chapter. In addition to the impact of country and bluegrass music in D.C., dozens of local clubs featuring all flavors of grassroots music, from Salvadorian to blues, and the various folk music societies, the Smithsonian Institution began its folklife festival in 1967. Begun by Ralph Rinzler (Bill Monroe’s one-time manager and a member of the Greenbrier Boys) as the Festival of American Folklife, this annual multi-day festival transforms the Mall into a smorgasbord of crafts, foodways, storytellers, and music. Now called The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, in 2011 this free event featured a major component devoted to Rhythm & Blues, an area focused on “The Nature of Columbian Culture,” and a fortieth anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps. Highlights of recent festivals include vernacular music found in regions (the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the Mid-Atlantic Maritime) and states such as Virginia, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

  BLUES AND GOSPEL IN CHICAGO

  The vernacular cultures of a city are largely defined by the people who live there, many of whom migrated to the city in search of better employment or a new life. Even though several generations may have passed, strong ties with their “home” often remain. Citizens of St. Louis or Kansas City, for instance, often continue to visit their relatives in southern Missouri who decided not to move to a nearby major urban center.

  Junior Wells, ca. 1960, played harp with such Chicago blues stalwarts as Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. Courtesy of Jay Bruder.

  As discussed in the “Cultural Geography and Traditions” section of chapter 1, these migrants bring their music, foodways, speech patterns, and other traditions with them. Well into the twenty-first century Chicago’s Southside remains largely populated by black Americans with roots in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana (or a “transitional” midsize city such as Memphis) even though their ancestors may be moved North as part of the Great Migration, from the teens through the 1940s. The movement of hundreds of thousands of black Americans brought the Mississippi Delta blues tradition from its rural home to a new urban environment, transforming the music from its acoustic and often solo format to a small electrified ensemble featuring a powerful lead guitar and the distinctive sound of an amplified harmonica—sometimes referred to by blues fans as a “Mississippi Saxophone.”

  Muddy Waters provides the quintessential example of this movement. Born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1913, as McKinley Morganfield, he began playing guitar while in his late teens. He came under the sway of Delta blues guitar legends such as Robert Johnson and Eddie “Son” House. Armed with his guitar, Waters visited Chicago in 1940 but soon moved back to central Mississippi. Library of Congress researcher Alan Lomax, in collaboration with Fisk University scholar John Work, recorded Waters on his acoustic guitar in 1941 as part of a project documenting black folk music in Coahoma County, Mississippi. Lomax returned a year later and recorded Waters at Stovall Plantation about ten months before the aspiring musician relocated permanently to Chicago.

  In Chicago Waters met many other musicians who’d also moved up from the mid-South. By the late 1940s he and harpman Little Walter (Louisiana), along with pianist Otis Spann (Mississippi), had formed a band that transformed the gritty, eclectic, sometimes highly idiosyncratic Delta blues into a powerful musical juggernaut that could easily be heard above the din of a local bar and that more often conformed to the predictable twelve-bar blues form. Waters provided the leadership, stepping in front of the band, brandishing his slashing lead guitar, almost always played using a slide on his finger, and shouting and growling the words to original songs such as “Mannish Boy,” “Still a Fool,” “Long Distance Call,” and “Hootchie Cootchie Man.” Even a rather casual listener can discern the roots of Chicago blues heard in the Delta blues recordings of the 1920s and 1930s eventually transformed into the electrified blues band that informed rock ’n’ roll when it emerged in the middle 1950s. For more about blues in general, please refer to the “African American Secular Folk Music” chapter.

  Gospel music also holds an important place in Chicago and was similarly fueled by the Great Migration. Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey, a former blues man who worked and recorded with guitarist Tampa Red in the late 1920s, is often hailed as the “Father” of modern gospel music. Dorsey helped to transform gospel music (see “African American Religious Folk Music” for further information), through his work as a composer and songbook publisher, as the person who helped to promote the choir movement and assisted in organizing black gospel groups not only in Chicago but across the country.

  As critical as Dorsey was in altering and promoting gospel music in Chicago, he did not stand alone. Kenneth Morris, an organist and significant composer, worked for many years at the First Church of Deliverance as a musician and choir director. Morris introduced the electric organ to gospel music while church member Sallie Martin formed the self-named Sallie Martin Singers in the late 1930s, which at one time included the well-known R&B singer Dinah Washington, then called Ruth Jones.

  In 1927 sixteen-year-old Mahalia Jackson moved to Chicago from her native New Orleans. She soon joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church and began touring the city’s churches and surrounding areas with the Johnson Gospel Singers, one of the earliest professional gospel groups. Two years later Jackson met Thomas A. Dorsey and by the mid-1930s they began a fourteen-year association of extensive touring, with Jackson singing Dorsey’s songs in church programs and at conventions. His heartfelt “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” became her signature song, which helped to promote both this song (and others) as well as the songbooks that he sold in person and through the mail.

  Born in Helena, Arkansas, in 1907, Roberta Martin moved to Chicago at the age of ten and began taking piano lessons. She thought about a career as a concert pianist until she took a job accompanying the Young People’s Choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she soon met the charismatic Dorsey. With his encouragement she and Theodore Frye organized the Martin-Frye Quartet, a mixed-gender youth group consisting of Eugene Smith, Norsalus McKissick, Robert Anderson, James Lawrence, Willie Webb, and Romance Watson, in 1933. Martin renamed the group the Roberta Martin Singers in 1936 and added Bessie Folk and Deloris Barrett Campbell to the group in the 1940s. Most of the songs composed by Martin, most notably “Only A Look” and “Try Jesus, He Satisfies,” were published by Roberta Martin Studio of Music (incorporated in Chicago in 1939), which would eventually publish works by significant gospel artists ranging from Professor Alex Bradford to James Cleveland. In addition to her work as a performer, composer, and songbook publisher, Martin also served as the choir director of the Pisgah Baptist Church in Chicago for nearly twenty years.

  The importance of gospel and blues music in Chicago suggests several trends that help to inform urban folk music across the country. The first relates to the transformation of rural traditions into more modern forms, particularly the evolution of acoustic delta blues into amplified Chicago blues. Second is the commodification of music from a community and racially based form with strong regional ties into one that commanded a place in the commercial marketplace including sound recordings, and live performances not only in Chicago but also around the world. Furthermore, some of these musicians—most notably Waters and Dorsey—now occupy iconic status as “founding fathers,” “pioneers,” and “innovators” whose works continue to directly inform the sound and direction of blues and gospel music and influence popular music trends, such as neo-soul.

  Muddy Waters, in particular, and blues, in general, remain the face of folk-based African American music in Chicago for many people. Once the domain of working-class black Americans who flocked to hear this music on Chicago’s Southside from the late 1930s into the 1960s
, blues now draws mostly white patrons from across the world in search of an “authentic blues experience.” They flock to clubs such as Buddy Guy’s Legends, Kingston Mines Chicago Blues, or Blue Chicago, most often to hear the house band belt out blues standards like “Sweet Home, Chicago.”

  SAN ANTONIO’S COUNTRY AND CONJUNTO TRADITIONS

  San Antonio (the second-largest city in Texas) boasts a folk and vernacular music that bears the strong flavor of immigrants moving north in search of a better life. In a city where country music of various flavors has long held sway, immigrants from south of the United States Mexican border have indelibly stamped the music found in San Antonio. Most notable are Latino musicians such as Tejano accordionist Flaco Jimenez, whose work draws from his fellow conjunto and norteno musicians, but who also boldly ventured into the rock and pop arenas. More about Hispanic vernacular music can be found in chapter 9.

  For decades San Antonio has been a destination city for south Texans as well as citizens of northern Mexico and became a majority Hispanic (or Latino) in the 1980s. Nonetheless, country music, often associated with western swing, has impacted the local music scene since the genre emerged in the 1930s. Adolph Hofner–born in 1916 in nearby Lavaca County, Texas, into a family of Czech-German origin—grew up listening and playing to Czech and Hawaiian music. His family moved to San Antonio around 1926 and within a few years Adolph, his younger brother Emil, together with Simon Garcia, formed the “Hawaiian Serenaders.” Inspired by the extremely popular Fort Worth–based Milton Brown and His Brownies, Hofner decided to set aside his Czech-German musical roots and joined Jimmie Revard’s Oklahoma Playboys. By 1938 he formed Adolph Hofner and His Texans, and continued to front bands in the western swing tradition until a 1993 stroke derailed his career. More about western swing can be found in the “Anglo-American Secular Folk Music” chapter.