American Routes: The Folk Revival and Social Protest 
@ Emory
Social Protest and the Folk Revival
Part I: The Depression Era in the Rural U. S.
What was the Great Depression?
“Big Rock Candy Mountain” Harry McClintock, 1928, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles. Victor. McClintock’s classic composition, which versifies the fabulous tales the seasoned hobo told the prospective young neophyte to lure him into companionship, had entered folk tradition long before this first recording of it; in fact, by the 1920s, Mac’s claims of authorship seemed scarcely believable. In 1945, Burl Ives’ Decca recording introduced the song to a new generation and made it an early folk revival favorite.
Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) 
Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives
All of the songs above were written and sung by Woody Guthrie and recorded in New York City in 1940. Source: Woody Guthrie:Dust Bowl Ballads (Buddha Records, 2000)
“So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You” Guthrie wrote this song around 1936 when he was living in the oil-boom town of Pampa, Texas. It remains one of his best-known compositions, thanks largely to the Weavers’ hit recording of 1951. Recorded at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., 1940.
Part II: The U. S. Folksong Revival
American song scholar Norm Cohen defines the “folk song revival” as the “‘discovery,’ by sophisticated, culture-conscious urban artists of traditional, generally American folk music, and its presentation by those artists to audiences of similar social background. This consitituted the early core of the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. The revival did not exclude genuinely traditional folk artists performing at college campuses and folk song festivals; in fact, at times the role of the traditional perfomer was highly significant. But when we examine the broad spectrum of the revival, from the festival stage to the Top Forty charts, we see that the dominant contribution came from the urban singers of folk song, not from the traditional folk singers themselves. As the folk song revival matured, singers turned from the re-creation of the traditional songs of an older, primarily rural culture to the composition of their own songs in the style of those older folk songs.
Hudson “Huddie” Ledbetter (ca. 1888-1949), from Louisiana, first sang for John and Alan Lomax’s microphone while still a prison inmate in 1933. He awed the Lomaxes with his extensive repertoire of folk songs, his powerful voice, and his driving twelve-string guitar playing. Freed from the Angola State Farm in August 1934, he accompanied the Lomaxes as their chauffeur on some of their field trips. He proved adept at learning songs from a wide variety of sources and adding them to his immense storehouse. Two Folkways recordings by Leadbelly: “Rock Island Line” 1942 and “Goodnight Irene” 1943.
In 1950, Pete Seeger’s folksong quartet, the Weavers, made “Goodnight Irene” the most popular song of the year.
“Swing Down, Chariot” Golden Gate Quartet, 1947. By 1937, the Golden Gate Quartet was one of a few groups of black gospel singers who, through weekly broadcasts on NBC, spread a polished style of religious music to a national audience. Alan Lomax took the quartet under his wing and arranged radio programs and concerts for them in the context of American folk music. They did for religious music what groups like the Ink Spots and the Mills Borthers did for secular. They were widely imitated, but popularity did not keep them from relocationg in 1959 in Europe, where, like many other black musicians, they were accepted with open arms.
“Black Is the Color” Jo Stafford, 1948. Capitol. Orchestra conducted by Paul Weston. Californian Jo Stafford (b. 1920) learned folk songs from her banjo-playing mother. The Stafford Sisters Tiro had their first radio job in 1935 with old-time musicians, the Crockett Family of Kentucky, in Hollywood. Through the 1940s, Jo turned out many pop hit records, sang with various big bands, and headlined her own radio shows. “Black Is the Color” is a traditional ballad.
"Black Is the Color" ——– Nina Simone —-Verve Remixed (2008). 
Anthology of American Folk Music . Edited by artist and collector Harry Smith (1923-1991), the influential Anthology was originally issued in 1952 in three volumes of two LPs each for a total of eighty-four tracks. The Anthology played an important role in the folk music revival and has influenced fans, ethnomusicologists, music historians, and cultural critics; it has inspired generations of popular musicians such as Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia. (Reissued on six compact discs by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1997. Volume four was issued in 2000 by Revenant/The Harry Smith Archives.)
“Jamaica Farewell” Harry Belafonte, 1956. RCA. Belefonte (b. 1927) was the son of Jamaican and Martiniquan parents who was educated in his early years in Jamaica. In 1950 he began singing in earnest, specializing in folk songs in New York’s Greenwich Village. For RCA, he was the first singer to achieve major success through LP albums rather than singles. The calypso craze spurred by Belafonte’s success with “Banana Boat Song” and “Jamaica Farewell” offered a highly domesticated version of that traditional Jamaican music. Mostly written by Americans, the songs lacked the trenchant political and topical content of genuine calypso music but capitalized on its rhythms and instrumentations, using Caribbean place-names for authentic flavor. Belafonte offered a courageous presence at countless rallies and marches of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as financial support.
“Another Man Done Gone” Odetta, 1956. San Francisco. Alabama-born (1930) Odetta Holmes grew up in Los Angeles, where she sang and acted on the stage. Her albums on the Tradition label followed a very successful stint at Chicago’s Gate of Horn nightclub. Odetta probably learned this song, about a convict’s escape from the chain gang, from the rendition by Vera Hall, an Alabama Black Belt singer (see her "Trouble So Hard" on the Roots and Routes page of the course website) recorded in 1940 by John Lomax and his wife, Ruby Tartt Lomax, for the Library of Congress and issued on one of the first Archive of American Folk Song releases in 1942.
“If I Had My Way” Gary Davis, 1958. Carnegie Hall, New York. Folkways. Born in South Carolina, Gary Davis (1896-1972) was ordained a Baptist minister when he was thirty-three. He made his first recordings in 1935 as Blind Gary, and until very late in life he recorded almost exclusively religous songs to his own guitar accompaniment. ) After moving to New York about 1940, he sang on street corners, developing a hoarse, powerful singing voice and an astonishing guitar virtuosity to suit such an uncongenial venue. The great gospel singer Blind Willie Johnson recorded this song in 1927. (For more on Davis, see Piedmont page.)
“Tom Dooley” Kingston Trio, 1958. Capitol. Dave Guard, vocal, guitar; Nick Reynolds, vocal, guitar; Bob Shane, vocal, banjo; Buzz Wheeler, bass. "Tom Dooley" was a local North Carolina ballad, probably never sung outside the state before the late 1920s and only rarely after that until 1958. The popularizers of this ballad were not traditional North Carolina folk singers, nor were they long-haried, sandaled imitators of traditional singers; they were business administration students from elite colleges who sported neat crew cuts and button-down Ivy League sport shirts. The Kingston Trio opened up the world of folk music to an audience well beyond the political activists and social rebels and created the possibility for polished, edited, and refined "folk" songs to become pop hits.
Twenty-five-year-old Thomas C. Dula was hanged on May 1868 for the murder of Laura Foster in Wilkes County, NC. Before the Civil War, Tom had been more than friendly with both Laura and her cousin Ann Foster. After returning home from the war, he took up again with Laura, although she had been courted by Bob Cummins. Ann, meanwhile, had maried James Melton. In May 1866 Tom suggested eloping, and Laura was not seen again. The grief-stricken Cummins combed the countryside until he found Dula in Tennessee and brought him back a prisoner. Dula and Ann Melton were tried for murder (by some accounts, he had contracted a veneral disease from Laura and passed it on to Ann). Dula was found guilty; he appealed, was retried, and found guilty a second trime. Ann Melton was acquitted after two years in jail waiting for trial, but according to local legend she confessed on her deathbed.
Though there had been earlier recordings of “Tom Dooley,” the ultimate source of the Kingston Trio’s version was North Carolina folk singer Frank Profitt. Profitt had sung it in 1938 for collector Frank Warner, who popularized it in New York folk-singing cirlcles in the 40s and gave it to Alan Lomax, who published it in Folk Song, USA (1947). The first folk revival recording of the song, and probably the Kingston Trios immediate source was made by; the Folksay Trio for Stinson in the early 1950s.
“Pastures of Plenty” Cisco Houston, 1960. Though born (1918) in Delaware, Gilbert “Cisco” Houston spent most of his youth on the West Coast, learning folk tunes from family members. During the depression he took to bumming around and met Woody Guthrie in Los Angeles. The two became fast friends, and Houston soon got involved in the musical activities of Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and their associates. He recorded, alone or with others, for Moe Asch’s various labels and then for Vanguard. “Pastures of Plenty,” was one of the songs Woody Guthrie wrote during his 1941 employment by the Bonneville Power Administration. He borrowed the tune from an old Anglo-American murder ballad, “Pretty Polly.”
“Walk Right In” Rooftop Singers, 1963. Erik Darling, Bill Svanoe, vocals, twelve string guitars; Lynne Taylor, vocal; Wendell Marshall, bass; Bobby Donaldson, drum. Erik Darling (b. 1933) had founded the Tarriers, replaced Pete Seeger in the Weavers, put out solo albums of his own, and accompanied many other singers on banjo or guitar by the time he formed the Rooftop Singers in 1962. He learned “Walk Right In” from a 1929 recording by Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers (see the Memphis web page) and immediately decided to form a group to record the piece.
“Little Boxes”—— Pete Seeger, 1963. Seeger, whose own compositions include “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Bells of Rhymney,” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” and who introduced America to “Wimoweh,” “Michael (Row the Boat Ashore),” and “Guantanamera,” should finally have broken into the pop music charts with a song written by someone else. Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes,” written in 1962 when she was sixty-two, was first published in Broadside magazine in 1963. Seeger’s Columbia single was released that year and made it to number seventy in the first week of 1964. Reynolds, who lived in the San Francisco Bay area, began writing topical songs in the 1930s. Her well known songs include “What Have They Done with the Rain.” “Turn Around,” about a young child growing up all too quicly before its parents’ wondering eyes, was one of her most touching songs.
Now That the Buffalo’s Gone”——– Buffy Sainte-Marie, 1964.
“There but for Fortune”——– Phil Ochs, 1964.
Part III: Struggle for Racial Justice
“Keep Your Hand on the Plow” Montgomery [Alabama] Improvement Association trio of high school students: Mary Ethel Dozier, Minnie Hendrick, Gladys Burnette Carter. Recorded in 1960 by Guy and Candie Carawan. Source: Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs (Smithsonian Folkways CD SF40032, 1990).
“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” Same trio as “Keep Your Hand . . . ” Source: Sing for Freedom.
“We Will Overcome” Joe Glazer and the Elm City Four, 1950. New York. CIO Dept. of Education and Research. New York-born Glazer (1918) was education director for two unions after ocmpleting college, then worked for the U. S. Information AGency as a labor specialist. In the 1940s he began writing his own union and protest songs and performing them, along with traditional songs, to his own guitar accompaniment at union meetings, political dinners, and civil rights rallies. “We Will Overcome,” recorded in Glazer’s first album, had been adapted as a labor song by black members of the striking Food and Tobacco Workers’ Association in Charleston, SC, in 1946 and brought by them to the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Their source was a gospel song written in 1901 by Charles Albert Tindley, “I’ll Overcome Someday.” At Highlander, Zilphia Horton, wife of director Miles Horton, taught “We Will Overcome” to other students, adding new verses of her own. Glazer learned the song from a southern textile worker who had moved to New York after hearing it at Highlander. Guy Carawan heard it while working at Highlander and wrote new words that made it the civil rights anthem. Many other union songs, including some by the Almanac Singers, were based on older spirituals and hymns.
“We Shall Overcome” Guy and Candie Carawan lead a freedom struggle reunion at the Highlander Center, New Market, Tennessee, 1989. Source: Sing for Freedom.
“Blowin’ in the Wind” 1963. Columbia. Although Dylan’s own recording of his 1962 composition, released in May 1963, did not make the charts, recordings by Peter, Paul, and Mary (1963) and Stevie Wonder (1966) did.
Routes from the Folk Song Revival :
“Ballad of Ira Hayes” Patrick Sky, 1965. Vanguard. Though the folk revival was largely a middle-class WASP phonomenon, there were some representatives of other ethnic traditions. Patrick Sky, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Peter LaFarge spoke for Native Americans. Sky was born (1940) of Creek ancestry, near Atlanta. He early developed an interest in folk music, and performed with Sainte-Marie for several years in the eary 1960s. On the strength of his accompaniment on her debut album, he was offered a recording contract. The “Ballad of Ira Hays” was written by Peter LaFarge (ca. 1931-65) a Pima Indian whose father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Oliver LaFarge. Peter developed an interest in folk music very early and learned much from his friend Cisco Houston. This song, about a Native American who helped to raise the flag at Iwo Jima during World War II, was published in Broadside in August 1962; in 1964, Johnny Cash’s recording of itmade number three on Billboard’s country-western charts.
“Mr. Tambourine Man” The Byrds, 1965.
“Scarborough Fair/Canticle” Simon and Garfunkel, 1966.
“I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin’-to-Die Rag” Country Joe and the Fish, 1967
“On the Road Again” Canned Heat, 1968.
“I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill” Joan Baez, 1969.
"When You Awake" – – – – The Band, 1969.
“Amazing Grace” Judy Collins, 1970.
“The City of New Orleans” Steve Goodman, 1972.
“Corinna” Taj Mahal, 1972.
Hejira – – – – Joni Mitchell, 1976. LYRICS. 
"In the Morning When I Rise," Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Sources: Unless otherwise noted, recordings and information for this page are taken from Norm Cohen, Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival, (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Collection of Recordings, 1990). Other helpful written sources include The Encyclopedia of Country Music (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998; Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Harvard Univ. Press, 1996); Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000).