Blues & Folk Revival: Searching for the Legends
- Music History Hall
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
The Folk Music Scene
A new generation was coming of age in the 1950s and early 1960s. This new “silent” generation was dubbed the Beat Generation and gathered in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The Beat Movement started with a group of friends that included Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Folk singers of the era were influenced by Woody Guthrie and included Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan. The Gaslight Café was the main hangout.
Luckily for the world, a couple of people realized that down-home blues and traditional folk music from the 1930s and 1940s were important and fading fast. Preservationists like John and Alan Lomax and Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records took it upon themselves to record blues and folk artists – in the fields, in prisons, at family gatherings, and in the studio. They preserved blues and folk music.
Blues artists whose music was preserved include:
▪ Muddy Waters
▪ Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter
▪ Son House
▪ Memphis Slim
▪ “Sonny Boy” Williamson
▪ Big Bill Broonzy
▪ Lightnin’ Hopkins
▪ Mance Lipscomb
▪ Mississippi Fred McDowell
▪ Big Mama Thornton
▪ Big Joe Williams
▪ “Bukka” White
▪ Skip James
The Newport Folk Festival
The Newport Folk Festival was founded in 1959 by music promoter George Wein and prominent folk singers like Pete Seeger. It followed in the footsteps of the Newport Jazz Festival. Its mission was to promote and preserve American folk music.
Searching for the Blues
In the summer of 1964, two sets of college students set out on a pilgrimage to the South in search of forgotten blues musicians. One group was from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These students were obsessed with the recordings they had heard on old 78s. They were on a mission to find Son House. The second group was from Berkeley, California. They were searching for Skip James. The students braved danger to find the blues musicians they revered.
Son House and Skip James performed triumphantly at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. This special moment in time captured the long journey of the blues.
The blues finally received the respect it deserved.
