Undoubtedly, Van Ronk was heavily indebted to black musicians, including blues, jazz and gospel artists including Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, and the Reverend Gary Davis, and it is great to have his recollections about those years generally and the songs on the record specifically. He writes with great humor and irony, as well as affection for his influences and confederates.
He also was quite honest, noting that, with "River, She Come Down," the tune was "the only song I ever wrote that made me any money, and I hate it." He considered the piece "as a guitar exercise" with lyrics consisting of "nonsensical doggerel." But when Peter, Paul and Mary covered the tune, renamed "Bamboo," for their debut album, it "sold seven trillion copies." Still, Van Ronk concluded, "I shared the royalties (and the chagrin)" with Dick Weissman, who came up with the chorus.
While Van Ronk also offered that he should have waited a year or two before recording the pieces and thought of the work "as a journeyman's progress report" who "starting to get the hang of it," the album is filled with some excellent fret work, distinctive singing, and potent mixtures of humor and activism. It wasn't more than a few years before folk was passed by in favor of rock (note Van Ronk's friend Bob Dylan's decision to go electric in 1965) and Van Ronk became something of a forgotten figure, though he remained active until his death in 2002 at age 65.
This album, though, is a potent reminder of what an immensely talented musician Dave Van Ronk was and it's great that the Smithsonian put this together after its absorption of the Folkways inventory.
No comments:
Post a Comment