I left for college (Oklahoma State University) in the fall
of 1972. The following year, I took an
elective class, unrelated to my major, which would have a profound effect on me
to this day. It was called The Geography
of Country Music—a sociology course taught by Dr. George Carney. God bless
you, George, for connecting me with my passion. I also taught myself to play
guitar that year, using an Lp instruction record I picked up somewhere and an
old pawnshop Kay guitar with f-holes.
In his class, I found my way into a whole new world of music:
from ancient British Isle ballads--locked up for safekeeping in Appalachia--to old-time hillbilly, fiddle and banjo music, to bluegrass and early
country music--before the Grand Old Opry was even old. And I learned of the
social forces and changes in our nation’s history that determined where music
migrated to.
And oh, the blues, and how that morphed, with European
instruments, into jazz, and how it all blended together like gumbo into rhythm and blues in
the ‘40’s before emerging, butterfly-like, into rock and roll in the ‘50’s. [it’s
ironic that rock & roll put so many performers of these ancestral genres
out of business for a number of years—Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Muddy
Waters—these guys couldn’t get gigs when rock & roll burst upon the scene!]
My new musical heroes were the Woody Guthrie’s and Pete
Seegers. And Pete’s brother, Mike, and his New Lost City Ramblers with their
academic fidelity to old-time string band music. And the Highwoods String Band,
the Fuzzy Mountain String Band, and the eclectic Red Clay Ramblers. There were hot
pickers like Norman Blake and Doc Watson. And blues guys like Robert Johnson,
Elmore James, and Brownie & Sonny. Jazz guys like Django. And all the bluegrass,
too. The year I started college, the borderline-hippie Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded
their historic sessions with many of the legends of country, folk, and
bluegrass music and released the Will The
Circle Be Unbroken album. I devoured it.
But the core of it, for me, was the folk music. The whole process of it. Pete Seeger is fond of
telling his story about jamming with Woody Guthrie and, even with traditional
songs (public domain), Pete was never sure which verses were the original ones
and which were ones that Woody added. And Woody thought this was the way it
should be--how new songs came to be. He once commented on another songwriter to Pete saying, “Oh, he just
stole from me, but I steal from everybody!”
Pete termed this “the folk process” of music evolution—a healthy, natural
cultural phenomenon. Like biological/ecological succession.
Pete helped to start Sing Out! Magazine in the 1960’s which is still published today. In each issue,
they would have the music and lyrics to new songs from the folk singers of the
day. Some of Bob Dylan’s iconic songs were first learned by baby boomer musicians
by leafing through the pages of Sing Out!. And that was the point: getting
people to sing the songs! And the songs were such a part of what the Sixties
cultural revolution was about. Music was the vehicle that moved the movements. Pete
Seeger dusted off an old hymn and offered it up at a civil rights gathering. Martin
Luther King loved it and We Shall
Overcome soon became the unofficial anthem of the movement.
On the weekends, in the college years, I played rhythm
guitar for old ranchers at the Old Time Fiddlers’ Association meetings in
Ripley, OK. I jammed with my new musical friends and even played in a coffeehouse
on campus with a couple of buds as The South Sea Drifters (we played folk and
bluegrass while dressed in Hawaiian shirts). We played whatever we liked—and whatever
we could pull off!
Flash forward a few decades: the band I now play in, the
Hogeye Ramblers, is having trouble finding a venue to play in because of some
strange legal issues involving performance rights to copyrighted music.
In my next post, I’ll share about how this simple folk
process of music performance and free sharing of songs has been corrupted (can
I say castrated?) by the same sort of corporate interests that alarm the
Occupy Wall Street folks and that caused a groundswell of reaction against the
SOPA/PITA legislation (i.e., regulating the internet in the name of copyright
infringement). I promise you, the music nazi’s are lurking in your town, too!
It threatens coffeehouse owners, restaurants, clubs and even yoga instructors
with hefty lawsuits. Those of you who know me well, know that I am not ordinarily
an alarmist or a loose cannon, but this is real. More to come …
PostScript: You
are more than welcome to visit the Hogeye Ramblers on YouTube but be
forewarned—some of the songs may involve copyright infringement over
performance rights! And for heaven’s sake, don’t let anyone see you tapping
your foot or, even worse, start singing the songs yourself …
