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Authors: Dave Van Ronk
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many of us had also had our share of run-ins with authoritarian, Stalinist die-hards in one group or another, and we knew them for the assholes they were. We of the non-Communist left, whether we were revolutionary socialists or anarchists or whatever the hell we were calling ourselves that week, felt that, as Trotsky once said, between ourselves and the Stalinists there was a river of blood. So even though we had a certain admiration for the singers who had stood up to the Red hunters, when you got right down to it we wanted very little to do with them. 8
Of course, there were some issues on which we and the Communists formed common cause. We all opposed the blacklist, for example. But even there, our situations were quite different. The singers who had made a name for themselves in the 1940s had national reputations and careers as nightclub and concert artists, and the blacklist was a direct threat to their livelihoods. Pete Seeger had been cited for contempt of Congress and had a sentence of I don’t know what hanging over his head. So that generation was very hard beset and very scared. If the American Legion got word of a performance by someone who had been cited as a Communist or a Communist sympathizer in Red Channels or some other blacklisting publication—and a lot of people
got cited who had only the vaguest left-wing tendencies—there might very well be a picket line of legionnaires out in front of the place. If it was a nightclub, that sort of publicity could shut the place down, since even if they only booked that performer for a week, people would remember the pickets and be nervous about being seen there. If some group tried to rent a hall for a Pete Seeger concert in Akron, Ohio, or someplace like that, whoever owned the hall was likely to get a phone call saying, “Did you know that you’re renting your hall to the Communist blah, blah, blah?” and all of a sudden the deposit would be returned. That kind of harassment was going on all the time, both from government agencies and from self-appointed vigilantes.
Those of us in the younger generation, though, had essentially nothing to lose. We didn’t have to worry about somebody pulling a concert hall out from under us, because no one in his right mind would have put us in a concert hall in the first place. We opposed the blacklist for ideological reasons, but it had no effect on our musical careers, because we had no musical careers. So in a sense, the justifiable paranoia that was common in some sectors of the folk music field in the 1950s left us pretty much untouched. In the long run, that was a good thing because it meant we were not cowed. Some of the older performers—Josh White, for example—got to feeling, “Once burned, twice careful,” and tended to shy away from anything that might be construed as political. We were very open about our radicalism, and when the Civil Rights Movement and the antiwar movement came along in the 1960s, we jumped in with both feet. Had we gone through what the older generation went through in the 1950s, I wonder if we would have been quite so gung ho. But I am getting ahead of myself.
4
Washington Square and Beyond
B y 1956 or so, I had worked out the basics of fingerpicking and become a regular at Washington Square. That was the golden age for that particular scene, because a whole new generation of us was coming in but it had not yet gotten so big that it was out of hand.
The regular Sunday musical get-togethers had actually started sometime in the mid-1940s when a few friends took to meeting in the park for loose song sessions. These had grown until the police began taking notice and there were all sorts of arguments, leading eventually to an inner core of musicians arranging to get regular permits. Naturally, a lot of us despised the idea of needing an official permit, but it did have one advantage: the rule was that everyone was allowed to sing and play from two until five as long as they had no
Of course, there were some issues on which we and the Communists formed common cause. We all opposed the blacklist, for example. But even there, our situations were quite different. The singers who had made a name for themselves in the 1940s had national reputations and careers as nightclub and concert artists, and the blacklist was a direct threat to their livelihoods. Pete Seeger had been cited for contempt of Congress and had a sentence of I don’t know what hanging over his head. So that generation was very hard beset and very scared. If the American Legion got word of a performance by someone who had been cited as a Communist or a Communist sympathizer in Red Channels or some other blacklisting publication—and a lot of people
got cited who had only the vaguest left-wing tendencies—there might very well be a picket line of legionnaires out in front of the place. If it was a nightclub, that sort of publicity could shut the place down, since even if they only booked that performer for a week, people would remember the pickets and be nervous about being seen there. If some group tried to rent a hall for a Pete Seeger concert in Akron, Ohio, or someplace like that, whoever owned the hall was likely to get a phone call saying, “Did you know that you’re renting your hall to the Communist blah, blah, blah?” and all of a sudden the deposit would be returned. That kind of harassment was going on all the time, both from government agencies and from self-appointed vigilantes.
Those of us in the younger generation, though, had essentially nothing to lose. We didn’t have to worry about somebody pulling a concert hall out from under us, because no one in his right mind would have put us in a concert hall in the first place. We opposed the blacklist for ideological reasons, but it had no effect on our musical careers, because we had no musical careers. So in a sense, the justifiable paranoia that was common in some sectors of the folk music field in the 1950s left us pretty much untouched. In the long run, that was a good thing because it meant we were not cowed. Some of the older performers—Josh White, for example—got to feeling, “Once burned, twice careful,” and tended to shy away from anything that might be construed as political. We were very open about our radicalism, and when the Civil Rights Movement and the antiwar movement came along in the 1960s, we jumped in with both feet. Had we gone through what the older generation went through in the 1950s, I wonder if we would have been quite so gung ho. But I am getting ahead of myself.
4
Washington Square and Beyond
B y 1956 or so, I had worked out the basics of fingerpicking and become a regular at Washington Square. That was the golden age for that particular scene, because a whole new generation of us was coming in but it had not yet gotten so big that it was out of hand.
The regular Sunday musical get-togethers had actually started sometime in the mid-1940s when a few friends took to meeting in the park for loose song sessions. These had grown until the police began taking notice and there were all sorts of arguments, leading eventually to an inner core of musicians arranging to get regular permits. Naturally, a lot of us despised the idea of needing an official permit, but it did have one advantage: the rule was that everyone was allowed to sing and play from two until five as long as they had no
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