Given a time machine one of the places high on my list to
visit would be Greenwich Village not quite fifty years ago.
My friend Ted White was a jazz critic back then--his eye
witness account of the fabled Charles Mingus 1962 Town Hall
concert is quoted in all the biographies--and he talks about
the days when Bob Dylan performed on street corners for tips.
Then Dylan's own CHRONICLES came out a couple of years ago
and paints a vivid picture of the days when he and Tiny Tim
took turns at clubs with open mikes.
Dylan tells of meeting Dave Van Ronk at Izzy Young's Folklore
Center which he called "the citadel of American folk music."
I highly recommend Dylan's 2004 CHRONICLES as a very
evocative memoir of that time and place.
Along with Izzy Young, another center piece was Lee Hoffman,
a science fiction fan who later became an award-winning
writer of westerns. At the time she was married to Larry
Shaw, who had edited Infinity Science Fiction and Suspect
Detective Stories magazines and was or soon would be editor
at Lancer Books. Years (and a wife) later Larry briefly
edited Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine--brief but long enough to
send me the nicest rejection letter I've ever received.
Shaw introduced Hoffman to the folk music scene and
eventually she started a publication called Cavaran for which
Van Ronk did a column as did John Brunner covering the
British scene. Lee died a few months ago but her memories of
that time are still to be found at: http://www.cvil.wustl.edu/~gary/Lee/bio-folknik.html
To tie this in to the Larry Block/Dave Van Ronk string, there
is this from Hoffman:
"One evening, Dave came by with Larry Block. While we were
gabbing one of us came up with a line or two of satire on a
union song. That immediately led to several satires such as
The Twelve Days of Marxmas and The Fink's Song. We decided
there should be a collection called The Bosses' Songbook.
Dave followed up by getting together with Dick Ellington and
actually producing a chapbook of the stuff we'd written that
evening and some satires that had been around a while. It
sold out so quickly that they developed a larger fancier
second edition."
A copy of that chapbook by Block and Van Ronk would now be a
very nice addition to any collection.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "ccpjlehane" <con@...>
wrote:
>
>
> One more fact of questionable value: the title of
Block's When the
Sacred Gin Mill Closes
> comes, if I remember correctly, from a Dave Van Ronk
song. And
while I'm at it, wouldn't
> every noir writer wish to change noir ... at least
just a little?
(I get behind in my email
> sometimes, so if this discussion ended a month ago,
I apologize).
>
> Con Lehane
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Tim Wohlforth
<timwohlforth@>
wrote:
> >
> > I would also add that the bar Block and Van
Ronk hung out in
was
> > right next to the Stonewall, made famous when
gays rebelled
against
> > police harassment. As Van Ronk told it, and he
liked to tell
tales,
> > he was there that night next door and joined in
the fight when
the
> > gays poured out of their bar. Van Ronk, in any
event was a bit
of a
> > romantic and an anarchist. Perhaps Block has in
his own way a
bit of
> > that spirit.
> > On Apr 1, 2007, at 4:48 PM, DJ-Anonyme@
wrote:
> >
> > > Didn't Block also write the introduction
to Van Ronk's recent,
> > > posthumous autobiography?
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > ps -- Van Ronk's is my favorite version of
Teddy Bear's
Picnic,
> > > though I
> > > think that's later in his career than this
Folkways set.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
> >
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 Apr 2007 EDT