WEBVTT - Joe Boyd 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:13.119 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Repsetts Podcast. My 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:17.599 guest today is Joe Boy, who has a new comprehensive 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.760 book on world music entitled In the Roots of Rhythm 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.120 remained Joe, Why this book? Why now? 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:30.880 Well? I wrote a book seventeen years ago called White 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:35.640 Bicycles Making Music in the nineteen sixties, and people would 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:37.800 ask me, so, when is the book on the nineteen 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:43.080 seventies coming, And I said never. I really didn't enjoy 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:45.840 the seventies. I have nothing really good to say about 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.760 the seventies. And the thing they kept nagging at me 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:57.040 was the fact that there's so many great books about 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:02.920 the music popular music of America, Britain, the Anglo American 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:07.160 whatever you know, from jazz to pop music to R 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:12.240 and B to country Peter Garounick Nick Toosh's, you know, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:17.479 these great figures, but very little about all the music 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.520 from far away that has had such a huge impact 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:26.120 on our culture. And I just felt like, yeah, I 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.320 love that stuff. I love those stories, I love those characters, 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:32.560 and I had a vision. It was sort of there 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:34.560 are a few things that it kind of nagged at me, 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:42.360 all the misunderstandings that existed in America and Britain over Graceland, 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.400 how little people understood about the South African culture that 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.560 have produced that music. And I felt that was a 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:56.360 good example of the kind of thing that would be 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.880 fun to tell in the story. And then, you know, I, 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.360 as I talk in the preface, I've been always fascinated 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:07.960 by the way that Afro Cuban rhythms have crept into 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:12.720 American popular music, whether it's Dizzy Gillespie or Save the 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:17.800 Last Dance for Me, and what the backstory of that is, 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.840 which is just so fascinating. And I just thought, Okay, 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:24.360 those are two great hooks to start this book on. 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:27.519 And I didn't realize it. We can take me seventeen years, 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:32.040 but I got started and I just didn't stop until 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:32.519 I finished. 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:37.720 Okay, the book is very comprehensive in six hundred plus pages. 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.040 At some point, did you say I'm writing the comprehensive, 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:43.359 definitive book. 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:48.440 Well, I mean it's not really comprehensive and definitive in 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:52.760 the sense that it's quite a personal selection of what 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.440 I like, stories, I like, music I like, and there's 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:58.560 a lot of great music from around the world that 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.440 I don't even mention, you know, there's not even a 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:07.560 look in for Greek rebetico music, or Portuguese fato or 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:14.720 Souse Islands music, or Peruvian Andean music. But my criteria 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.960 was that I would stick to the hits, the music 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:23.520 which had really had an impact in Western so called 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:31.240 Western culture, meaning salsa, samba, reggae, so called gypsy music, 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.200 you know, all that the stuff that people know but 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:37.720 don't know the backstory. 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.960 Well, the book is broken down by region, and you 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.440 mentioned Graceland at first. You talk about Zulu and Graceland. 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.160 Can you tell us some of the misconceptions people have 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:48.680 about that. 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:54.840 Well, there were a few. I think the biggest one 0:03:54.880 --> 0:04:00.520 to me was that when people embraced this record, which 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:02.760 they was quite right that they should. It's such a 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:10.160 wonderful record, and they felt this affection for this black 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.360 South African culture, and in a way it was kind 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.880 of in defiance of the white South Africans who were 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:23.480 imposing this imparti system who had imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Everybody 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:28.400 wanted Mandela freed from prison, and it became almost I 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:30.599 felt at the time, there was almost a feeling that 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.560 buying a Ladysmith Black Mombaso record was a way of 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:42.560 showing solidarity with the ANC and with Nelson Mandela. But 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.000 I knew a lot about South Africa and its politics, 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.760 and I knew that it wasn't like that that. In fact, 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:53.640 Ladysmith Black Mombaso is Zulu music, and the Zulus were 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.760 very much at war with the A and C. They 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:00.320 were being armed by the South African government to fight 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:08.760 the ANC, and most young ANC comrades preferred funk and disco. 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:15.920 They thought English lyrics were modern and progressive and Zulu 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:21.760 lyrics were regressive and tribal. And so there was a 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.640 kind of a disconnect between what we in the Northern 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:30.640 hemisphere felt about this music and what was really happening. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.200 And you know, that was one thing, and then there were, 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:38.159 you know, lots of other things, including all this fuss 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:41.280 about the breaking of the boycott. Everybody was upset. A 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:46.240 lot of people were upset with Paul Simon, but nobody 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:51.400 ever said boo about Athol Fuguard and all the great 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.320 plays that were running on Broadway and in the West End. 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.520 There were productions from the Market Theater in Johannesburg with 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:04.200 South African actors white and black, just like Graceland you know, 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.479 and nobody ever criticized that. So anyway, those are a 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.200 few of my little actses I had to grind as 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:12.279 I embarked on this. 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.080 Okay, we live in an era where they do a 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:20.719 TV special and the past is looked at through new eyes, 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.159 not only would TV series but other So now it's 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:30.640 almost forty years after Graceland. Do you think this imprimature, 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:35.960 This perception of Paul Simon going to South African ripping 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:38.800 off the culture still persists or what is the decades 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:42.360 that have ensued changed the perception of this record. 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.120 Well, I was a bit shocked when I mean, we're 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.680 not talking about twenty twenty four now, but if we 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.640 talk about I think it was around twenty ten there 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:59.159 was a documentary film about the making of Graceland. I 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.240 think it was called Under African Skies or something and 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.400 Paul actually the filmmaker got Paul to sit down with 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:09.920 somebody from the ANC and talk about the boycott by 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:12.400 you know, the whole thing, and the guy from the 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:18.920 A and C all these years later was still very hostile, 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:26.920 very bitter, very antagonistic towards Paul about what he had done. 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:31.040 And I think, you know, there are still people who 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:35.600 have that feeling about him. But I think, you know, 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:40.119 the fact is that Graceland is a phenomenon. I write 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:45.640 in the book about going to see the Reunion tour 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.440 when it came to Hyde Park in London and two 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:54.440 thousand and twelve was it? I think, and walking through 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:58.480 this vast crowd, tens of thousands of people, hundreds of 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:06.720 thousands of people, everybody mouthing or singing the words, twenty somethings, 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:14.120 fifty somethings, teenagers, sixty somethings. You know, it just covered 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:19.600 all shades. And I think it's a good lesson about 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:23.160 the power of music that can is. That's why it 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:26.440 makes a lot of dictators and a lot of governments nervous, 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:31.480 because it transcends anything they can say against it. People 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:33.559 either love it or they don't, you know, And people 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:34.400 love that record. 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:41.000 Okay, this theme you see in the book where people 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:46.520 go to get a sound and like you say, you know, 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.800 the Zulus were playing this music, but the anc is 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:54.080 more than funk, etc. So what can you tell us 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.400 around the world where there's an authentic sound, yet the 0:08:57.440 --> 0:08:59.880 people who are living there have moved into a more 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:00.839 modern zone. 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:04.679 Well, one of the best examples, in a way, is 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:12.160 in our own backyard. I remember being very conscious as 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:16.600 a teenager who was obsessed with blues. I started collecting 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:21.120 blues records when I was about eleven or twelve, and 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:28.480 it soon became clear that African American audiences had no 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:33.719 use for blues. You know, right, radio stations in Chicago 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.000 that in the late forties and the early fifties have 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:40.400 been playing Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf were no longer 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:44.920 playing Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. And there was a 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:51.600 feeling that it was old fashioned. And there's a sense 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:55.480 that I get through much of the book. It's not 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:59.760 always it's not a universal truism, but it's a trend. 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:09.000 You can see that most cultures, particularly in poorer countries, 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:13.800 developing parts of what used to be called developing countries 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:19.600 in the world, love modernity. They want to be modern. 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:25.440 Modernity is a way out of the poverty, the backwardness, 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:31.320 the limitations on life that has been a hallmark of 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:36.959 their cultures. Whereas the middle class in the West has 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.040 seen enough of the future, they don't really necessarily like 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.240 the future so much. They're worried about social media, they're 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:47.200 worried about pollution. They're worried about, you know, all these 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.160 things that the modern world has brought. And they seek 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:55.199 out natural fibers, they seek out organic food, they seek 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:59.120 out authenticity wherever they can find it, and they seek 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:06.360 out roots music. And there's a disconnect sometimes between the 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:10.920 cultures that are seeking to modernize. There's a there's an 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.800 there's a moment I talk about in the Africa chapter 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.520 where this guy that I know who's a wonderful guy 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.880 who teaches music at the University of Akra and Ghana 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:30.640 and he specializes in highlight. He's written wonderful books about 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:39.360 high life music. And by the late eighties, none of 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:43.880 his students, none of the youth of Ghana had any 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.320 time for high life. And there was a kind of 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.040 big concert in the main square and they had before 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.839 the hip hop started, before the rap started. They had 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.960 a kind of oldies group of high life stars and 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:02.440 people through rocks, people through stuff and got them off stage. 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:07.240 The crowd was very hostile, and he went to one 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:10.120 of his students and he asked him to explain this, 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:16.440 and the students said, what has high life ever given us? 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:21.440 What is that tradition, that old way of this society. 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.920 The way it was, we end up with no job 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:33.640 prospects were very poor. As a country. Tradition just stifles us. 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:40.120 So why should we like traditional music? They loved the 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:46.600 cheapest Casio drum machine, hip hop and because it sounded 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:51.360 modern and it was implicitly rejecting the past. 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:54.760 Okay, I want to do a little cleanup work. You say, 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.160 essentially you have no time for the seventies, although some 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:01.040 of your greatest success producing records were in the seventies. 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.360 Shoot Out the Lights Nick. 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:07.680 Drake album eighties. That was eighties shoot Out the Lights eighties, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:09.800 Nick Drake sixties. 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:14.239 Okay, well, let me instead of instead of you correcting 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:17.400 me where I'm wrong, sorry, which I know which I am, 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:20.120 let me just make it simple. Why do you have 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:21.319 no time for the seventies? 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.640 I guess in terms of writing, I mean, obviously I 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:29.680 had a lot of good times in the seventies. I 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:32.440 made some records that I'm very proud of, Midnight at 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.640 the Oasis, the McGarrigle sisters took some of the may towles. 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:42.440 But I struggled the whole time. I was sort of 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:45.680 my own life was torn between trying to be a 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:49.840 film producer. I've made a documentary about Jimmy Hendrix in 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:54.280 nineteen seventy two, and I thought that made me a 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:59.920 film producer, and I started developing projects, real dramas, you know, 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:10.040 and it was totally frustrating, and I never got anywhere 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:14.960 with any of them. And look is standing back and 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.160 looking at the arc of our culture, musical culture, and 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:23.760 the way music and culture interacted. I h the thing 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.040 that stands out for me about the seventies, particularly the 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.200 late the end of the seventies, the climax of that 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:37.440 decade was disco and punk, which were kind of implicit 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:41.720 in their nature or in many of the spokesmen for 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:48.240 those types of music was a rebuke to the hippie 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:50.520 music that I had been part of. You know, they 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:56.320 were sort of against psychedelia. They were against the kind 0:14:56.320 --> 0:15:00.560 of virtuosity of you know, all the great groups from 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:06.240 the late sixties, early seventies, you know people. You know, 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:11.840 there was a kind of fetish for the machine beat 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.120 of disco, for the anonymous sex that it kind of 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:21.720 was a soundtrack for. And punk was you know, they 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.840 hated anything to do with you know, kind of great 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:32.080 long guitar solos, or great saxophone solos, or delving into 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.880 the roots of rhythm and blues and writing songs around that. 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.000 So I didn't feel that I had a connection that 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.280 would lead to a nice book. You know, I didn't 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:50.040 have a story to tell in the sixties. You know, 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.560 my story in the sixties of being a fan of 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:58.520 folk music and blues and jazz, and then getting to 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.800 work at Newport and being there when Dylan went electric, 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.880 and then producing Pink Floyd and running the UFOL Club. 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.720 This was all part of the story of the era. 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.640 So my story had a kind of resonance. But I 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.920 thought in the seventies my story was completely out of 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:19.320 tune with what was happening. 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:32.680 Okay, you're highly educated, you went to Harvard. Just speaking 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.880 with you, you're an intellectual. I'm going to be point 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:39.400 blank here. This tends to be a dumb business. They're 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.440 more smart people actually who are making records. But there 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.360 are a lot of people uneducated who are just sort 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.760 of channeling God. As they say, you have all these theories. 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:53.320 Who do you talk to that can talk on this level? 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:57.520 Well, hopefully everybody who reads the book. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:16:59.680 I'm telling you about your everyday life. Yes, you've done 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:00.720 a great thing with the book. 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.680 Come on, every so many people that I've worked with, 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.880 most people I worked with, I can have great conversations with. 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:09.560 I mean, I can't tell you. 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:10.160 I used to. 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:15.639 Spend hours on the phone in the late seventies and 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:19.200 the early eighties and even in the nineties with Kate McGarrigle. 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:24.560 You know who's Rufus Wainwright's mom. She and I both 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:29.199 loved reading history, and she was a huge fan of 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:34.280 books of history, and you know she I'm particularly Canadian history, 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.840 you know, and she turned me on to great writers 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:42.719 of history about the missionaries heading west across the Great Lakes, 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:47.240 and the fur trappers and the discovery of the Mississippi Basin, 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.119 which I use in this book. You know, some of 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:54.920 those things started in those conversations with Kate McGarrigle. Richard Thompson, 0:17:56.160 --> 0:18:00.159 you know, he's a very thoughtful guy. He's a very 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:05.679 uh you know he he you know, he's pursued a 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:10.920 lot of spiritual quests in his life through Sufi'sism and 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:14.320 things like this, and he can talk to you about 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.439 Duke Ellington and Django rein Hart and what it all means. 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:27.720 And I don't know. I mean, I think, uh, I've 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:34.679 always found musicians to be very thoughtful people, and I 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:38.479 think particularly I mean one musician who I have huge 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.960 admiration for that I'm the one musician that I ever 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:47.880 felt frustrated because we could never get a real conversation 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:52.879 going was Tutz Hibbert. When I worked with him and 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:56.600 I went to see him in live performances in years afterwards, 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:03.199 I'd go back backstage and you know, he he I 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.320 don't know what it was. I mean, I think he's 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:13.480 smoked a lot, but his lyrics demonstrate such an extraordinary 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:19.240 intelligence and emotional intelligence and sort of sensitivity to nuance 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:24.199 and personal relationships. But I could never reach him on 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.000 that level in a kind of one to one conversation. 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.920 But you know Haesus Alamanni who was the leader of Cubanesemo, 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:38.000 or taj Mahal or Toumani Diabate, or you know people 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:45.680 like that, or you know that those artists were people 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.080 that I could sit down and have a drink with 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:52.879 and talk to endlessly about music, and not just in 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:58.520 the kind of limited or surface kind of way. I 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.200 would say, all of them are intelligent people. 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:05.440 Okay, let me do another clean up you talk about 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:09.159 collecting blues records at age eleven and twelve. You know, 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.720 there's the blues revival when you're in college and people 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.880 talk about looking up the old blues men in the 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.760 phone book who might be doing something other than playing music. 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:23.240 Eleven and twelve. How did you get turned on to 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:24.119 blues music? 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:29.359 Well, it was an extraordinary event, one of those lucky 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:36.600 moments in my life. I had two grandmothers, obviously, like everybody. 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:43.280 One grandmother, my father's mother, had been a concert pianist 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:47.440 when she was young, and then taught concert pianists later 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.600 on in her life, and had studied in Europe and 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:53.760 lived in Berlin and Vienna and all this. And she 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:59.800 was very musical, but she had no interest in anything 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.760 but classical music. I could never talk to her about 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:09.400 jazz or popular music. My other grandmother, my mother's mother, 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:17.520 knew nothing about music, didn't care, didn't listen, but she 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.240 was aware that I, or I think my mother had 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.879 told her how much I loved music, and that I 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:26.480 was sort of listening to my mother's record She had 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:33.000 Carmen Miranda and Edith Paff records and stuff HM and 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:37.119 so one birthday or Christmas, I can't remember which. My 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:40.439 mother's mother went into a record store and said, I 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:44.200 have a grandson who likes music. I think it's kind 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:47.600 of jazz or something like that that he likes. What 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:52.040 have you got? And so he handed her this record 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:57.480 called the RCA Encyclopedia of Classic Jazz. It was one 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:00.240 single disc. She packed it up, said it to me, 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:08.320 it's an unbelievable record. It has Sugarfoot stomps Fletcher Henderson, 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:11.720 it has Black and Tan Fantasy by Duke Ellington, it 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:17.720 has a great Armstrong track, it has a great Sydney 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:21.399 Beschet track. And in the middle of all these great 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:26.439 jazz tracks, as I played through the second side, like 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:31.200 track three or track four, all of a sudden, it's 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:40.119 sleepy John Estes working Man Blues. And I was just staggered. 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:45.800 I'd never heard of anything like it. I played it 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:51.399 over and over again, and you know, I started listening 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:54.760 to Led Belly and I started listening to you know, 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:56.800 there were not that many records around, but there was 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:02.280 Led Belly was around, and I don't know Barbara Dane 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:04.399 and I don't know there were people like that in 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:08.520 the mid fifties that where you could pierce the you know, 0:23:08.760 --> 0:23:11.239 pull back the curtain a little bit into blues. And 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:16.240 then it just expanded as I went along, you know, 0:23:17.160 --> 0:23:19.960 the ripples spread out, and I got more and more 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:25.159 understanding of what this music represented. And when I was sixteen, 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:30.240 I discovered a book. I don't know how, I think, 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:32.399 I'm not sure how I even heard about it, but 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:35.480 I went in I ordered it. It was a book 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:41.680 by Samuel Charters. It was called The Country Blues, and 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:46.199 it had stories about Sleepy John Esty's and the Memphis 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:50.440 Drug Band and all these people. But the central character, 0:23:50.560 --> 0:23:53.439 or a character whose story ran through the whole book, 0:23:54.480 --> 0:23:58.280 was a guy called Ralph Peer, who was a record 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:04.119 producer working for Victor Records and going through the South 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:08.040 and renting hotel rooms and setting up a recording gear 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:12.800 and recording blues singers and country singers. And I remember 0:24:12.840 --> 0:24:16.360 thinking to myself, now that's what I'd like to do. 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:22.840 Okay, when you get to Harvard, are you the progenitor 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:26.639 of the blues revival? Or do you get there and 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:28.280 find like minded people. 0:24:30.480 --> 0:24:35.040 I got there and found like minded people. Before I 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:42.080 got there, my brother, who's two years younger, but he 0:24:43.880 --> 0:24:47.200 his interest wasn't two years behind mine, He was right 0:24:47.240 --> 0:24:50.800 neck and neck with me all the way, collecting records 0:24:50.840 --> 0:24:57.560 more avidly than I did. And he met some kid 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:00.760 who was halfway between. It was in one year older 0:25:00.760 --> 0:25:04.600 than him, one year younger than me, called Jeff Muldor, 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:09.000 and we all lived in Princeton, New Jersey, and Jeff 0:25:09.080 --> 0:25:11.680 Muldor later went on to be the vocalist for Paul 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.720 Butterfield Blues Band and for the Question Jug Band and 0:25:14.800 --> 0:25:18.720 doing lots of great solo stuff. The three of us 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:24.159 used to spend weekends saying, Okay, this Saturday, we're going 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:27.560 to listen to nothing but Lonnie Johnson records, or we're 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:30.560 going to listen to nothing but Book of White records 0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:33.119 or jazz, or we're going to listen to nothing but 0:25:35.280 --> 0:25:40.920 Fletcher Henderson. And so we had a very intense sort 0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:44.439 of self education. But then we got to when I 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:48.840 got to Harvard, I discovered the Club forty seven, which 0:25:48.920 --> 0:25:51.520 was the where Joan Baez used to sing twice a week. 0:25:52.160 --> 0:25:55.080 But on the nights when she wasn't singing, there were 0:25:55.119 --> 0:26:00.200 people like Eric von Schmidt and Rolf Kahan were singing, 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:05.920 who were you know, local bohemians who loved blues and 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:08.600 weird music from different parts of the world and sang 0:26:08.640 --> 0:26:13.760 it and had collections. So I was like a kid 0:26:13.800 --> 0:26:15.760 in a candy store, you know. I was like, Wow, 0:26:15.840 --> 0:26:19.600 can I come and hear your collection? So it wasn't 0:26:20.359 --> 0:26:23.919 I wasn't really a pioneer. I ended up bringing Sleepy 0:26:24.000 --> 0:26:27.080 John Estys and Big Joe Williams to Harvard for concerts 0:26:28.080 --> 0:26:31.600 and that was sort of what started my career in 0:26:31.640 --> 0:26:36.320 a way, you know, was that step into the world 0:26:36.359 --> 0:26:39.800 of professional events. 0:26:40.600 --> 0:26:43.880 Okay, Eric Fonschmidt, the other people Club forty seven were 0:26:44.000 --> 0:26:48.280 folkies really, and you're talking Sleepy John ASTs etc. As 0:26:48.320 --> 0:26:52.960 a blues guy, you bring them to Harvard? Are they 0:26:53.040 --> 0:26:55.600 playing music when you bring them to Harvard? And is 0:26:55.800 --> 0:27:00.720 anybody else looking for these old bluesmen? Yeah? 0:27:00.800 --> 0:27:03.520 There was a guy called Dick Waterman who ended up 0:27:03.560 --> 0:27:07.119 managing Son House. He was around Harvard Square in those days. 0:27:09.520 --> 0:27:11.359 There was a lot of it going on. You know. 0:27:11.800 --> 0:27:15.080 There were and people I would later discover were doing 0:27:15.119 --> 0:27:19.680 things that I wasn't aware of, Dick Spotswood and Tom 0:27:19.760 --> 0:27:26.679 Costner and I'm not Tom Costner anyway. There was a 0:27:28.359 --> 0:27:35.120 rapidly expanding community and one of the things that, as 0:27:35.119 --> 0:27:38.920 you say, they were folkys. But what I discussed and 0:27:39.200 --> 0:27:43.800 when I went to Harvard, I had a very negative 0:27:43.920 --> 0:27:48.520 attitude about folk music. I loved Lead Belly records, but 0:27:48.560 --> 0:27:52.680 I didn't really like Cisco Houston and Pete Seeger and 0:27:53.240 --> 0:27:56.040 people like that much. And I didn't like the Weavers. 0:27:56.080 --> 0:28:00.240 I didn't like Ronnie Gilbert's voice. The whole idea of 0:28:01.600 --> 0:28:05.200 sort of middle class white people strumming guitars and singing 0:28:05.240 --> 0:28:12.720 folk music seemed a bit silly to me. And but 0:28:12.800 --> 0:28:15.560 when I first heard Eric von Schmidt and Rolf Khan, 0:28:16.960 --> 0:28:20.000 I realized that there was a whole different esthetic going 0:28:20.040 --> 0:28:25.560 on here. That the people that I didn't like were 0:28:25.600 --> 0:28:30.320 the New York people, where folk music was a political thing. 0:28:31.400 --> 0:28:35.040 It was music of the people. And the way you 0:28:35.119 --> 0:28:41.560 communicated music of the people was by finding like Spanish 0:28:41.560 --> 0:28:47.640 Civil War song, a miners song from Yorkshire, a cowboys song, 0:28:49.240 --> 0:28:53.320 a South African song, and singing them all in the 0:28:53.360 --> 0:28:58.880 same kind of strum, the same kind of way to 0:28:59.400 --> 0:29:04.520 unify and make it accessible. You know. Pete Seeger had this, 0:29:04.920 --> 0:29:06.840 which is a bit ironic because Pete Seger was a 0:29:06.960 --> 0:29:12.400 brilliant musician, a fantastic virtuoso, but he wanted to simplify 0:29:12.560 --> 0:29:18.160 music and make every song singable around a campfire or 0:29:18.160 --> 0:29:22.720 at a picket line. What I found, which is an 0:29:22.760 --> 0:29:26.480 attitude that I sort of didn't feel connected to. But 0:29:26.560 --> 0:29:29.600 when I went to Harvard Square, I found these people 0:29:29.680 --> 0:29:34.560 who had the opposite idea, which was, let's not make 0:29:34.640 --> 0:29:38.640 it accessible, Let's make it hard. Let's find out exactly 0:29:38.720 --> 0:29:45.640 how Doc Bogs picked his banjo. Very complicated, weird tunings, 0:29:46.160 --> 0:29:50.560 weird fingerings, let's decode that. Let's figure it out and 0:29:50.640 --> 0:29:56.240