suggested change, though Kennedy’s politics were as much a part of Cold War rationalism as his opponent Nixon’s. Americanism and technology would see us through, and on May 5 Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Other, even more powerful events were not entirely controlled by the government. On May 4, the civil rights movement, its leadership taken over by youth, sent the Freedom Riders into the deep South to challenge segregation in bus stations. When they arrived in Anniston, Alabama, on May 14, their bus was attacked and later firebombed, and the Freedom Riders were beaten. Attorney General Robert Kennedy intervened, and National Guard troops and helicopters flanked the riders as they proceeded to New Orleans. A change could be felt, and it was captured in a song: “We Shall Overcome.”
Faddish dance songs like “The Twist” dominated pop music, and to many, folk music seemed more authentic. A purist approach had catalyzed itself out of the commercial adaptations of the Kingston Trio, first in 1958 in Boston’s Club 47 through its house band, the Charles River Valley Boys. Soon after, Palo Altan Joan Baez became a regular at the club, and when she captivated the Newport Folk Festival in 1960, she became an icon. There was always a collegiate link between Cambridge and Berkeley, and shortly after Club 47 opened, Rolf Cahn, a young radical musical heir to Woody Guthrie who was married to the folksinger Barbara Dane, moved West and began the Blind Lemon there. The Lemon joined a couple of other Berkeley institutions that encouraged Bay Area folk music. There was the annual folk music festival, which began on a large scale in 1958. Most important was
The Midnight Special,
a live, late-Friday-night hootenanny on the radical Berkeley radio station KPFA.
Not long after they’d met, Hunter and Garcia were at a party and Robert picked up a guitar, playing about half a song before, Hunter recalled, “Jerry said, ‘Hey, give me that,’ and grabbed it away from me and kept it. That’s how it’s been ever since. He could play better than I could.” Garcia was clearly the dominant musical partner. The political side of folk—Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly—did not move him. From the beginning, Garcia was an apolitical artist, certainly pro–civil rights and intuitively liberal, but at heart concerned only with music and its performance. He and Hunter would sit in the back of Kepler’s all day, at first playing what he would later shamefacedly dismiss as “dippy folk songs” like “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” or “Banks of the Ohio” or tunes from early Joan Baez albums. Hunter and Garcia even wrote a song together, “Black Cat.”
Tell you a story about my old man’s cat
A cat whose hide was uncommonly black
Fame and fortune and good luck hath
the man who would cross the black cat’s path . . .
My old man’s cat went out one night
the moon and stars were shining bright
crossed the path upon his way
of the man who’s president today.
But in those days, folk music was to be taken from the masters, not newly created, and they didn’t write any more songs.
Instead, Garcia and Hunter turned to a fundamental source, Harry Smith’s magical and peculiar
Anthology of American Folk Music,
on Folkways Records. Early in the 1950s, Smith had tapped into American popular culture from the twenties and thirties to assemble the anthology, selecting songs that had been commercial enough to release on record, exotic but not esoteric. He put eighty-four tunes on six long-playing discs, then wrapped them in alchemical quotations and decoration. In so doing, he gave young folkies like Garcia and Hunter a passageway into the heart of the old, eccentric, gnarly, lovely America. A homosexual dope fiend whose body was stunted and humped, Smith was the ultimate outsider, the ideal person to introduce a new generation to something
truly
authentic. Garcia and Hunter would be indebted to him for
Faddish dance songs like “The Twist” dominated pop music, and to many, folk music seemed more authentic. A purist approach had catalyzed itself out of the commercial adaptations of the Kingston Trio, first in 1958 in Boston’s Club 47 through its house band, the Charles River Valley Boys. Soon after, Palo Altan Joan Baez became a regular at the club, and when she captivated the Newport Folk Festival in 1960, she became an icon. There was always a collegiate link between Cambridge and Berkeley, and shortly after Club 47 opened, Rolf Cahn, a young radical musical heir to Woody Guthrie who was married to the folksinger Barbara Dane, moved West and began the Blind Lemon there. The Lemon joined a couple of other Berkeley institutions that encouraged Bay Area folk music. There was the annual folk music festival, which began on a large scale in 1958. Most important was
The Midnight Special,
a live, late-Friday-night hootenanny on the radical Berkeley radio station KPFA.
Not long after they’d met, Hunter and Garcia were at a party and Robert picked up a guitar, playing about half a song before, Hunter recalled, “Jerry said, ‘Hey, give me that,’ and grabbed it away from me and kept it. That’s how it’s been ever since. He could play better than I could.” Garcia was clearly the dominant musical partner. The political side of folk—Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly—did not move him. From the beginning, Garcia was an apolitical artist, certainly pro–civil rights and intuitively liberal, but at heart concerned only with music and its performance. He and Hunter would sit in the back of Kepler’s all day, at first playing what he would later shamefacedly dismiss as “dippy folk songs” like “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” or “Banks of the Ohio” or tunes from early Joan Baez albums. Hunter and Garcia even wrote a song together, “Black Cat.”
Tell you a story about my old man’s cat
A cat whose hide was uncommonly black
Fame and fortune and good luck hath
the man who would cross the black cat’s path . . .
My old man’s cat went out one night
the moon and stars were shining bright
crossed the path upon his way
of the man who’s president today.
But in those days, folk music was to be taken from the masters, not newly created, and they didn’t write any more songs.
Instead, Garcia and Hunter turned to a fundamental source, Harry Smith’s magical and peculiar
Anthology of American Folk Music,
on Folkways Records. Early in the 1950s, Smith had tapped into American popular culture from the twenties and thirties to assemble the anthology, selecting songs that had been commercial enough to release on record, exotic but not esoteric. He put eighty-four tunes on six long-playing discs, then wrapped them in alchemical quotations and decoration. In so doing, he gave young folkies like Garcia and Hunter a passageway into the heart of the old, eccentric, gnarly, lovely America. A homosexual dope fiend whose body was stunted and humped, Smith was the ultimate outsider, the ideal person to introduce a new generation to something
truly
authentic. Garcia and Hunter would be indebted to him for
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