Folk City stumbles out of the gate, leading off with a smarmy “Foreword” presenting the moment in the late 1950s and early 1960s when traditional music recorded by nontraditional performers for nontraditional audiences enjoyed great commercial success as “a departure from the superficiality of the times” (9) and “the soundtrack of the awakening conscience of our nation” (10). The author of this self-congratulatory drivel is Peter Yarrow, remembered by a dwindling few as one third of Peter, Paul and, Mary, a briefly popular trio from that era assembled by hardball promoter Albert Goldman in conscious imitation of the Kingston Trio, who had cashed big checks on their bouncy rendition of “Tom Dooley” in 1958.

A dismal start for sure, with intermittent injections of schlock and high-octane boosterism to follow, but counterbalancing virtues soon surge to the fore. Most obvious are the photographs. Folk City is a richly illustrated volume, a monograph/coffee-table hybrid featuring scores of full-page images and two-page spreads supported by maybe one hundred smaller shots of concert posters, record album covers, music periodicals, news events, night club exteriors, and the like. A less evident but no less valuable resource is the extensive (though hard to search) bibliography—authors Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen are diligent researchers, and their endnotes reveal a thorough command of both popular and scholarly sources.

Their work is also notable for its comprehensive coverage. Several prominent episodes and significant figures shortchanged or omitted altogether in earlier studies are accorded fuller treatment here: Eric Andersen, Broadside, Guy Carawan, Len Chandler, the 1960-1965 sequence of Folkways albums centered on the Civil Rights Movement, Howard Moody, the two-stage battle over singing in Washington Square Park. On the other side, Pete Seeger is perhaps too prominently featured—he’s pictured thirteen times in the first third of the book (and on the back cover). A substantial portion of this attention is no doubt deserved—Seeger stood up bravely to HUAC lintheads and spineless music industry suits through various blacklistings and a seven-year legal battle. A little Pete, however, always went a long way—“Michael Row the Boat Ashore” might break out at any moment. If Dick Clark and Snoop Dogg duked it out for a decade or two for the title of World’s Oldest Teenager, Pete Seeger went unchallenged for half a century as the nation’s premier hootenanny leader. Folklorists may be pleased to see mention of the roles played by several of their own (Roger Abrahams, Paul Clayton, Kenneth Goldstein, Alan Lomax, Ralph Rinzler, Steve Zeitlin).

These substantial virtues redeem the book as a whole from Yarrow’s intro, the regularly inserted “Recollections” overwhelmingly devoted to self-serving plugs, and from the heavy-handed promos for New York City that show up at regular intervals. “The international cultural capital of the world” (71), insists one redundant sample, with Paris dismissed by name from contention in the next sentence. “The worldwide capital of commerce, finance, media, art, culture, fashion, and entertainment” (255), shouts a later iteration, making the reader wonder again why our largest metropolis, its cultural and commercial eminence assured, must also lead the nation in booster self-glorification. No contemporary Babbitt, crying up the virtues of his hinterland Zenith, could be louder. (Things clear up a bit when it’s remembered that Folk City originated as the catalog for an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.)

Then there’s Dylan, the only A-team player on the block. In from Hibbing via Minneapolis in 1961 as a Guthrie wannabe with a long-as-your-arm bunco backstory, he cut through the Village folkies like a knife through butter, shoving his way first to the mike, second to the studio, and finally to stardom past a long line of disposable helpers. The international cultural capital of the world thus fleeced like a hayseed yokel at a carnival booth, the renamed Mr. Zimmerman split south and west for brief outings as a plugged-in rocker in Newport, a rooted country man in Nashville, a frontier drifter named Alias in his Hollywood debut. The last role fit perfectly; he’d been Alias all the while.

He wasn’t alone in any of this, of course. They all did it. “Rambling” Jack Elliott, a Brooklyn native, settled on his moniker after first trying out “Buck,” and Woody Guthrie himself needed reminding by Okie commie Gordon Friesen that his guitar killed no fascists, that he was an entertainer, not a grape picker.

Dylan’s shtick played better because he dropped off memorable songs at every stop. New York when he arrived being “folk city,” he sang folk songs and wrote protest songs, but was careful as he left to dismiss the whole topical song scene as “bullshit” (289). Hard truth brutally told, followed by a slamming door. But for the folkies and civil rights activists he left “Blowing in the Wind” behind, and tossed off “Masters of War” for the anti-war protesters. Talent traveled well, too. The Nashville stand resulted in “All Along the Watchtower” (from 1967’s John Wesley Harding) and “Girl from the North Country” (from Nashville Skyline, in 1969). Even the unlikely stint as a born-again Christian produced “I Believe in You” (from 1979’s Slow Train Coming) and “Every Grain of Sand” (from Shot of Love, in 1981).

Folk City, I hope this quick overview suggests, is a striking mix, at once the mostly predictable product of its immediate purpose as an exhibit catalog for a city-level museum and an impressive job of research readably and sometimes eloquently presented. The presentation of the Guy Carawan-produced Folkways albums, The Nashville Sit-In Story from 1960 and The Story of Greenwood, Mississippi from 1965, is especially compelling—the cringe-inducing clumsiness of the former, with its “mannered and affected” (213) recreated scenes, only serves to highlight the still-powerful impact of the latter. Carawan proved a very quick study. Go back and listen—the album is still available. The resonant mix of singing and preaching, prayer and song, framed by Robert Moses’ deft narration, the soft, precise, youthful voices of SNCC workers combined with the roughened, prayerful voices of their local elders, female and male—the whole is a treasure, a precious record of a terrible and wonderful time. Here, far from Greenwich Village, is the true “soundtrack of the awakening conscience of our nation.” But, yes, the wisecracking voice of Dick Gregory, in from New York in a supporting role, serves to connect “folk city” to the Mississippi story. Petrus and Cohen have done a worthy job of bringing it vividly before us.

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[Review length: 1074 words • Review posted on April 13, 2016]