Musical Discovery 1970 +

My discovery of folk music was startling and easy in 1970 because music was exploding on radio - and rock’s variety of influences led directly to Latin jazz (Santana), Baroque (The Left Bank, Jethro Tull), English folk (Pentangle, Fairport Convention), and a heavy dose of gospel, country, blues and all manner of American roots music. I knew little of a 1960’s folk boom, but I enjoyed my older sister’s Judy Collins and Tom Rush albums she brought home from college. Reading Joan Baez’s Daybreak and Bob Dylan’s Tarantula in high school was as influential as Catcher in the Rye in developing my interests, values and character. Oh and my 1970 discovery was startling not only because music is life’s soundtrack, but for me it was a calling.

Learning about Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie was more mythic than tangible. Then Arlo Guthrie and Arthur Penn clarified some of that for me in Alice’s Restaurant. The movie also gave me something to expect when I went through my own draft physical as a contentious objector!

Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy played acoustic blues in the midst of Jefferson Airplane’s set at Woodstock. I saw them at Mount Saint Mary’s College in late 1969 with a “Joshua” style light show and silk screened Woodstock headbands for free.

Hearing Hot Tuna’s first LP turned me on to Reverend Gary Davis and the blues. I went with my high school friends Greg Bowders and Chuck Bickford to see Jack and Jorma play with Papa John Creech at Franklin and Marshall College in 1971. In 1971-72 I played flute in a Waynesboro, PA garage band called Riverside, with Chuck, Kyp Bohn, Jace and Jimmy Chalfant.

Burr Photo (1969)

My brother Jim got married in Dallas in 1973 and I saw Jethro Tull on a side trip to San Antonio. Opening band was Steeleye Span. I will never forget the image of Maddy Prior dancing in circles in a long white dress. Peter Knight fiddled like a demon and Tin Hart made what I came to know as a mountain dulcimer sound like a stark, throaty, percussive, electric guitar.

I first saw a hammer dulcimer played by Bob Shank of Hickory Wind at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival in 1973. Much later I learned to love Gram Parsons, who penned the classic song of that name, which he recorded with the Byrds on the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

Burr Photo (1973)

But I did not realize what I was seeing – Bob Shank’s dulcimer playing - until years later when I found this picture, long after I was playing myself. Later in 1974 I first realized I was in the presence of a hammer dulcimer with a performance by Fennigs All-Stars at the Town Crier, in Beekman, New York. Chuck, Greg and I found the little club one Saturday night and I was blown away by the dulcimer playing of Bill Spence, along with Tom McCreesh (fiddle) and Toby Stover (piano).

That most of the tunes Fennigs All-Stars played was dance music flew over my head. The hammer dulcimer was just an incredible thing to hear, watch and want to emulate. I had a lot of questions.

What is that instrument, how do people learn to play it and, what is going on in that musician’s mind when he’s playing it? At least I knew the answer to the first part of that question when I stood watching the late Guy Carawan playing at the Highlander Center in 1975. Guy told me that what was going through his mind was nothing so magical as the nature of my question. His concentration was simply fine-tuned to hit the right notes, one after the next. That’s basically what I tell people today.

The amazing hammer dulcimer player Evan Carawan, with parents Candie and Guy Carawan

It was John McCutcheon who described the sound of the hammer dulcimer as “at once the crash of cymbals and the flutter of angel’s wings.” I repeat this at times, seeing this quite the poetic, memorable and profound description of the instrument’s sound. In the mid 1970’s McCutcheon lived in Scott County, VA near the Carter Family Fold, in Hiltons. His influence as well as Guy Carawan’s were very personal in the summer of 1975 when I met and heard them during a summer Pitt internship in Appalachia, VA. There were festivals, weddings, parties every weekend – all with old time music and dancing. I also made special trips to visit Appalshop, the Highlander Center, The Carter Fold crossing over state borders that come together there in the southern Appalachians.

Back in Pittsburgh, my first Calliope House concert featured Scottish Pipe music with Donald Lindsay and Norman MacLeod in 1976. With every Appalachian performer I heard, talk centered around the connection of Scots-Irish music to American folk and country music. You could hear the connection in the songs and the tunes. Especially in the tunes and I came to love playing the material from both sides of the Atlantic. From there the excitement came with fusing the styles.

It was clear that Irish and Scottish music involved scholarship and serious musical study. Although in my path, I continued to learn to play by ear. Flute and tin whistle player LE McCullough published music books including The Complete Tin Whistle Tutor, and obtained a Pitt PhD in Ethnomusicology. Scottish Fiddler’s and bagpipers underwent formal training. George Balderose started the Balmoral School of Piping and Drumming in 1978 and in 1985 brought James McIntosh to Carnegie Mellon University where he institutionalized bagpipes as a legitimate major in the CMU Conservatory of Music.

In my early work with Calliope and the Smoky City Folk Festival, I helped to bring in Malcolm Dalglish and Grey Larsen for a concert in Pittsburgh in 1980 that also featured Irish fiddler Kevin Burke. Both Dalglish and Larsen are gifted, studied musicians who met at Oberlin College and collaborated for many years and often performed in Pittsburgh. They were welcoming hosts when Devilish Merry travelled to play in Cincinnati during that time.

Burr Photo (1980)

In last week’s blog I stated that the Pittsburgh music scene of the 1970’s was stronger than in current times. We are coming up on the 40th anniversary year for the height of the 1970’s folk music and dance community and it makes sense many of us would thinking nostalgically that way about our musical upbringing.

Last week I played two solo gigs and busked at the Strip District. I went to a great concert at the Acoustic Music Center in Squirrel Hill. I am here to tell you that Pittsburgh has now, no less than ever, a killer music scene. I'd love to hear your comments!