Dave Van Ronk was born 78 years ago today. Van Ronk was a folk singer, born in Brooklyn, who settled in Greenwich Village and was eventually nicknamed the Mayor of MacDougal Street. He was an important figure in the acoustic folk revival of the 1960s. His work ranged from old English ballads to Bertolt Brecht, blues, gospel, rock, New Orleans jazz and swing. He was also known for performing instrumental ragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of St. Louis Tickle and Scott Joplins Maple Leaf Rag. Van Ronk was a widely admired avuncular figure in the Village, presiding over the coffeehouse folk culture and acting as a friend to many up-and-coming artists by inspiring, assisting and promoting them. Folk performers whom he befriended include Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Phil Ochs, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Guthrie Thomas and Joni Mitchell. Van Ronk received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in December, 1997. He died in a New York hospital of cardiopulmonary failure while undergoing postoperative treatment for colon cancer. His first professional gigs were with various traditional jazz bands around New York, of which he later observed: We wanted to play traditional jazz in the worst way...and we did! But the jazz revival did not take off, and Van Ronk turned to performing blues he had stumbled across and enjoyed years earlier, by artists like Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt. Van Ronk was not the first white musician to perform African-American blues, but became noted for his interpretation of it in its original context. By about 1958, he was firmly committed to the folk-blues style, accompanying himself with his own acoustic guitar. He performed blues, jazz and folk music, occasionally writing his own songs but generally arranging the work of earlier artists and his folk revival peers. He became noted both for his large physical stature and his expansive charisma, which bespoke an intellectual, cultured gentleman of many talents. Among his many interests were cooking, science fiction (he was active for some time in science fiction fandom — referring to it as mind rot — and contributed to fanzines), world history and politics. During the 1960s he supported radical left-wing political causes and was a member of the Libertarian League and the Trotskyist American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI, later renamed the Workers League, predecessor to the Socialist Equality Party). Attracted to the commotion from a neighboring bar, and no stranger to police violence, he was at the famous Stonewall Riots during which he was grabbed by police, arrested, briefly jailed and charged with felony assault on a police officer. In 1974, he appeared at An Evening For Salvador Allende, a concert organized by Phil Ochs, alongside such other performers as his old friend Bob Dylan, to protest the overthrow of the democratic socialist government of Chile and to aid refugees from the U.S.-backed military junta led by Augusto Pinochet. After Ochss suicide in 1976, Van Ronk joined the many performers who played at his memorial concert in the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden, playing his bluesy version of the traditional folk ballad He Was A Friend Of Mine.” In 2000, he performed at Blind Willies in Atlanta, clothed in garish Hawaiian garb, speaking fondly of his impending return to Greenwich Village. He reminisced over tunes like Youve Been a Good Old Wagon, a song teasing a worn-out lover, which he ruefully remarked had seemed humorous to him back in 1962. He was married to Terri Thal in the 1960s, lived for many years with Joanne Grace, then married Andrea Vuocolo, with whom he spent the rest of his life. He continued to perform for four decades and gave his last concert just a few months before his death. Van Ronk died before completing work on his memoirs, which were finished by his collaborator, Elijah Wald, and published in 2005 as The Mayor Of MacDougal Street. Van Ronk was underestimated as a musician and blues guitarist. His guitar work is noteworthy for both syncopation and precision. In its simplest form, it shows similarities to Mississippi John Hurts, but Van Ronks main influence was the Reverend Gary Davis, who conceived the guitar as a piano around his neck. Van Ronk took this pianistic approach and added a harmonic sophistication adapted from the band voicings of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. He ranks high in bringing blues style to Greenwich Village during the 1960s, as well as introducing the folk world to the complex harmonies of Kurt Weill in his many Brecht-Weill interpretations, and being one of the very few hardcore traditional revivalists to move with the times, bringing old blues and ballads together with the new sounds of Dylan, Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. During this crucial period, he performed with Dylan and spent many years teaching guitar in Greenwich Village, including to Christine Lavin, David Massengill, Terre Roche and Suzzy Roche. He influenced his protégé Danny Kalb and The Blues Project. The Japanese singer Masato Tomobe, American pop-folk singer Geoff Thais and the musician and writer Elijah Wald learned from him as well. Known for making interesting and memorable observations, he once said Painting is all about space, and music is all about time. Here, Van Ronk performs at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1981.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:49:09 +0000
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