History Lesson

Here's an American folk music as popular music lesson by Peter Stampfel:

As a lower middle class kid from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I grew up knowing nothing about folk music. Years later when I examined my early years for any sign of it, all I could recall were these the following lines, sung to a polka tune by my uncle in 1948:

Hey bartender why you holler?
Oh, I owe you fourteen dollar,

and

Turn the water on the sink
Everybody have a drink

But in 1949, American pop radio had three folkish hits. One, "Lavender Blue" (Dilly Dilly) was an actual folk song that Burl Ives sang in Disney’s "So Dear to my Heart." The other two were new songs written with a folk “feel”— "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and "Mule Train," both of which went to number one. Curiously, in my fifth great class in 1949 we were singing a number called "The Cossack Song," which was everyone’s hands down favorite. It had a melody almost identical to "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

The Weavers represented folk music’s commie/lefty/academic aspect, and in 1950, they went to number one in the hit parade with "Goodnight Irene," the old Leadbelly song, although in Leadbelly’s version, he doesn’t see her in his dreams, he gets her in his dreams. They also had a hit with "Tzena Tzena Tzena," which was the first time I heard a five-string banjo.

"Wanderin’" another actual folk song was successfully recorded by the Sammy Kaye Orchestra (Swing and Sway With Sammy Kaye) with a lead singer and chorus. And one of the biggest records of the Year was "Cry of the Wild Goose," which went straight to number one on radio’s Your Hit Parade, which featured the nations top ten songs each week. This was so unprecedented—I had never seen a song go to number one from completely out of the Top Ten before--I ran down to the basement to tell my dad about it. He was unimpressed.

1951 marked the high water mark of the pop/folk thrust, with eleven folk or folk inspired songs being hits--"So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You" and "On Top of Old Smokey" by the Weavers, "The Roving Kind," another actual folk song, "The Sound Off!" marching song/chant popularized by its inclusion in "From Here to Eternity," "Jezebel," one of my all-time favorites, and "Shrimp Boats Are Coming," "Gandy Dancer’s Ball," "Rose, Rose, I Love You," "Beautiful Brown Eyes," "Truly Truly Fair," and "Belle, Belle, My Liberty Belle."

The Weavers had their last hit in 1952 with "Wemoweh," after which they were shot down by the House Un-American Activities witch hunt. Guy Mitchell, who had had a number of folkish hits in 1951, promptly recorded "The Only Red I Want is the Red I Got in the Good ‘Ol Red White and Blue": “It’s a brave red, not a slave red, and it is a red that’s true” to make it clear where he stood. "Sugarbush," another folk inspired song also did well.

Strangely enough, the last folky gasp was a record called "Hambone," recorded by the Original Hambone Kids—three. Black boys, between eight and twelve years old, who appeared on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, a TV show that had successfully crossed over from radio. The big prize, whatever it was, went to acts that won three weeks in a row, which the Original Hambone Kids did. They performed Hambone each week, dressed in matching bib overalls and straw hats, sitting on chairs (or was it a hay bale?), and proto-rapping:“Hambone, Hambone, where you been”(Then slapping their thighs in unison)

“BOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP BOMP BOMP Round the world and back again
BOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP BOMP BOMP Watcha gonna do when you get back
BOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP BOMP BOMP Take a little walk by the railroad track
BOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP BOMP BOMP”

There was no musical accompaniment. The break was simply thigh-slapped—BOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP diddy diddy diddyBOMP diddy diddy diddy BOMP BOMP BOMP two times.I loved it. Everybody loved it. And it was purely 19th century Americana, as close to authentic folk music as anything on pop radio in the last—or next-- twenty years. But the strange part was that the same year the Weavers were blacklisted, and folk based music fled pop radio while the most authentic folk tune in decades became a hit, Folkways Records released Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. These six records, comprising 84 songs, are where a whole generation first heard country blues, Cajun music, shape note music, the Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, et glorious cetera—the Old Weird America. Perhaps stranger still is this is about when rock and roll—the New Weird America—was born. What Unseen Force could have caused these unlikely events to occur—simultaneously? And what on earth could that Unseen Force have possibly been thinking?