Dave Van Ronk – Live in Monterey

DAVE VAN RONK
Live In Monterey
Omnivore Recordings 
omnivorerecordings.com

I’ve written several times before about my valued friendship with the late, very great Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002), the legendary folk-blues-jazz-cabaret singer, guitarist and songwriter, including in reviews of Down in Washington Square, the marvelous 3-CD collection released last fall, and my book review of his memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, (completed brilliantly in Dave’s words by Elijah Wald).

My last opportunities to spend extended periods of time with Dave were in 1998 when he came to Montreal to perform at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (and sit down with me for an extensive interview on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio program), and then later that same summer when I was MCing and he was performing at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival in Burlington, Vermont.

Dave was pretty damn great when he started out in the 1950s – by the early-‘60s he was a major influence on Bob Dylan and just about every other singer, guitarist and songwriter who passed through the Village folk scene – and just kept getting better and better as time went on. The concerts and workshops I saw him in do in Montreal and Burlington in 1998 were all superb – Dave was at the peak of his form.

A couple of months before his great Montreal Jazz Festival concerts, Dave was in similarly fine form when he performed in Monterey, California. An edited version of that concert has now been released as Live In Monterey.

Dave’s repertoire that night seems like a pretty typical Dave Van Ronk concert. Almost all of the 16 songs are numbers I heard him do many times over the years but all are songs I never got tired of hearing him sing and play. For one thing, there were always different nuances and developments in his vocal phrasing and guitar playing that made every version of every song unique. For example, “St. James Infirmary” (sometimes known as “Gambler’s Blues’) is a song I heard him do in almost every show I ever saw him do – and there were many – and I’ve got 10 different recordings of Dave doing the song, but I hear something new and exciting in every one.

And the same goes for the other songs in the set. It is a treat to hear his whisper-to-a-growl-to-a-shout voice and inspiring, always-intricate guitar arrangements on such classics as Jelly Roll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues,” Reverend Gary Davis’ “Cocaine Blues,” “Candy Man” and “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well,” Brownie McGhee’s “Sportin’ Life Blues,” his beautiful version of “He was a Friend of Mine,” adapted by Dave, Dylan and Eric Von Schmidt, from the traditional “Shorty George,” Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver Blues,” Tom Paxton’s tribute song, “Did You Hear John Hurt?” and all the rest.

Some of these songs – including “Cocaine Blues,” “Candy Man,” Bessie Smith’s “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon,” and his own “Losers” – are infused with Dave’s patented humor while others, including “Jelly Jelly,” “St. James Infirmary” and “Winin’ Boy Blues” are informed by jazz, particularly the traditional New Orleans jazz that Dave loved and sang so well.

Although almost all of the repertoire on Live In Monterey was from the standard Van Ronk canon, the set ends with an extraordinary and beautiful version of Ian Tyson’s classic “Four Strong Winds.” Although, Dave recorded the song on To All My Friends In Far-Flung Places, I don’t recall ever hearing him perform it in concert.

The CD booklet includes words from co-producer Rick Chelew and a great essay by Happy Traum, who knew Dave from the mid-1950s on and recalls vividly their friendship from the early days in Washington Square forward, as well as Dave's importance as a musical innovator and mentor to many.

About the only thing I miss on Live In Monterey are most of the asides and stories that typically punctuated a Dave Van Ronk concert. I assume they were edited from this recording to make it a purely musical experience.

I return often to many of Dave’s albums and this is one that will certainly be among those for years to come.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Inside Llewyn Davis (film)

Inside Llewyn Davis
Written and directed by Joel & Ethan Coen 
insidellewyndavis.com

As I noted in my review of the film’s soundtrack last month, “I’ve been looking forward to Inside Llewyn Davis, the new Coen Brothers film ever since I heard the rumor that it would be based on The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the posthumous memoir of my late friend Dave Van Ronk that was completed by Elijah Wald.”

The film covers a week or so in the life of Greenwich Village folksinger Llewyn Davis in early-1961.

Now, having seen the film, I can report mixed feelings. Although I was a decade or so too young to have experienced that scene at that time (I got to the folk scene in Montreal as a teenager in the late-1960s and first visited Greenwich Village folk clubs in 1974 when I would have been about the same age Bob Dylan was when he arrived in ‘61), I’ve known a lot of the musicians who were there at the time and many of them are friends I’ve had extensive conversations about that time with.

So, if I detach myself from what I know of that scene and of the people who were there, I can say that I enjoyed the movie as a dark exploration of a frustrated, self-centered folksinger suffering an existential crisis. God knows I’ve seen any number of musicians and non-musicians go through such crises over the past 40 years or so. That depiction, acted so well by Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis, was compelling to watch.

I also enjoyed the depictions of Folkways Records (Legacy Records in the movie) and its legendary founder Moe Asch (Mel Novikoff in the movie) and of Albert Grossman (Bud Grossman in the movie) who really did run a folk club called the Gate of Horn in Chicago before coming to New York. I also quite liked the scene where Llewyn shows up at the seamen’s union trying to ship out again with the Merchant Marine. I’ve heard stories directly from Dave Van Ronk that make those scenes seem very authentic.

But, early on, it becomes obvious that Llewyn Davis is not Dave Van Ronk and is no Dave Van Ronk. By 1961, Dave was already established on the Village folk scene as a central and influential artist. He did not bounce from couch to couch like Llewyn; rather he and his first wife Terri Thal provided indigent folksingers – like the young Bob Dylan – with a couch to sleep on. Dave also did not drive – which Llewyn does – and I can’t imagine him exploding at benefactors or at a fellow performer the way Llewyn does. Throughout the film, Llewyn has a chip on his shoulder that’s bigger than himself and that too wasn’t Dave.

Llewyn Davis explodes at a request to play a song in a social setting declaring he’s a professional; that he should only sing for payment. Most folksingers I’ve known have been people who are driven to sing and play music. It’s not just what they do or did on stage, it’s a way of life. They derive joy in playing music for the sake of playing music. Some of the best music I’ve ever heard has been off stage, late at night – including some of the best music I’ve ever heard Dave Van Ronk play.

This did not seem to be a folk scene that included the Sunday afternoon gatherings in Washington Square Park or at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center. Llewyn and the other musicians did not seem obsessed with the history of music and the musicians that came before them. Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan and so many others on that scene were intent on soaking those things up.

The character Troy Nelson – a soldier stationed at Fort Dix who came to the Village to play music when he could – was obviously inspired by the young Tom Paxton. Troy even sings “The Last Thing On My Mind,” Tom’s best-known song, as his own. But, just as Llewyn Davis is decidedly not my friend Dave Van Ronk, Troy Nelson bears little resemblance to my friend Tom Paxton. Tom is smart, witty, funny and generous. I just can’t imagine him as the dumb country bumpkin that the character Troy is.

I do think it is a good movie. I’m a fan of the Coen Brothers and really like what they do on film. However, as a portrayal of a scene and of people I know personally, too much of it doesn’t ring true for me. For more about that from someone who was there have a look at the article Terri Thal wrote for the Village Voice.

And for a really good description of the film’s time and place, read Dave’s memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street.

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--Mike Regenstreif

The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir

In view of all the recent attention from the film Inside Llewyn Davis, here is my review of  The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir that was published in the Montreal Gazette in 2005.

The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir
By Dave Van Ronk with Elijah Wald
Da Capo Press, 246 pages

In Chronicles: Volume One, published last year, Bob Dylan recalled Dave Van Ronk, the influential Greenwich Village folk and blues singer he learned from - and often borrowed couch space from - in his first year or two on the New York folk scene: "Van Ronk could howl and whisper, turn blues into ballads and ballads into blues. I loved his style. He was what the city was all about. In Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was king of the street, he reigned supreme."

MacDougal, in the heart of Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan, is the street Dylan is referring to. In 1961, when Dylan landed in the Village, MacDougal St. was filled with coffeehouses like the Gaslight and the Commons, where the folksingers plied their trade, bars like the Kettle of Fish, where they drank and played cards all night, and Izzy Young's Folklore Centre, where they hung out all day. Sometime in the early 1960s, a bartender at the Kettle of Fish bestowed the title of Mayor of MacDougal Street on Van Ronk, and the appellation followed him for 40 years.

Van Ronk, who died in 2002, grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and arrived in Greenwich Village as a teenage musician in 1951. He started out playing in traditional jazz bands, discovered an affinity for rural blues and became one of the major players in the folk and blues revivals of the 1950s and '60s.
In this always engaging and frequently laugh-out-loud funny memoir, Van Ronk looks back at those groundbreaking years, telling his own story and giving us an insider's view of how the folk revival, particularly in Greenwich Village, developed, boomed and collapsed. While most accounts of this period, including Dylan's own, begin with Dylan's arrival in the Village in 1961, Van Ronk gives us an insightful description of the development of the scene that Dylan and countless others were drawn to and swept up in. I've read most of the books that have been written about that time and place. This one may well be the best, as a historical narrative, a critical analysis of the music and the musicians who made it - and as an altogether enjoyable read.

Van Ronk was a natural raconteur who honed his gift for storytelling at thousands of concerts and club shows over a career that lasted almost 50 years. He and blues scholar Elijah Wald had begun working on this book when Van Ronk was diagnosed with cancer in 2001. After Van Ronk died, Wald finished the project by drawing on recordings of Van Ronk in concert and an extensive collection of radio, television and documentary film interviews.

Wald has done a superb job of putting Van Ronk's words on paper. I knew Van Ronk and felt like I was hearing his voice as I read through these pages. In fact, one of Van Ronk's interviews used by Wald in completing this book was with me on Folk Roots/Folk Branches, my CKUT radio program, done at the time of Van Ronk's last trip to Montreal for two concerts at the jazz festival in 1998.

Van Ronk performed regularly in Montreal throughout his career. One of his live albums was recorded in 1967 at Sir George Williams University, and he played at local folk venues like the New Penelope and the Back Door. In the 1970s and '80s, he played at the Golem, the Stanley St. folk club that I ran then.

Van Ronk vividly recalls many of the musicians he shared the scene with, from legendary blues artists like Brownie McGhee, Mississippi John Hurt and Reverend Gary Davis to the young singer-songwriters like Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell who came to the fore in the 1960s.

One particularly funny story recounts a night at the Kettle of Fish when Hurt, a small and gentle songster already in his 70s, beat Van Ronk and a succession of other musicians, bigger of size and 40 years younger, at arm wrestling.

Another hilarious story he tells is about Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, out to prove how powerful he could be in the music business. Grossman offered to guarantee Van Ronk $100,000 for a year's worth of bookings if he'd perform wearing a helmet with horns and change his name to Olaf the Blues Singer. Van Ronk turned Grossman down but slyly confides he might have done it for $120,000.

Although Van Ronk's memoir ends as the 1960s fade away, he stayed in Greenwich Village for the rest of his life, making music that seemed to just get better as he aged and mentoring succeeding generations of young performers.

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--Mike Regenstreif