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I b e n j a m i n f l e n e ROMANCING TH E FOLK C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S O F T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S Alan Trachtenberg, editor E ditorial Advisory Board Michele Bogart K aren Halttunen Mae Henderson Eric Lott Miles Orvell Jeffrey Stewart P u b lic M em ory & A m e rica n R oots M u sic The University o f North Carolina Press Chapel Hill & London © 2000 The University of North Carolina Press AU rights reserved Designed by Richard Hendel Set in Monotype Garamond and Smolder types by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Filene, Benjamin. Romancing the folk: public memory and American roots music / Benjamin Filene. p. cm.—(Cultural studies of the United States) Includes bibliographical references, discography, and index. 0-8078-25 50-6 (cloth: alk. paper)— isbn 0-8078-4862-x (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn 1. Folk music—United States—History and criticism. 2. Popular music—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. ML3551.F55 2000 781.62' 1 3'oo9Q4—dc2i 99-054367 0 4 03 0 2 0 1 00 5 4 3 2 1 To my parents and to Rachel, Eli^a, & H a^el Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/romancingfolkpubOOfile C O N T E N T S Acknowledgments ix Introduction / Chapter i. Setting the Stage: Identifying an American Folk Music Heritage, 1900—1930 y Chapter 2. Creating the Cult o f Authenticity: The Lomaxes and Lead Belly 47 Chapter 3. Mastering the Cult o f Authenticity: Leonard Chess, Willie Dixon, and the Strange Career o f Muddy Waters 76 Chapter 4. Searching for Folk Music’s Institutional Niche: Alan Lomax, Charles Seeger, B. A. Botkin, and Richard Dorson 133 Chapter 5. Performing the Folk: Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan 183 Coda 233 Notes 237 Bibliography 279 Discography 303 Permissions 303 Index 307 ILLU ST R A T IO N S Front cover of Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, 1917 19 Front cover o f Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs, 1920 19 Front cover o f Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag, 1927 7/ Recording equipment in the back of John Lomax’s car, probably late 1930s yo Prison Compound No. 1, Angola, La., 1934 j2 , Lead Belly in prison, Angola, La., July 1934 Jj John A. Lomax 77 Lead Belly in Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly, 1936 60 Lead Belly, 1942 61 Muddy Waters, ca. 1960s 89 Leonard Chess, ca. 1960s 99 Willie Dixon, ca. 1960s 98 Fathers and Sons album cover, 1969 190 Franklin Roosevelt with local musicians, Warm Springs, Ga., January 193 3 199 Charles Seeger with his family at their home in Washington, D.C., ca. 1937 77/ Alan Lomax, ca. 1940 146 Alan Lomax, 194 x 777 B. A. Botkin, ca. 1960s iyo Richard Dorson, ca. 1960s iyi Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, 1963 189 Pete Seeger at Newport Folk Festival workshop, 1964 186 Bob Dylan goes electric, Newport Folk Festival, 1965 i8y A C K N O W L E D G M E N TS This book could not have come about without the help o f a number of institutions and people. A Jacob Javits Fellowship and a Whiting Fellow ship in the Humanities helped subsidize my graduate work at Yale Uni versity. A John F. Enders Fellowship funded summer research, as did a Smithsonian Graduate Student Fellowship. The final draft o f this book simply would not have been completed without the generous support o f a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Scholars. Several archival collections were central to this work, and I am in debted to the people who made them accessible: Joe Hickerson, Judith Gray, Peter Bartis, and the rest o f the staff o f the Archive o f Folk Culture at the Library o f Congress; Jeff Place, Lori Elaine Taylor, and Tony Seeger at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies in Washington; and John Wheat and Linda Peterson at the Cen ter for American History at the University o f Texas at Austin. Yale Uni versity’s marvelous library system was an invaluable asset. While there, I leaned heavily on Paul Constantine and Anne Ferguson at the Sterling Memorial Library; Ken Krilley and Helen Bartlett at the music library; and Karl Schrom at the record library. The interlibrary loan office, mean while, handled an ever mounting pile o f requests. Other people interacted with me only momentarily but left their mark on this study. John Cohen provided encouragement at the outset o f this project. Ralph Rinzler, Bess Lomax Hawes, and Harold Courlander gra ciously consented to interviews at a very early stage in the work, while Alan Jabbour, Richard Kurin, Dan Sheehy, Peter Bartis, and Tony Seeger did so near its conclusion. Charles Shindo and Cheryl Brauner Laberge