All posts by Woodstock Whisperer

Attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, became an educator for 35 years after graduation from college, and am retired now and often volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts which is on the site of that 1969 festival.
Music et al, Music of the 60s

Bob Dylan Talkin New York

2 Comments

Bob Dylan Talkin New York

There is no prep course for our first solo trip to New York City. It can be a pleasurable memory. Often a milestone. Whether we are from a farm, a factory town, or the infamous suburbs, the city’s sights, sounds, and smells congeal and we realize we are someplace like no other.

Bob Dylan Talkin New York

Snowy arrival

On January 24, 1961, University of Minnesota dropout Bob Dylan arrived in a snowy New York City: 178th Street at the eastern end of the George Washington Bridge.

“The cold was brutal and every artery of the city was snowpacked, but I’d started out from the Frostbitten North Country,” Dylan wrote in Chronicles. “I didn’t know a single soul in this dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change — and quick.”

He found his way to Greenwich Village and to a half-filled Cafe Wha?. Hootenanny night.

Dylan asked owner Manny Roth (uncle of David Lee Roth) if he could perform — and Dylan did, playing a short set of Woody Guthrie songs. In the following weeks, Dylan would appear occasionally at the coffee-house, playing harmonica behind Mark Spoelstra and Fred Neil, writer of Dolphins and Everybody’s Talkin’.

By the end of 1961 he would perform his first concert in New York City. And of course by then he had memorialized that first visit like no one had before in Talkin’ New York.

It’s what is known as a talking blues song. Some people used the style because they couldn’t sing; others used it because it had a special impact on the words.

Let’s be kind and say Bob used it mainly for the latter reason.

Happy anniversary, Bob.

Bob Dylan Talkin New York
poster for Dylan’s first NYC concert (from bobsboots.com)

Bob Dylan Talkin New York

Rambling out of the wild west

Leaving the towns I love the best

Thought I’d seen some ups and down

‘Till I come into New York town

People going down to the ground

Building’s going up to the sky

Wintertime in New York town the wind blowing snow around

Walk around with nowhere to go

Somebody could freeze right to the bone

I froze right to the bone, New York Times said

“It was the coldest winter in seventeen years”

I didn’t feel so cold then

I swung on to my old guitar

Grabbed hold of a subway car

And after a rocking, reeling, rolling ride

I landed up on the downtown side Greenwich Village

I walked down there and ended up

In one of them coffee-houses on the block

Got on the stage to sing and play

Man there said, Come back some other day

You sound like a hillbilly We want folksingers here

Well, I got a harmonica job begun to play

Blowing my lungs out for a dollar a day

I blowed inside out and upside down

The man there said, He loved my sound

He was raving about he loved my sound

Dollar a day’s worth

After weeks and weeks of hanging around

I finally got a job in New York town

In a bigger place, bigger money too

Even joined the Union and paid my dues

Now, a very great man once said T

hat some people rob you with a fountain pen

It don’t take too long to find out

Just what he was talking about

A lot of people don’t have much food on their table

But they got a lot of forks and knives

And they gotta cut something

So one morning when the sun was warm

I rambled out of New York town

Pulled my cap down over my eyes

And headed out for the western skies

So long New York Howdy, East Orange

Bob Dylan Talkin New York

Music et al

Eric Andersen Blue River

4 Comments

Eric Andersen Blue River

Eric Andersen Blue River

Though Columbia released Eric Andersen’s Blue River in February 1972, it is a January album for my wife and me. In our home, 1972 was both a vinyl and 8-track house. The vinyl remains, the 8-tracks disintegrated long ago.

Late January 1973 was the due date for our first child. On our pre-dawn drive to the hospital we slipped “Blue River” into our car’s portable 8-track player.  As we turned onto the highway the album’s third track came on: Wind and Sand.

All alone a father sits
thinking of his son
Far away a mother sleeps

Her baby yet unborn

Rain and wood and fire and stone
magic all across the land
Seasons come and time will go
right through your hand,
like wind and sand

In awhile a child will grow
a bird will learn to fly
Pretty soon a child will know
what it is to make a life

Long before the river goes
far from where it was
Long before it meets the sea
a child will know of love
Eric Andersen Blue River

A Child Will Know of Love

While not literally describing our life at that moment, it was close enough to always remember. Later that day our son was born.

Blue River , Andersen’s  8th album, remains his best known and most successful. Unfortunately, Columbia lost the master tapes of his next album, so it was three years before his “next” album and by then Blue River’s momentum was gone.

And it was not until 1990 that the tapes to that 1972 follow-up were found.  Columbia released Stages: The Lost Tapes album was released in April 1991.

Eric Andersen Blue River

Greenwich Village

Andersen was part of the original Greenwich Village folk scene in the early sixties and eventually moved to Woodstock, NY in the mid-70s. I’ve often wondered,  but never found an answer, why Woodstock Ventures did not include him on their invitation list.

Bob Dylan (as often the case) had led the way to recording in Nashville by previously recording his John Wesley Harding (1967) and Nashville Skyline  (1969) there.

Among the many musicians who were on Andersen’s  album were Joni Mitchell (sang on the title track), David Bromberg, David Briggs, Norman Putman, Eddie Hinton, Kenneth Buttrey, and the Jordanaires.

Eric Andersen Blue River

Tracks

The track listing for the original album (2 additional tracks were later added for a CD release) is as follows. Anderson wrote all songs except where indicated:

  1. “Is It Really Love at All”
  2. “Pearl’s Goodtime Blues”
  3. “Wind and Sand”
  4. “Faithful”
  5. “Blue River”
  1. “Florentine”
  2. “Sheila”
  3. “More Often Than Not” (D Wiffen)
  4. “Round the Bend”

While Andersen was not part of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, he was part of the famous movable festival known as the Festival Express in 1970.

Surprise Phone Call

In 2004 our daughter was  waitressing at the Stone House Music Club, a now defunct venue in Englewood, NJ. Eric Andersen was playing. My wife and I were unable to attend, but we (likely again) told her the Wind and Sand story.

That particular night, our daughter was assigned to the green room and so met Eric. She told Eric the story.

My wife and I were already asleep and the phone rang. My wife answered and someone at the other end asked “Joyce?” It was Eric to say hello.  A red letter day…or night.

Nowadays

Eric Andersen continues to regularly tour in the US and Europe and release albums. ( Eric Andersen site)

Here is a his January 22, 2020 performance at the Paste Studio in New York City. Steve Addabbo (guitar), Eric Lee (mandolin, fiddle), and Jagoda (percussion)

Woodstock Under the Stars

In June 2020, Andersen release a 3-CD collection. Woodstock Under The Stars features songs from concerts, studio sessions and webcasts recorded 1991 – 2011.  The 36 tracks include 35 songs plus an introduction track.

Special Guests include: John Sebastian, Eric Bazilian, Garth Hudson, Happy Traum, Artie Traum, Inge Andersen, Joe Flood, Rick Danko, Jonas Fjeld, Gary Burke and Robert Aaron.

There are two live versions of six of the same titles recorded at different venues with different musicians accompanying Eric. The songs on this album feature Eric’s early works as well as more recent ones.

Like all things, the collection is available through Amazon.

Eric Andersen Blue River
Anniversary, Music et al

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Leave a comment

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Happy Anniversary!
January 23, 1986
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
1986 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees

By 1986, rock and roll was in its fourth decade and when you’re 40 some things that you would have laugh at in your teens, suddenly seem appropriate. A Hall of Fame seemed appropriate.

Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records’ chairman, founded The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . He had announced the Hall’s creation in August 1985 ( NYT article).

To be eligible, the performers nominated could alive or dead, but they had to have been actively involved in music for at least 25 years.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And so it was on this date that the first induction was held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

First Class

smaller r and r h of f

  • John Hammond
  • Alan Freed
  • Sam Phillips
  • Elvis Presley
  • Buddy Holly
  • Chuck Berry
  • Fats Domino
  • James Brown
  • Jerry Lee Lewis
  • Jimmie Rogers
  • Jimmy Yancy
  • Ray Charles
  • Sam Cooke
  • The Everly Brothers
  • Robert Johnson
  • Little Richard

The New York Times article described the event this way: By the end of the evening, the audience of 1,000 music-industry figures was rocking and rolling – shouting, cheering, standing on tables and chairs – while several inductees, and a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of rock stars who had helped present the awards – took over the stage for a roaring but surprisingly cohesive jam session. (NYT article)

It was quite a party with lots of musical collaborations such as the following Reelin’ and Rockin’

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Not all Musicians

It is important to note that three of the inductees were not musicians as such: John Hammond was an American record producer, civil rights activist and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s. In his service as a talent scout, Hammond became one of the most influential figures in 20th century popular music], DJ Alan Freed, and Sam Phillips (blog piece about Memphis Recording Service)

Happy anniversary to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Post Script

The foibles of men in power, particularly white men in power, can catch up with them and that’s what happened in September 2023 when in a New York Times interview Jann Wenner explained why there were so few women and Blacks were included in his book about important rock and roll musicians.

His response was unacceptable.

Regarding women; “Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,” and remarked that Joni Mitchell “was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”

Regarding Blacks: “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?” he said. “I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.” [NYT article]

Not good.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame