The Newport Folk Festival: 1968
But to get to the main events: Friday and Saturday nights’ concerts offered almost all of the featured artists of the Festival. Friday night’s program was disappointing by any standard. The program’s first half was devoted to the Onward Brass Band, various freedom singers from the South, the Pennywhistlers and Arlo Guthrie. The second half was comprised entirely of Joan Baez and the Bread and Puppet Theatre. Of the actual attempts at folk music, the Pennywhistlers’ offerings were among the most attractive. I am no authority on the subject, but it seemed to me that their full rich vocal sound was often enthralling, and, also, believable. Elizabeth Cotton, on the other hand, was simply out of place. Not because she isn’t good enough to perform at a folk festival, but because a massive field and an audience of nearly ten thousand people is not the appropriate setting to listen to her pick “Freight Train.” Unfortunately, I missed the Onward Brass Band, who had opened the program and who, in the brief spot I was able to catch, were quite exciting. They are a semi-Dixieland band with Creole overtones, and are genuine in every sense of the word.
Arlo Guthrie finished off the first half of the program to an enthusiastic response. Rather than do “Alice,” he performed a new one song monologue built around a children’s song his father had written. The routine hit me as being pretty thin and Arlo seemed to be straining for both cuteness and laughs. Bill Cosby has definitely influenced his delivery, if not his material, and there was a studied or mannered quality to his diction which I found quite distracting. Personally, I wish he would sing more and talk less. He sings folk songs beautifully.
After intermission we were favored with Joan Baez Harris. I happen to be one of those who is captivated by Miss Baez’s voice. My admiration for her notwithstanding, her performance here was garishly tasteless. She began with a competent version of a Gil Turner protest song called “Carry It On.” After that, it was pathetic. She did a flamenco-sounding Spanish song in which she accompanied herself on guitar in a style reminiscent of Peter, Paul and Mary and sounded every bit as authentic as Jose Feliciano.
Joan’s unaccompanied “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” managed to combine the phoniest affectation of a Southern accent I’ve ever heard with irrelevant bursts of near operatic virtuosity. And she topped it all off with a version of “Suzanne” during which her guitar was obviously out of tune. Beyond that, she didn’t take the time to learn either the words or the chords well enough to prevent her from muffing both at least once. Her only salvation was a pair of duets with her sister Mimi. Mimi’s modesty and the demands of duet singing forced Joan into a brief period of self-restraint. The results were the two best songs of the evening.
It is hard to tell whether such a performance is the product of indifference or lack of sensitivity or both. Whatever its causes, it is necessary to state that singing a country song with a southern accept doesn’t make one a country singing and saying “Amen” after a gospel number doesn’t make one the new Marion Williams. Style-hopping is unbecoming to a performer not equipped to do justice to the diverse traditions present in folk music. As a politician Joan Baez may get my vote, but as a musician I fault her for the same thing she is so quick to fault others: she doesn’t seem to care.
Saturday evening’s program was a vast improvement over Friday’s. It was top heavy with the major names of the Festival. George Hamilton IV started things off with his country versions of contemporary folk-songs. He performed with a bassist and an excellent Nashville guitarist who gave Hamilton a distinctly country sound. Hamilton himself was thin and somewhat boring over his six song stretch.
Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys came on after Hamilton and they too did country music, but they were surely no bore. Stanley has been recording straight blue-grass for twenty-five years (for the last ten on the King label). Although he is a first rate banjo picker, his group is probably most appreciated for their vocal work. The Stanley Brothers gospel records rank with Bill Monroe’s as the best country gospel available.
Stanley seemed somewhat ill at ease and treated his audience with the kind of excessive deference characteristic of all the southern performers at the Festival. Nonetheless, his performances of “How Mountain Girls Can Love,” “Man of Constant Sorrow,” “The Hills of Roane County” and “Sally Goodin” made me nostalgic for the days when I was a bluegrass fanatic. Stanley has what Ralph Rinzler calls the “high lonesome sound.” He sings country music with a depth and style more commonly found in blues, and the type of feeling he created in me was not unlike what I feel about the music of B. B. King. When Ralph Stanley sang I could hear someone’s whole life singing for me. Hearing him at Newport was a pleasure.
B. B. King finished off the first half of the program. A sold out Festival Field (17,000) was not the ideal setting for his intimate kind of blues but he made do. I think B. B. King is the greatest blues singer I have ever heard and probably the greatest guitarist as well. He made Buddy Guy and Junior Wells’ afternoon performance look mighty tame by comparison. But because he was not fully at home with the performing situation he hammed it up a bit too much. Being theatrical is King’s way of testing an audience. If you can show him you know the blues he’ll work his ass off and play from his guts. If you just come for a show, that’s what you’ll get. And the show was fine. Still, it was nice to see him break loose towards the end and put down a mean, mean, “Sweet Sixteen.” To really dig B. B. King you can’t sit on your chair and watch. You have to be able to move your body, and do what you want to do. And that was impossible within the concert setting at Newport.