Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America [Hardcover]

Dick Weismann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0826416985 | ISBN-13: 978-0826416988

In 1932 Florence Reece, the wife of a Kentucky coal miner, wrote one of the classic topical songs preserved in the folk musical revival. The song, "Which Side Are You On?," contrasts the lot of the working class and the bosses, and asks the listener to choose. This politically charged song was performed again during the Civil Rights Movement, with its lyrics appropriate to the 1960s. It was recorded more recently by Billy Bragg. Indeed, the story of this song might serve as a microcosm of the entire history of the folk music revival. Dick Weissman, former member of the Journeymen and a musician still releasing CDs of his original compositions, brings his personal and professional involvement to this definitive history. Which Side Are You On? includes chapters and sections on the Lomaxes, Harry Smith, the little known Lawrence Gellert, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, groups such as the Weavers and the Kingston Trio, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Natalie Merchant, Ani Difranco, Bela Fleck, Nickel Creek, the Indigo Girls, and many others. Which Side Are You On? also explores the folk music business in depth: how it all works, where the power really lies, how the artists have been manipulated and often exploited, the dynamic between artist and audience. Though he writes as a historian, Weissman also has seen it all from the inside, and includes anecdotes that are both funny and poignant: My friend and guitarist-singer Artie Traum took care of one of two houses that Bob Dylan owned in Woodstock, some thirty five years ago. The house had thirty seven rooms! Artie was instructed not to give out Dylan's phone number to any caller. The first caller was Joan Baez, and Artie followed instructions, calling Dylan at the other house to relay the call. During Artie's house-sitting chores, I visited him. He took me on a brief tour of the house. In one room were sacks of mail. We randomly opened a half-dozen letters. The one that I remember was by a female fan in North Dakota. She had been to a Dylan concert and reminded him that they had met. There was something touching though pathetic about the letter.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Can white folks sing the blues?" asks Weissman in his new book, which covers the folk music revival of twentieth century America and the relationships between the various types of music that derived from it. Weissman touches on the music business and the motives of some folksong collectors such as Jack Tharp, John Lomax, Lawrence Gellert, Charles Seeger and Alan Lomax, and explores the definition of "folksong" and the idea of "authenticity" in folk music. The book contains an interesting, albeit brief, segment on the rise and fall of folk-rock, in the midst of which Weissman hastily dismisses psychedelic rock ("many of the bands were under the influence of acid, and their performances featured long jam sessions."). Among the most interesting sections are those on folksong as protest music and the blacklisting of folk singers, particularly The Weavers. Throughout the volume, big name artists such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez appear, and Weissman discusses them in the contexts of their predecessors and the marketplace. Weissman's prose is casual, sometimes awkwardly so, and his knowledge of people, places and repertoire, and the connections between them, is so extensive that at times passages can read like cumbersome lists of names. Folk enthusiasts will appreciate this nearly one-stop shop of American folk history, but anyone with a casual interest in the form may find Weissman's information onslaught too overwhelming. 8 pp. b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Topical songs are news again as pop musicians consider taking political stances, but using folk songs politically dates back many decades. Weissman's concise history of folk music and politics offers an insider's perspective, for as musician, singer, and, later, songwriter and record producer, he knows the territory. He discusses the folklorists (e.g., Francis James Child, Cecil Sharp, Alan Lomax) who collected American traditional music, the 1930s protest singers who both made a living and sang for social change (e.g., Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Pete Seeger, the Weavers), McCarthyism and the blacklist era, the 1950s folk revival, the so-called folk scare of the early to mid-1960s, the singer-songwriter and New Left intersections, folk- and country-rock, the women's music movement, the blues revival, and other roots music. He consistently explores the often-antagonistic relations between the various musicians and music genres. Indeed, Weissman covers so much material in so relatively few pages that many may wish he would slow down occasionally and say more about the many fascinating personalities and issues he introduces. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (October 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826416985
• ISBN-13: 978-0826416988
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #965,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Five-Star Insider's Look At the Folksong Revival, November 30, 2005

By 

Amba R. Coltman "Bob Coltman folk explorer" (Chelmsford MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (Hardcover)

What exactly was the folk song craze? How did it happen? Who was involved? What is its legacy today?

Dick Weissman, a five-string banjo virtuoso formerly of the folk group The Journeymen, is perhaps the first to tackle this complex subject in depth. He takes a hard look at a wide range of topics with sharp observation, unsentimental analysis, and occasional wit.

Weissman, who partly in self-defense has made himself an authority on the music business, uses that insight to get under the skin of folk entertainers like the Weavers, the Kingston Trio and the many lesser-knowns who, in the early 1950s, put together the folk craze. He goes on to take a look at developments as diverse as skiffle amd blugrass, electric folk and fusion.

But he begins much further back: in the late 19th (Francis James Child and the ballads) and early 20th century with Cecil Sharp, the Lomaxes, and the other folk collectors -- including the lesser-known Lawrence Gellert, who pioneered in collecting songs that got even closer to the black experience. He takes us through the Golden Age recordings of early country music and blues, and early protest music, including People's Artists, and how they influenced what we all thought folk music was. From there he traces the route to 1949 and the breakout of the Weavers - culminating in the blacklisting that shut down some folk entertainers including Pete Seeger along with a number of Hollywood's finest.

"Which Side Are You On" takes in a very broad sweep that makes most other books on the subject look narrow. This is probably the first book ever to put side by side in the same context people as disparate as Alan Lomax, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Bill Monroe, cowboy singers and poets, Ewan MacColl, Peter, Paul and Mary, Doc Watson, Laura Nyro, The Band, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Tom Waits, New Age music, newgrass, John Fahey, Eliza Gilkyson, Bruce Springsteen, Nanci Griffith, Paul Simon, Sheryl Crow, Jewel, and 21st century folk pop -- not to mention parallel developments in ethnic music such as Cajun, Zydeco, Canadian, Celtic, Hispanic, American Indian, Hawaiian, children's music (who else covers Raffi?) and more.

That makes this book unique in my estimation. Most writers on folk music carve themselves out a stylistic niche - traditional songs, bluesmen, country musicians, folk-rockers -- and stay within it. Weissman takes the opposite approach, showing how widely folksong has been impacted by developments in popular, ethnic, rock and other forms of music, and how its ways of thinking and performing have been changed by them. The result is a first chance to see the folk scene as a grand parade leading onward into the future, triumphs, foibles and all.

The "folk superstars" are here: Leadbelly. Woody Guthrie. Odetta. Dylan. Phil Ochs. Peter, Paul and Mary. Simon and Garfunkel. Joan Baez. Judy Collins. Joni Mitchell. So are many names that will be new to nearly every reader, with fascinating stories that place them in the ongoing folk thread that winds through American music. Tracing stardom as well as the obscure through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Weissman brings the story of the folk era up to date with incisive coverage of what the thing we call "folk" means now, today: everything from Ani DiFranco and Nickel Creek to the Dixie Chicks and "O Brother Where Art Thou."

There is astute coverage of trends and backgrounds: Folkways, Elektra, Vanguard and the other folk record labels. The folk scene in various parts of the US and abroad, most prominently New York's Greenwich Village, but also Philadelphia, Boston, Newport, Chicago, Denver, Austin, California and elsewhere. How music informed the Civil Rights Movement. Feminist music and musicians. Singer-songwriters. Musical instruments. Radio, folk organizations, print music and performing venues. Folk-rock and country-rock.

Along the way Weissman poses some tough questions folkniks often prefer to duck. What about authenticity vs. "selling out?" What did stardom mean for the few folkies who achieved it? What did "going electric" mean for singers who believed their roots lay in casual home-made music of centuries past? How did folk-inspired songwriting change as it grew? What has it meant to "bourgeoisify" and commodify folk music? And how did the business of folk music change the music and the people who made it? These are only some of the questions this book addresses.

"Which Side Are You On" is frankly a survey, covering a lot of territory. Hence it cannot go deeply into some of its subject matter. Still there are surprising moments of insight, and enough detail to feast on for hours.

If you want a smart practitioner's bird's-eye view of what folk is, does, and means - and are ready for a few side trips into allied kinds of music that draw intriguing parallels - this is the book for you.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not to be missed by any serious about American popular music history, December 4, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (Hardcover)

Dick Weissman worked with the Journeymen and here uses a popular song from the 1930s to fuel chapters discussing the history and culture of American folk music from Joan Baez to Ani DiFanco, Peter Paul and Mary and more. Here are discussions of all the top names in American folk, written with authority because author Weissman is more than a historian here - he was a participant in the folk movement of the times, and adds persona anecdotes about the folk music business and its artists. From pop artists to the re-emergence of female blues singers, Which Side Are You On? An Inside History Of The Folk Music Revival In America is not to be missed by any serious about American popular music history.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wuz You Really There, Dick?, January 21, 2011

By 

Michael Cala (Staten Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (Hardcover)

Despite the jacket blurbs and publisher's one-sheet, Weissman, who has deliberately written here about politicized folk music, feels free to share some of the most confounding opinions this former political activist and fan of political folk music has ever read. There are some good sections, and these appear in the first half of the book. The best sections are historical, antedating Weissman's birth, so he wasn't "there" for the better parts of this exercise.

Remember, this book's title refers to a song written for striking coal miners and labor activists. It was written in 1932 by Florence Reece, the wife of a striking Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miner. Weissman is allegedly going to give us the "inside scoop," on the turbulent 1960s. Not really. He ultimately shares little personal insight in this book, despite the fact that he was briefly in the thick of it as a performer and former member of the Journeymen with the late John Phillips and Scott Mackenzie.

When Weissman (quoted in the publisher's one-sheet, to my astonishment) dismisses the talented songwriter and committed leftist and political activist Phil Ochs as a "politician rather than a folk musician," one is tempted to ask, aren't those the people you're writing about, Dick? Then, on page 174, he again does Ochs's legacy a huge -- almost punitive -- disservice when he writes, "By 1975, Ochs had become frustrated by his lack of success... He became a virtually homeless alcoholic, and committed suicide." What?! That's it on Phil Ochs? Just 26 words?

Nowhere does Weissman note Ochs's involvement in American leftist politics during the presidential elections of 1964 and 1968, nor his active support of international political solidarity. For example, he organized and performed at a huge rally protesting the CIA assassination of Chile's first democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, in 1973. Nowhere is any of this mentioned.

Worse yet is omission of any mention of the many classic songs Ochs wrote or adapted -- from the lyrical ("Changes," "Bound for Glory," and the perennial "Highwayman") to the caustic ("I Ain't Marching Anymore," Draft Dodger Rag," "Here's to the State of Mississippi") and the profound ("In the Heat of the Summer," "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land," "The Scorpion Departs and Never Returns," "Rehearsals for Retirement"). I recommend this book be taken with a big grain of folk-salt. Meanwhile, try to see "There But for Fortune," the full-length film documentary on the genius who was Phil Ochs.