When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Paperback)

~ Robert S. Cantwell (Author) "I need a steamshovel, mama, to keep away the dead," Bob Dylan declared in 1965, having personally terminated the popular folksong revival, some thought, by..." (more)
Key Phrases: folksong movement, folk revivalism, folksong revival, New York, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Lay readers may be put off by Cantwell's sometimes rambling examination of the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, which was ushered in by the Kingston Trio's hit "Tom Dooley." Expanding on his essay of the same name in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (Univ. of Illinois, 1993), Cantwell (American studies, Univ. of North Carolina) covers the revival's lineage from 19th-century blackface minstrelsy through the demise of folk's Socialist politics in the early 1950s to the impacts of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Cantwell loses focus when he emphasizes his own interpretation of events. More effective are the relatively straightforward narratives on Woody Guthrie, the Almanac Singers, and the seminal Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music recordings. Complete with copius references, this serious treatment of the folk revival is recommended for larger music and social history collections.?Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Jargon-rich but provocative study of the folk-music craze of the '60s. Cantwell (American Studies/Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) is typical of a new school of academic critics combining personal memoir with sociocultural analysis and writing in a highly specialized language understood only by its practitioners. He believes that the original folk revival of the '30s and '40s, as embodied in the work of performers like Woody Guthrie and the young Pete Seeger, failed because of its ideological links to left-wing politics, making it anathema to the postWW II generation. In the late '50s groups like the Kingston Trio created a new folk resurgence by reviving the music without the political message. He also argues that folk music appealed to urban, young, middle-class listeners because it enabled them to act out a mild rebellion against their upbringing and build at least imaginative ties with a purer American culture, nostalgically linked to the past. Cantwell outlines these theories in dense prose that will be barely comprehensible to the uninitiated; for example, he describes Mike Seeger's life work as that of ``cultural cathexis, dreaming the felt but untheorized political urgencies of the present into historical memory.'' Moreover, his theories oversimplify the many strands that went into creating the folk revival. While the Kingston Trio were an apolitical and largely commercial group, the young Bob Dylan was deeply engaged in expressing a social message through his music. Moreover, Cantwell can't seem to decide how he feels about these folk revivalists. While ostensibly praising their lives and work, he slips in many negative remarks about them; he compares Mike Seeger to a blackface minstrel, dismisses Pete Seeger as a person who is ``basic[ally] sad,'' and describes Dylan as possessing ``gallant fraudulence.'' An odd hodgepodge, which will be of interest primarily to the academic folklore community. (17 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674951336
• ISBN-13: 978-0674951334
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #933,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thick, thick prose masks a compelling story, August 9, 2001

By	Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

I approached this book with high hopes, and found myself sorely disappointed. It had gotten such great press when it came out -- with big write-ups in the "New York Times" and elsewhere -- but frankly, I found the style and grammar so convoluted that I could hardly understand it. Cantwell's overly-academic prose is so dense and thicketed that halfway through I realized I had absolutely no idea what his book was about. Something about the American folk revival... but what exactly was he trying to say? Cantwell, a former '60s folkie who teaches American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, applies a nearly impenetrable acadamese to his history(?)/analysis(?)/deconstruction(?) of the folk revival, but seems unable to rise above the terminology and crowded syntax he's adopted. His writing has a piled-on, house-of-cards style, full of incredible run-on sentences and needless verbal transpositions that make practically every sentence, paragraph and chapter difficult to follow. In short: arrrrrrgh!!! The most frustrating aspect is the boggling lack of narrative skills: Cantwell sets out to tell stories and convey experiences, but inevitably gets balled up in unreasonably convoluted, digressive rhetoric. Maybe I'm just a big dummy and can't understand all that smart-feller, egghead stuff... or maybe this guy needs a more forceful editor.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How did music become "FOLK" music?, June 11, 2002

By	E. L. Oneill "Lee O'Neill" (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Hardcover)

Cantwell is an academician but sometimes even scholars can put together a fascinating book. The music we call "Folk" music more or less surfaced in the folk revival of the late 50s and early 60s but what was its prehistory and how did "Folk" music come to be what it is perceived to be today? In a music inherently archival and conservative, why is it generally aligned with the left end of the political spectrum when it gets political? Why is a solo singer with a guitar a "folk" musician but a solo piano player not?

Cantwell traces the music and events that led to the Folk Revival from the first commercialization of non-academic music (minstrel shows, for example) through its contacts with Broadway and concert singing (Paul Robeson, John Jacob Niles, etc.) through and its affiliation with communists, campers, beatniks and folklorists. The writing is dense and Cantwell doesn't always provide clear enough landmarks to help you follow his arguments, but his conception of the complexities that lay behind the folk revival is remarkable.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cantwell stares into the well....., January 31, 2005

By	M. Brust (Denton, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Cantwell's insights are extremely valuable in the on-going evaluation of this area of America's cultural expression. Informed opinions are the best we can do in the study of the artifacts of the human experience in America. Cantwell's ideas have come to permeate,and dominate, the criticism of this long overlooked and misunderstood area of American music. His essay on Harry Smith is a revelation.