We heard the other day, as we recall it was one of those slightly windy fall days when the whole natural process is somewhat uncertain--that folk music was dead. The oral tradition, our Jeremiah confided, was no more. And the ubiquitous tape recorders of the Lomax clan have succeeded only in attracting the curious and such aesthetes as might otherwise "mourn the Medieval grace of iron clothing."
Accordingly, the opportunity coming, like the sky to Chicken Little's head, we went to see Josh White. Quiet and stealthy as people late for church, we tapped at the door. At the command "Come," we pushed in.
"Fall on in. I'd about given you up." We fell into place and asked our questions.
"No. Definitely no. Take it from me, daddy. It's not dying." In fact, he said, it seems to be getting stronger. Rock and roll was commercial, but it was folk music, he said. But all it had was a beat and it couldn't last. "The teenagers just coudn't keep it up. Something's got to happen. Run out of gas or something." Now you are getting more ballads, he noted, more blues and ballads.
He noted Calypso. "Harry--Harry Belafonte--gave it words, I mean he sang it so people could understand the words. And if people can't understand the words, they don't get the story."
Story or not, thousands of people crowded the Malls of the Scandinavian countries where indoor facilities were too small for his concerts. "You just have to introduce your songs a little slower, and sing a little slower," he said and probably they don't understand a lot of the words. But still, thirty to forty thousand people every time.
Were the trips across Europe sponsored by the State Department as Good Will Tours?
"No. No. The loot. That's for the loot." His smile reminded us of the coal miners' song, "Keep Your Hand Upon the Dollar, and Your Eye Upon the Scale."
It works out?
He smiled widely enough to cover the retreat of the Cheshire cat, "Pretty good."
Are folk singers eating a little more regularly than in the past? We remembered that Lead Belly had sometimes been a little short on "loot."
"He was singing," White said, "he was working hard, but he wasn't getting it. You have to watch that." Actually, with so much staff needed, it seemed harder now, he said.
Recalling the legendary strength of Lead Belly's hands, and the fact that he played a twelve string guitar, with steel strings, we asked about that.
"I can play a twelve string guitar," he said, though I usually play a six string. The thing is with twelve, the neck is not much wider, but with more strings you have to use picks." As to steel strings, "you can't really use anything else. Nylon or gut just won't talk back to you the way you'll want it to. The twang just isn't there. For Blues. You can't make it dirty."
Asked where the new material, the new folk singers, would come from, he said, "from the teenagers, the ones who fall in love with the songs. There are a lot of them. Josh Jr.--he's 16--and some I'm training, and Stan Wilson, and Dean Gitter will be good some day, and a pupil of Lead Belly's--I can't think of his name--on the twelve string guitar, who's damn near as good." He brought himself up short and stretched his hands wide apart. "By damn near as good, I mean that's a lot of difference."
