Podcasts about The Freedom Singers

We go into the Fresh Air archive to remember two remarkable women: Bernice Johnson Reagon was one of the powerful singers who helped galvanize the civil rights movement in the 1960s, as a member of the Freedom Singers quartet. She died July 16 at the age of 81. Also, we remember writer Gail Lumet Buckley, the daughter of singer Lena Horne, who chronicled her family's history from enslavement to becoming a part of the Black bourgeoisie. She died this week at age 86. August 2nd is the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin, so we listen back to Terry Gross's 1986 interview with him.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We go into the Fresh Air archive to remember two remarkable women: Bernice Johnson Reagon was one of the powerful singers who helped galvanize the civil rights movement in the 1960s, as a member of the Freedom Singers quartet. She died July 16 at the age of 81. Also, we remember writer Gail Lumet Buckley, the daughter of singer Lena Horne, who chronicled her family's history from enslavement to becoming a part of the Black bourgeoisie. She died this week at age 86. August 2nd is the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin, so we listen back to Terry Gross's 1986 interview with him.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Jovelyn Richards and Margo Okazawa-Rey pay tribute to Dr  Bernice Johnson Reagon and listen to clips of her music and talks . Bernice Johnson Reagon (October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024) was an American song leader, professor of American history, composer, historian, musician, scholar, curator at the Smithsonian, and social activist who, in the early 1960s, was a founding member of the Freedom Singers, organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Albany Movement for civil rights in Georgia.[1][2] In 1973, she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington, D.C. Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.[4] The post Tribute to musician and activist Dr Bernice Johnson Reagon appeared first on KPFA.

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, died Tuesday at the age of 81. Her daughter, the acclaimed musician Toshi Reagon, shared the news of her mother's passing Wednesday night in a public Facebook post. It is impossible to separate liberation struggles from song. And in the 1960s — at marches, and in jailhouses — the voice leading those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. Her work as a scholar and activist continued throughout her life, in universities and concert halls, at protests and in houses of worship. The future songleader was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a Baptist minister. She was admitted to a historically Black public college, Albany State, at the age of 16 and studied music. Albany, Ga., would become an important center of the civil rights movement when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there in 1962, causing the media to descend on the town.

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, died Tuesday at the age of 81. Her daughter, the acclaimed musician Toshi Reagon, shared the news of her mother's passing Wednesday night in a public Facebook post. It is impossible to separate liberation struggles from song. And in the 1960s — at marches, and in jailhouses — the voice leading those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. Her work as a scholar and activist continued throughout her life, in universities and concert halls, at protests and in houses of worship. The future songleader was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a Baptist minister. She was admitted to a historically Black public college, Albany State, at the age of 16 and studied music. Albany, Ga., would become an important center of the civil rights movement when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there in 1962, causing the media to descend on the town.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. Take this survey. We take the temperature on where Democrats are on President Biden staying in the presidential race with Sen. Peter Welch. He was the first Senate Democrat to call for Biden to withdraw after his "disastrous" debate performance. Then, as the Republican National Convention continues, we look at some of former President Donald Trump's policy proposals. The Wall Street Journal's Nick Timiraos and the Washington Post's Hannah Knowles join us. And, Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the Freedom Singers during the Civil Rights Movement, has died at 81. We remember her legacy with the Smithsonian's Krystal Klingenberg.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Original airdate January 16, 2022 On December 11, 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the AFL-CIO's Fourth Constitutional Convention at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. The speech is not long, just 30 minutes, but it's tremendously historic, both in its content and its timing. In this speech, King connected the civil rights movement and labor movement, calling them “the two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country.” King encouraged the AFL-CIO to "help erase all vestiges of racial discrimination in American life, including labor unions," as well as to provide financial support to the civil rights movement. Until recently this speech only existed on a reel of tape in the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, but for the 2022 AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference the AFL-CIO and the Archives digitized the speech and gave us permission to bring it to you here on Labor History Today. Labor historian Joe McCartin tells us how had King come to be there, the context for his quiet but powerful challenge to the American labor movement, and what that speech says to us now, 61 years later. Our other story today is the perfect follow-up to Dr. King's speech; it's about the fight by DC trash collector Marvin Fleming and his union, AFSCME, against job discrimination in the 1960's. On this week's Labor History in Two: Give Us Our Daily Bread (1898) and Standing Against Wage Theft (1915). Questions, comments or suggestions welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @AFSCME @AFSCMEArchivist @JosephMcCartin SEE ALSO: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech to AFL-CIO Exploring Dr. King's Radical Legacy Trumka in Memphis: We're Reaching for that Mountaintop This week's music: Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round (The Roots); Everybody's Got A Right To Live: Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick & Jimmy Collier and The Soul Chance; Woke up this morning (The Freedom Singers).

We're looking at a song that is indisputably a Christmas carol but with a reach that extends to every season – “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” It belongs to a collection of historic Negro Spirituals, which likely started on the slave plantations in the American South and were later picked up in the Civil Rights Movement by activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and later, The Freedom Singers.  “Go Tell It on the Mountain” has been performed by a multitude of heavenly singers and we were lucky enough to speak to one such star- Vanessa Williams- about why she chose to feature the carol on her 1996 Christmas album, Star Bright. Maggi Van Dorn, Hark's host, also garnishes rich cultural and theological insight from Catholic liturgical heavyweight, Eric Styles, along with expert music and history lessons from the wildly talented Emorja Roberson, Assistant Professor of Music and African-American Studies at the Oxford College of Emory University. The music featured in this episode is thanks to The OK Factor, Caleb Noeldner, Kendra Logozar, Kim and Reggie Harris, Vanessa Williams, and Universal Music Enterprises. Special thanks to Pauline Books and Media for the recording of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” by Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A. We're grateful to Emorja Roberson for providing commentary and his singing voice throughout, and to Frank Tuson for his audio wizardry as the engineer on this episode. Frank also composed the Hark! theme music and successfully convinced members of his family to record “Down to the River,” heard on this episode. Support “Hark!” become a digital subscriber of America Magazine at: https://link.chtbl.com/04Jrg99F Or you can play a little reindeer game with us and win a subscription to America!  At the end of this episode, we've left a clue about next week's carol. Guess the carol in an Instagram post, tag three friends, and follow @americamedia, and you will be entered to win a one-year digital subscription to America. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents only 18 and older. Prize value is $49.99 each. Promotion period November 26 to December 22, 2023. Twenty winners will be randomly selected and notified by D.M. by January 10, 2023. Instagram does not endorse this giveaway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1961, Rutha Mae Harris was home visiting her family after her first year at Florida A&M University. Protests had been erupting in Albany, her hometown, and Harris had to face a question that many young people involved in the struggle asked themselves – would she go back to school or stay and organize? She knew the need. Harris grew up with strong roots in the community. Her father, Rev. Isaiah Harris, was the founding minister of Mt. Calvary Baptist Church and had been providing literacy classes and encouraging members of his congregation to register to vote since the 1940s. He taught his children to always think that they were as good as anyone else and to never fear any man. Her mother was a schoolteacher and was supportive of the Movement, “She told me that as long as I came back to finish my schooling, it was alright with her.” And so Harris stayed, fueled by the opportunity to fight for her freedom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I visited George Floyd Square in Minneapolis. I was moved, and I made a friend. Butchy Austin, one of the leaders of Brass Solidarity, shares his experience and his music, and launches a typically atypical exploration of protest, liberation, and revolution. Freedom Singers, Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, Nancy Sinatra, Beatles, Kristofferson, of course Prine, and some surprises. BLM.

In deze aflevering praat Andrew met een levende legende: Charles "Chuck" Neblett. Een burgerrechtenactivist die onder andere bekend is als mede-oprichter van The Freedom Singers. Hiermee zong hij tijdens talloze protesten, waaronder tijdens de 'March on Washington'. De dag waarop Martin Luther King zijn beroemde "I Have A Dream" speech hield. 

“I wanted to be part of that stream of music that could change people's minds and hearts,” explains Gary Lapow, the composer for the Language Alchemy Podcast music. Gary writes music to reflect different times in his life with a desire to provide hope. Today, host Alejandra and Gary discuss the power of music and how it can be a communication tool to make the world a more inclusive place. Gary has had a fascinating musical journey centered around social justice and bringing people's stories to light. He has used music to spread positivity and love, from touring with the Freedom Singers to leading kids through inclusive songs. Ultimately, Gary believes that music is more significant than himself and an effective way to bring people together and voice what it means to be human. Tune into this week's episode of the Language Alchemy Podcast for an inspirational conversation on making meaningful music. Learn more about Gary's experience with the civil rights movement, his introduction to the folk genre, and how he only wants to make music that spreads peace. Quotes • “At different times in my life, whatever I'm going through, that's what my music is about.” (3:38 - 3:43) • “There was a dedication to making the world better, at least what little bit we can do as artists, making a momentary situation where audiences felt united. And that's been something that I've done for decades.” (5:31 - 5:53) • “I wanted to be part of that stream of music that could change people's minds and hearts.” (10:40 - 10:48) • “I felt so thankful that I was able to give a voice to what people were thinking and feeling. But we took that responsibility very seriously.” (12:26 - 12:35) • “What does it mean to be a decent person? Just positive messages, how can I send positive messages and everybody's having so much fun, the audience does not realize they're being preached that because they're not really being preached at, they are having a good time. And they're saying these words, and these words are all affirmations, of decency, how to be a decent person.” (15:40 - 16:05) • “The only songs I really want to share with people are songs about love and peacefulness.” (19:28 - 19:38) Links To visit Gary Lapow's website, click here: https://www.garylapowart.com/ To listen to Gary's music on YouTube, click here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CGPolyAqmlRwji49_GEAA To follow Gary on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garylapowart/ To ask your communication question, click here: languagealchemy.com/podcastquestion To join the mailing list, visit: Languagealchemy.com Podcast Music composed by Gary Lapow: open.spotify.com/artist/1HlMhcNfKIELxYil5mVqDI Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

**DISCLAIMER** THIS EPISODE TALKS ABOUT THINGS PEOPLE MIGHT FIND UNCOMFORTABLE TO HEAR. In this episode Emma talks about a birth that was so traumatic that both her and her husband couldn't talk about it for 3 years! How moving to the French Alps gave them new life and how they help through connection, love and food with The Welcome Tent.   “But by that point, I, then I disconnected from it. And I remember looking down at my own body thinking “I can't be part of that”. I removed myself and I can't explain what, I don't know how that happened but I just, I had to remove myself because it was beyond anything that I could ever have imagined. It's not, it's not in the books”.   “You know, I had to get therapy, but to get therapy, you have to get a diagnosis, like to go to the doctor. And he was like, Um, so, okay. I can give you either a severe psychological issues or PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder”.   “How can they be in the same….?”   “Ah, well, this is the whole experience. You know, it just shine a light on the, how ill prepared our system is for psychological challenges and issues.  ”     ABOUT THE GUEST - EMMA BARRETT PALMER   Recently a new mum for the second time which has kept her busy this past year. She is Founder of humanKINDER Limited, a creative research agency which she set up after running the first Social Innovation Lab in UK government. The catalyst for this professional change was volunteering in Calais with displaced communities, a life-changing experience that inspired her family to travel Europe for a year in their van with “The Welcome Tent”. From their new home in the French Alps, Emma is now writing Recipes of HOPE, a book about the people we met and the food we shared on our journey.    Some helpful information about PTSD and Birth Trauma from MIND: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/postnatal-depression-and-perinatal-mental-health/ptsd-and-birth-trauma/   Name That Tune Songs: THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE - Fannie Lou Hamer & the Freedom Singers https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00J3LMQ0Y/ref=dm_ws_ps_adp   REVOLUTION - Congo Natty   CONNECT WITH EMMA:   www.humankinder.uk https://www.instagram.com/emmabarrettpalmer/ https://www.instagram.com/thewelcometent https://www.instagram.com/humankinder.uk/  https://twitter.com/emma_aube   ABOUT THE HOST - EVE HORNE   Eve Horne is an Award Winning Singer, songwriter, producer, sound engineer, podcast producer and more recently, a creative transformational coach, Mentor and Advisor. She has over 20 years experience in the Music Industry and is founder of PeakMusicUK and the UNHEARD Campaign which demands equality for women in the Music Industry.   Eve helps women to realign their vision and realise their potential through her unique programme that combines creativity and mental well-being. Eve is passionate about  unlocking the ‘forgotten you' and clearing those subconscious blocks so that each woman can remember her worth, regain her confidence and achieve inner success.   Eve is also co-author of children's book “How Nova Got The star In Her Eye” a beautiful children's picture book about an interracial, same sex couple and their journey to becoming a family! A book can help educate all families! https://amzn.to/3wz9NSw   If you need a podcast producer, need mentoring 1-2-1 training or advice on singing, songwriting or production, or you are curious about my Rewire program to build confidence. Reconnect you to your younger self reignite, your passion and realign your journey, you can book a complimentary 30 minute call via my website www.peakmusic.uk. If you want to get back on track, feel free to give me a call today. And let's get chatting.    Also, if you would like to support the We Are The Unheard campaign to help young women get trained in songwriting and music production, please grab yourself a T-shirt here: https://www.peakmusic.uk/about-4   CONNECT WITH EVE:   https://www.facebook.com/WeAreTheUnheardPodcastGroup https://www.linkedin.com https://www.facebook.com/wearepeakmusicUK https://www.facebook.com/EveHorne https://www.instagram.com/WeAreTheUnheard https://www.instagram.com/EveHorne https://www.instagram.com/PeakMusicUK https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@evehorne https://www.youtube.com/PeakMusicUK https://linktr.ee/PEAKMusicUK     Sontronics Podcast Pro Mic:   https://amzn.to/3yhUWvH RED https://amzn.to/2WIiSuy GOLD https://amzn.to/2WDiqgV GREEN https://amzn.to/3rK9l1o SILVER https://amzn.to/3rO8DA4 BLUE https://amzn.to/3ym3sds PURPLE   HOSTED BY: Eve Horne

Today's show comes to us from Labor's Untold Stories, hosted by Marty Horning. As Women's History Month continues, Marty honors some of the women, both past and present, who have helped build – and who are now leading – the American labor movement. And there's plenty of good music, too. On this week's Labor History in Two: Remembering Susan B. Anthony. Questions, comments or suggestions welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. Produced by Chris Garlock.  #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @CLUWNational #EqualPayWeekOfAction #EqualPayDay2021 #HealthierWithFairPay  Music: The Rebel Girl (Janne Lærkedahl); Which Side are You On? (The Freedom Singers); Fannie Sellins (Anne Feeney); Emma Goldman (Adam East & Kris Deelane); The Rebel Girl Joe Glazer.       

Broadcast on February 3, 2022 Hosted by Chris Garlock February 4 is Transit Equity Day and ATU Local 689 President Raymond Jackson and Labor Network For Sustainability Maryland Director Elizabeth Bunn join us to talk about why transit affects working people the most. Then, Where Do Grocery Prices Come From? Corporate consolidation and profiteering, that's where; Errol Schweizer, host of The Checkout Podcast, explains. Finally, there's a brand-new book out this month, "Revolutionary Nonviolence, Organizing for Freedom", and one of the authors, Michael Honey, joins us to discuss the philosophy and power of nonviolent organizing, and how to build and sustain effective social movements. Today's music: Woke Up This Morning by The Freedom Singers. Plus labor news headlines: Center For American Progress Staffers Threaten To Strike Amid Contract Fight; U.S. Labor board official seeks swift punishment for anti-union threats; NWSL, NWSLPA Agree to 1st CBA in League History; Minimum Salaries, More Addressed; Starbucks union push spreads to 54 stores in 19 states; The NLRB accused Amazon of illegally threatening, surveilling, and interrogating workers over union organizing at a New York warehouse; Genesee Co-op FCU Congratulates Employees on Joining Communication Workers of America Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kaliah Chapman and Ciera Shine. @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod #TransitEquity @LN4S @labor4sustainability @labor4sustainability @checkoutradio

On December 11, 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the AFL-CIO's Fourth Constitutional Convention at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. The speech is not long, just 30 minutes, but it's tremendously historic, both in its content and its timing. In this speech, King connected the civil rights movement and labor movement, calling them “the two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country.” King encouraged the AFL-CIO to "help erase all vestiges of racial discrimination in American life, including labor unions," as well as to provide financial support to the civil rights movement. Until recently this speech only existed on a reel of tape in the Meany Labor Archives at the University of Maryland College Park, but for this year's AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference (Jan. 16-17 online) the AFL-CIO and the Archives digitized the speech and gave us permission to bring it to you here on Labor History Today. Labor historian Joe McCartin tells us how had King come to be there, the context for his quiet but powerful challenge to the American labor movement, and what that speech says to us now, 61 years later. Our other story today is the perfect follow-up to Dr. King's speech; it's about the fight by DC trash collector Marvin Fleming and his union, AFSCME, against job discrimination in the 1960's. On this week's Labor History in Two: Give Us Our Daily Bread (1898) and Standing Against Wage Theft (1915). Questions, comments or suggestions welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle #LaborHistory @AFSCME @AFSCMEArchivist @JosephMcCartin SEE ALSO: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech to AFL-CIO Exploring Dr. King's Radical Legacy Trumka in Memphis: We're Reaching for that Mountaintop This week's music: Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round (The Roots); Everybody's Got A Right To Live: Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick & Jimmy Collier and The Soul Chance; Woke up this morning (The Freedom Singers).

NOTE: This episode went up before the allegations about Dylan, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, were made public on Monday night. Had I been aware of them, I would at least have commented at the beginning of the episode. Episode one hundred and thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, and the controversy over Dylan going electric, Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Hold What You've Got" by Joe Tex. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum A couple of times I refer to “CBS”. Dylan's label in the US was Columbia Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc, but in the rest of the world the label traded as “CBS Records”. I should probably have used “Columbia” throughout... Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Dylan. Much of the information in this episode comes from Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. The New Yorker article by Nat Hentoff I talk about is here. And for the information about the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone", I relied on yet another book by Heylin, All the Madmen. Dylan's albums up to 1967 can all be found in their original mono mixes on this box set. And Dylan's performances at Newport from 1963 through 1965 are on this DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's a story that everyone tells about Bob Dylan in 1965, the story that has entered into legend. It's the story that you'll see in most of the biographies of him, and in all those coffee-table histories of rock music put out by glossy music magazines. Bob Dylan, in this story, was part of the square, boring, folk scene until he plugged in an electric guitar and just blew the minds of all those squares, who immediately ostracised him forever for being a Judas and betraying their traditionalist acoustic music, but he was just too cool and too much of a rebel to be bound by their rules, man. Pete Seeger even got an axe and tried to cut his way through the cables of the amplifiers, he was so offended by the desecration of the Newport Folk Festival. And like all these stories, it's an oversimplification but there's an element of truth to it too. So today, we're going to look at what actually happened when Dylan went electric. We're going to look at what led to him going electric, and at the truth behind the legend of Seeger's axe. And we're going to look at the masterpiece at the centre of it all, a record that changed rock songwriting forever. We're going to look at Bob Dylan and "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] While we've seen Dylan turn up in all sorts of episodes -- most recently the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", the last time we looked at him in detail was in the episode on "Blowin' in the Wind", and when we left him there he had just recorded his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but it had not yet been released. As we'll see, Dylan was always an artist who moved on very quickly from what he'd been doing before, and that had started as early as that album. While his first album, produced by John Hammond, had been made up almost entirely of traditional songs and songs he'd learned from Dave van Ronk or Eric von Schmidt, with only two originals, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan had started out being produced by Hammond, but as Hammond and Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had come to find it difficult to work together, the last few tracks had been produced by Tom Wilson. We've mentioned Wilson briefly a couple of times already, but to reiterate, Wilson was a Black Harvard graduate and political conservative whose background was in jazz and who had no knowledge of or love for folk music. But Wilson saw two things in Dylan -- the undeniable power of his lyrics, and his vocals, which Wilson compared to Ray Charles. Wilson wanted to move Dylan towards working with a backing band, and this was something that Dylan was interested in doing, but his first experiment with that, with John Hammond, hadn't been a particular success. Dylan had recorded a single backed with a band -- "Mixed-Up Confusion", backed with "Corrina, Corrina", a version of an old song that had been recorded by both Bob Wills and Big Joe Turner, but had recently been brought back to the public mind by a version Phil Spector had produced for Ray Peterson. Dylan's version of that song had a country lope and occasional breaks into Jimmie Rodgers style keening that foreshadow his work of the late sixties: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Corrina, Corrina (single version)"] A different take of that track was included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album that was made up almost entirely of originals. Those originals fell into roughly two types -- there were songs like "Masters of War", "Blowin' in the Wind", and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" which dealt in some way with the political events of the time -- the fear of nuclear war, the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and more -- but did so in an elliptical, poetic way; and there were songs about distance in a relationship -- songs like "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", which do a wonderful job at portraying a young man's conflicted feelings -- the girl has left him, and he wants her back, but he wants to pretend that he doesn't.  While it's always a bad idea to look for a direct autobiographical interpretation of Dylan's lyrics, it seems fairly safe to say that these songs were inspired by Dylan's feelings for his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who had gone travelling in Europe and not seen him for eight months, and who he was worried he would never see again, and he does seem to have actually had several conflicting feelings about this, ranging from desperation for her to come back through to anger and resentment. The surprising thing about The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is that it's a relatively coherent piece of work, despite being recorded with two different producers over a period of more than a year, and that recording being interrupted by Dylan's own travels to the UK, his separation from and reconciliation with Rotolo, and a change of producers. If you listened to it, you would get an impression of exactly who Dylan was -- you'd come away from it thinking that he was an angry, talented, young man who was trying to merge elements of both traditional English folk music and Robert Johnson style Delta blues with poetic lyrics related to what was going on in the young man's life. By the next album, that opinion of Dylan would have to be reworked, and it would have to be reworked with every single album that came out.  But The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out at the perfect time for Dylan to step into the role of "spokesman for a generation" -- a role which he didn't want, and to which he wasn't particularly suited. Because it came out in May 1963, right at the point at which folk music was both becoming hugely more mainstream, and becoming more politicised. And nothing showed both those things as well as the Hootenanny boycott: [Excerpt: The Brothers Four, “Hootenanny Saturday Night”] We've talked before about Hootenanny, the folk TV show, but what we haven't mentioned is that there was a quite substantial boycott of that show by some of the top musicians in folk music at the time. The reason for this is that Pete Seeger, the elder statesman of the folk movement, and his old band the Weavers, were both blacklisted from the show because of Seeger's Communist leanings. The Weavers were --- according to some sources -- told that they could go on if they would sign a loyalty oath, but they refused. It's hard for those of us who weren't around at the time to really comprehend both just how subversive folk music was considered, and how seriously subversion was taken in the USA of the early 1960s. To give a relevant example -- Suze Rotolo was pictured on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Because of this, her cousin's husband, who was in the military, lost his security clearance and didn't get a promotion he was in line for. Again,  someone lost his security clearance because his wife's cousin was pictured on the cover of a Bob Dylan album. So the blacklisting of Seeger and the Weavers was considered a serious matter by the folk music community, and people reacted very strongly. Joan Baez announced that she wouldn't be going on Hootenanny until they asked Seeger on, and Dylan, the Kingston Trio, Dave van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among many others, all refused to go on the show as a result. But the odd thing was, whenever anyone *actually asked* Pete Seeger what he thought they should do, he told them they should go on the TV show and use it as an opportunity to promote the music. So while the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary, two of the biggest examples of the commercialisation of folk music that the serious purists sneered at, were refusing to go on the TV in solidarity with a Communist, that Communist's brother, Mike Seeger, happily went on Hootenanny with his band the New Lost City Ramblers, and when the Tarriers were invited on to the show but it clashed with one of their regular bookings, Pete Seeger covered their booking for them so they could appear. Dylan was on the side of the boycotters, though he was not too clear on exactly why. When he spoke about  the boycott on stage, this is what he had to say: [Excerpt: Dylan talks about the boycott. Transcript: "Now a friend of mine, a friend of all yours I'm sure, Pete Seeger's been blacklisted [applause]. He and another group called the Weavers who are around New York [applause] I turned down that television show, but I got no right [applause] but . . . I feel bad turning it down, because the Weavers and Pete Seeger can't be on it. They oughta turn it down. They aren't even asked to be on it because they are blacklisted. Uh—which is, which is a bad thing. I don't know why it's bad, but it's just bad, it's bad all around."] Hootenanny started broadcasting in April 1963, just over a month before The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, and so it would have been a good opportunity for publicity for him -- but turning the show down was also good publicity. Hootenanny wouldn't be the only opportunity to appear on TV that he was offered. It would also not be the only one he turned down. In May, Dylan was given the opportunity to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, but he agreed on one condition -- that he be allowed to sing "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues". For those who don't know, the John Birch Society is a far-right conspiratorial organisation which had a huge influence on the development of the American right-wing in the middle of the twentieth century, and is responsible for perpetuating almost every conspiracy theory that has exerted a malign influence on the country and the world since that time. They were a popular punching bag for the left and centre, and for good reason -- we heard the Chad Mitchell Trio mocking them, for example, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" a couple of weeks ago.  So Dylan insisted that if he was going to go on the Ed Sullivan Show, it would only be to perform his song about them: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues"] Now, the Ed Sullivan Show was not interested in having Dylan sing a song that would upset a substantial proportion of its audience, on what was after all meant to be an entertainment show, and so Dylan didn't appear on the show -- and he got a big publicity boost from his principled refusal to make a TV appearance that would have given him a big publicity boost. It's interesting to note in this context that Dylan himself clearly didn't actually think very much of the song -- he never included it on any of his albums, and it remained unreleased for decades. By this point, Dylan had started dating Joan Baez, with whom he would have an on-again off-again relationship for the next couple of years, even though at this point he was also still seeing Suze Rotolo. Baez was one of the big stars of the folk movement, and like Rotolo she was extremely politically motivated. She was also a fan of Dylan's writing, and had started recording versions of his songs on her albums: [Excerpt: Joan Baez, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] The relationship between the two of them became much more public when they appeared together at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. The Newport Folk Festival had started in 1959, as a spinoff from the successful Newport Jazz Festival, which had been going for a number of years previously. As there was a large overlap between the jazz and folk music fanbases -- both musics appealed at this point to educated, middle-class, liberals who liked to think of themselves as a little bit Bohemian -- the Jazz Festival had first started putting on an afternoon of folk music during its normal jazz programme, and then spun that off into a whole separate festival, initially with the help of Albert Grossman, who advised on which acts should be booked (and of course included several of the acts he managed on the bill). Both Newport festivals had been shut down after rioting at the 1960 Jazz Festival, as three thousand more people had turned up for the show than there was capacity for, and the Marines had had to be called in to clear the streets of angry jazz fans, but the jazz  festival had returned in 1962, and in 1963 the folk festival came back as well. By this time, Albert Grossman was too busy to work for the festival, and so its organisation was taken over by a committee headed by Pete Seeger.  At that 1963 festival, even though Dylan was at this point still a relative unknown compared to some of the acts on the bill, he was made the headliner of the first night, which finished with his set, and then with him bringing Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger and the Freedom Singers out to sing with him on "Blowin' in the Wind" and "We Shall Overcome".  To many people, Dylan's appearance in 1963 was what launched him from being "one of the rising stars of the folk movement" to being the most important musician in the movement -- still just one of many, but the first among equals. He was now being talked of in the same terms as Joan Baez or Pete Seeger, and was also starting to behave like someone as important as them -- like he was a star. And that was partly because Baez was promoting Dylan, having him duet with her on stage on his songs -- though few would now argue that the combination of their voices did either artist any favours, Baez's pure, trained, voice, rubbing up against Dylan's more idiosyncratic phrasing in ways that made both sound less impressive: [Excerpt: Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, "With God On Our Side (live at Newport 1963)"] At the end of 1963, Dylan recorded his third album, which came out in early 1964. The Times They Are A-Changin' seems to be Dylan's least personal album to this point, and seems to have been written as a conscious attempt to write the kind of songs that people wanted and expected from him -- there were songs about particular recent news events, like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll",  the true story of the murder of a Black woman by a white man, and  "Only a Pawn in Their Game", about the murder of the Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers. There were fictional dramatisations of the kind of effects that real-world social problems were having on people, like "North Country Blues", in which the callous way mining towns were treated by capital leads to a woman losing her parents, brother, husband, and children, or "The Ballad of Hollis Brown", about a farmer driven to despair by poverty who ends up killing his whole family and himself. As you can imagine, it's not a very cheery album, but it's one that impressed a lot of people, especially its title track, which was very deliberately written as an anthem for the new social movements that were coming up: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"] But it was a bleak album, with none of the humour that had characterised Dylan's first two albums. Soon after recording the album, Dylan had a final split with Rotolo, went travelling for a while, and took LSD for the first time. He also started to distance himself from Baez at this point, though the two would remain together until mid 1965. He seems to have regarded the political material he was doing as a mistake, as something he was doing for other people, rather than because that was what he wanted to do.  He toured the UK in early 1964, and then returned to the US in time to record his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. It can be argued that this is the point where Dylan really becomes himself, and starts making music that's the music he wants to make, rather than music that he thinks other people want him to make.  The entire album was recorded in one session, along with a few tracks that didn't make the cut -- like the early version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Ramblin' Jack Elliott that we heard in the episode on that song. Elliott was in attendance, as were a number of Dylan's other friends, though the album features only Dylan performing. Also there was the journalist Nat Hentoff, who wrote a full account of the recording session for the New Yorker, which I'll link in the show notes.  Dylan told Hentoff "“There aren't any finger-pointing songs in here, either. Those records I've already made, I'll stand behind them, but some of that was jumping into the scene to be heard and a lot of it was because I didn't see anybody else doing that kind of thing. Now a lot of people are doing finger-pointing songs. You know—pointing to all the things that are wrong. Me, I don't want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman. Like I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write from inside me, and to do that I'm going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally." Dylan was right to say that there were no finger-pointing songs. The songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan were entirely personal -- "Ballad in Plain D", in particular, is Dylan's take on the night he split up with Suze Rotolo, laying the blame -- unfairly, as he would later admit -- on her older sister. The songs mostly dealt with love and relationships, and as a result were ripe for cover versions. The opening track, in particular, "All I Really Want to Do", which in Dylan's version was a Jimmie Rodgers style hillbilly tune, became the subject of duelling cover versions. The Byrds' version came out as the follow-up to their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "All I Really Want to Do"] But Cher also released a version -- which the Byrds claimed came about when Cher's husband Sonny Bono secretly taped a Byrds live show where they performed the song before they'd released it, and he then stole their arrangement: [Excerpt: Cher, "All I Really Want to Do"] In America, the Byrds' version only made number forty on the charts, while Cher made number fifteen. In the UK, where both artists were touring at the time to promote the single, Cher made number nine but the Byrds charted higher at number four.  Both those releases came out after the album came out in late 1964, but even before it was released, Dylan was looking for other artists to cover his new songs. He found one at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, where he met Johnny Cash for the first time. Cash had been a fan of Dylan for some time -- and indeed, he's often credited as being the main reason why CBS persisted with Dylan after his first album was unsuccessful, as Cash had lobbied for him within the company -- and he'd recently started to let that influence show. His most recent hit, "Understand Your Man", owed more than a little to Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", and Cash had also started recording protest songs. At Newport, Cash performed his own version of "Don't Think Twice": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] Cash and Dylan met up, with June Carter and Joan Baez, in Baez's hotel room, and according to later descriptions they were both so excited to meet each other they were bouncing with excitement, jumping up and down on the beds. They played music together all night, and Dylan played some of his new songs for Cash. One of them was "It Ain't Me Babe", a song that seems at least slightly inspired by "She Loves You" -- you can sing the "yeah, yeah, yeah" and "no, no, no" together -- and which was the closing track of Another Side of Bob Dylan. Cash soon released his own version of the song, which became a top five country hit: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "It Ain't Me Babe"] But it wasn't long after meeting Cash that Dylan met the group who may have inspired that song -- and his meeting with the Beatles seems to have confirmed in him his decision that he needed to move away from the folk scene and towards making pop records. This was something that Tom Wilson had been pushing for for a while -- Wilson had told Dylan's manager Albert Grossman that if they could get Dylan backed by a good band, they'd have a white Ray Charles on their hands. As an experiment, Wilson took some session musicians into the studio and had them overdub an electric backing on Dylan's acoustic version of "House of the Rising Sun", basing the new backing on the Animals' hit version. The result wasn't good enough to release, but it did show that there was a potential for combining Dylan's music with the sound of electric guitars and drums: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “House of the Rising Sun (electric version)”] Dylan was also being influenced by his friend John Hammond Jr, the blues musician son of Dylan's first producer, and a veteran of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Hammond had decided that he wanted to show the British R&B bands what proper American blues sounded like, and so he'd recruited a group of mostly-Canadian musicians to back him on an electric album. His "So Many Roads" album featured three members of a group called Levon and the Hawks -- Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson -- who had recently quit working for the Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins -- plus harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite and Mike Bloomfield, who was normally a guitarist but who is credited on piano for the album: [Excerpt: John Hammond, Jr. "Who Do You Love?"] Dylan was inspired by Hammond's sound, and wanted to get the same sound on his next record, though he didn't consider hiring the same musicians. Instead, for his next album he brought in Bruce Langhorne, the tambourine man himself, on guitar, Bobby Gregg -- a drummer who had been the house drummer for Cameo-Parkway and played on hits by Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell and others; the session guitarists Al Gorgoni and Kenny Rankin, piano players Frank Owens and Paul Griffin, and two bass players, Joseph Macho and William Lee, the father of the film director Spike Lee. Not all of these played on all the finished tracks -- and there were other tracks recorded during the sessions, where Dylan was accompanied by Hammond and another guitarist, John Sebastian, that weren't used at all -- but that's the lineup that played on Dylan's first electric album, Bringing it All Back Home. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" actually takes more inspiration than one might imagine from the old-school folk singers Dylan was still associating with. Its opening lines seem to be a riff on "Taking it Easy", a song that had originally been written in the forties by Woody Guthrie for the Almanac Singers, where it had been a song about air-raid sirens: [Excerpt: The Almanac Singers, "Taking it Easy"] But had then been rewritten by Pete Seeger for the Weavers, whose version had included this verse that wasn't in the original: [Excerpt: The Weavers, "Taking it Easy"] Dylan took that verse, and the basic Guthrie-esque talking blues rhythm, and connected it to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" with its rapid-fire joking blues lyrics: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Too Much Monkey Business"] But Dylan's lyrics were a radical departure, a freeform, stream-of-consciousness proto-psychedelic lyric inspired as much by the Beat poets as by any musician -- it's no coincidence that in the promotional film Dylan made for the song, one of the earliest examples of what would become known as the rock video, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] "Subterranean Homesick Blues" made the top forty in the US -- it only made number thirty-nine, but it was Dylan's first single to chart at all in the US. And it made the top ten in the UK -- but it's notable that even over here, there was still some trepidation about Dylan's new direction. To promote his UK tour, CBS put out a single of "The Times They Are A-Changin'", and that too made the top ten, and spent longer on the charts than "Subterranean Homesick Blues". Indeed, it seems like everyone was hedging their bets. The opening side of Bringing it All Back Home is all electric, but the B-side is made up entirely of acoustic performances, though sometimes with a little added electric guitar countermelody -- it's very much in the same style as Dylan's earlier albums, and seems to be a way of pulling back after testing the waters, of reassuring people who might have been upset by the change in style on the first side that this was still the same Dylan they knew.  And the old Dylan certainly still had plenty of commercial life in him. Indeed, when Dylan went to the UK for a tour in spring of 1965, he found that British musicians were trying to copy his style -- a young man called Donovan seemed to be doing his best to *be* Dylan, with even the title of his debut hit single seeming to owe something to "Blowing in the Wind": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Catch the Wind (original single version)"] On that UK tour, Dylan performed solo as he always had -- though by this point he had taken to bringing along an entourage. Watching the classic documentary of that tour, Dont Look Back, it's quite painful to see Dylan's cruelty to Joan Baez, who had come along on the expectation that she would be duetting with him occasionally, as he had dueted with her, but who is sidelined, tormented, and ignored. It's even worse to see Bob Neuwirth,  a hanger-on who is very obviously desperate to impress Dylan by copying all his mannerisms and affectations, doing the same. It's unsurprising that this was the end of Dylan and Baez's relationship. Dylan's solo performances on that tour went down well, but some of his fans questioned him about his choice to make an electric record. But he wasn't going to stop recording with electric musicians. Indeed, Tom Wilson also came along on the tour, and while he was in England he made an attempt to record a track with the members of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers -- Mayall, Hughie Flint, Eric Clapton, and John McVie, though it was unsuccessful and only a low-fidelity fragment of it circulates: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] Also attending that session was a young wannabe singer from Germany who Dylan had taken up with, though their dalliance was very brief. During the session Dylan cut a demo of a song he planned to give her, but Nico didn't end up recording "I'll Keep it With Mine" until a couple of years later. But one other thing happened in England. After the UK tour, Dylan travelled over to Europe for a short tour, then returned to the UK to do a show for the BBC -- his first full televised concert. Unfortunately, that show never went ahead -- there was a party the night before, and Dylan was hospitalised after it with what was said to be food poisoning. It might even actually have been food poisoning, but take a listen to the episode I did on Vince Taylor, who was also at that party, and draw your own conclusions. Anyway, Dylan was laid up in bed for a while, and took the opportunity to write what he's variously described as being ten or twenty pages of stream of consciousness vomit, out of which he eventually took four pages of lyrics, a vicious attack on a woman who was originally the protagonist's social superior, but has since fallen. He's never spoken in any detail about what or who the subject of the song was, but given that it was written just days after his breakup with Baez, it's not hard to guess. The first attempt at recording the song was a false start. On June the fifteenth, Dylan and most of the same musicians who'd played on his previous album went into the studio to record it, along with Mike Bloomfield, who had played on that John Hammond album that had inspired Dylan and was now playing in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield had been surprised when Dylan had told him that he didn't want the kind of string-bending electric blues that Bloomfield usually played, but he managed to come up with something Dylan approved of -- but the song was at this point in waltz time: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (early version)"] The session ended, but Joe Macho, Al Gorgoni and Bobby Gregg stayed around after the session, when Tom Wilson called in another session guitarist to join them in doing the same trick he'd done on "House of the Rising Sun", overdubbing new instruments on a flop acoustic record he'd produced for a Greenwich Village folk duo who'd already split up. But we'll hear more about "The Sound of Silence" in a few weeks' time. The next day, the same musicians came back, along with one new one. Al Kooper had been invited by Wilson to come along and watch the session, but he was determined that he was going to play on whatever was recorded. He got to the session early, brought his guitar and amp in and got tuned up before Wilson arrived. But then Kooper heard Bloomfield play, realised that he simply couldn't play at anything remotely like the same standard, and decided he'd be best off staying in the control room after all.  But then, before they started recording "Like a Rolling Stone", which by now was in 4/4 time, Frank Owens, who had been playing organ, switched to piano and left his organ on. Kooper saw his chance -- he played a bit of keyboards, too, and the song was in C, which is the easiest key to play in. Kooper asked Wilson if he could go and play, and Wilson didn't exactly say no, so Kooper went into the studio and sat at the organ.  Kooper improvised the organ line that became the song's most notable instrumental part, but you will notice that it's mixed quite low in the track. This is because Wilson was unimpressed with Kooper's playing, which is technically pretty poor -- indeed, for much of the song, Kooper is a beat behind the rest of the band, waiting for them to change chords and then following the change on the next measure. Luckily, Kooper is also a good enough natural musician that he made this work, and it gave the song a distinctive sound: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] The finished record came in at around six minutes -- and here I should just mention that most books on the subject say that the single was six minutes and thirteen seconds long. That's the length of the stereo mix of the song on the stereo version of the album. The mono mix on the mono album, which we just heard, is five minutes fifty-eight, as it has a shorter fade. I haven't been able to track down a copy of the single as released in 1965, but usually the single mix would be the same as the mono album mix. Whatever the exact length, it was much, much, longer than the norm for a single -- the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" had been regarded as ridiculously long at four and a half minutes -- and Columbia originally wanted to split the song over two sides of a single. But eventually it was released as one side, in full: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] That's Bruce Langhorne there playing that rather sloppy tambourine part, high in the mix. The record made the top five in the UK, and reached number two in the US, only being held off from the top spot by "Help!" by the Beatles.  It would, however, be the last track that Tom Wilson produced for Dylan. Nobody knows what caused their split after three and a half albums working together -- and everything suggests that on the UK tour in the Spring, the two were very friendly. But they had some sort of disagreement, about which neither of them would ever speak, other than a comment by Wilson in an interview shortly before his death in which he said that Dylan had told him he was going to get Phil Spector to produce his records. In the event, the rest of the album Dylan was working on would be produced by Bob Johnston, who would be Dylan's regular producer until the mid-seventies. So "Like a Rolling Stone" was a major break in Dylan's career, and there was another one shortly after its release, when Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival for the third time, in what has become possibly the single most discussed and analysed performance in folk or rock music. The most important thing to note here is that there was not a backlash among the folk crowd against electric instruments. The Newport Folk Festival had *always* had electric performers -- John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash and The Staple Singers had all performed with electric guitars and nobody had cared. What there was, was a backlash against pop music. You see, up until the Beatles hit America, the commercial side of folk music had been huge. Acts like the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and so on had been massive. Most of the fans at the Newport Folk Festival actually despised many of these acts as sell-outs, doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved. But at the same time, those acts *were* doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved, and by doing so they were exposing more people to that traditional music. They were making programmes like Hootenanny possible -- and the folkies didn't like Hootenanny, but Hootenanny existing meant that the New Lost City Ramblers got an audience they would otherwise not have got. There was a recognition, then, that the commercialised folk music that many of them despised was nonetheless important in the development of a thriving scene. And it was those acts, the Kingston Trios and Peter, Paul, and Marys, who were fast losing their commercial relevance because of the renewed popularity of rock music. If Hootenanny gets cancelled and Shindig put on in its place, that's great for fans of the Righteous Brothers and Sam Cooke, but it's not so great if you want to hear "Tom Dooley" or "If I Had a Hammer". And so many of the old guard in the folk movement weren't wary of electric guitars *as instruments*, but they were wary of anything that looked like someone taking sides with the new pop music rather than the old folk music. For Dylan's first performance at the festival in 1965, he played exactly the set that people would expect of him, and there was no problem. The faultlines opened up, not with Dylan's first performance, but with the performance by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, as part of a history of the blues, presented by Alan Lomax. Lomax had no objection to rock and roll -- indeed, earlier in the festival the Chambers Brothers, a Black electric group from Mississippi, had performed a set of rock and R&B songs, and Lomax had come on stage afterwards and said “I'm very proud tonight that we finally got onto the Newport Folk Festival our modern American folk music: rock 'n' roll!” But Lomax didn't think that the Butterfield band met his criteria of "authenticity". And he had a point. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band were an integrated group -- their rhythm section were Black musicians who had played with Howlin' Wolf -- and they'd gained experience through playing Chicago blues on the South Side of Chicago, but their leader, Butterfield, was a white man, as was Mike Bloomfield, their guitarist, and so they'd quickly moved to playing clubs on the North side, where Black musicians had generally not been able to play. Butterfield and Bloomfield were both excellent musicians, but they were closer to the British blues lovers who were making up groups like the Rolling Stones, Animals, and Manfred Mann. There was a difference -- they were from Chicago, not from the Home Counties -- but they were still scholars coming at the music from the outside, rather than people who'd grown up with the music and had it as part of their culture. The Butterfield Band were being promoted as a sort of American answer to the Stones, and they had been put on Lomax's bill rather against his will -- he wanted to have some Chicago blues to illustrate that part of the music, but why not Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, rather than this new group who had never really done anything? One he'd never even heard -- but who he knew that Albert Grossman was thinking about managing. So his introduction to the Butterfield Blues Band's performance was polite but hardly rapturous. He said "Us white cats always moved in, a little bit late, but tried to catch up...I understand that this present combination has not only caught up but passed the rest. That's what I hear—I'm anxious to find out whether it's true or not." He then introduced the musicians, and they started to play an old Little Walter song: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Juke"] But after the set, Grossman was furious at Lomax, asking him what kind of introduction that was meant to be. Lomax responded by asking if Grossman wanted a punch in the mouth, Grossman hurled a homophobic slur at Lomax, and the two men started hitting each other and rolling round in the dirt, to the amusement of pretty much everyone around. But Lomax and Grossman were both far from amused. Lomax tried to get the Festival board to kick Grossman out, and almost succeeded, until someone explained that if they did, then that would mean that all Grossman's acts, including huge names like Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary, would also be out.  Nobody's entirely sure whose idea it was, but it seems to have been Grossman who thought that since Bloomfield had played on Dylan's recent single, it might be an idea to get the Butterfield Blues Band to back Dylan on stage, as a snub to Lomax. But the idea seems to have cohered properly when Grossman bumped into Al Kooper, who was attending the festival just as an audience member. Grossman gave Kooper a pair of backstage passes, and told him to meet up with Dylan. And so, for Dylan's performance on the Sunday -- scheduled in the middle of the day, rather than as the headliner as most people expected, he appeared with an electric guitar, backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooper. He opened with his recent single "Maggie's Farm", and followed it with the new one, "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live at Newport)"] After those two songs, the group did one more, a song called "Phantom Engineer", which they hadn't rehearsed properly and which was an utter train wreck. And then they left the stage. And there was booing. How much booing, and what the cause was, is hard to say, but everyone agrees there was some. Some people claim that the booing was just because the set had been so short, others say that the audience was mostly happy but there were just a few people booing. And others say that the booing mostly came from the front -- that there were sound problems that meant that while the performance sounded great to people further back, there was a tremendous level of distortion near the front. That's certainly what Pete Seeger said. Seeger was visibly distraught and angry at the sounds coming from the stage. He later said, and I believe him, that it wasn't annoyance at Dylan playing with an electric band, but at the distorted sound. He said he couldn't hear the words, that the guitar was too loud compared to the vocals, and in particular that his father, who was an old man using a hearing aid, was in actual physical pain at the sound. According to Joe Boyd, later a famous record producer but at this time just helping out at the festival, Seeger, the actor Theodore Bikel, and Alan Lomax, all of whom were on the festival board, told Boyd to take a message to Paul Rothchild, who was working the sound, telling him that the festival board ordered him to lower the volume. When Boyd got there, he found Rothchild there with Albert Grossman and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who was also on the board. When Boyd gave his message, Yarrow responded that the board was "adequately represented at the sound controls", that the sound was where the musicians wanted it, and gave Boyd a message to take back to the other board members, consisting of a single raised middle finger. Whatever the cause of the anger, which was far from universal, Dylan was genuinely baffled and upset at the reaction -- while it's been portrayed since, including by Dylan himself at times, as a deliberate act of provocation on Dylan's part, it seems that at the time he was just going on stage with his new friends, to play his new songs in front of some of his old friends and a crowd that had always been supportive of him. Eventually Peter Yarrow, who was MCing, managed to persuade Dylan to go back on stage and do a couple more numbers, alone this time as the band hadn't rehearsed any more songs. He scrounged up an acoustic guitar, went back on, spent a couple of minutes fiddling around with the guitar, got a different guitar because something was wrong with that one, played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", spent another couple of minutes tuning up, and then finally played "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man (live at Newport)"] But that pause while Dylan was off stage scrounging an acoustic guitar from somewhere led to a rumour that has still got currency fifty-six years later. Because Peter Yarrow, trying to keep the crowd calm, said "He's gone to get his axe" -- using musicians' slang for a guitar. But many of the crowd didn't know that slang. But they had seen Pete Seeger furious, and they'd also seen, earlier in the festival, a demonstration of work-songs, sung by people who kept time by chopping wood, and according to some people Seeger had joined in with that demonstration, swinging an axe as he sang. So the audience put two and two together, and soon the rumour was going round the festival -- Pete Seeger had been so annoyed by Dylan going electric he'd tried to chop the cables with an axe, and had had to be held back from doing so. Paul Rothchild even later claimed to have seen Seeger brandishing it. The rumour became so pervasive that in later years, even as he denied doing it, Seeger tried to explain it away by saying that he might have said something like "I wish I had an axe so I could cut those cables". In fact, Seeger wasn't angry at Dylan, as much as he was concerned -- shortly afterwards he wrote a private note to himself trying to sort out his own feelings, which said in part "I like some rock and roll a great deal. Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. I confess that, like blues and like flamenco music, I can't listen to it for a long time at a stretch. I just don't feel that aggressive, personally. But I have a question. Was the sound at Newport from Bob's aggregation good rock and roll?  I once had a vision of a beast with hollow fangs. I first saw it when my mother-in-law, who I loved very much, died of cancer... Who knows, but I am one of the fangs that has sucked Bob dry. It is in the hope that I can learn that I write these words, asking questions I need help to answer, using language I never intended. Hoping that perhaps I'm wrong—but if I am right, hoping that it won't happen again." Seeger would later make his own electric albums, and he would always continue to be complimentary towards Dylan in public. He even repeatedly said that while he still wished he'd been able to hear the words and that the guitar had been mixed quieter, he knew he'd been on the wrong side, and that if he had the time over he'd have gone on stage and asked the audience to stop booing Dylan. But the end result was the same -- Dylan was now no longer part of the Newport Folk Festival crowd. He'd moved on and was now a pop star, and nothing was going to change that. He'd split with Suze, he'd split with Joan Baez, he'd split with Tom Wilson, and now he'd split with his peer group. From now on Dylan wasn't a spokesman for his generation, or the leader of a movement. He was a young man with a leather jacket and a Stratocaster, and he was going to make rock music. And we'll see the results of that in future episodes.

“Americana and roots music has become too complacent. What we need now is to shake ourselves from feeling comfortable and start looking at the world around us.” We're back for a mid-season special series recorded live at Newport Folk Festival, and in this episode, Adia sits down with Newport's Director, Jay Sweet to dig into the Black roots of folk music. The two explore how Newport can serve as a platform for uncomfortable conversations so that it can grow and evolve with the expanding landscape of folk music, and what the festival's return means for the artists and audiences it calls family./ Show Notes / Jay Sweet is the Director of the Newport Folk Festival. Adia references the 1963 performance at Newport by the Freedom Singers, a group formed by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Jay brings up the song “Ohio,” originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, inspired by the 1968 killings that took place at Kent State University in Ohio./ Credits / Call & Response is a Sonos show produced by work x work: Scott Newman, Jemma Rose Brown, Adia Victoria, Babette Thomas and Emily Shaw. Our engineers are Sam Bair and  Tom Tierney. 

Sherrilyn Ifill walks into court with history behind her as president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund. It’s the legal arm of the civil rights movement, and Sherrilyn is in its vanguard. Her hometown is Jamaica, Queens, a neighborhood in New York City where she grew up in the 1960s and '70s. That’s what Kevin Burke explores with her in this conversation, starting with the first question Sherrilyn asks whenever she takes on a new legal case: “Tell me about the history of this place.” That’s because she knows every town has one: the layers of time, buried and built over, that reveal why things are the way they are, from the bulldozing of Black neighborhoods to make way for highways to brutal acts of violence like lynchings, erased from the public square and, over time, memory. Sherrilyn wants us to see these scars of history all around us and how they impact the struggle for equal justice in America. She’s compared this process of discovery to swallowing the red pill in the sci-fi action film, The Matrix. Once you see the past in the present, you can’t unsee it. What is the connection between Sherrilyn’s civil rights work and her powerful personal story and all she experienced in her New York? Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels. Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast. Show Notes Music Judy Garland – “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” (1944) The Freedom Singers -- “We Shall Not Be Moved at the March on Washington” (1963) The O’Jays -- “Use Ta Be My Girl” (1978) Choir of Zion Methodist Church -- “Jesus Leads Me All the Way” (1970) James Brown -- “Lost Someone” Live at the Apollo theater (1972) The Human Condition with Beverly Grant -- “Clifford Grover” (1974) Archival Martin Luther King Jr. Funeral Services 1978-Boston Massacre, Game 2 (WPIX-TV Audio) The Huntley-Brinkley Report, July 31, 1970 May 17, 1973: Televised Watergate Hearings Begin Barbara Jordan Impeachment Speech Exclusive: Riots that followed a Queens police shooting, 40 years later The Matrix (1999) Rosedale: The Way It Is (1976) Illustration Nick Gregg Poem Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855) “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. “You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter

I watch and comment on the documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble   Recorded February 19, 2021   Notes:   -Real life superhero   -I will comment during the doc but this podcast won’t be the length of the doc   -What he’s been through   -That mugshot — https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/622844317162434560?lang=en   -Pre-COVID   -Elijah Cummings   -Organize, mobilize, legislate   -Being brutalized by cops for waiting on line to vote   -Knowing the risk   -The power of voting   -Pettus bridge and unlawful assembly   -Parading permit   -Troopers advancing with weapons   -Civil disobedience   -Bashed in the head   -Present day voter suppression   -Constant struggle   -“There’s so much more progress to be made”   -“My greatest fear…”   -Misinformation, hatred, and cruelty   -Comic Con story   -Equity   -Getting involved   -Ripple effects   -Good trouble   -Say something, do something, good trouble, necessary trouble   -2018 and the blue wave   -Change from then to now (so much more to do)   -Preaching to chickens   -Picking cotton   -Nashville and non-violence   -Non-violence as offense, not defense   -Starting locally to desegregate downtown Nashville   -Systems versus an individual    -Under a constant threat   -Training   -One big temper tantrum from people in power   -Fear and insecurity   -First Nashville sit-in   -Optics   -Doing everything you can   -AOC   -How racism morphs   -Barriers   -Voting requirements   -Senator Warnock   -Beto O’Rourke   -Election Day 2018 and 2020   -James Clyburn   -John Lewis Voting Rights Act   -Republicans want to suppress votes   -AOC and the speed of freedom   -Moving slow versus moving fast   -Results of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act    -Long wait times to vote   -HR1   -Opressors framing themselves as victims   -Freedom Singers   -How music lifts the spirit   -Thurogood Marshall   -John F. Kennedy and intentions   -We cannot be patient   -Democrats vs. Republicans   -Fast vs. Slow   -Wife and son   -Lawlessness and hypocrisy of the “law and order” Trump administration   -Viral videos   -Julian Bond and the danger of registering people to vote   -Rise into politics   -Becoming an “insider”   -Tense moments with Bonds   -Activism from the outside and inside   -Protest on the floor and the non-coverage of Fox “News”   -Stacey Abrams and the power of Lewis’ story   -The resistance to the right to vote   -The more who show up…   -President Obama   -Looking back 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020   -Paul Wyrech - he’s not from AIPAC, he’s from ALEC and he didn’t want everybody to vote   -Removing the filibuster   -This is not a time for despair   -The struggle   -2019 Edmund Pettis Bridge (Trump wasn’t there)   -Putting in the work   -Medal of Freedom   -A good start   -A giant   -There were post credits   -Inspiring   -Equity and progress (and justice)   -Plugs!   Twitter https://twitter.com/mmampodcast Facebook https://www.facebook.com/mmampodcast    Apple Podcasts https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/music-movies-and-other-stuff/id1236495556?mt=2  Podbean https://mmam.podbean.com/ Email mmampodcast@gmail.com     Get your news from credible sources (New York Times, USA Today, BBC, NPR, etc.)   #GoodTrouble   © MMAMPodcast 2021 All Rights Reserved        

The books and songs discussed in this episode include:O Sanctissima performed by the Daughters of Saint Paul, 2010The Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe, performed by the Canadian BrassThe History of We Shall Overcome uploaded to YouTube by creator Genie Deez, June 15, 2020I’ll be Alright performed by The Angelic Gospel SingersI’ll Be Alright Someday performed by Rev. Gary Davis, reissued 1972Pete Seeger Talks about the History of We Shall Overcome, uploaded to YouTube by folkarchivist, Dec 29, 2010We Shall Overcome (Live) performed by Pete Seeger, 1963We Shall Overcome performed by the Freedom Singers, Sing For Freedom Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (1990)We Shall Overcome (Live) performed by Mahalia JacksonThe Nashville Sit-In Story from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (1960) We Shall Overcome, Jail SequenceWe Shall Overcome performed by Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers, Paul Stookey, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Bernice Reagon, Cordell Reagon, Charles Neblett, Rutha Harris, Pete Seeger, and Theodore Bikel, Newport Folk Festival, July 1963Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan, performed by Cliff Richards (1966)Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, from Say It Plain, Say It Loud: A Century of Great African American Speeches (original recording King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan - April 12, 1964)We Gonna Be Alright Crowd Chanting, Black Lives Matter, Downtown Los Angeles July 7, 2016 #AltonSterling #PhilandoCastileMaking Movement Sounds: The Cultural Organizing Behind the Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement by Elizabeth Davis-Cooper (2017)Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:39987965Sit In, Stand Up and Sing Out!: Black Gospel Music and the Civil Rights Movement by Michael Castellini (2013) Georgia State Universityhttps://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses/76From Sit-ins to SNCC : The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, edited by Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies. 2014. Thanks, as always, to Aaron P and Jeffrey Christian for reviewing the episode.

Today in The Pastor's Office we're celebrating Black History Month with two very distinguished guests. Rutha Mae Harris, one of the original Freedom Singers from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) joins us, as well as Bob Zellner, SNCC first white member of the SNCC.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 30 is "Black, White & Gray: How life, culture, time & place contributed to our personal understanding of Race." Rodney and David have an open and honest discussion of issues related to race and racism, featuring music by Rodney Whittenberg, They Might Be Giants, John McCutcheon, David Roth, The Carpenters, The Freedom Singers, Pete Seeger, Quincy Jones, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Gil Scott-Heron, Two of a Kind and Sarah Pirtle. 1. Rodney Whittenberg: Don't Fit In 2. They Might Be Giants: Your Racist Friend 3. John McCutcheon: Steals of the White Man (new recording!) 4. David Roth: Dragon to Butterfly 5. The Carpenters: We've Only Just Begun 6. The Freedom Singers: Fighting for My Rights 7. Pete Seeger: We Shall Overcome 8. The Freedom Singers: I Love Your Dog, I Love My Dog 9. Quincy Jones: "Roots" Mural Theme 10. Sweet Honey in the Rock: Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto 11. Gil Scott-Heron et al: Let Me See Your I.D. (from "Sun City") 12. Two of a Kind: The Colors of Earth (by Sarah Pirtle) Artwork: Black, White, and Gray, by Franz Kline (1959)

Happy New Year! Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Happy New Year! Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Happy New Year! Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Happy New Year! Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist a cappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist a cappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist a cappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist a cappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episodeSelected References:Bob Dylan lyrics by song titleNo Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton“I Want You” from Dylan and The Grateful Dead’s 7/4/87 show in Foxboro, MA - not the exact version on the album (in terms of Dylan’s enunciation it’s actually better), but you get the idea.“I Want You” from Bob Dylan’s 1966 masterpiece Blonde on Blonde“Hurricane” and “One More Cup Of Coffee” off the 1976 album Desire“Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” from the 1975 album Blood On The Tracks“Love Minus Zero/No Limit” from the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home“The Man In Me” from the 1970 album New Morning, and famously used in the Coen brother’s extraordinary cult classic movie  “The Big Lebowski”Bruce Springsteen, the 1975 Rolling Stone article “New Dylan From Jersey? It Might As Well Be Springsteen”, “The Members of ‘The Next Bob Dylan’ Club” and “Who Is The Next Bob Dylan?: 10 Songwriters Once Voted Most Likely” Bob Dylan at The Palace Theatre on April 14, 1996 reviewed here in the Hartford CourantTime Out Of Mind won 3 Grammy’s at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the song “Cold Irons Bound” - perhaps most memorably Dylan’s performance of “Love Sick” at the show was crashed by a spastically contorting and shirtless Michael Portnoy who infamously had the words “Soy Bomb” painted across his chest - Dylan and the band kept going like the true pros that they are without missing a beat or seeming to acknowledge the intrusion in any way. Also notably “Time Out of Mind” beat out Radiohead’s masterpiece “OK Computer” for Album of the Year.Rick Danko (late, of The Band) joins Bob Dylan for “This Wheel’s On Fire” and then again during the encore for “I Shall Be Released” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” original version from the 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob DylanThe Gibson J-45 Sunburst acoustic guitar - Dylan played the J-45 as his primary acoustic throughout the late 90’s and early 2000’s - it can be seen and heard prominently on this video of “My Back Pages”Is Dylan the greatest songwriter? Try “Rolling Stone Readers Pick the Top 10 Songwriters of All Time” or “The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time” (heavily biased towards rock era, but it’s Rolling Stone, so that’s somewhat expected), or try a list from Dave’s Music Database that aggregates 36 other lists, an article/poll from BBC news, an opinion piece from a philosophy professor, or maybe the fact that Dylan won a Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”Newport concert review (with setlist) from Berkshire Links website, and “Dylan at Newport, 2002” from the blog singer-songwriter/Dylanologist Peter Stone Brown (originally posted on Bobdylan.com), Dylan notably wore a wig and fake beard for the occasion (pic with wig, beard, and J-45)Dylan sang “Only A Pawn In Their Game” and “When the Ship Comes In” (with Joan Baez) as part of a musical program that included Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Odetta, and The Freedom Singers, before Martin Luther King gave his famous speech “Bob Dylan’s Influence On The Beatles” from The Flip Side Beatles Blog, and “How Bob Dylan Influenced The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who“ from Far Out Magazine“How Bob Dylan Changed the 60’s, and American Culture”“Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and the Rock of the Sixties” “Is this cave painting humanity’s oldest story?”“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, or read this excerpt in Scientific AmericanAnother Side of Bob Dylan released in 1964Bob Dylan performing “Maggie’s Farm” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and just because it’s cool here is an awestruck Jason Isbell playing the 1964 Fender Strat that Dylan played at the Newport performance, and here is a bunch of others including Courtney Barnett with the same  guitarFor more on the “Electric Dylan Controversy” see “The Night Bob Dylan Went Electric,” “Dylan goes electric at The Newport Folk Festival,” “July 25, 1965: Dylan Goes Electric at The Newport Folk Festival,” and “Revisit Bob Dylan’s electric performance at Newport Folk Festival 50 years later” -Here’s a good example of an antagonistic interview from the famous Dylan documentary “Don’t Look Back”“How Robert Zimmerman Became Bob Dylan”“My Back Pages” album recording and lyricsThe album Bringing It All Back Home was released on March 22, 1965 a few months before the Newport Folk Festival in July of that same year“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” album recording“It Ain’t Me Babe” album recording“Simulacra and Simulations” excerpt from Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited and the 1966 masterpiece Blonde on Blonde, along with Bringing It All Back Home are widely considered the peak of Dylan’s 60’s outputCheck out the classic video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”The 2005 documentary “No Direction Home” by Martin Scorsese“Shelter from the Storm” album version This episode was recorded in February 2020The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

We bring you movement songs from Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers, and the Freedom Singers, revolutionary poetry by Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets, songs of freedom for Juneteenth by Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, the Nat Turner Rebellion, and Roberta Flack, plus powerful songs from Rasheed Ali, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong.

We bring you movement songs from Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers, and the Freedom Singers, revolutionary poetry by Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets, songs of freedom for Juneteenth by Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, the Nat Turner Rebellion, and Roberta Flack, plus powerful songs from Rasheed Ali, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong.

The episode this week is a rebroadcast of my conversation with Rutha Mae Harris. Ms. Harris is a retired teacher who lives in Albany, Georgia, but she’s perhaps more widely known as one of the original Freedom Singers, a group of activitists and musicians who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s. The group traveled across the country raising money and awareness for SNCC and their work during the Civil Rights Movement and also providing inspiration for all who would listen. The pinnacle of her work with the Freedom Singers was to sing at the March on Washington, which happened 55 years ago today. Ms. Harris shared many inspirational stories of her work with SNCC and her memories of that day in this conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Radio Jazz studievært Kay Seitzmayer præsenterer et mindeprogram om folkesageren, folkloristen, sangskriveren, borgerretsforkæmperen og miljøkæmperen Pete Seeger (1919-2014). Der vil også være musik af Almanac Singers, Bob Dylan, Freedom Singers, Big Bill Bronzy og The Byrds. Sendt i Radio Jazz i 2014 Der er mere jazz på www.radiojazz.dk

Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Today, we hear Part 2 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear Part 1 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist acappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear Part 1 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist acappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear Part 1 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist acappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

Today on Sojourner Truth, we hear Part 1 of music from the The Freedom Singers performed live during the 50th anniversary conference of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2010. Join us as we travel back in time and listen to the songs that mobilized millions of people across the country and around the world for peace and equality. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, music played an integral role in the inspiration and mobilization of Black and white people across the United States against racism and poverty. Groups like The Freedom Singers, which began as a student quartet in 1962 at Albany State College in Georgia, provided the soundtrack to the mass movement that was taking place in that era. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, began using this music as a tool for progress. The Freedom Singers were organized by Cordell Reagon in 1962. After witnessing the power of the singing in the Albany mass meetings, Pete Seeger suggested to James Forman that a singing group would be very supportive of the organization in building support, sharing information and raising funds. Cordell, one of the SNCC field secretaries who came to Albany, Georgia in 1961, was a tenor singer out of the Nashville sit-in movement. The youngest member of SNCCs staff, by 1961 he had been on the Freedom Rides, working in voter registration and participated in sit-in demonstrations. He formed the first group of Freedom Singers from the movements he had been active in across the country. Overall, the power of congregational-style singing, fused with Black Baptist acappella church singing and protest songs and chants, became instrumental in empowering and educating listeners about civil rights issues. It was also a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation.

What can I say, sorry for the delay, hope it's worth the wait.If you'd also like some dancehall pop over to https://www.mixcloud.com/VinylVagabond/smilin-girl-vinyl-vagabonds-4-international-womans-day/if that's not enough for you grab a ticket and come to this – u know 2018 - reggae for days.https://www.wegottickets.com/f/11670 Rocksteady rock my soul part 8tracklist1 Tommy McCook – heatwave2 Valentines – all in one3 Skatalites – brand new ska4 Ethiopians – owe me no pay me5 Hopeton Lewis – sound and pressure6 Monty Morris – play it cool7 Consumates – what is it8 Enos McLeod – you can never get away9 Prince Buster – another sad lonely night10 Termites – love up, kiss up11 Conquerers – come let us dance12 Gaylettes – silent river13 Untouchables – prisoner of love14 Tommy McCook – zazuka15 Jupiters – return of ezekial16 Freedom Singers – stop them17 Cables – fast mouth18 Slim Smith – give me some loving19 Ethiopians – you are the girl20 West Indians – I mean it21 Prince Buster – too hot22 Lynn Taitt – napoleon solo

Preacher: Christian Coon Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:5-12 Here's the video of the Freedom Singers that is mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhafyI6-Bp0

May 1, 2017 / How did we get to this moment, with the death of Freddie Gray in custody? A history of Baltimore policing, culminating in the troubling reign of Commissioner Anthony Batts. Episode scoring music by AnimalWeapon, Blue Dot Sessions, Chris Zabriskie, Fleslit, H-LR, Jahzzar, Remain, Uncanny Valleys, VYVCH, “We Shall Overcome” by the Freedom Singers, and “Stop the Madness,” a White House-commissioned song to accompany the War on Drugs. Thank you to our new sponsors! www.BloomThat.com/UNDISCLOSED www.storyworth.com/UNDISCLOSED #undisclosed #freddiegray #justiceforfreddie Support the show.

In this Black History Month edition of Saving Stories we hear from Kentuckian Charles Neblett, one of the founding members of the Freedom Singers which often performed as part of civil rights demonstrations in the early 1960's.

Pastor Megan opens our Advent season of Revolutionary Songs with a sermon reflecting on how singing has sustained movements of just peace across time and place. Encounter the story of Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the Freedom Singers during the Civil Rights Movement and Sweet Honey in the Rock since then.

It was the early days of the civil rights movement. Across the South, black students staged sit-ins, marches, demonstrations and protests that were violently repressed. In this podcast, two voices from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) talk about the song “We Shall Overcome” – three simple words that became an anthem of strength and conviction for their movement. Bernie Lafayette remembers hearing the song in February 1961 during 14 nights of demonstrations to enter the movie theaters of Nashville, Tennessee. Cordelia Jackson first heard the song in March of that year at a sit-in at the Jackson, Mississippi public library. "In my heart, when I was worried about my friends in jail, and how they might be pulled out and lynched or anything, I heard those voices saying: 'We Shall Overcome.'" These interviews were conducted in 1962 in Chicago on the occasion of a concert there by the Freedom Singers. The newly-formed quartet was touring the country in support of civil rights and the...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the historic Selma to Montgomery protest marches which led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Anthony Robinson, unarmed and shot by police. The DOJ reads Ferguson PD and the Ferguson municipal court for filth. International Women's Day. An unsolved hate crime in Texas. Music by The Freedom Singers, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Smoove, Public Enemy, and Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Moses Asch was a steadfast and passionate advocate for underdogs who spoke up for themselves. He cared deeply about unions, civil rights, fights for freedom, and fights against oppression. On this show, his son Michael Asch explores the catalogue looking for songs that exemplify this commitment. Smithsonian Folkways: Sounds to Grow On is a 26-part series hosted by Michael Asch that features the original recordings of Folkways Records.

Lyrics: Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain’t gonna let segregation turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let segregation turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain’t gonna let no jail house turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let no jail house turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain’t gonna let no nervous Nellie turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let no nervous Nellie turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain’t gonna let Chief Pritchett turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let Chief Pritchett turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain’t gonna let Mayor Kelley turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let Mayor Kelley turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain't gonna let no Uncle Tom turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let no Uncle Tom turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land. Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around Turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, Keep on a walking, keep on a talking, Marchin’ up to Freedom Land.