Reissue roundup: The Times, They Are A-Changing--The End of American Rock's Golden Age. (The Music).

"Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?"

Despite America's great technological and social advances in the 20th century, the nation increasingly found itself immersed in the problems and politics of the world's less fortunate countries. The isolationist politics that had been key to the successful development of American industry throughout much of the 19th century could no longer guarantee our citizens a freedom from foreign involvement, nor could those politics hope to foster a callousness towards the plight of our neighbors across the oceans. By mid-29th century, the United States had already postured itself as the world's caretaker in many instances, perhaps the most familiar of these being the Berlin airlift of the late '40s, signaling the start of the Cold War.

The '50s brought developments at home that began to shake the foundations of our lifestyles too. We saw the beginnings of our current global economy take shape as our former enemy, Japan, resurrected from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, again invaded our shores -- this time with inexpensive toys and electronics instead of bombs and torpedoes. With more than a little self-pride, the expression, "made in Japan," became our subconscious self-assurance that all was still well; our jobs were safe. Although there had always been a movement to offer the same rights and privileges to all of our citizens, mid-century brought with it, too, the accelerated efforts of many duly impatient Americans. Over the next decade the civil rights issue would continue to dominate the headlines of our newspapers, and filter into the songs we heard on pop radio.

As I had each morning, I awoke early Sunday, October 5, 1957, about 5:00 AM, to a cold, dark, damp, somber day in Arlington, Virginia. I would soon deliver The Washington Post to my customers in the neighborhood just off Arlington Boulevard at North Scott Street. I sensed something different in the air as I walked up the hill to get the papers, but I didn't know what. Sundays were always the hardest of days for paperboys. Because of all the inserts, as all former paperboys know, the various parts of the newspaper, have to be assembled before they could be delivered. Their size then made it almost impossible for a young boy to carry little more than a dozen at a time, making Sunday the hardest day of the week to complete our routes. As I bent down to clip the wire from the first bundle of papers, I saw the bold headline reporting that the Soviet Union had launched their first satellite successfully.

I paused a moment to read the article, the streetlight providing me just enough illumination. Weighing 184 pounds, the article noted, this Sputnik appeared to be an omen. Later that morning the television news programs spoke of nothing else. Throughout the following weeks, teachers in school talked about this accomplishment, seemingly to instill some fear into us, the eighth graders at Stratford Junior High. Might there soon be an invasion? Was American science and technology hopelessly behind?

Just a few weeks later, the Russians launched Sputnik 2, weighing a massive 1100 pounds, and including the first space traveler, a female dog named Laika. History tells us that Laika survived several days in space until her oxygen supply was exhausted. Meanwhile back in the States, after failing at its first attempt, the U. S. retaliated by launching Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958; it weighed 31 pounds. The space race had begun, and a new era was upon us.

Popular culture reflected this new age and it was even in evidence in the music we heard on our radios. Slowly creeping into pop programming some years earlier had come a "new" form of music called calypso, brought to us by one Harry Belafonte. Belafonte was instrumental in diverting some interest away from the fledgling Rock and Roll genre, and in developing renewed regard for that most basic of music forms, folk. Although a native of Harlem, his almost serene, smooth voice, augmented by his incisive diction, often resulted in the misconception that he was from Jamaica. (He had lived in the islands as a boy.)

No doubt, this came into play when musicians Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, and Dave Guard formed The Kingston Trio shortly after the success of Belafonte's "Dayo," also known as "The Banana Boat Song." Belafonte began his career as an actor. His singing in Oscar Hammerstein's Carmen Jones, adapted from Bizet's Carmen, prompted RCA to sign him as a singer. Short-lived in the singles charts; his success is best noted for his albums' ability to climb the charts -- sixteen of them, to be exact, between '56 and '64.

Folk music recording had enjoyed its own meager share of interest in 20th-century America prior to Belafonte. Hudson Leadbetter (Leadbelly) had performed as early as 1909; Pete Seeger and his group, The Weavers, had been formed in 1949, and Woody Guthrie had begun singing professionally in 1935. They provided us a rich heritage in story-telling songs about all of the trials besetting the common man.

But it was Belafonte and The Kingston Trio that were the catalysts to bring the form its greatest popularity. Their early successes ensured the emergence of many other "folkies" in the years to follow: The Brothers Four, The Limeliters (Glen Yarbrough), The Chad Mitchell Trio, The Highwaymen (John Stewart), Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, The New Christy Minstrels (Barry McGuire), Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ian & Sylvia, Simon & Garfunkel, Tom Rush, and, of course, Bob Dylan. Many folk artists saw their art as a means of raising the public's awareness of the world's problems and our own social inequities. The subtitle for this article became the movement's anthem, with at least a dozen recorded performances of Pete Seeger's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" available throughout the period.

The folk movement began in earnest with the release of Belafonte's Calypso album in 1956, and shortly after that, The Kingston Trio's hit single, "Tom Dooley," on September 8, 1958. Trio member, Dave Guard wrote the song, basing it on a 19th century tune called "Tom Dula." Within weeks the song reached the top of the charts, and stayed in the top 100 for the next five months Over the next 13 months, they accomplished a feat in album sales history that has been bettered only once: they had a succession of four releases to appear on the Billboard top 40 album charts concurrently. (If you guessed that it was The Beatles that outdid the Trio, you would be right. Their first five U. S. album releases charted between February 1964 and January 1965.) Despite several personnel changes, the group continued to chart its albums until 1964; its last single to chart in the top 40 was "Desert Pete" in August of 1963. Unlike the songs of many other folk singers, most of the Trio's were upbeat, positive and spiced with a bit of humor. Of the groups to follow them, The Limeliters most closely followed their good nature.

By 1962, Folk's change in tenor was already upon us. It became the vehicle for promoting civil rights and protesting our involvement in Viet Nam. Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" and Pete Seeger's "If I Had A Hammer" as sung by Peter, Paul & Mary burst across the airwaves; Joan Baez shortly followed with her version of "We Shall Overcome." These songs of protest signaled the beginnings of a new level in public awareness begun just five short years earlier with Sputnik. We were no longer the innocents of the past, our anguish reflected in this movement. As the movement would evolve in the mid-Sixties, folk splintered into several different styles with groups such as The Byrds embellishing the genre with rock instrumentation, and spiced with a country flair, signaling the beginning of the end of the folk era.

There is no question that this movement would not have reached such public prominence were it not for the music of Bob Dylan. Dylan (nee Zimmerman) had grown up in Minnesota listening to folk, blues and country music on his radio from stations as far away as Memphis. His impact on his fellow musicians reached all the way to popular artists like Stevie Wonder who, in 1966, provided "Blowin' In The Wind" yet another entry into the charts (and Jimi Hendrix in '68 with "All Along The Watchtower"). Dozens of "folk-rock" artists would cover Dylan's songs. His impact was most profound on The Byrds, whose arrangements of several of his songs (among them "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "My Back Pages") placed segments of the folk movement squarely in the rock arena.

Although several artists would continue on as folk performers, by the latter part of the mid-60s, the genre was not enjoying the popularity that it had over the previous decade. Popular music was becoming even more diverse. Dylan would experiment with various electronic instruments in his music, and groups such as The Jefferson Airplane who had dabbled in the folk genre would soon abandon it for another new sub-set in rock music.

The golden age of American Rock and Roll was about to end, although some said it had already with the death of Buddy Holly. Surely, popular music was undergoing another metamorphosis, at least, as the artists so prominent in Rock's early days slipped away from the public's eye. Lost to the angst that was to first beset us with the protest music of many folk artists, the assault on our innocence was even more evidence of the changing times wrung in by the psychedelic movement that would soon follow.

Music critics agree that the Rock and Roll era came of age in 1955, but there is much discussion on the date of its demise. I believe the death of Rock and Roll came with the release of the Beatles' album, Rubber Soul, just in time for Christmas in 1965. They had heretofore adhered to the formulae that their rock antecedents had already proven successful, but with this album came the feeling that Rock music was not merely for teens in soda shops. There was a concession here to the ideas and protestations that the folkies were providing listeners over the previous five years, and there was a venture into the then unknown. So, ten years after its beginning it was all but completely over.

A Selected Discography: By no means is this discography intended to be complete. With hundreds of titles to chose from in the folk genre, it would be impossible for me to list them all. I've tried to limit the selections below to those whose sound quality would be acceptable to audiophiles, while trying to broaden musical horizons at the same time. Not all of the artists mentioned above will be listed here.

While there are many selections in the catalog, Harry Belafonte is best represented by four recordings. Calypso (RCA 1248) was his third and most successful chart album. It is full of the kind of folksy and calypso-style songs that made him one of the show business sensations of the late 1950s. Two of them, "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" and "Jamaica Farewell", were hit singles as well. The album itself spent 84 weeks in the US Top 40, 31 of them at number1 (peaking on June 16,1956), and made history by becoming the first 33 1/3 rpm LP by a solo artist to sell a million copies. The album is available on CD only in monaural sound from RCA/BMG.

Perhaps the most recognized of Belafonte's recordings among audiophiles would be the 2-LP set, Belafonte At Carnegie Hall (RCA LSP 6006), recorded in April 1959 and originally released the following month. Sadly, both its standard CD and SACD releases from BMG omit four of the original album's songs (the SACD is available only as an import, and offers minimal improvement over the red book version as it is merely a conversion from the PCM master). This is probably owing to the company's decision to release the title on a single disc, although import versions on two CDs contain all the music that appeared on the original album.

The album was such a hit that RCA was quick to release Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall (RCA LSP 6007) the following year. This release differed from the previous one by its inclusion of guest artists Odetta, Miriam Makeba and the Chad Mitchell Trio. Both of these recordings peaked at number 3 in the charts and demonstrate well why many of RCA's records are prized among record collectors for their excellent sound.

Belafonte's next chart-topper was Jump Up Calypso (RCA LSP 2388), released in 1961. At the present time this album is not in print, although several Internet mail order companies claim to have the DCC gold disc version in stock. Inasmuch as nearly all Of DCC's CDs are now officially out of print, gold CD collectors will probably be driving up the used prices for these as they had so many of the MoFi titles, so you may want to start looking now.

There is a fifth Belafonte album that may be of interest to some readers, but it is not currently available in any format. The Midnight Special (RCA LSP 2449) was released in May 1962 and contains Bob Dylan's first appearance on any commercial recording. He appeared as a back-up musician only, playing the harmonica on the title track.

Without question, the single CD collection of The Kingston Trio that stands head and shoulders over the others is The Capitol Collectors Series (Capitol 92710-2), produced by Ron Furmanek. The collection contains all 17 of the Trio's hits to chart on Billboard. Of the 20 tracks on the CD, four of the selections are here, as always, in mono. The earliest stereo on the CD is "M.T.A.," which was recorded on 2/16/59. Sound quality for this song has always been exceptional. The original vinyl album, Kingston Trio at Large, from which the song came is well known among some audiophiles for its excellent, natural sound. The booklet is quite informative too, giving a rather complete rundown on the Trio's history and various incarnations, as well as an extensive listing of recording dates for each of the songs in the collection. Sound quality for the CD is very good overall.

Although I would imagine that many readers already own Peter, Paul & Mary's 10 Years Together (Warner 3105-2), this one is showing its digital age. Released in '92, it is more than a little short of the sound quality heard on many of the group's original vinyl albums of the '60's. This one deserves to be remastered (preferably in SACD) with more attention paid to the sound quality we heard on the originals. There are a few omissions of their most popular songs that should be added as bonus tracks to make this one comprehensive enough to be a more complete survey of the songs that made them so popular.

As for The Byrds, Sony has been leading the way (in some instances, at least) with some noteworthy digital remasters of their individual albums; and they weren't known as well for their folk music. KWN has written on several of these in past issues. I have both their newly remastered Greatest Hits collection (CK 66230, and on SACD as CS 66230), and 20 Essential Tracks (CK 47884), which was a compilation issued in '92. The latter was a distillation of their then-new boxed set. It boasted extensive research into the CBS vaults to find the best tape sources. Both of these releases were produced by Bob Irwin, and remastered by Vic Anesini. While 20 Essential Tracks does not employ 24 bit remastering as found on the more recent hits collection, the newer set has a few sonic surprises, not all of them pleasant ones.

The first of these is that "Turn! Turn! Turn!" is in mono on the new GH, but stereo on 20 Essential Tracks. Another negative, in my opinion, is that the new release seems to suffer from the same sorts of things I've noticed on many other recent remasters I have auditioned. I can't quite put my finger on it, but while they appear to reveal more detail, it is often at the expense of musicality. There is a bleached quality to the sound that may not be evident to you until you make your own comparisons. The newer release also appears to sound more compressed. Finally, they have yet to add my favorite Byrds single to any such compilation: "You Ain't Going Nowhere" from Sweetheart Of The Rodeo.

Although I elected not to delve into the music of Tom Rush, or his involvement in '60s folk music, many readers know that he was very much a part of the San Francisco music scene throughout its transitions. He is still performing today. I did not include any recommendations for Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The Limeliters or any of the others mentioned above. I believe that the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte signify the importance of this musical era more than any of these others (except Dylan, of course). There are a large number of various artist compilations that would be well suited at introducing the folk movement; perhaps the best of these is Troubadours of the Folk Era series from Rhino.

As always, I welcome comments and questions by email to [e-mail].

-SGB