Rainbow Quest

by Cohen, Ronald D.

• ISBN13: 9781558493483
• ISBN10: 1558493484
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr

Summary

For a brief period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, folk music captured a mass audience in the United States, as college students and others swarmed to concerts by the likes of Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. In this comprehensive study, Ronald D. Cohen reconstructs the history of this singular cultural moment, tracing its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century.

Drawing on scores of interviews and numerous manuscript collections, as well as his own extensive files, Cohen shows how a broad range of traditions -- from hillbilly, gospel, blues, and sea shanties to cowboy, ethnic, and political protest music -- all contributed to the genre known as folk. He documents the crucial work of John Lomax and other collectors who, with the assistance of recording companies, preserved and distributed folk music in the 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of left-wing politics and the rise of the commercial music marketplace helped to stimulate wider interest in folk music. Stars emerged, such as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete

Author Biography

Ronald D. Cohen has taught since 1970 at Indiana University Northwest, Gary, Indiana, where he is a professor of history

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Prologue: Summer 1953	3	(5)
Roots of the Revival	8	(31)
People's Songs, Popular Folk, and the Later 1940s	39	(28)
The Weavers and the Red Scare, 1950--1954	67	(26)
Stirrings of the Revival, 1955--1957	93	(32)
The Kingston Trio and the Emerging Revival, 1958--1959	125	(32)
Into the Heart of the Revival, 1960--1962	157	(37)
The Revival's Peak, 1963--1964	194	(35)
Folk's Transformation, 1965--1966	229	(34)
The 1960s End (But Not Folk Music)	263	(28)
Notes	291	(36)
Index	327