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Newport Folk Festival
Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America, and remains a focal point in the expanding genre of folk music. The festival was held annually from 1959 to 1969, except in 1961 and 1962. In 1985, its founder revived it in Newport, where it has been held at Fort Adams State Park ever since. History Founding The Newport Folk Festival was started in 1959 by George Wein, founder of the already-well-established Newport Jazz Festival, and owner of Storyville, a jazz club located in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1958, Wein became aware of the growing Folk Revival movement and began inviting folk artists such as Odetta to perform on Sunday afternoons at Storyville. The afternoon performances consistently sold out and Wein began to consider the possibility of a "folk afternoon embedded within the 1959 Newport Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
My Morning Jacket
My Morning Jacket is an American rock band formed in Louisville, Kentucky in 1998. The band consists of vocalist/guitarist Jim James, bassist Tom Blankenship, drummer Patrick Hallahan, guitarist Carl Broemel, and keyboardist Bo Koster. The band's sound, rooted in rock and country, is often experimental and psychedelic. The group amassed a following beginning in the 2000s in part due to their live performances. The group first found success in Europe after the release of its debut album, '' The Tennessee Fire'' (1999). Its next release, ''At Dawn'' (2001), led to a large stateside following and preceded several lineup changes. After signing to major label ATO Records, the group released two albums, ''It Still Moves'' (2003) and '' Z'' (2005), with the latter representing a critical breakthrough. The group's next release, ''Evil Urges'' (2008), was more polarizing for fans and critics, while '' Circuital'' (2011), its sixth album, saw a more measured response. The band's seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds. It rose to international popularity fueled by unprecedented sales of LP records and helped alter the direction of popular music in the U.S. The Kingston Trio was one of the most prominent groups of the era's folk-pop boom, which they kick-started in 1958 with the release of the Trio's eponymous first album and its hit recording of " Tom Dooley", which became a number one hit and sold over three million copies as a single. The Trio released nineteen albums that made ''Billboard''s Top 100, fourteen of which ranked in the top 10, and five of which hit the number 1 spot. Four of the group's LPs charted among the 10 top-selling albums for five weeks in November and December 1959, a record unmatched for more than 50 years, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Forman
James Forman (October 4, 1928 – January 10, 2005) was a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement. He was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. As the executive secretary of SNCC from 1961 to 1966, Forman played a significant role in the Freedom Rides, the Albany movement, the Birmingham campaign, and the Selma to Montgomery marches. After the 1960s, Forman spent the rest of his adult life organizing black people around issues of social and economic equality. He also taught at American University and other major institutions. He wrote several books documenting his experiences within the movement and his evolving political philosophy including ''Sammy Younge Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement'' (1969), ''The Making of Black Revolutionaries'' (1972 and 1997) and ''Self Determination: An Examination of the Question and It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toshi Seeger
Toshi Seeger (born Toshi Aline Ohta; July 1, 1922 – July 9, 2013) was an American filmmaker, producer and environmental activist. A filmmaker who specialized in the subject of folk music, Toshi's credits include the 1966 film ''Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison'' and the Emmy Award-winning documentary '' Pete Seeger: The Power of Song'', released through PBS in 2007. In 1966, Seeger and her husband, folk-singer Pete Seeger, co-founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which seeks to protect the Hudson River and surrounding wetlands. Additionally, they co-founded the Clearwater Festival (officially known as The Great Hudson River Revival), a major music festival held annually at Croton Point Park in Westchester County, New York. Personal life Toshi Seeger was born Toshi Aline Ohta on July 1, 1922, in Munich. Her mother, Virginia Harper Berry, was an American originally from Washington, D.C., while her father, Takashi Ohta, was a Japanese exile from Shikoku. Her gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freedom Singers
The Freedom Singers originated as a quartet formed in 1962 at Albany State College in Albany, Georgia. After folk singer Pete Seeger witnessed the power of their congregational-style of singing, which fused black Baptist ''a cappella'' church singing with protest songs and chants, their performances drew aid and support to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the emerging civil rights movement. Seeger suggested The Freedom Singers as a touring group to the SNCC executive secretary James Forman as a way to fuel future campaigns. As a result, communal song became essential to empowering and educating audiences about civil rights issues and a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation. Rutha Mae Harris, a former freedom singer, speculated that without the music force of broad communal singing, the civil rights movement may not have resonated beyond of the struggles of the Jim Crow South. Members The original group consisted of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections. By the mid-1960s the measured nature of the gains made, and the violence with which they were resisted, were generating dissent from the group's principles o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tommy Makem
Thomas Makem (4 November 1932 – 1 August 2007) was an internationally celebrated Irish folk musician, artist, poet and storyteller. He was best known as a member of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. He played the long-necked 5-string banjo, tin whistle, low whistle, guitar, bodhrán and bagpipes, and sang in a distinctive baritone. He was sometimes known as " The Bard of Armagh" (taken from a traditional song of the same name) and "The Godfather of Irish Music". Biography Makem was born and raised in Keady, County Armagh (the "Hub of the Universe" as Makem always said), in Northern Ireland. His mother, Sarah Makem, was an important source of traditional Irish music, who was visited and recorded by, among others, Diane Guggenheim Hamilton, Jean Ritchie, Peter Kennedy and Sean O'Boyle. His father, Peter Makem, was a fiddler who also played the bass drum in a local pipe band named "Oliver Plunkett", after a Roman Catholic martyr of the reign of Charles II of England. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cisco Houston
Gilbert Vandine "Cisco" Houston (August 18, 1918 – April 29, 1961) was an American folk singer and songwriter, who is closely associated with Woody Guthrie due to their extensive history of recording together. Houston was a regular recording artist for Moses Asch's Folkways recording studio. He also performed with such folk/blues musicians as Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, Woody Guthrie and the Almanac Singers. Biography Early life Gilbert Vandine Houston was born in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, on August 18, 1918, the second of four children. His father, Adrian Moncure Houston, was a sheet-metal worker. The family moved to California while Houston was still young, and he attended school in Eagle Rock, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. During his school years, Houston began to play the guitar, having picked up an assortment of folk songs from his family. It is reported that Houston was regarded as highly intelligent during his time at school, despite the nystagmus t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in ''Rolling Stone''s 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists. Some of his best known songs include " Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "Crawling King Snake" (1949), " Dimples" (1956), " Boom Boom" (1962), and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (1966). Several of his later albums, including '' The Healer'' (1989), '' Mr. Lucky'' (1991), '' Chill Out'' (1995), and '' Don't Look Back'' (1997), were album chart successes in the U.S. and UK. ''The Healer'' (for the song "I'm In The Mood") and ''Chill Out'' (for the album) bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ewan McColl
James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a Folk music, folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, Union organizer, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish people, Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s British folk revival, folk revival as well as for writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town". MacColl collected hundreds of traditional folk songs, including the version of "Scarborough Fair (ballad), Scarborough Fair" later popularised by Simon & Garfunkel, and released dozens of albums with A. L. Lloyd, A.L. Lloyd, Peggy Seeger and others, mostly of traditional folk songs. He also wrote many left-wing Revolutionary song, political songs, remaining a steadfast Communism, communist throughout his life and engaging in political activism. Early life and early career MacColl was born as James Henry Miller at 4 Andrew Street, in Brought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Gibson (musician)
Samuel Robert Gibson (November 16, 1931 – September 28, 1996) was an American folk singer and a key figure in the folk music revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His principal instruments were banjo and 12-string guitar. He introduced a then-unknown Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival of 1959. He produced a number of LPs in the decade from 1956 to 1965. His best known album, ''Gibson & Camp at the Gate of Horn'', was released in 1961. His songs have been recorded by, among others, The Limeliters, Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds, The Smothers Brothers, Phil Ochs, The Kingston Trio and Bob Dylan. His career was interrupted by his addiction to drugs and alcohol. After getting sober he attempted a comeback in 1978, but the musical scene had changed and his traditional style of folk music was out of favor with young audiences. He did, however, continue his artistic career with albums, musicals, plays, and television performances. In 1993, he was diagn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. Baez is generally regarded as a folk singer, but her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel music. She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, '' Joan Baez'', ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'' and ''Joan Baez in Concert'', all achieved gold record status. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
