Barry Olivier (November 2, 1935 in
San Francisco, California) is a retired professional guitar teacher, and creator/producer of the
Berkeley Folk Music Festivals from 1958 to 1970.
https://sites.northwestern.edu/bfmf/barry-olivier-festival-director/
Early life
Olivier grew up living in the San Francisco Bay Area cities of Belvedere, Brentwood and
Berkeley, moving several times as his father was a school principal. He moved to Berkeley in 1947 as a teenager. Olivier lived in Berkeley until the early 1980s, and since then has lived in
Oakland, California.
Career
Olivier has been part of the Berkeley folk music scene since the 1950s. He was influenced by folk revivalists such as
Burl Ives,
Carl Sandburg, and
John Jacob Niles, who he saw perform on campus at Cal. Beginning in 1956 he hosted “The Midnight Special” on
KPFA
KPFA (94.1 FM) is an American listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station sign ...
radio. He started a music instrument shop in Berkeley, The Barrel Folk Music Center, to serve the growing folk music community during the mid-1950s.
In 1958, Olivier, as a former student of
UC Berkeley envisioned and created The Berkeley Folk Festival which became an annual event, directed and produced by Olivier, until 1970. Performers and workshop participants included
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, sch ...
,
Doc Watson and his son Merle,
Joan Baez,
Pete Seeger,
Mississippi John Hurt,
Almeda Riddle
Almeda Riddle (November 21, 1898 – June 30, 1986) was an American folk singer. Born and raised in Cleburne County, Arkansas, she learned music from her father, a fiddler and a teacher of shape note singing. She collected and sang traditio ...
,
Mance Lipscomb,
Alice Stuart, and folklorists
Charles Seeger and
Archie Green. Associate festival producer John Chambless described Olivier as having produced the festivals almost single-handedly and with "enormous good taste." He produced all of
Joan Baez’s Northern California concerts from 1962 to 1973.
In 1974, Olivier's archive of folk festival materials was acquired by
Northwestern University (ibid). This festival was the subject of history and American studies professor Michael J. Kramer’s research seminar “Digitizing Folk Music History: The Berkeley Folk Festival.” In May 2011, he spoke at Northwestern about his experience during the 1960s.
In 2021,
Northwestern University (ibid) published its digital archive of th
Berkeley Folk Music Festival
Olivier was a Bay Area guitar teacher. He taught a young boy from
El Cerrito, California named
John Fogerty
John Cameron Fogerty (born May 28, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. Together with Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, and his brother Tom Fogerty
Thomas Richard Fogerty (November 9, 1941 – September 6, 1990) was an American mu ...
his first guitar lessons,
[(ibid)] and helped
Kate Wolf
Kate Wolf (born Kathryn Louise Allen; January 27, 1942 – December 10, 1986) was an American folk singer and songwriter."Kate Wolf", pp. 533–534, in '' All Music Guide'', 2nd edition (1994), edited by Michael Erlewine. San Francisco: Miller ...
perfect her guitar playing technique. He is the father of five children.
He retired from teaching in 2019, after being diagnosed with dementia.
In June 2020, his students formed a Facebook group
Friends of Barry Olivier
Media Joan Baez concert handbill, 16 April 1967
(Barry Olivier, Producer)
References
External links
Barry Olivier's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olivier, Barry
1935 births
Guitarists from San Francisco
Living people
American male guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American male musicians