Michael Cooney (born 1943,

Carmel, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), often simply called Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its natural scenery and ric ...

, United States) is an American folk and blues musician who performed in the 1960s

folk revival The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-Benn ...

. He is known for his

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

performances as well as for performing at, and organizing, many folk festivals. In 1963, he participated in a "Young Folksinger's Contest" at the Monterey Folk Festival; Barbara Dane was the contest judge and another contest participant was Janis Joplin. Cooney was the featured musical guest on a first-season episode of ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) a ...

'' (episode 33, originally aired December 24, 1969). Cooney served on the

boards Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, a t ...

of the

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 foca ...

and also the National Folk Festival.Dunaway, David.
Singing Out : An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals
', p. 203 (Oxford University Press 2010). His albums include ''The Cheese Stands Alone'', ''Singer of Old Songs'', ''Still Cooney After All These Years'', ''Pure Unsweetened'', and ''Together Again''.

References

External links

Official Website

Michael Cooney biography at allmusic.com

''Washington Post'' review of Pure Unsweetened
1943 births Living people American blues singers American blues guitarists American folk singers American folk guitarists American male guitarists People from Carmel-by-the-Sea, California 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American male musicians {{US-blues-musician-stub