''Rainbow Quest'' (1965–66) was a

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

television series devoted to

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

and hosted by

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...

. It was videotaped in

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

and featured musicians playing in traditional American music genres such as traditional

old-time music Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combinati ...

, bluegrass and blues. The show's title is drawn from the lyrics of the song by Seeger "Oh, Had I A Golden Thread".

Production

The program was produced on a low budget funded by Seeger and his co-producer, Sholom Rubinstein. Seeger's wife,

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 Wo ...

, given the title "Chief Cook and Bottle Washer" in the closing credits after each show, actually functioned as the director by dint of the fact that she continually made suggestions to Rubinstein that he passed along to the camera operators. Eventually the cameramen simply followed her instructions without waiting for Rubinstein to repeat them. The shows were unrehearsed and there was no studio audience even though Seeger's metier was leading his audiences in song. Songs were traded between Seeger and his guests and Seeger often joined in while his guests performed. One show was dedicated to

Woody Guthrie Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired ...

and another to Lead Belly. Lead Belly had died long before and Guthrie was incapacitated with

Huntington's disease Huntington's disease (HD), also known as Huntington's chorea, is a neurodegenerative disease that is mostly inherited. The earliest symptoms are often subtle problems with mood or mental abilities. A general lack of coordination and an uns ...

. Both shows featured film clips of the legendary singer/songwriters who had been close friends of Seeger's. Many of the other shows featured film clips made by the Seegers during their travels in the U.S. and elsewhere, including a demonstration in Mexico of guitar-making and another in the West Indies of making a steel drum. Altogether 39 shows, each 52 minutes long, were recorded in 1965–66 at WNJU-TV (Channel 47), a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

-based UHF station with studios in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.public television Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing ...

station WNDT (Channel 13, now

WNET WNET (channel 13), branded on-air as "Thirteen" (stylized as "THIRTEEN"), is a primary PBS member television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the ...

). Among the guests featured on the program's 39 episodes were Johnny Cash,

June Carter June is the sixth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the second of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the third of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. June contains the summer solstice in t ...

Reverend Gary Davis Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infan ...

Mississippi John Hurt John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1893 – November 2, 1966), better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. He w ...

Doc Watson Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. W ...

The Stanley Brothers The Stanley Brothers were an American bluegrass duo of singer-songwriters and musicians, made up of brothers Carter Stanley (August 27, 1925 – December 1, 1966) and Ralph Stanley (February 25, 1927 – June 23, 2016). Ralph and Carter perform ...

Elizabeth Cotten Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten ( Nevills; January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This po ...

Patrick Sky Patrick Sky (born Patrick Linch; October 2, 1940May 26, 2021) was an American musician, folk singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was noted for his album ''Songs That Made America Famous'' (1973). He was of Irish and Native American anc ...

Buffy Sainte-Marie Buffy Sainte-Marie, (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American ( Piapot Cree Nation) singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. While working in these ...

, Judy Collins, Donovan,

Richard Fariña Richard George Fariña ( Spanish IPA: ) (March 8, 1937 – April 30, 1966) was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist. Early years and education Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of an Irish mother, ...

and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and

Brownie McGhee Walter Brown "Brownie" McGhee (November 30, 1915 – February 16, 1996) was an American folk music and Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaboration with the harmonica player Sonny Terry. Life and career McGhee was ...

, Mamou Cajun Band,

Bernice Johnson Reagon Bernice Johnson Reagon (born Bernice Johnson on October 4, 1942) is a song leader, composer, scholar, and social activist, who in the early 1960s was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) Freedom Singers in t ...

, The Beers Family,

Roscoe Holcomb Roscoe Holcomb, (born Roscoe Halcomb September 5, 1912 – died February 1, 1981) was an American singer, banjo player, and guitarist from Daisy, Kentucky. A prominent figure in Appalachian folk music, Holcomb was the inspiration for the term ...

, Sonia Malkine, Cousin Emmy and

Shawn Phillips Shawn Phillips (born February 3, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter and musician, primarily influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His work is rooted in folk rock but straddles other genres, including jazz fusion and funk. Phillips has re ...

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

and

Tom Paxton Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

appeared on the first show of the series on short notice because Seeger felt ill, as he explained on camera. Only Paddy and

Liam Liam is a short form of the Irish name Uilliam or the old Germanic name William. Etymology The original name was a merging of two Old German elements: ''willa'' ("will" or "resolution"); and ''helma'' ("helmet"). The juxtaposition of these ele ...

appeared of the Clancy Brothers. No explanation was given for

Tom Clancy Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (April 12, 1947 – October 1, 2013) was an American novelist. He is best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science storylines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels have ...

's absence from the group. A clip of

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 banj ...

singing " The Butcher Boy" during this initial episode appeared in

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...

's Grammy-winning documentary about

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

and the early influences on him, ''

No Direction Home ''No Direction Home: Bob Dylan'' is a 2005 documentary film by Martin Scorsese that traces the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on 20th-century American popular music and culture. The film focuses on the period between Dylan's arrival in New ...

''.

Publication

In 1980, Norman Ross, president of Clearwater Publishing in New York, a firm that was primarily a publisher of

microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...

s and reference books, proposed to publish the series on videocassette. (At that time VHS and Betamax were relatively new inventions.) Ross's company, whose name was eponymous with the nonprofit organization founded by Seeger and the boat at the center of the organization's efforts to clean the Hudson River, was not affiliated with the organization. (Ross had named his publishing company Clearwater in honor of Seeger.) However, when Ross began having the 2" broadcast masters copied onto 3/4" cassettes to be used as dubmasters, it became clear that the studio tapes had badly deteriorated while in the vault. A local video studio, Devlin, reported that the surface of the tapes was flaking off, which had damaged their equipment and resulted in copies that were of very poor quality. Devlin resigned from the job. Another studio in New York examined one of the tapes and reported that it could be rescued by passing it through a chemical bath several times and then transferring the image to new media. However, they estimated that the 2" tapes would only survive one such pass, and the cost would be $19,500 for the 39 shows, a sum that was far too costly for either Ross or the original producers to justify at that point. On the other hand, the loss of all 39 shows would have been a great tragedy, given the unique qualities of the series. At the suggestion of Manny Kirchheimer, an independent film maker whose wife Gloria was an editor at Clearwater Publishing, the decision was made to seek a grant for the work and a proposal was prepared under the aegis of The Woody Guthrie Foundation, whose director, Harold Leventhal, was also Pete Seeger's manager. The proposal was submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts, where Bess Lomax Hawes (sister of the folklorist Alan Lomax), who had sung with Seeger and Woody Guthrie, among others, as a member of the Almanac Singers, was one of the key people involved in making the decision. Thus the grant was awarded, the tapes were processed and two new sets were created: 1" tapes that went back into the vault and 3/4" videocassettes that became the dubmasters for Clearwater Publishing, which then proceeded to offer copies of the series for sale. Because Clearwater's marketing efforts were primarily directed to libraries, sales were sparse through the '80s and '90s, especially prior to the advent of the Internet, and only a few thousand cassettes were sold in total. However, a number of libraries acquired the complete (38 shows) collection, including University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University, National University (available only to National University faculty in San Diego), and the Tokyo Folklore Center. During this period Sun Video, owned by Caspar Weinberger, Jr., offered a small selection of the shows to the general public. In 2003 Ross, having sold both Clearwater Publishing and his subsequent firm, Norman Ross Publishing, withdrew from the agreement. A subsequent agreement with Shanachie, negotiated by Rubinstein, resulted in 12 of the shows becoming available on DVD, however the remaining 27 were no longer available for sale. Two episodes, one featuring Tommy Makem and another featuring Johnny Cash and June Carter were available on Netflix' streaming service as of December 2011. Sholom Rubinstein died a few years later. In September 2015 archivist and librarian Karl-Rainer Blumenthal announced that he had uploaded copies of 10 available episodes to the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. His blog post, with streaming players for the videos, originally included a footnote stating that "The show has been in the public domain since the 1990s"; he has since edited his comment, noting that he "cannot confidently characterize the copyright status of this work". Meanwhile, a number of

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

subscribers have uploaded full episodes or individual performances from the series to that video hosting site, where they can be found with a simple search on the program title (with Seeger's name, to eliminate a racehorse called "Rainbow Quest"), or by searching for individual rarely-seen artists, such as

Richard Farina Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stron ...

Episode list

The Clancy Brothers The Clancy Brothers were an influential Irish folk music group that developed initially as a part of the American folk music revival. Most popular during the 1960s, they were famed for their Aran jumper sweaters and are widely credited with popu ...

and

with

# " Lead Belly" (solo performance by Seeger) #

with Rosa Valentin & Rafael Martinez # Ruth Rubin #

Jean Ritchie Jean Ruth Ritchie (December 8, 1922 – June 1, 2015) was an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player, called by some the "Mother of Folk". In her youth she learned hundreds of folk songs in the traditional way (orally ...

and Bernice Reagon # Malvina Reynolds and Jack Elliott # Bessie Jones and Children from the Downtown Community School # New Lost City Ramblers # The

Beers Family The Beers Family was an American traditional folk music group that performed and recorded between 1958 and 1972. The members of the group were Robert Beers (sometimes billed as "Fiddler" Beers), his wife Evelyne Beers, and their daughter Martha B ...

# Herbert Manana # Martha Schlamme & Abraham Stockman #

with

Clint Howard Clinton Engle Howard (born April 20, 1959) is an American actor. He is the second son born to American actors Rance and Jean Howard, and younger brother of actor and director Ron Howard. His 200-plus acting credits include feature films such as ...

and Fred Price # Norman Studer and Grant Rogers # "Political Satire" (solo performance by Seeger) # Lino Manocchia, Ralph Marino, and Federico Picciano # Mimi and

with Jean Redpath #

and the

Clinch Mountain Boys Ralph Edmund Stanley (February 25, 1927 – June 23, 2016) was an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. Stanley began playing music in 1946, originally with his older brother Carter Stanley as part of ...

with Cousin Emmy # Sonia Malkine # "

" (solo performance by Seeger) #

and

The Pennywhistlers The Pennywhistlers were an American singing group founded by folklorist and singer Ethel Raim and popular during the 1960s American folk music revival, folk music revival. They specialized in Eastern European choral music, sung primarily a cappel ...

Len Chandler Len Hunt Chandler, Jr. (born May 27, 1935), better known as Len Chandler, is a folk musician from Akron, Ohio. Biography He showed an early interest in music and began playing piano at age 8. Studying classical music in his early teens, he lear ...

# Donovan,

, and

# # Mamou Cajun Band # Frank Warner and film of Frank Proffit # Paul Draper & Coleridge Perkinson # Penny Cohen and Sonya Cohen #

Theodore Bikel Theodore Meir Bikel ( ; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He appeared in films, including '' The African Queen'' (1951), ''Moulin Rouge'' (1952), ' ...

and

Rashid Hussein Rashid Hussein Mahmoud ( ar, راشد حسين, he, ראשד חוסיין; 1936 – 2 February 1977) was a Palestinian poet, orator, journalist and Arabic-Hebrew translator. He was born in Musmus, Mandatory Palestine. He published his first coll ...

# Steve Addiss and Bill Crofut with Pham Duy # The Greenbriar Boys # Judy Collins # Jim Garland and Hazel Garland # Sonny Terry and

# Bessie Jones and Children from the Downtown Community School #

Hedy West Hedwig Grace "Hedy" West (April 6, 1938 – July 3, 2005) was an American folksinger and songwriter. She belonged to the same generation of folk revivalists as Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Her most famous song " 500 Miles" is one of America's ...

& Paul Cadwell # Herbert Levy, K. L. Wong and Hi-Landers Steel Band #

# Johnny Cash and

VHS/DVD releases

Starting in the early 1980s 38 of the shows were made available on VHS, Betamax and 3/4" (U-Matic) tapes by Norman Ross through the companies he owned, Clearwater Publishing, Norman Ross Publishing and Ross Publishing. The 39th show, featuring Johnny Cash and June Carter, was withheld at the request of Pete Seeger because Johnny Cash was heavily on drugs during his appearance. However, in the late '90s this show was released to the public by Sholom Rubinstein. In 2005, 12 episodes were released on six DVDs by Shanachie, two episodes per disc. *Johnny Cash and June Carter / Roscoe Holcomb with Jean Redpath *The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem / The Mamou String Band *The Stanley Brothers with Cousin Emmy / Doc Watson with Clint Howard and Fred Price *The New Lost City Ramblers / The Greenbriar Boys *Judy Collins / Elizabeth Cotten *Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee / Mississippi John Hurt

References

External links