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A hootenanny is a freewheeling, improvisatory musical event in the United States, often incorporating audience members in performances. It is particularly associated with folk music. [1]
Hootenanny is an Appalachian colloquialism that was used in the early twentieth century U.S. as a placeholder name to refer to things whose names were forgotten or unknown. [1] In this usage, it was synonymous with doohickey, thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in: "That hootenanny that she shovels her bread with — that long-handled majigger, you know" (from Sim Greene: A Narrative of the Whisky Insurrection [1906]). [1] [2]
Hootenanny is also a rural word for "party" or get-together. It can refer to a folk music party with an open mic, at which different performers are welcome to get up and play in front of an audience.
According to Pete Seeger he first heard the word hootenanny in Seattle, Washington in the summer of 1941 while touring the area with Woody Guthrie. [3] It was used by Hugh DeLacy's New Deal political club [4] to describe their monthly music fund raisers. [5] After some debate the club voted in hootenanny, which narrowly beat out wingding. Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other members of the Almanac Singers later used the word in New York City to describe their weekly rent parties, which featured many notable folksingers of the time. [5] In a 1962 interview in Time , Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz. [6]
During the early 1960s at the height of the American folk music revival, the club Gerdes Folk City at 11 West 4th Street in Greenwich Village started a folk music hootenanny tradition every Monday night. It featured an open mic and welcomed a broad variety of performers. [7] The Bitter End at 147 Bleecker Street—not far from Gerdes—continued the folk music hootenanny tradition every Tuesday night. [8] [9]
A weekly hootenanny has been held during the summers at Allegany State Park most years since 1972. [10]
The Hootenanny was an annual one-day rockabilly music festival held on July 4th weekends from 1995 to 2013 at the Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine, California. [11] The July 3, 1999 Hootenanny was recorded and released as Live at the Hootenanny, Vol. 1 . It featured rockabilly bands like the Reverend Horton Heat, The Derailers, Mike Ness, and the Royal Crown Revue. [12]
For years there have been online hootenannies. The most long-standing example is Small Talk At The Wall , which originated in 1999. [13]
Several different television shows are named hootenanny and styled after it, including:
David Lee Marks is an American guitarist who was an early member of the Beach Boys. While growing up in Hawthorne, California, Marks was a neighborhood friend of the original band members and was a frequent participant at their family get-togethers. Following his departure from the group, Marks fronted the Marksmen and performed and recorded as a session musician.
Surfer Girl is the third studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released September 16, 1963 on Capitol Records. It is largely a collection of surf songs. The LP reached number 7 in the U.S. and number 13 in the UK. Lead single "Surfer Girl", backed with "Little Deuce Coupe", was also a top 10 hit.
Hootenanny was an American musical variety television show broadcast on ABC from April 1963 to September 1964. The program was hosted by Jack Linkletter. It primarily featured pop-oriented folk music acts, including The Journeymen, The Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, Ian & Sylvia, The Big 3, Hoyt Axton, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, The Tarriers, Bud & Travis, Josh White, Josh White Jr., Leon Bibb, and the Smothers Brothers. Although both popular and influential, the program is primarily remembered today for the controversy created when the producers blacklisted certain folk music acts, which then led to a boycott by others.
Carolyn Sue Hester is an American folk singer and songwriter. She was a figure in the early 1960s American folk music revival.
The Highwaymen was an American 1960s "collegiate folk" group. The quintet's version of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore", a 19th Century African-American work song, released in 1959 under the title "Michael," was a Billboard #1 hit in September 1961. The group scored another Top 20 hit in 1962 with a version of Lead Belly's "Cotton Fields". "Michael" sold over one million copies, achieving gold record status. The group originated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where its members were undergraduates.
"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" is a traditional spiritual first noted during the American Civil War at St. Helena Island, one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. The best-known recording was released in 1960 by the U.S. folk band The Highwaymen; that version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single.
"Bob Dylan's Dream" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1963. It was recorded by Dylan on April 24, 1963, and was released by Columbia Records a month later on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
"Cindy, Oh Cindy" is a song, written by Robert Nemiroff and Burt D'Lugoff and credited to their pseudonyms, Robert Barron and Burt Long. It used as its melody a stevedore song, "Pay Me My Money Down", collected by Lydia Parrish in her 1942 book Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, which was performed by The Weavers during their influential 1955 Carnegie Hall concerts and further popularized by The Kingston Trio on tour starting in 1957.
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, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion were a musical duo. Guthrie and Irion were married on October 16, 1999, and began performing together as an acoustic duo in late 2000, performing together until they divorced in the mid-2010s. Their music combined Irion's love of rock and blues with Guthrie's roots of folk and country.
"Worried Man Blues" is a folk song in the roots music repertoire. It is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 4753. Like many folk songs passed by oral tradition, the lyrics vary from version to version, but generally all contain the chorus "It takes a worried man to sing a worried song/It takes a worried man to sing a worried song/I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long." The verses tell the story of a man imprisoned for unknown reasons "I went across the river, and I lay down to sleep/When I woke up, had shackles on my feet", who pines for his lost love, who is "on the train and gone."
Frank Hamilton is an American folk musician, collector of folk songs, and educator. He co-founded the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Illinois in 1957. As a performer, he has recorded for several labels, including Folkways Records. He was a member of the folk group The Weavers in the early 1960s, and appeared at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959. He was the house musician – playing guitar and other folk instruments – for Chicago's Gate of Horn, the nation's first folk music nightclub. After many years of teaching, playing, and singing in California he married a third time, and with his wife relocated to Atlanta, where he performs on banjo, guitar, ukulele, voice, and other instruments and co-founded the Frank Hamilton School in 2015.
Gil Turner was an American folk singer-songwriter, magazine editor, Shakespearean actor, political activist, and for a time, a lay Baptist preacher. Turner was a prominent figure in the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s, where he was master of ceremonies at New York City's leading folk music venue, Gerde's Folk City, as well as co-editor of the protest song magazine Broadside. He also wrote for Sing Out!, the quarterly folk music journal.
The Pennywhistlers were an American singing group founded by folklorist and singer Ethel Raim and popular during the 1960s folk music revival. They specialized in Eastern European polyphonic vocal music, traditional and arranged, sung primarily a cappella. Folk singer Theodore Bikel, in his autobiography Theo, called them "the closest to the real thing in authenticity in the United States." Their repertoire also featured traditional American songs. The Pennywhistlers toured throughout the 1960s, appearing at the Sing Out! hootenanny at Carnegie Hall, the Fox Hollow Festival, and the Mariposa Folk Festival, among others. They shared the bill with performers such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Reverend Gary Davis, Leonard Cohen, and many others.
The Surfin' Lungs are an English surf music band originally from Bracknell, Berkshire, who were formed in 1981 by Chris Pearce and Geoffo Knipe. The original line-up consisted of: Chris Pearce, Geoffo Knipe, Steve Dean and Lee Money (drums).
The Biggest Wave is the second album released by surf music band The Surfin' Lungs, released in September 1987 on Satellite Records' Beat International label. Similar in style to Cowabunga, The Biggest Wave featured a collection of surf/summer-inspired tunes with all 12 songs self-penned by the group. The album was self-produced by the group, but a failure by Beat International to promote the album saw fail to attract the attention it should have.
The discography of Pete Seeger, an American folk singer, consists of 52 studio albums, 23 compilation albums, 22 live albums, and 31 singles. Seeger's musical career started in 1940 when he joined The Almanac Singers. He stayed with the group for two years until he was drafted into the Army to fight in the Second World War. After the end of World War II in 1945, Seeger helped found an organization known as People's Songs, along with the influential folk music magazine People's Songs Bulletin. He published several singles and a studio album with the magazine. Seeger would play at People's Songs events, called hootenannies, until the organization folded in 1949. After People's Songs, Seeger and another former member of the Almanacs, Lee Hays, founded the Weavers, who achieved commercial success. In 1952, The Weavers went on hiatus due to the Red Scare; Seeger and Hays both had Communist ties. After the demise of the Weavers, Seeger released a solo album, American Folk Songs for Children, in 1953 on Folkways Records. He continued to release albums on Folkways until he signed with Capitol in 1961.
Olivia Chaney is an English folk singer, pianist, guitarist, harmonium player and songwriter. Her debut solo album, The Longest River, was released on Nonesuch Records in 2015. Her follow-up solo album, Shelter, was released on Nonesuch on 15 June 2018.
Anthony D. Saletan, known professionally as Tony Saletan, is an American folk singer, children's instructional television pioneer, and music educator. Saletan is responsible for the modern rediscovery, in the mid-1950s, of two of the genre's best-known songs, "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" and "Kumbaya". In 1955, he was the first performer to appear on Boston's educational television station, WGBH. In 1969, Saletan was the first musical guest to appear on Sesame Street.
"Surfin' U.S.A." is a song by the American rock band the Beach Boys, credited to Chuck Berry and Brian Wilson. It is a rewritten version of Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" set to new lyrics written by Wilson and an uncredited Mike Love. The song was released as a single on March 4, 1963, backed with "Shut Down". It was then placed as the opening track on their album of the same name.
