The Rise of Folk Rock

by McCartney Garb

The Newport Folk Festival was established in 1959 during a burgeoning folk revival movement in the United States. At the 1965 Festival, Bob Dylan shattered folk purists’ hearts when he appeared on stage with a band, cementing his position among those defying the acoustic tradition. By the time this issue of On Air is published, the new Bob Dylan biopic, featuring Timothée Chalamet, will have already been released. Having not yet gotten the chance to see it, there won’t be any enlightening movie commentary in this article. But the film is based on a moment in American music history that I do tend towards: the moment folk was electrified, forever changing the mainstream music landscape.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Greenwich Village in New York City seemed to house the highest guitar-playing, folk-obsessed, collegiate-aged population in the country. With jug bands and vocal groups and solo harmonicists, you couldn’t walk very far at all before encountering a cafe with traditional tunes wafting from the front door. It’s in this environment that Bob Dylan became the voice of a generation. But it is also here where groups like the Mugwumps lost their footing.

Who are the Mugwumps? What does that name even mean? Well, no one really knows. What the name is about, I mean. But the group formed from two dissolving folk trios and a session musician who grew up in the Village amidst all of this musical activity. It consisted of members John Sebastian, Zalman Yanovksy, Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty, and Jim Hendricks. Four of those members would later go on to form two renowned folk-rock groups, The Mamas & the Papas and the Lovin’ Spoonful. The Mugwumps’ music was too fresh for a scene still caught in the throes of traditional composition. They performed covers like most other folk purist groups, but instead of an acoustic, Zalman Yanovsky plugged in his Thunderbird Gibson; they found unhappy audiences in both folk and rock clubs alike. It wasn’t that the music was bad, it was just too early for audiences to latch onto any sort of electric version of folk. Now, all that is left of their sound is a nine-song album released after their dissolution, an album meant to capitalize off of the big-time names that emerged from the group.

However, there would soon be an expanding market for this kind of sound. Just like most music genres of the 1960s, I would be remiss not to mention the influence of the British Invasion. It was in Cass Elliot’s apartment that John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky watched the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show together. The younger audiences that had previously latched onto the serious air of the folk revival were turning their heads to the raw, new expressions coming from groups like the Kinks and the Animals. The Animals, with their 1964 hit “House of the Rising Sun," completely transformed the traditional American guitar tune into an eerie, dramatic, and loud composition, with haunting organ keys by Alan Price and Eric Burdon’s powerful vocal performance. Out of all the versions of “House of the Rising Sun,” this one has probably had the longest-lasting legacy. The song has dubious origins, but the earliest similarly-recorded versions date back to 1933, by an Appalachian duo. The Animals heard it in an English club, performed by Johnny Handle. By September 1964, the song had made its way back to the United States at the top of the charts.

Illustration by McCartney Garb.

It was clear that the British were significantly impacting the American music market, to the extent of taking traditional folk tunes from Appalachia, repackaging them, and successfully sending them back to America. It was while walking down the streets of Greenwich Village that Yanovsky and Sebastian decided to form what would be the American response to the Beatles. Many bands have been given the title, “American Beatles” in that era: the Spoonful, the Beach Boys, the Byrds. Whoever it was, it was clear that there was some sort of response warranted to the explosive breakout of the Liverpudlian band. Deciding on a name from Mississippi John Hurt’s song, “Coffee Blues”, The Lovin’ Spoonful recruited Joe Butler on drums and Steve Boone on bass, both with experience in dance hall bands, playing rock for venues on Long Island. Joe Butler was responsible for bringing rock to Greenwich Village with his band the Sellouts, aptly titled, although their music wasn’t particularly unique. Like most rock at the time, it seemed derivative of Merseybeat streaming over from the Atlantic. It was The Lovin’ Spoonful where real magic happened, at dark and dim rehearsals in the basement of the Albert Hotel in late 1964 and early 1965.

By March, Bob Dylan was already picking up the electric guitar with his new release Bringing it All Back Home. Half acoustic, half electric, it is both a timid and somehow eruptive declaration. Like the youth of America that he had for two long years represented, he was turning away from the confines of the American folk revival, from the strict traditionalists. In June, the Byrds released their first album, titled after their cover of the Bob Dylan tune “Mr. Tambourine Man”. In July, The Lovin’ Spoonful released their first single, “Do You Believe in Magic.” Penned by John Sebastian after a performance at the Night Owl Cafe, the singer-songwriter as a concept was in full bloom. That same month, Bob Dylan would appear with an electric band backing him at the Newport Folk Festival.

The word ‘folk-rock’ was first used to describe the Byrds album release in 1965, but it was clear that this sound was brewing at least a year before Roger McGuinn entered a Columbia studio with the backing of the Wrecking Crew. In San Francisco, there were the Beau Brummels; in New York City, the Mugwumps. Who knows how many garage bands were left unrecorded, in between the two jolted coasts? Listening to collegiate vocal folk groups from their peers in one ear, the imported English rock sound in the other. Deciding to put an electric guitar to “Turn! Turn! Turn!” becomes natural, even warranted. The ingredients were always there, and as the exchange across the Atlantic got richer and more numerous, these folk-rock bands became inevitable. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t pushback, folk purists screaming ‘Judas’ as one freshly-minted folk-rocker took the stage in Manchester.

Nowadays we laugh at or ridicule the people who booed and jeered at Dylan in 1965. But this wasn’t just about the loudness of songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” or “Maggie’s Farm.” The folkies of the early 1960s revival were seeing something beloved get slowly tarnished in front of their eyes. And this isn’t dramatic either, although it may seem that way now. With the Beatles’ electric, pop-rock influence also came the band archetypes, the kitschy teen magazines, asking John Sebastian and Denny Doherty, “What’s your favorite type of girl?” It’s hard for the same serious, respectful nature surrounding folk music to exist in that environment. The more folk-rock evolved, the more it pushed boundaries, losing the traditional compositions that once filled the debut albums from these groups. In the end, the singer-songwriter won out.

It’s hard to overstate the impact these folkrock groups had on music in the sixties. It wasn’t just an impact, it was the music. For two straight years, folk-rock was the dominant, cutting-edge sound. The Americans got their response. Where would Rubber Soul be if Bob Dylan never went electric at Newport? Or Zal Yanovsky had never plugged into an amp at the Night Owl Cafe? One of the most notorious music duos of all time, Simon & Garfunkel, may have forever disbanded if it wasn’t for the electric guitar and drums added to “Sound of Silence” in June of 1965.

In a few short weeks, I’ll be in the theatre, watching a modern retelling of this exact moment. I’m no Dylanologist or film critic, I don’t care about the biographic accuracy or acting. I’m just excited to see the film revolve around that “controversial choice” that placed Dylan at the head of a pivotal and dramatic moment in American music history.

McCartney is a regular host of Hobo's Lullaby, Saturdays 4-6pm. Tune in to hear them explore folk-rock regularly, and join them on their quest to track down Simon & Garfunkel vinyl LPs.