(The David Nelson Band has an amazing new studio CD, Once In a Blue Moon. Check it out!)
David Nelson, July 2007:
In the late ’50-early ’60s, there were factions, camps. “I like folk music” usually meant Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, Limeliters. That was a surfacey kind of folk music.
There were those of us who dug a little deeper into the funky stuff, which is what it comes from. The New Lost City Ramblers was a good example. Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, and John Cohen would take old 78s from the ’30s and then capture that – but not exactly. They were doing their thing; they were into the music.
People were taking sides. “Oh, you’re one of those ethnic people,” and they would point the finger at us. At a folk festival, we’d gather around and over here there’d be people who could play banjo and fiddle – “that low stuff.”
We’d say, “Yeah, we’re into ethnic music.” That meant bluegrass and old time string band music. “Eww…”
By the time the Monterey Folk Festival came around and Dylan was there –
By the way, we won “Best amateur band” – me, Hunter, Garcia, Ken Frankel, and Norm van Maastricht. I believe we were the Hart Valley Drifters. We auditioned there, and Mike Seeger gave us a big applaud and we won the band contest.
There was Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, the Kentucky Colonels – all these bands. It was incredible! But the reviews in the [San Francisco] Chronicle – “Oh, the Monterey Folk Festival! Big fiasco – it was way too ethnic-heavy! All this traditional stuff – who wants that?”
We were going, “Oh, man. Won’t they ever get it?”
That’s the way it was in those days: you took sides. It was either-or; you’re jumpin’ on this or not. It was like enemies. If somebody was into the Kingston Trio, you had to be enemies because you played bluegrass. That’s the way things were in the ’50s.
I liked that [mainstream folk] stuff, because it introduced guitars to everybody.
And then there’s the political songwriters – the Almanac Singers, Woody Guthrie – that’s a whole legitimate genre, too. But somehow we had to be enemies. We were fighting each other, y’know. I don’t know what for. That’s what I recall.
There’s this kid Bob Dylan, who’s writing songs. We were thinking, “Why would you want to write a song? There’s so much good stuff. How about ‘The Cuckoo Bird‘ by Clarence Ashley? How come you don’t play that? No, no, no, you have to write a song.” And yet, I go back to those songs now – “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” oh man! To this day, that song is just utterly riveting! At the same time as being related to traditional music. You couldn’t declare it, because of all that infighting, but secretly we all knew. “You got the album? So did I.”