Richard Barone - Raging Pages

by Lisa Torem

published: 20 / 3 / 2023

In her ‘Raging Pages’ book column Lisa Torem enjoys the depth and precision of Richard Barone’s latest book, ‘Music & Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s.’

Article

According to the recent press release, Richard Barone’s latest book, ‘Music & Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s’ “celebrates the lasting legacy of a pivotal decade with stories behind the songs that resonate just as strongly today.” Barone has, indeed, brought to life these sometimes complex, but consistently colourful stories. Beyond teaching at The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, Barone has had a long--standing residency in Greenwich Village. Moreover, there are few areas in the industry in which he hasn’t taken part: he fronted the Bongos, performs as a solo artist and as a collaborator, and has promoted multiple concerts throughout his career. He has produced an impressive number of studio albums, with ‘Sorrows & Promises,’ serving as companion piece to the book, as it features songs from the 1960s era. This is not his first book. Barone also wrote, ‘Front Man: Surviving the Rock Star Myth’ in 2007. But for this project, he zeroes in on the iconic Greenwich Village neighborhood’s movers, shakers and even detractors. Through seamless narration, precise word choice, exhaustive research and a palpable awe for the brick and mortar, Barone transports us: “One night, standing in the middle of MacDougal Street and looking uptown, I observed that the street was perfectly aligned with the Empire State Building thirty blocks away in the same way that Stonehenge is aligned with the sun,” he states in the first few pages, Barone’s stunning image of Stanford White’s arch “still serves as the gateway to Washington Square Park,” Barone tells us early on. Modeled after the Parisian ‘L’Arc de Triomphe,’ this prominent architectural wonder stands as a symbol for countless socio-political events that have taken shape in New York City. The book might have been a Herculean task in the hands of a lesser-qualified author, but Barone was primed and left no historical stone unturned. Using cartography and a detailed time line, he even chronicles events that foreshadowed the chosen time period, including the “Shirtwaist Factory” tragedy, where garment workers locked in a facility that caught fire, leapt to their deaths. Despite the horror, the tragedy led to a reformation of labour laws. By listing this and other pre-1960s events, Barone skillfully creates a strong thread of social activism and reform, which he ties into the subject-at-large. But to step back a bit, it’s important to acknowledge that In 1910, the Village was already considered “an American bohemia, a center of defiant nonconformity.” Barone’s premise, that the Greenwich Village area was seemingly ripe for cultural revolution, is supported throughout. Fittingly, Barone includes a wellspring of sourced material by those who bucked the system in order to right wrongs as well as those who elected to upend artistic convention. Because we get introduced and re-introduced to many of Barone’s protagonists, they end up feeling like part of an extended family. His entries on “Dust Bowl” balladeer Woody Guthrie, a muse to Bob Dylan, and so many other songwriters, et. al, are circumspect to deep analysis. As such, Guthrie’s American anthem, ‘This Land is Your Land,’ is deemed controversial. Father and son team Alan and John Lomax famously field-recorded songs that otherwise may have not been heard by the general public. Among others, they recorded Son House, Muddy Waters and “work songs.” Some Lead Belly songs were recorded at a penitentiary in 1933. The cultural thread continues when Barone cites Pete Seeger as a Lomax intern, who emulated both Lead Belly and Guthrie, although Barone is quick to point out that Seeger’s “brand of music had a gentle approach.” Seeger reappears multiple times as both an innovator and loyal friend during troubled, political times. Barone researched, as well, Buddy Holly and perhaps lesser-known, but unequivocally talented Texan Carolyn Hester. Ironically, the former songwriter “was predicting rock and roll’s demise in six or seven months.” Refreshingly, Barone’s portrait of Joan Baez reveals a strong feminist angle. “This was an era when a female performer was expected to conform to a kind of sexualized stereotype that Baez resisted,” he states. He also mentions, perhaps as a sign of the times, that Baez contracted with indie-label Vanguard, as opposed to Columbia Records for her debut because the 1960s was a time when artists did not want to be accused of “selling out.” The Newport Folk Festival in the summer of 1959 gets full shrift but this festival gets mentioned later, too, when Barone makes a point about changing trends and fan resistance, with Bob Dylan unexpectedly caught in the clutches. The devil here is definitely in the details. On that note, Barone demystifies many myths about the “beat” era. “Finger snapping” at the Gaslight, for instance, did not come about as a hip means of expression; it replaced applause due to tenant complaints of noise. Painting with broad strokes, the author denotes the beauty and grit of the area’s storied brick and mortar, “Then as now, the Village was messy, more than a bit cacophonous, vivid with color, with garish neon and painted signs on glass storefronts.” With more affection, Barone adds that the area was “an escape from predictability and modern mediocrity.” Dylan, by the way, remains a dominant figure in the book. According to the author’s research, the Minnesotan often “borrowed” ideas. ‘No More Auction Block’ is a prototype for ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ Paul Clayton’s ‘Who’s Gonna Buy Your Ribbons’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ get under the nailbeds, too. At an especially heated juncture, where Dylan feels abandoned by girlfriend Suzy Rotolo, Barone comes to the muse’s rescue: “The truth is, the privilege and possessiveness typical of the time that came through might have been the very things Rotolo, at nineteen years old, was trying to escape from.” Barone is a focused and academically astute author, but to his credit, he’s also able to stand back and see the humanity in his writing. To that end, he frequently approaches the material with humour. For his appraisal of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bleeker Street,’ for example, he cites a lyric: “thirty dollars pays your rent,” but then jokes that one “would have needed a roommate or two” to come up with that amount of hard cash, given the time, given the area. While there are too many individuals to mention in this 300-plus page book, Barone does highlight Scottish folksinger Donovan who taught the Beatles “the claw hammer” style of fingerpicking so heavily used on “the white album.” He pays close attention to political injustices. Buffy Sainte-Marie was banned by the media after proclaiming Native American rights; Janis Ian’s family was continually under surveillance (she wrote about this in ‘God and the FBI’), and as for singer-guitarist Jose Feliciano, Barone asks: “How dare a Puerto Rican, an American citizen raised in New York City, interpret his national anthem in a way that reflected his cultural heritage?” He is referring to the folksinger’s rubato rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ performed at the World Series… While overall, the book is a rich study of American social movements, some subjects are tackled more deeply than others--Barone touches on the “square dancing” scene of the 1940s as an early galvanizer of Village residents; a movement which would, years later, lead to the first “Folklore Center in the world.” It was essential, too, to chronicle the McCarthy black listings and the origins of the Lonnie Donegan-led “Skiffle” movement in the U.K., which, in turn, led to the British Invasion. Barone wisely namechecks Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs as proponents of the “Beat” generation and suggests that they carved out a wide berth for the folk singer communities. ‘Raging Pages’ highly recommends Richard Barone’s ‘Music & Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s.’ This insightful and scrupulously researched book sheds a brilliant light on an essential, but often misunderstood, time and place.