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I had the good fortune to do sound for Dave Van Ronk one time. His was the shortest, easiest sound check I ever had. Couple of strums on his Guild jumbo and a line or two of a song. “That sounds OK to me, whaddya think?” and we were finished.

I’ve posted on this blog before that I was looking for a good Van Ronk video, and here it is. First Dave talks about Clarence Williams for a bit. Sit still and listen, this is living history. Dave learned this song from the guy who wrote it, gave it to Bessie Smith and recorded her singing it.

Bandleader and trumpeter Ernest “Red” Nichols was the son of a college music teacher in Ogden, Utah. In 1923, inspired by recordings of “The Original Dixieland Jass Band,” Red came east to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he joined a band called The Syncopating Seven. Red was soon in New York, playing in Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, working on more than 100 recordings as a session musician and playing trumpet in Broadway shows.

His band, Red Nichols and His Five Pennies, is shown here in 1934 or 1935, doing the 1924 Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams song “Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me).” The performance has a Benny Goodman like swing feel to it, without losing it’s 1920s hot jazz flavor.

In 1959 Red’s career was revived by the release of a movie loosely based on his life, “The Five Pennies”, starring Danny Kaye. Nichols continued performing with The Five Pennies until hes death in 1965.

Fifteen year old John Herald was at summer camp in 1954 when Pete Seeger came by, during Seegers long exile from the public eye, thanks to Red Channels and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Pete was performing for children in schools, camps and recreational programs, because he couldn’t get bookings anywhere else. Herald was inspired by Seeger to become a full time musician. Five years later Herald Bob Yellin and Eric Weissberg formed a band, calling themselves The Greenbriar Boys, a nice name for three kids from Manhattan. Here is a clip of The Greenbriar Boys on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest show.

Herald wrote some very familiar songs “Stewball,” which I thought was a traditional song, is one of his. Joan Baez recorded the song and ired the Greenbriar Boys to play on her second album. The Greenbriar Boys made three LPs for Vanguard before breaking up. John Herald worked as a studio musician on records by Ian and Sylvia, Bonnie Raitt, Doc Watson, Tom Rush and many others.

Here is a later video. This is the John Herald Band. Cindy Cashdollar is playing the dobro. The John Herald Band, in one form or another, stuck together for 35 years.

Herald had terrible luck with record companies releasing his albums just as they went bankrupt, having fires which destroyed his master recordings and just missing the big break, time and time again. Never achieving commercial success and living precariously from one project to another,Herald died in 2005 in his home, near Woodstock New York.