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I’m going to interrupt the normal flow of thing to bring you a clip from last year’s Philadelphia Folk Festival. I just returned from the 2008 festival, where I worked on the production crew. Last year the Lovell sisters played some of the side stages of Friday and then came down to Maryland to do a concert at The Mainstay, where I had the privilege of doing sound for them, before they returned to play the festival main stage on Sunday night. This is from their 2007 Sunday night performance at PFF.

I have a post about the 2008 festival here, with some photos.

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.

When I had my folk music radio show I would get a Christmas card every year from John Hartford. I know it was a promotional tool for his record label, Small Dog A’ Barkin’, and that he had a mailing list of thousands of names but I always felt like John was a personal friend, nonetheless. Certainly, the promotional aspect was unnecessary as I was happy to play John Hartford records on my show any time.

The first time I saw John Hartford was on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and he sang this song, his most well known. I was able to see him perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival many years later. His performance was always very smooth and professional, even though many of his songs were quirky and personal. He had a half sheet of plywood which was miced so that the audience could hear his feet as he clog danced along with his fiddle and banjo and sang his songs, as he does here.

Gentle On My Mind became a pop music hit. Glen Campbell recorded it, along with many others. Hartford was a banjo picker in a bluegrass band in Missouri when he wrote it.

This video shows John with Roy Husky, Jr., a bluegrass bassist of some note, performing in what appears to be a music store. It is not McCabes, in Santa Monica California, which has a famous concert series. I am not able to read the backwards writing in the store windows of the set, or store, whatever it is.

Notice how Hartford takes a slow walk down the major scale from the root note of each of the song’s three chords, with his banjo. It gives his tune a Jobim like quality, simple yet sophisticated. The melody hangs on a single note for extended periods of time, just like “One Note Samba.” The banjo part is deceivingly simple, but holds your attention.

Update: Mary Lou informs me that this is from Nashville Network’s “American Music Shop” hosted by David Holt. (See comment) She gave me a link to another video from the same show. John and Roy are joined by David Holt, Vassar Clements, Tony Rice and several, yet to be identified, great pickers. Notice that Tony is playing Clarence White’s Martin guitar.