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The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States in the 1950s to mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, of course, since traditional folk music has thousands of years of history, and performers like Woody Guthrie had enjoyed a limited general popularity in decades prior to the 1950s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music.

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Archivists, Collectors, and Re-issued Recordings 1.2 Electric folk 1.3 Legacy 2 Major figures 3 Ethnicity 4 Bibliography 5 See also

The folk music revival is sometimes said to have begun with Pete Seeger. The Weavers, formed in 1947 by Seeger, had a big hit in 1949 with Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene". This hit was probably one of the first glimmerings of the folk music revival.

Although carried along by a handful of artists releasing records, the folk-music scene's development was still only as a sort of cult phenomenon in bohemian circles in places like New York City (especially Greenwich Village and North Beach), and in the college and university districts of cities like Boston, Denver, Chicago and elsewhere. It was hip, but not terribly widespread.

In the 1950s and after, acoustic folk-song performance became associated with the coffee houses, private parties, open-air concerts and sing-alongs, and college-campus concerts. It blended, to some degree, with the so-called beatnik scene, and dedicated singers of folk songs (as well as folk-influenced original material) traveled through what was called "the coffee-house circuit" across the U.S. and Canada.

The Kingston Trio, while playing at a college club called the Cracked Pot, were discovered by Frank Werber, who became their manager and secured them a deal with Capitol Records. Their first hit was a catchy rendition of an old-time folk song, "Tom Dooley", which went gold in 1958. The following year, the group won the first Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording category for the album The Kingston Trio at Large. At one point in the early 1960s, The Kingston Trio had four albums at the same time among the Top 10 selling albums^{[citation needed]}, a record unmatched for nearly 40 years.

The contemporary-songwriter and folk-music scene during these times often had a facet of social concern. Young singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, had been signed and recorded for Columbia by producer John Hammond in 1961. Dylan's record enjoyed some popularity in the Greenwich Village folk-music cult, but he was "discovered" by an immensely larger audience when a pop-folk-music group, Peter, Paul & Mary had a hit with his song "Blowing in the Wind". Their songs often shared in the humanitarianism and social idealism of the Weavers, and a few of the earlier folk-scene notables, and this and other songs by Dylan fitted the bill.

Dylan’s general popularity was soon so great that record companies began to sign, and distribute records for, many new, young, sometimes-scruffy singer/songwriters – Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Eric von Schmidt, Buffy Saint-Marie, Dave Van Ronk, Judy Collins, Tom Rush, Fred Neil, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, Arlo Guthrie, John Hartford, and others, among them. Some of this wave had emerged from family singing and playing traditions, and some had not.

During these same years, the devoted and growing folk-music crowd that had developed in the United States began to want and to buy records by obscure older folk musicians, from the Southeastern hill country and from urban inner-cities. LP records made up of collections of 78-rpm records stretching back to the 1920s and 1930s were put on sale. Many smaller record labels such as Yazoo Records grew up to distribute older recordings and to make new recordings of these artists. This was how many white Americans first heard country blues and especially Delta blues, that had been recorded by Mississippi folk artists 30 or 40 years before.

Artists like the Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Clarence Ashley, Buell Kazee, Uncle Dave Macon, the Reverend Gary Davis, Bill Monroe, and Jimmie Rodgers came to have something more than a regional or ethnic reputation. The revival turned up a tremendous wealth and diversity of music and put it out through radio shows and record stores.

Living representatives of some of the varied regional and ethnic traditions, including younger performers like Southern-tradition singer Jean Ritchie, enjoyed popularity through enthusiasts' widening discovery of this music.

After the darling of the young enthusiasts, Bob Dylan, began to record with a rocking rhythm section and electric instruments in 1965 (see Electric Dylan controversy), many other still-young folk artists followed suit. Meanwhile, bands like The Lovin' Spoonful and the Byrds, whose individual members often had a background in the folk-revival coffee-house scene, were getting recording contracts with folk-tinged music played with a rock-band line-up. Before long, the public appetite for the more acoustic music of the folk revival began to wane.

"Crossover" hits ("folk songs" that became rock-music-scene staples) happened now and again. One well-known example is the song "Hey Joe", copyrighted by folk artist Billy Roberts, and recorded by rock singer/guitarist Jimi Hendrix just as he was about to burst into stardom in 1967. The anthem "Woodstock" was written and first sung and accompanied on keyboard by Joni Mitchell while her records were still nearly entirely acoustic, and while she was labelled a "folk singer" — receiving big airplay when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded a high-energy rock version.

See also: Folk rock

By the late 1960s, the scene had returned to being more of a lower-key, afficianado phenomenon, although sizable annual acoustic-music festivals were established in many parts of North America during this period. The acoustic music coffee-house scene survived at a reduced scale. Through the luminary young singer-songwriters of the 1960s, the American folk-music revival has influenced songwriting and musical styles throughout the world.

• Burl Ives - as a youth, Ives dropped out of college to travel around as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo. In 1930 he had a brief, local radio career on WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana, and in the 1940s he had his own radio show, titled The Wayfaring Stranger, titled after one of the popular ballads he sang. The show was very popular, and in 1946 Ives was cast as a singing cowboy in the film Smoky. Ives went on to play parts in other popular films, as well. His first book, The Wayfaring Stranger, was published in 1948.

• Pete Seeger had met, and been influenced, by many important folk musicians (and singer-songwriters with folk roots), such as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. Seeger had labor movement involvements, and he met Woody at a "Grapes of Wrath" migrant workers’ concert on March 3, 1940, and the two thereafter began a musical collaboration (which included the Almanac Singers). In 1948 Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, an instructional book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument.

• The Weavers were formed in 1947 by Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman. A fifth member, Erik Darling, sometimes sat in with the group when Seeger was unavailable. After a period of finding themselves unable to find much, if any paid work, they finally achieved a performance slot at the Village Vanguard in New York. They were then discovered by arranger Gordon Jenkins, and were signed with Decca Records.

• Harry Belafonte, another influential singer, started his career as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. At first he was a pop singer, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music. In 1952 he signed a contract with RCA Victor. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first LP to sell over a million copies. The album spent 31 weeks at number one, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the US charts. It introduced American audiences to Calypso music and Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso." Belafonte went on to record in many genres, including blues, American folk, gospel, etc.

• Odetta - As an example of the more obscure among the early notables, starting in 1953 singers Odetta and Larry Mohr recorded some songs, with the LP being released in 1954 as Odetta and Larry, an album that was partially recorded live at San Francisco's Tin Angel bar. For Odetta, it began a period of great respect and a sort of underground reputation associated with a repertoire of traditional songs (e.g., spirituals) and blues covers.

• The Kingston Trio was formed in 1957 in the Palo Alto, California area by Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, and Dave Guard, who were just out of college. They were greatly influenced by the Weavers, the calypso sounds of Belafonte, and other semi-pop folk artists such as The Gateway Singers and The Tarriers. The Kingston Trio's success was followed by other highly successful night-clubbish acts, such as The Limeliters.

• Bob Dylan often performed, and sometimes toured with, Joan Baez, a guitarist and soprano singer of mostly traditional songs, who adopted some of Dylan's songs into her repertoire. Baez had had a following on the folk circuit for a few years before Dylan gained recognition; the two had the same manager for a number of years. It is arguable that Dylan eventually became the most popular of the younger folk-music-revival performers.

See also: List of North American folk music traditions

Although singers such as the Weavers and Joan Baez occasionally included Spanish-language material in their repertoires, the folk-music revival in North America (as it existed in the coffee houses, concert halls, and radio and TV) was overwhelmingly an English-language phenomenon. In that sense, it bypassed a lot of ethnic folk traditions to be found in North America (e.g., Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian) – except in a small proportion of instances where songs’ lyrics had been translated into English.

• Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). ISBN 0-674-95132-8
• Ronald D. Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002). ISBN 1-55849-348-4
• Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) ISBN 1-55849-210-0
• R. Serge Denisoff, Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971).
• R. Serge Denisoff, Sing Me a Song of Social Significance (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972). ISBN 0-87972-036-0
• David Dunaway, How Can I Keep From Singing: Pete Seeger (1981; Da Capo Press, 1990). ISBN 0-306-80399-2
• David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña (New York: North Point Press, 2001). ISBN 0-86547-642-X
• Robbie Lieberman, "My Song Is My Weapon:" People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-50 (1989; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). ISBN 0-252-06525-5
• Dick Weissman, Which Side Are You On? An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (New York: Continuum, 2005). ISBN 0-8264-1698-5

• No Direction Home
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• March on Washington
• Roots revival

American roots music
African American music | Appalachian/old-time | Blues (Ragtime) | Cajun music | Country (Honky tonk and Bluegrass) | Folk music revival (1950s/'60s) | Jazz (Dixieland) | Native American | Spirituals and Gospel | Swamp pop | Tejano | Zydeco