[NYTr] Here's a Treat for Folkies: The Ash Grove Turns 50

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Along with the Cuban Revolution, the Ash Grove Turns 50 in 2008

Here's a lovely article on the 50th anniversary of The Ash Grove, a Los
Angeles folk club founded by Ed Pearl that brought the music scene from
Greenwich Village (venues mostly, if not all, passed into history now)
to the West Coast. [Photos accompany the article at the FolkWorks --
see URL below.  See also the Ash Grove's website,
http://www.ashgrovemusic.com.]

Those of us old enough to remember seeing and hearing people like
Mississippi John Hurt, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Ian and Sylvia, Sonny
Terry and Brownie McGee, Phil Ochs -- and so many more -- in small
intimate settings will enjoy the memories in this fine article by Ross
Altman. 

Many artists have Ed Pearl to thank for helping their careers along.
He's known and worked with just about everyone from Pete Seeger to the
Freedom Singers to Holly Near. 

Left-Coasters will be able to enjoy even more on April 18-20, 2008
when Ash Grove is celebrating with a 3-day feast of music at UCLA.  

Ash Grove's website at http://www.ashgrovemusic.com  is also a feast.
Check it out -- great history, and updated schedule of the April events.

Give yourself a treat, recharge your batteries,  Spend a little time
this weekend just enjoying and reminiscing, and consider how music was
such an important part of the period called "The Sixties" and how it
could give new energy to the current generation of activists. -NYTransfer]


FolkWorks - January-February 2008
http://folkworks.org/content/viewcategorycur/21/

How Can I Keep From Talking?


THE ASH GROVE TURNS 50

By Ross Altman

Fifty years ago, the major leagues moved to Los Angeles. Under the
auspices of a visionary owner, who ignored the well-meaning advice of
every practical mind that said it couldn’t be done, some of this club’s
greatest players became hometown heroes, and LA became the center of a
big league renaissance. No longer just the province of New York’s
boroughs, LA could now hold its head up high and shout from the
rooftops, We don’t have to wait ‘til next year—here comes…The Ash Grove.

That’s right, in 1958, the same year Walter O’Malley brought the
Dodgers ball club kicking and screaming out of Brooklyn to Los Angeles,
Ed Pearl opened a folk club at 8162 Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood,
named for an old Welsh folk song—The Ash Grove. O’Malley is celebrated
for bringing the big leagues to LA; well, so did Ed Pearl.

For two dollars a night you could walk in confident of hearing the very
best in both traditional and contemporary folk music—and I mean the
very best in the country.

To a young, budding folkie like me it was the West Coast University of
Folk Music. It was there I first heard Mississippi John Hurt—who had
been rediscovered in his hometown of Avalon, Mississippi by folklorist
and bluegrass mandolin player, Ralph Rinzler. And speaking of Ralph
Rinzler, it was at the Ash Grove I first heard his sensational
city-billy bluegrass trio The Greenbriar Boys, with Armenian-American
John Herald on lead vocals and lead guitar, and Russian Jew Bob Yellin
on 5-string banjo.

They were like no bluegrass band I had ever heard before, combining
country harmonies and classic bluegrass instrumental skills with New
York’s Washington Square’s urban sense of irony and intelligence. In
stark contrast to a group like The Dillards’ willingness to overplay
the country hick role, the Greenbriar Boys never pretended to be
anything other than what they were—brilliant musicians who knew
bluegrass inside out and had mastered it without being of it. Thus they
didn’t mind poking fun at themselves even as they relished the
tradition that defined them. Case in point: In the middle of their
supercharged locomotive version of George Jones’ classic Ragged But
Right, John Herald pauses right in the middle of a guitar break to ask,
“Since you folk singers are so busy walking down the highway, where do
you get the time to fill out all those copyright forms?” And just as
Ralph Rinzler comes forth to answer his question John Herald rolls
right over him with another perfectly pitched high lonesome tenor
harmony, to get them back on track to the chorus.

When the Greenbriar Boys came to town they always played at only one
club—and it wasn’t The Troubadour—famous for introducing Elton John to
Los Angeles in 1970, but not for promoting the kind of non-commercial
folk artists Ed Pearl lived and breathed to promote—both the
traditionalists who created the music we call folk, and the
revivalists, like the Greenbriar Boys and The New Lost City Ramblers,
who preserved the music and gave it a new life for urban audiences who
would never have heard Doc Watson if he hadn’t left Deep Gap, North
Carolina.

Ralph Rinzler discovered Doc too, and brought him north to Newport. But
like Walter O’ Malley bringing major league baseball to the West Coast,
Ed Pearl brought Doc to Los Angeles—that is, to the Ash Grove. The Ash
Grove was the Dodger Stadium of folk music—all the major leaguers
eventually made it out here, under Ed’s sure and guiding hand.
Lightning Hopkins, Son House, Mance Lipscomb, Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGee, Ian and Sylvia, Phil Ochs, Guy and Candie Carawan, John Hurt,
Doc Watson, Muddy Waters, Jean Ritchie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and
literally hundreds of other performers in every genre of folk music.

With one—maybe two—notable exceptions, the Ash Grove didn’t make
anybody famous. The groups and performers they presented were not
seeking commercial stardom in any conventional sense—they were proud
purveyors of non-commercial music looking for a place to play that
respected the deep roots of their art. The Ash Grove was that place,
whether it was traditional Anglo-ballad singer John Jacob Niles, or
African-American blues master Bukka White.

One exception that the Ash Grove helped to groom for a major national
and international career is Ry Cooder, who, when I first heard him
backing up Jackie De Shannon at the Ash Grove was only 16 years old—and
already the best folk guitarist in Los Angeles.

Ry would play the guitar rags and blues of Blind Blake and Blind Lemon
Jefferson, and then back up current pop sensation Jackie De Shannon
without missing a beat. This was before he had dared to sing a note on
stage—he let his guitar do the talking for him. He was the
finger-picking wunderkind of LA and with Ed’s encouragement he became
one of America’s best known and most highly esteemed musicians—with a
life-long reverence for the traditional music he learned to value and
to perform at the Ash Grove.

The second major recording artist who I recall grew up and matured with
what we might call the Ash Grove’s farm team into a true Hall-of-Famer
is Linda Ronstadt, who began her career as the lead singer for
guitarist Kenny Edwards and the Stone Ponies. Among the great careers
Ed helped to launch from the Ash Grove’s small stage into big league
stardom Linda Ronstadt must rank at or near the top.

Many of these artists are coming home next April 18th, 19th and 20th to
pay tribute to the man whose vision and commitment knew no bounds. They
will be performing at Royce Hall in the 50th anniversary weekend
tribute to the club that truly was a beacon for those who were
searching literally for something off the charts—music that had
intrinsic meaning and not merely pop success. It will be a weekend
filled with music and memories, as well as renewed commitment to the
animating purpose of the house that Ed built—music that made a
difference.

Just as the Dodgers transcended the world of baseball, the Ash Grove
transcended the world of music. Just as Jackie Robinson broke the color
line in baseball and made the Dodgers a part of civil rights as well as
baseball history, the Ash Grove from the beginning was determined that
the music it presented be representative of a cultural view that
reinforced the inherent dignity of all people and participated in the
struggles of its times to bring unheard or hard-to-find voices into the
spotlight.

Literally from opening day, July 1, 1958, Ed’s folk club made it
crystal clear that it wasn’t going to be satisfied by just filling the
seats—it would fill your mind as well. Thus on its first official “Ash
Grove Concert” there was a traditional white performer—Guy Carawan—who
hailed from Los Angeles but would soon be heading south to join the
civil rights movement and become a part of the Highlander Folk School,
which launched We Shall Overcome back in the 1930s. There was an
African-American blues master—Brownie McGee—who would soon team up with
blind blues harmonica genius Sonny Terry to create the greatest
double-play combination of blues guitar and harmonica in the 1960s. And
finally, there was flamenco guitar virtuoso Geronimo Villarino—together
they created the extraordinary multi-cultural mix that was the hallmark
of Ed’s approach to booking. Ash Grove audiences came to expect that
they would be lifted out of their comfort zones by being exposed to
artists from other worlds than the ones they may have come to see.

Did I hear someone say World Music? There was no name for it back
then—when Ed Pearl helped to create it.

Nor was there only music. Ed produced poetry readings, dance events and
visual arts exhibitions as well. Just like the Dodgers broke the color
barrier by signing Jackie Robinson, Ed Pearl and the Ash Grove broke
the sound barrier by signing great artists from many disparate
disciplines, and broke even the barriers that surrounded and guarded
each distinct art form as if it was a world unto itself. Not to Ed it
wasn’t. Why shouldn’t a poet share the stage with a musician, and a
dancer share the stage with a photographer?

The Ash Grove thus became a meeting ground for artists of different
backgrounds and forms of expression, united in a common pursuit of a
world in which humanity—and not just one nation—was indivisible.

There was no other folk club or indeed art venue in Los Angeles quite
like it—and probably not in the whole country for that matter.

In time, the Ash Grove itself became a work of art—a unified field
vision of a better world—one that was integrated and a beacon of human
liberation. For that we owe Ed Pearl a debt of gratitude, and at long
last we as a community will get the opportunity to make a small down
payment on that debt—by coming out to UCLA on the weekend of April
18th,19th and 20th and saying thank you for what Ed did for Los Angeles
50 years ago. He shook up a small, sleepy town of orange groves and
movie stars and shocked them into seeing a new world soon to be
born—the world of the 1960s.

If Walter O’Malley helped bring LA into the modern world, LA’s own
homegrown, hometown hero, Ed Pearl, provided the soundtrack for that
world, and even though the Ash Grove is no longer here, we have never
stopped listening to that soundtrack.

A century before, in 1855, yet another Walter from Brooklyn—poet Walt
Whitman—brought poetry kicking and screaming to the open road out west
as well. The inspiration for the Ash Grove goes back at least that far.
For like Whitman, in 1958, Ed Pearl heard America singing. Whitman
wrote a poem about it; Ed created the Ash Grove.


[Author’s note: The Ash Grove 50th anniversary tribute will be
multi-faceted—to reflect the scope of the original folk club itself.
There will be two nights of ticketed concerts at Royce Hall, with a
galaxy of major performers across the folk music spectrum. On Saturday
and Sunday during the day there will also be free concerts and
workshops at other campus locations. These will include (on Saturday) a
broad discussion of the political and cultural history of the club with
Mike Davis and other writers; a new songs performance workshop with
Dave Alvin, Peter Case and others; a panel discussion and performance
of poetry from the Ash Grove produced by Ed’s brother, poet Sherman
Pearl, and including San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman and
others; a blues performance/workshop with another of Ed’s three
brothers, bluesman Bernie Pearl and others; a sing out of political
songs with Holly Near, Len Chandler, Guy and Candie Carawan, and myself
(at Schoenberg Hall); a children’s concert with KPFK’s Uncle Ruthie and
others; a Sunday Morning Gospel Concert, a Sunday afternoon closing
concert, and a number of other special programs and events. See you
there!]

[Ross Altman has a Ph.D. in English. Before becoming a full-time folk
singer he taught college English and Speech. He now sings around
California for libraries, unions, schools, political groups and folk
festivals.]