Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 (Culture, Politics, and Cold War)

For a brief period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, folk music captured a mass audience in the United States, as college students and others swarmed to concerts by the likes of Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. In this comprehensive study, Ronald D. Cohen reconstructs the history of this singular cultural moment, tracing its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on scores of interviews and numerous manuscript collections, as well as his own extensive files, Cohen shows how a broad range of traditions--from hillbilly, gospel, blues, and sea shanties to cowboy, ethnic, and political protest music--all contributed to the genre known as folk. He documents the crucial work of John Lomax and other collectors who, with the assistance of recording companies, preserved and distributed folk music in the 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of left-wing politics and the rise of the commercial music marketplace helped to stimulate wider interest in folk music. Stars emerged, such as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, and Josh White. With the success of the Weavers and the Kingston Trio in the 1950s, the stage was set for the full-blown "folk revival" of the early 1960s. Centered in New York's Greenwich Village and sustained by a flourishing record industry, the revival spread to college campuses and communities across the country. It included a wide array of performers and a supporting cast of journalists, club owners, record company executives, political activists, managers, and organizers. By 1965 the boom had passed its peak, as rock and roll came to dominate the marketplace, but the folk revival left an enduring musical legacy in American culture. Frontmatter Preface (page ix) Prologue: Summer 1953 (page 3) 1. Roots of the Revival (page 8) 2. People's Songs, Popular Folk, and the Later 1940s (page 39) 3. The Weavers and the Red Scare, 1950-1954 (page 67) 4. Stirrings of the Revival, 1955-1957 (page 93) 5. The Kingston Trio and the Emerging Revival, 1958-1959 (page 125) 6. Into the Heart of the Revival, 1960-1962 (page 157) 7. The Revival's Peak, 1963-1964 (page 194) 8. Folk's Transformation, 1965-1966 (page 229) 9. The 1960s End (But Not Folk Music) (page 263) Notes (page 291) Index (page 327) Prologue: Summer 1953 -- Roots Of The Revival -- People's Songs, Popular Folk, And The Later 1940s -- The Weavers And The Red Scare, 1950-1954 -- Stirrings Of The Revival, 1955-1957 -- The Kingston Trio And The Emerging Revival, 1958-1959 -- Into The Heart Of The Revival, 1960-1962 -- The Revival's Peak, 1963-1964 -- Folk's Transformation, 1965-1966 -- The 1960s End (but Not Folk Music). Ronald D. Cohen. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 291-325) And Index. Writing in the April 1940 issue of Etude about Alan Lomax's American School of the Air radio program on CBS, Blanche Lemmon observed: American youth are privileged this year to dip into a veritable treasure chest of Americana. . . . A well-researched history of the folk music boom in America traces three decades of blues and hillbilly music that reshaped the popular music scene in America.