The officially unofficial site for details and discussion about the history and legacy of Mike Porco's Center of Folk Music, Gerde's Folk City (&other pertinent stuff)
Showing posts with label Gerde's Folk City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gerde's Folk City. Show all posts
It’s a pay-per-view set up on Substack.
It seems pretty straight forward and the first hundred people already subscribed seem to be busy watching Positively Porco in its entirety.
Substack makes it easy. So click in and through to the link for the “Bob Porco’s Substack” or search for the GerdesFolkCityDoc and you’ll have access to the full documentary about my grandfather Mike Porco and his cabaret called Folk City.
On occasion, I will drop some other clips of B-Roll or concert footage as I see fit.
Bob Porco’s Substack will be predominantly about gaining more exposure to the GerdesFolkCityDoc.
So include yourself!
Help me reach the first 600 views for June 2024. Subscribe for a while to absorb the doc and share my Substack with your friends.
🎂🎼Will You Still LOVE Folk City when it’s Sixty Four?🎼🎼🎹
The four (4) hour ‘director’s cut’ of the FOLK CITY documentary POSITIVELY PORCO AKA the GerdesFolkCityDoc will be on Substack. Free enrollment gets you free content. Subscribe for occasional exclusive content. The GerdesFolkCityDoc will be pay-what-you-wish and will be found here on June first.
You’ve already found me here at BOB PORCO’S SUBSTACK so please have a look at the following email/post and share Substack with those Folkies who are familiar with Gerde’s Folk City.
It’s only been eleven years!!
Actually, I entered the Greenwich Village scene 15 years ago right before the Folk City 50th anniversary concert!!
The first of June 2024 will be FOLK CITY’s 64th Anniversary. From January 1960 to late May, Izzy Young ran the stage. After being closed to music for a few days, my Grandpa Mike Porco took over in June 1960.
🤌🏼 👀 I want you to read this email so that you get the main idea about what the GerdesFolkCityDoc is all about.
🤌🏼Do ya love Rock and Roll?
🤌🏼How about Folk Rock?
🤌🏼How about The Blues?
🤌🏼Americana?
🤌🏼Singer songwriter???
🎼🎼 Ever wonder where all that came from?
Try imagining a place where it was always safe and warm for the stray musician during the Folk Revival of the 1960s.
Gerde's Restaurant was an Italian eatery situated East of Washington Square and MacDougal Street yet it became the unlikely epicenter of a musical movement.
In his autobiography, Bob Dylan called Gerde's "the preeminent Folk club in America." Mike Porco, an opportunist who was never one to turn away a crowd, was instrumental in, literally, setting the stage for the music revolution of the 1960s.
What began as a book project about my grandfather became a film project. I started it 3 presidential admins ago! That’s why some consider the project unfinished; THEY’VE NEVER SEEN IT. Truth is, “it” existed on my lap top for many years. I only wanted TOP SHELF production and fanfare. I held the film closely until the ink was dry on BIG contracts. 🥂
⏳The contract hasn’t come, but I never stopped working on making the GerdesFolkCityDoc. I called it POSITIVELY PORCO for many years and I think the story still answers to that name.
Instead of the Opera House Folkie Overthrow, ‘it’ be released digitally on Substack AS IS.
🛎🎁🎉📅JUNE FIRST.
Between you reading this NOW and June 1st, the GerdesFolkCityDoc will be undergoing one hot and heavy LAST edit and get uploaded ‘completed’ or not.
🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼
🌎Substack is popular with writers and content creators who have daily essays and videos to distribute to their readers and subscribers. I never gave it a thought to upload the GerdesFolkCityDoc to a writers’ subscriber page…WTF
It was always the ‘plan’ to get my final product the GerdesFolkCityDoc out to everyone through the Internet of things.
In my dreams I had visions of selling individual digital views of the GerdesFolkCityDoc.
BUT HOW???
Eleven years later, I discovered a way. 🤞🏼
I need to share it for a very affordable price since everything is digital these days. The COSTS, really, are only for Substack to incur. My 15 years of sweat equity was from a labor of love❤️
NOW
All I need for the documentary to FINALLY get out is for everyone to have-a
✅ Clean signal
✅ Electricity and
✅ Substack subscription to The GerdesFolkCityDoc
It will be found here the FIRST of JUNE 2024!!!
It’s only been eleven years!! What’s the rush??? I’ve been planning this release for several weeks now and I’d love to see-a wha-comes out of it, as Mike would say.
This is folk music. The GerdesFolkCityDoc needs to be accessible to all People.
Acoustic music is supposed to be automatic for the People. EVERY musician hustles for their own benefit, but no one really over-charges, as a rule. The Show must be accessible to entire families.
I’m relying on Substack to work smoothly so people all around the world can watch 24/7/365 worldwide.💫
Countless hours have been spent on the material and I finally want to share it.
🤞🏼🕰POSITIVELY PORCO will become known as the definitive document of the rich history of Gerde’s Folk City. Using first-person testimony, archival footage and authentic recordings, the movie will demonstrate the profound affect the music emanating from the Village had on the collective consciousness of a generation.
The interviews that I conducted in 2013 and 2014 include
BRUCE LANGHORNE
JOHN P. HAMMOND
ARLO GUTHRIE
TERRE ROCHE
BARRY KORNFELD
DOMINIC CHIANESE
VINCE MARTIN
IZZY YOUNG
BOB PORCO SR.
ANGELO PORCO
GEORGE GERDES
SONNY OCHS
PEGGY DUNCAN-GARNER
LARRY ‘RATSO’ SLOMAN
ROB STONER
ROD MACDONALD
HAPPY and JANE TRAUM
ERIK FRANDSEN
ERIC ANDERSEN
JOSÉ FELICIANO
DELORES DIXON
DAVID MASSENGILL
📡I’m giving you the GerdesFolkCityDoc for a pay as you want price.
If you happen to recognize the great contributions that Gerde’s and the musicians gave to American music itself,
Pay a few bucks more. It’s up to you and
I’m grateful for what you give..
⚖️Substack will send you all the information you need to pay and PLAY THE GERDESFOLKCITYDOC.
It will be a SUBSCRIPTION ONLY VIDEO.
I need to get the word out now!!!
🎪🎖I’ll be sharing other clips and shorts to Facebook and where ever hoping you’ll find the DOC from one direction or another. PLEASE SHARE ‘Bob Porco’s Substack’ to find the GerdesFolkCityDoc.
If you gave a shit about Folk City then, then you’ll probably take some interest in Gerde’s Folk City today.
🏆My very noble grandfather gave a lot to the scene.🏆
Please spread the word! This always has potential to blossom into more tributes.
Come on over and subscribe for other content in the future.
Pass it along to your folkie buddies. Substack will keep you in the loop through emails.
For years I kept telling people this film is coming, It’s coming, IT’S COMING‼️Now we have a date.
(fact check: Mike arrived 2.2.33 not 1929. And his family first gave him work in the Bronx at Club 845 not at Gerde's upon his arrival)
MUCH LOVE to Sr. Perri for taking the time to collect the details for this story. We all miss MIKE PORCO
Mike Porco, the Calabrian who adopted Bob Dylan Leaving Domanico for New York to be a bricklayer, Michele takes over a small restaurant in Greenwich Village transforming it into a place that will make the history of world music. From there the older ones will pass, even a stranger minor fleeing from his parents, of which he will become the guardian before he takes flight up to the Nobel.
In the first volume of his autobiography, Chronicles (Feltrinelli, 2005), Bob Dylan remembers with grateful affection Mike Porco, the one who paved the way for his debut to the gates of success. "Mike was the Sicilian father – he writes – that I never had", Mike was the Sicilian father I never had. Actually Michele "Mike" Porco, was not Sicilian, as the American common sense defined southern Italian. He was Calabrian, Cosentino of Domanico, son of an emigrant to America, taken by the dream of reuniting his family in New York, where he was a bricklayer.
From the Serre cosentine to New York When the resumption of building activities began to loom, which the Great Depression of 1929 had blocked, Michele embarked in Naples to join his father and help him realize, as soon as possible, the anxious family aspiration. After three weeks of travel, the landing at Ellis Island, in the enchantment of the Statue of Liberty, at the access of the new world, open to the hope of a new life. On the quay, waiting for him, there was a group of villagers.
But not the father. Death had crushed him, suddenly, a few days earlier. Mike, desperate, felt lost. Fortunately, he found hospitality from some relatives, who sent him to work in one of their restaurants, Gerde's club, in the center of Greenwich Village, a growing neighborhood in the heart of the Big Apple. From dishwasher to waiter, to trusted manager, Mike managed, nest egg after nest egg, to buy the place.
The Village and the Beat generation The Village was a village of irresistible appeal for intellectuals and bohemians, a composite microcosm of alternative culture, a New York synthesis between Montmartre and Montparnasse, teeming with pubs and bistros. It was the favorite destination of folksingers, pioneers of the beat movement. They were inspired by the autobiographical novel On the road by Jack Kerouac, the literary works of Allen Ginsberg, who was its guru, and the songs of Woody Guthrie, myth of the new musical course, revolutionary singer of the Other America, poet of social protest radicalized in communism, a solitary hobo monumented in life by his populous following.
The Village and the Beat generation Kerouac, in his wanderings, chose the Village, as a place congenial to his philosophy and his coherent way of life. Here he met Neal Cassady, a writer, who, like him, in existential unruliness, inspired the figure of the co-protagonist of his autobiographical novel for the common vain search for an indistinct lost father, suffered as they were, the first, for the death of the natural parent, the other, for having had him chronic alcoholic, reasons these, for them, of inner imbalance and existential crisis. Here, in the Village, Woody, also fatherless, fleeing from his unfortunate adolescence, found the ideal destination of his restless nomadism, the right atmosphere to fix his definitive domicile along Hudson Street, a tree-lined avenue between the river of the same name and the central Washington Square.
The Village and the Beat generation Driven by Kerouac's engaging message, by Ginsberg's poetic impulses and – more, much more – by the irrepressible desire to meet his idol Woody, Bob Dylan (born in 1941), not yet twenty, regularly penniless, guitar on his shoulder – his only available capital with some songs composed by him – he abandoned, en route with his father, the family to reach, on the road, the mythical Village, in search of the father of his artistic training and the weather suitable for his cultural pours, refined by the novels of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain, writers of rupture in their genres and literary messages.
The Village and the Beat generation Il Gerde's Folk City Mike, now trained in the art of restaurateur, sniffed the emergence of the folk genre in the tastes, yes, of young people, but also of those intellectuals, those entrepreneurs and the many New Yorkers, who, moneyed, poured into the neighborhood to escape from the metropolitan hustle and bustle, in the neighborhood to experience the climate and, preferably, the nightlife. His intuition led him to renovate the restaurant, where he set up a box instead of the old piano bar to offer customers a musical tone, accompanying dinners, different from the usual.
Gerde's became Gerde's Folk City. He himself converted from a restaurateur – a role he entrusted to his brother Giovanni who, in the meantime, had joined him – to talent scouts of bands and solo singers, who, to make ends meet, during the day, performed on the street, trusting in the offers of passers-by, and, in the evening, went around the premises that exploited them, time after time, for a dollar plus a drink at the bar. He first had them tried, then selected them on the basis of customer satisfaction. If they worked, he made them rotate in turn, doubling the pay with consumption and dinner.
Bob Dylan and Mike Porco Bob Dylan happened to him. He allowed him the limelight for one evening. The audience applauded. He, on the other hand, was on the verge of rejecting him: "He has the voice of a crow," he told friends at his table – none other than Ginsberg and Robert Shelton, the first music critic of the New York Times – who, as regulars of the place, did not spare him the right imbeccate. The two certified the boy's talent. And they had to insist on convincing him to include Bob in the program of Monday hootenanny nights. It was a boom.
Bob Dylan became the protégé of Mike Porco, who, at that point, offered him a contract. Being still a minor, Bob should have had the union's clearance. The employee of the Musicians Union, to whom he turned, opposed him with the need for the consensual signature of one of the parents. To no avail, Bob, who no longer had contact with his family in Minnesota, replied that he was an orphan and alone in the world. To solve the problem was Mike, who signed as a tutor. Some excerpts from "Positively Porco", a docufilm about Mike and his restaurant: at minute 4'05" he himself tells how he acted as a guarantor for Bob Dylan.
From then on, the relationship between the two was that of father and son. Caring father and grateful son, no longer as rebellious as he had been with his real parent. Bob found the father he was looking for, unlike his idols who, not finding the meaning of life in the surrounding humanity, chased bliss by consuming themselves in drugs and alcohol. Bob Dylan didn't need it, even after having experienced the risk. He took his own path, to do so much, as he had promised himself in Song to Woody.
Shelton dedicated an exhilarating review to him. John Hammond, legendary record producer, grabbed it from Columbia Records. Hence the flight to celebrity, after having made the fortune of the Calabrian emigrant. Who, in the last years of his life, used to tell his children how his tenacity had been able to reunite the family in the well-being of the new world and thus crown his father's dream.
A place of worship Thirty years ago, on March 13, 1992, Mike Porco said goodbye to the world, the Calabrian who, in the thirties, from Domanico, a rural village in the Serre Cosentine, emigrated to America. And in New York he founded Gerde's Folk City – one of the three best music venues in the world, according to Rolling Stone magazine, along with Liverpool's Beatlesian The Cavern and New Yorker CBGB – and a cutting-edge driving force behind folk, rock, folk rock and a gathering place for counterculture intellectuals in turmoil in the Village. from the aforementioned Bob Dylan to Joan Baez, from Dave Van Ronk to Richie Havens, from John Lee Hooker to Jimi Hendrix, from Simon & Garfunkel to José Feliciano. A real launching pad for many musicians destined to enter the history of music.
The anniversary in the world vision In the limelight of the Newport Folk Festival, cyclically organized on the anniversaries of the venue, the artists promoted by Gerde's performed en masse, in declared homage to their discoverer. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Folk City, the concert was broadcast worldwide by PBS and BBC TV. In the 1979 one, the mayor of New York, Edward Koch, addressed to the owner of Gerde's a letter of warm congratulations for his "praiseworthy activity".
Often, the American media covered Mike Porco. He was ready to tell unpublished anecdotes about his singular experience and about the artists whose value, even without understanding an accident of music, he had instinctively grasped. He had become a character pleasing to the general public, who also had sympathy for his macaronic English. The artists themselves spoke of him as a great person, a familiar figure, certainly shrewd by the nose for business, but always available to help others.
Not only Bob Dylan: artists as sons In an interview for the book Conclusions on the wall: new essays on Bob Dylan by New York Times Magazine music expert Elizabeth Thomson (Thin man, 1980), Mike Porco told his story as an immigrant, as the owner of Gerde's, as a paternal supporter of Bob Dylan, in a special way, but also of the artists he set out on the road to success. "I feel like these guys were all my children. I have seen them grow up, he said, as people and as artists. Many of them have gone on to become real stars. I wish those times could come back, with Bobby, Janis Joplin, Steve Goodman, Phil Ochs. On the occasion of my sixty-first birthday, I saw them all coming, Bobby with Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Phil, Bobby Neuwirth, Roger MacGuinn, all my old people».
Mike Porco, an affable Calabrian Robert Shelton in his biographical book on Bob Dylan described Mike Porco as follows: "An affable Calabrian, with a thin mustache, thick lenses and an accent even thicker than lenses. He barely distinguished a ballad from a mortadella. He amassed profits on consumption. He relied on the reactions of the audience to choose the singers, often listening not to the music, but to the applause. The sympathy that Mike aroused was also due to the fact that he had never learned English well.
He called his club "a Folk a City". He once dictated an advertisement to the Village Voice on the phone, which was repeated for two weeks in a row, presenting Anita Sheer as a flamingo singer (the English equivalent of the Italian "flamingo", ed), instead of flamenco. Of another who sang in different languages he said that he was a linguistic singer. He was, however, very well disposed towards new talents. "Let's give it a chance", was his motto, while his management policy was based on "the newer it is, the less it costs".
A coat that you won't forget José Feliciano declared: "Mike was like a second father to me. He helped me in every way to overcome the moments of difficulty, making me earn money. As a good and generous man that he was, since I did not have him, he gave me a new coat, because the cold in New York is felt, and how. I didn't have one that could be called such. These are things I will never forget." Of the same grateful tone, dozens and dozens of other testimonies about a man who, evidently, never forgot his origins and the meaning of his sacrifices.
To America he was able to return the capital he had given him in banknotes with the invisible, yet concrete, capital of his altruism and intuitive intelligence. If New York was not the capital of America, it became the capital of the world for that musical limelight born in the Village and conceived – who would have ever imagined it – by a Calabrian.
Welp. I've sold hats, chip clips, posters and cheap concert tees without a digital store. Now I offer you a selection of unique and lovely premium tees. More tees and long sleeves added soon!
Be recognized by these exclusive and unique Tees. Show your support and spread the word about the world renown Folk Music Cabaret and Home to every Greenwich Village standout, Gerde's Folk City. Many friends of Mike Porco shot on to stardom. His good deeds and connections helped shape the sound of American Music history.
Two of them happened in Washington Square Village.
1. Israel G. Young saved the Free Speech rights for singers on Sunday April 9, 1961.
2. Bob Dylan began his professional career two days later at Gerde’s Folk City.
His rise to success lured millions of free thinkers and musical poets to Gerde’s including Phil Ochs who, IMO, stands as one of two people at the top as rightful representatives of the gold standard in the singer songwriting genre. (Woody is King)
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April 11 is one of the most historic dates in Gerde’s Folk City history. There have been many.
Without an opening act involved, 4/11 would merely be looked back on as ‘one of the many bookings for Blues great John Lee Hooker at Gerde’s.’
Instead, the opening act claimed the date for his story.
Simply stated, Bob Dylan has been a pro musician for a full 60 years.
Or right around this date.
I write this on the 8th, (Published on the 9th) by my estimation and avid research, April 6, 7 or 8 was the day Mike Porco took Young Bobby to the Union Hall to join the Musician’s Local 802.
The story itself is the legend.
The act of Co-Signing as Bob Dylan’s stand-in father is THE lifelong legend of my grandfather, Mike. His act is still known by those ‘who know’ as the legendary action that flipped the switch on the 1960s.
Actually, my humble opinion is that Izzy Young and Mike Porco flipped the switch “on”for the 1960s in December 1959 when they installed a PA at Gerde’s.
To say ‘the proof is in the pudding’ is trite yet true. I rather like to point out that EVERY KNOWN AMERICAN STYLE of acoustic Roots and Traditional music was welcomed and stirred up in a great big pot at Gerde’s Restaurant. From that open door came the open mic, invented in May 1960 by Mike, Oscar Brand and Charlie Rothschild.
Beyond there lies the answer to the question: How did all the Roots, Blues and Trad Folk music blend with rock and roll to become the sound of the 1960s?
The musicians learned from each other by being there together. They created something of their own week after week as if in a lab. They took the sound to the West Coast to make it groovy. The ingredients for story-telling Rock crossed the pond, came back, went forth and traveled around the world only to come back electric.
And that brings us to now. Thank my Grampa. And Izzy Young. Thank you, guys!
Along the way, Gerde’s had to make money to stay open. If it had closed or failed, I’d be blogging about something else right now. However, Mike and his younger brothers John and Luigi were able to remain open by selling GOOD Italian food, beer and wine. And cola for 15cents.
That gave rise to the next 60 years of original royal American music. Gerde’s gave a platform to working musicians pouring in to New York City week after week to perform at a City-sanctioned cabaret. Like they say, you can’t fake original.
Everybody got $90 for the week of play. Trio or solo act, $90. Later Mike would cut advertising costs off the top for your convenience. The price of exposure and potential had infinite value to the young musicians. For the Blues guys and Gospel Families, they needed more than $90 in addition to the hospitality. But, it all worked out in the end. And without question, meals and wine were provided for individuals and groups who could put fannies in the seats.
During the early days of Folk City, a blend of many new and seasoned musicians worked and performed there. When ’1960’ comes to mind I think Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Oscar Brand, Eric Weissberg, Bruce Langhorne, Joan Baez, Logan English, Brother John Sellers, Carolyn Hester, Pete Yarrow, Vince Martin, Cisco Houston, Rev Gary Davis and Dave Van Ronk amongst many others. Even Ramblin Jack Elliott returned from Europe and opened for The Stevens Gospel Singers. Ed McCurdy and Brother John were the first official acts. The Clancy Brothers gained American fame shortly after.
The august audience is known only in legend. Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Diahann Carroll, Theo Bikel, Pete Seeger and all curious poets and Bluesmen from MacDougal St. Jac Holtzman, John Hammond and Maynard Solomon were scouting. Albert Grossman visited. People like John Cohen, Happy Traum, Alan Arkin, Ralph Rinzler, Dick Weissman, John Herald, Tom Pasley, Tom Paxton, Bill Keith, Mike Seeger and Gil Turner split time on stage and as patrons. Bruce Langhorne is worth mentioning again as he was the one man house band. Played with everyone. Had half a right thumb.
Paul Simon and Artie mostly came to watch. Sometimes they would be asked to do a tune but they were not polished yet. They mostly watched the show soon deciding to go pro on that stage years later, also.
Hanging around listening in through the window for free was Barry Kornfeld, Suze Rotolo and Peter Stampfel. Other kids from the local streets knew what was happening at Gerde's. John P. Hammond, John Sebastian and their buddies came around before they were mature enough to go inside.
Now that I’ve described 1960….
Along came 1961 AD.
Having expert knowledge of Gerde’s history, when I think of ‘1961,’ the firstname act that comes to mind is…Judy Collins. Second, only a two weeks behind, is Bob Dylan. Later that month was Cisco Houston’s last gig ever. Sharing the stage was Arlo Guthrie in his first official appearance on stage at age 13. Hands of Arlo were young and shaking.
Of course, we can’t forget Bob opened for John Lee Hooker on April 11th. Mike Porco and Hooker remained life long friends. John Lee paid Mike a late-in-life hospital visit in Florida.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Oh yes, yes, man! Yes, man! Thanks!”
According to Ratso, that’s what Bob said when Mike asked him if he’d like to warm up for John Lee Hooker in late March ’61.
Dylan was hanging around Gerde’s all the time. Mike fed him when he heard Bob’s stomach rumble. He played the Hoots (open mic) like religion on Mondays. Van Ronk’s wife Terri Thal was asking around town trying to get Dylan a paying job singing. Several people were encouraging Bob to ask Mike for work. At the same time, several people were asking Mike to hire Bob. It was a standoff for a moment in time. Dylan never asked for work but Mike Porco DID. Very unorthodox for the time, no amateur waited for the owners of clubs to ask them to get hired. Mike gave Bob some of Uncle Angelo’s lightly worn clothes.
In the case of getting work, Dylan had help from music fan and reviewer for the New York Times Robert Shelton. He was also encouraging Mike to hire Bobby. Shelton was a patron and fan of Folk City from day one. He and Mike were also friends at the bar. (Did I mention that Gerde’s had a liquor license? Coffee houses had much less benefit for musicians getting paid from the hat. Night business included alcohol. Alcohol kept the doors open and the music playing until the wee hours) Shelton’s review of Dylan’s Sept 1961 show put him on the map and got him signed with Columbia.
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To finish the thought that started this blog post I must say that I did rifle through many boxes of documents at the Bobst Library at NYU, on the south border of Washington Square Park.
The boxes were haphazardly cared for, in no order and sparse in content. Yet I filed through all the pages IN SEARCH OF the document signed on either April 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th. One of those days, I thought, but I couldn’t find the sheet. I knew going in to the library that the signed page may have been recovered by someone (perhaps Robert Zimmerman) in any number of years past but I looked anyway.
Some books speculate that the sign up was various dates however the guy at the Bobst made me believe that it was the 6th. I’ll buy that. He happened to be a Dylan fan and had given this some thought in the past. It was a Thursday in 1961. Not Saturday the 8th or Sunday the 9th (closed office) but it’s possible.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bob Dylan went pro on Tuesday the 11th of April 1961. Can’t forget that part! Volumes have been written about the significance and influence of his subsequent cannon of work. It had to start with step one: Union dues and Cabaret Card to perform in NYC. (The dues were fronted in cash by Mike and later deducted from Dylan's pay along with his drink tab) If one happened to be underage, one's mom, dad or favorite Porco must sign along as one's legal guardian. It’s not quite a legal adoption, but it counts in my mind. (Don’t forget your nephew Bob, Bob)
Bob Zimmerman saw a life changing opportunity forming for him. It was in New York, at Gerde’s Folk City. He was in the mid-West. Mr. Z took the action to GO and watch and learn from all the masters in New York. Woody was a draw to NYC, yes, but a job puts food in the ice box. American Roots and Blues Music was already being mushed together before he arrived. There was no where else in America to be for ambitious amateur musicians. Sixty years on, almost 80 years old sits Bob, still adding to the body of work.
What if Bob Dylan arrived in New York this date 60 years ago and turned in for good night’s sleep? Lucky for his fans, Bobby had no where to go. So he went to the Wha? (Not a question. Café Wha? Has a question mark. Gerde’s has an apostrophe. We carry on.)
What if Bob Dylan arrived in New York City on a different date from 60 years ago today?
What if he pioneered his sound on the West coast instead? I frame it that way because decisions had to be made by many people in Dylan’s bio. His mother, his father and Dylan, of course. Then, many others in New York and East Orange helped him with future decisions.
What if he traveled South from Minnesota and took a right instead of a left? He talks of having already decided before packing up to go to New York instead of the other way. He had heard about Gerde’s.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gerde’s Restaurant was up and running with music since late 1959. It became Folk City in May of 1960 right after Izzy Young and Mike Porco dissolved their handshake deal to originally run folk shows at Gerde’s. The Folk revival became a national sensation.
Dylan, like many others, got wind of opportunity and eventually hitched his way to NYC via Chicago.
Izzy and Mike had many other things to do on their respective paths than to wait around for other people.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later that year, The Beatnik Riot
What if Izzy Young never saved free speech in 1961?
All those writers and poets that came would have to wait decades for Facebook to be invented to express themselves.
Civilization is predicated on what was once known as free speech.
The first amendment in America includes free press, assembly and worship.
It has been noted by historians that anyone with a printing press has a right to print and express ideas protected by the 1st Amendment. Debate and discourse within the public arena or even within the mind of the individual would decide an idea’s acceptance.
The ‘idea’ itself had no box drawn around it by the Government as stated in the bill of Rights. It’s a personal interpretation. Create your own interpretation.
Later ‘yelling fire in a crowd’ was rightly declared unprotected and harmful speech.
Church, Temples, Mosques are all protected.
Copy machines, Facebook posts and open letters are covered.
Now that millions of people have cameras in their pockets, video ‘reports’ of events anywhere in the world are protected making the owner of that camera a citizen journalist. Publishing their experience is covered under freedom of press.
Singing is an extension of speaking, said Izzy on April 9th, 1961.
Fast forward to
2021:
Singing in a crowd is a super spreader event, says the team of experts in now.
How much more fucked can we be?
I hope we never find out. Yet we wait until…..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SUNDAY is an astounding document on the events of April 9th 1961. It’s offered by Drasin to the public here on Youtube.
This is journalism of its day. Captured then edited perfectly (listen closely) after the fact and released at the time to inform the viewer of the seriousness of the event. It’s become a museum piece. The parks Commissioner at the time- Morris- had declared free assembly and singing in the Square to be off limits on Sundays. Too noisy. Too much congregation. Too free.
The Square was Izzy’s for a day. He was the only real ‘grown up’ and adopted daddy.
They sang a ‘little folk tune’ called the Star Spangled Banner in unison because it was all about being able to sing in the first place.
If you gather musicians outdoors they are going to play and sing just as if you took beavers into your living room they will chew your furniture.
After some court visits, Israel G. Young and pro bono legal ‘experts’ helped Izzy get legal permits to sing once again. Izzy told me that the City of NY just got tired of sending their own attorneys to appear over the matter. It took a reported 5 months worth of appearances.
In the end, Izzy saved the expressive RIGHTS for all Greenwich Village artists. That’s fact. Those fukkers with the chalk drawings for the last 60 years? Yeah them, as well. That includes the professional musicians who were just hanging out with the crowd. That includes the professional and would-be pro musicians who were creating in the clubs. That includes the message(s) that eventually spawned out of the clubs and onto the radio and into the streets.
Izzy saved everyone’s ass. Said ‘everyone’ wrote songs to save America’s collective ass. Dr. King joined forces with the words of the musicians to create legislative change for the entire country. Again, that’s my interpretation of what happened before I was born. Make of it what you will. Blowin' in the wind had to be written by somebody. It wasn't going around the world on its own.
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What if Izzy never saved free speech in 1961?
Perhaps it was only a delay. Perhaps it was only a 60 year long speed bump in the progression to where we are today.
Only later that day on the 9th of April 1961, Bob Dylan was probably doing a rehearsal for his first ever pro event. Quite possibly, he was with Mike Porco at the Local Union hall paying his dues and getting his NYC Cabaret card to perform professionally. Only Bob knows, now. Mike Porco signed as his legal guardian that day, fronted Zimmerman the dues and most certainly fed him for the next two weeks as Bobby (not yet legally Dylan) opened up for John Lee Hooker at Gerde’s.
It was a tiny room, Folk City was, but it was Hooker and Dylan’s for a week. Because of the packed house shows, they were held over for another week. Mike never charged musicians for meals. Dylan’s union dues and Cabaret fee is another story. Usually, musicians were welcome to eat dinners with the staff before showtime and expenses were trimmed off the top of the musician’s $90 weekly payday. My estimation, a $25 yearly Union fee and $8 for a Cabaret license was Dylan's haircut. This is not including the $3 given to Dylan by Mike to get a haircut for the picture. The 3 bucks was a gift. Haircut result…?…unknown.
If Izzy was busy doing all that Union set up with Dylan, he wouldn’t have been able to be at Washington Square Park on April 9th when he saved Free Speech.
It was saved once. Can it survive in 2021?
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Exactly one year ago today, I had the privilege of hosting the Gerde’s Folk City 60th Anniversary Concert. We honored Dylan and Ochs and every musician that ever played Grampa’s Italian restaurant.
Yes indeed! You see that right. The date of the show was 2020. Just look at all those super spreaders. Something positive came out of 2020, at least. It was a few days after the pandemic was declared globally.
Notice the musicians were joking around during soundcheck about ‘this corona thing in China.’ Not to be dismayed we gathered anyway. Packed like sardines, singing out loud, spitting on the first two rows and their wives and dinner…it was GLORIOUS.
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How far have we come since then? How far have we come since 1961?
How far has songwriting and public concerts come since Dylan arrived?
1.24.61 to 1.24.21
What would a time traveler do on West 4th and Mercer today?
There would hardly be anyone at Gerde’s. Mike was a carpenter by trade and would have, as many fine establishments do, outdoor shacks/yurts built for customers out on the sidewalk. Ya know, the sidewalks in the freezing cold of January serving one or two tables if at all. Today, Folk City indoors would be able to hold about 35 people, spread out, no music. Including kitchen staff and Mike, 42 persons would be legal. If caught with 43, he could be shuttered.
The kitchen staff would be unable to social distance as they worked.No one really needs to see everything that goes on in a basement kitchen. No one is supposed to know what goes on down there as long as the food is 180 degrees.
Need I remind you, there would be no singing indoors. It’s not illegal yet but it is deemed selfish, inconsiderate and dangerous to spread droplets around the room.
That’s where we are as I type. Music can only happen if it’s incidental, if at all. Which is to say, the club may not advertise events but if the musician is able to alert 35 people to hear him play an incidental concert out around the corner by the fire hydrant on Mercer, the show may go on.
That’s where we are until…until…until…
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What if Izzy Young never saved free speech in 1961?
One tiny park in the whole country once tried to ban people congregating and singing on Sundays. Israel G. Young and 3000 Beatniks were’t having any of it.
IZZY- Well we’ve assembled for 70 years without a problem.
IZZY- We think the police are derelict in their actions. Commissioner Morris says that Folk Music brings degenerate people and it’s not so.
Where have we gone in 60 years, I wonder?
Free Speech not only refers to free expression of verbal ideas but written ideas, freedom to assemble, freedom to worship any god and freedom to report to others as in Press.
Free flow of data, emails, texts and phone calls. Free information. Free social calls, shopping etc. Free assembly is/was my favorite. We all remember a lifetime of not having to ask some unseen authority to visit our loved ones on Easter, Passover, funerals, Thanksgiving, Christmas, purim, New Year’s, Valentine’s day, birthdays, Easter, Passover, Yom Kippur, Christmas, New Year’s, Birth, death, birth, death.
Singing outside of one’s own home. That was another favorite memory of mine. How they used to sing, and sing and sing… list, oh, list!
Now I sing to myself at home and watch too many others sing at home to their computers, also. I wish we could just begin again or go back in time and encourage the lysol and the vitamin D ahead of time on this one. There would be singing in the club and theaters by now if we did that.
The general uncertainty of timeline and lack of reopening schedule are going to continue to hurt those without. I made a YouTube vid in March using Dylan’s lyrics to describe the troops on the streets and walls between us created by 2020. He wrote the words in the 80s but I heard 2020 in the description. The only passage missing is ‘they’re killing nuns and soldiers on the border.’ It’s the only thing missing, but the moment they start killing nuns on the border, I’ll consider myself correct! For now, the headlines write them selves. { ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF 15 DAYS TO STOP THE SPREAD FAST APPROACHING}
Dylan does talk about having to ‘take my temperature, baby’ and ‘climbing the walls’ and ‘uttering idle words’ all day long. This sort of dystopia was brought to life by the film Masked and Anonymous. Graffiti, gulags and Mad Max-ville towns fill the view of a nondescript country ruling its people through fear. Technology and advanced prosperity were absent in that film.
Today, our experience can be described 7 billion different ways. The shared witnessing of a global shutdown is unspeakably difficult to fully explain to a space alien. Can’t even make a good sentence out of it.
Poems, maybe. That’s for the poets and writers to do. I’m only a witness.
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Izzy Young, founder of music at Gerde’s, saved free speech.
Since then…
Wha happened?
As sure as I sit here I can state that Izzy Young almost single handedly saved free speech and the right to assemble for all New Yorkers later that year on April 9, 1961.
What if he didn’t?
Luckily for Dylan and every other songwriter, their ability to get their message out in song was protected. Their words could reach the radio and eventually reach around the world. Izzy saved Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton and every musician you can think of.
Imagine if Izzy and the Beatniks failed?
Imagine if carousing and singing out loud (without masks) was outlawed in 1961? Imagine if Phil Ochs never got his chance like he did in 1962?
What if he never had a chance to open his mouth and sing his song? Imagine his anti-war rants and raves and messages were never expressed. Imagine if he had lived til today and had spent 2020 writing songs about not being able to sing in public for fear of germs. Imagine if germs stopped Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Joan Baez from gathering groups to sing and stamp out oppression and March for peace. Imagine Phil in 2021.
Imagine Phil Ochs. Imagine his anti-establishment phrases. Imagine his ideas not flowing from his mind into peoples ears. Imagine Phil never having a platform.
No Phil Ochs YouTube channel. No Phil Ochs Twitter handle. No Phil Ochs antiwar marches. No Phil Ochs Pentagon levitation. No playful digs by name to the sitting president. No political banter between his songs at Carnegie Hall. No statements at all. No concerts at all.
Luckily for Phil, he came around when he did in 1962. He began at Folk City with bluesman John Hammond doing two weeks at Gerde’s. He knew how many artists were being discovered there on West 4th and Mercer and he, too, had to go south out of college and hang a left and keep going until he became noticed at the Folk City Hoots.
The open mic/American idol model was invented by Mike Porco. That's a statement for the record. Once Dylan sprang into the spotlight, Mike Porco had zero problems getting talented song writers to play his club for free on Monday. All of them were bucking for an opening act time slot in the future.
For my money I’ll bet that Mike never lost Folk City’s magnetic field when it came to attracting musicians for 20 straight years. He relied on a continuous stream of musicians to pay the bills. Dylan arrived here (I write this in New York City) this date in 1961 exactly sixty years ago today. Phil Ochs and countless others followed. The rest is history.
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What if Phil Ochs saw no reason to come to New York from Ohio? What would have been the point had Izzy Young failed and singing was banned?
What if Commissioner Morris succeeded? What if Robert Moses succeeded and built a bridge over Washington Square? (That’s another story!)
What if Bob Dylan went to the Troubadour instead and Mike Porco was relegated to selling pasta dishes until the 1980s?
