Saturday, June 29, 2024

Mike Porco: From Cabinet making in Calabria to the stage at Madison Square Garden

 

Bob Dylan Acknowledges his New York Father before a packed house at MSG in 1975



Bob Dylan was busy in the Summer and Fall of 1975. He was spending a lot of time in Greenwich Village and surrounds.


๐ŸŽผHe was recording the Desire album and assembling the troops for the Rolling Thunder tour. This is a snippet of the Gerde's Folk City doc pointing just how important Mike Porco was to Bob Dylan.The first leg of the Rolling Thunder Tour culminated in a benefit concert for framed-boxer Reuben 'Hurricane' Carter at the World's Most Famous Arena. Mike was there to the delight of Dylan.


They had both come a long way from Dylan's first weeks in NYC in 1961 when Mike sponsored Dylan's Union and Cabaret cards as his PARENTAL GUARDIAN. AND Mike gave Bobby a little red wine and roast beef. Not a bad deal.

The Italian immigrant found himself on the stage at Madison Square Garden with all of his famous friends.


๐ŸšจThe GerdesFolkCityDoc is a SUBSCRIPTION ONLY VIDEO.๐Ÿšจ Subscribe for free to get free content. Pay for a subscription to get access to the Folk City documentary.


Help me gain 600 new subscribers so the unbelievable tale of Mike Porco can be told๐ŸŽฅ๐Ÿ†๐Ÿฟ๐ŸŽผ๐Ÿฟ๐Ÿ†๐ŸŒŽ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ This link will take you directly to the post with the GerdesFolkCityDoc๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽผ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿฝ ๐Ÿ™ ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿฝ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿฝ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿฝ https://bobporco86.substack.com/p/documentary-on-mike-porcos-folk-music



Saturday, June 1, 2024

Gerde's Folk City Documentary Made Available

After 11 years I jumped the gun And released the Gerde’s FolkCity doc May 31. 




 In case you missed it


 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.   

 Cheers, Bob 

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Gerde's Folk City Doc Shall Be Released on Bob Porco's Substack June 1

๐ŸŽ‚๐ŸŽผWill You Still LOVE Folk City when it’s Sixty Four?๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽน

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.

๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ ๐Ÿ‘€ I want you to read this email so that you get the main idea about what the GerdesFolkCityDoc is all about.

๐ŸคŒ๐ŸผDo ya love Rock and Roll?

๐ŸคŒ๐ŸผHow about Folk Rock?

๐ŸคŒ๐ŸผHow about The Blues?

๐ŸคŒ๐ŸผAmericana?

๐ŸคŒ๐ŸผSinger songwriter???

๐ŸŽผ๐ŸŽผ 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. ๐Ÿฅ‚ 

⏳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.

๐Ÿ›Ž๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ‰๐Ÿ“…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. 

๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ๐ŸคŒ๐Ÿผ

๐ŸŒŽSubstack 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. ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿผ

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.๐Ÿ’ซ

Countless hours have been spent on the material and I finally want to share it.

๐Ÿคž๐Ÿผ๐Ÿ•ฐPOSITIVELY 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

JOSร‰ FELICIANO

DELORES DIXON

DAVID MASSENGILL

๐Ÿ“กI’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!!!

๐ŸŽช๐ŸŽ–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.

๐Ÿ†My very noble grandfather gave a lot to the scene.๐Ÿ†

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.

On June 1st you’ll have your chance!

Get Folked,

Bob

https://bobporco86.substack.com/p/gerdes-folk-city-doc-to-be-released

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Bones they got the marrow

Motion Suggests (Itself) on YouTube was recorded and published the day after a boyish fling at the Open Mic at The Towne Crier in Beacon. That night on October 12th I sang Galaxie by Blind Melon and Fell on Black Days by Soundgarden. I needed more practice on that instead of this latest Pavement song I've committed to. Even learned another solo. The other ten takes you'll never hear. Here is take eleven.



[Verse 1]
I traced my family lines

It ends up with a
Wave of passing grainy days

Forgetting she's away

Here's the straight and narrow:
Brought my wheelbarrow
And it's filled with the lies
And the dirt and the hurt


[Chorus]
But I won't need someone to let me be
I won't need someone to let me be


[Verse 2]
I bought the cotton threads

And the voice could soothe you
Captivate your senses
Like a ginger ale rain

Bones they got the marrow

Curse the tainted pharaohs

Take off! Expect fun
You might learn how it runs


[Chorus]
But I won't need someone to let me be
No, I won't need someone to let me be
No, I won't need someone to let me be

No, I won't need someone to let me go

Let me be


What could these items say about a guy?

Here's a companion video with the actual rendition of Fell on Black Days recorded at Phil Ciganer's place the other night. A little flat but OKay for Open Mic.

Boxing and a Soundgarden cover:

https://youtu.be/azZuP9pvGR0





Sunday, October 1, 2023

DYLAN talk Rolling Thunder Part 1

Built in 2014, used as a naked base reel for another clip with images and music, held on tightly and stowed away in a harddrive, laying in wait for the right deal, THIS clip is mostly about how Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review began on Mike Porco's 61st birthday at Folk City.






Savvy tech peeps will recognize the reel as just the first layer saved from a video program unbothered by Ken Burns style images and copywritten music. It's youtube friendly. THANKS to Rob Stoner, Ratso Sloman, Angelo Porco and my dad RIP Bob Sr you have the whole story. Dan Behrman supplied the voice of Mike Porco. It's been a long time coming. Nine fookin years later, it sits. I'd like to give this and part 2 of 'Dylan talk assembly" away. The rest is for sale. In the words of David Bowie, "I can't give everything away." But wait, wait, there's more.  

The ending is a glowing description by Ratso and Stoner of Mike Porco the man, how they viewed him in history and how they felt about him. Three Cheers! 

The Fifth Peg: Izzy Young brings music to Gerde's Restaurant CLIP

 GREAT THANKS to Dan Behrman especially for the words of Mike Porco. Some thought the clips for the Folk City doc would never see the light of day. Well, here's some for ya. But wait, wait. There's more.






The Fifth Peg: Izzy Young brings music to Gerde's Restaurant 8 22 14

https://youtu.be/EJsq8GfVVcs


From Blog post 4.1.15: https://folkcityatfifty.blogspot.com/2015/04/bob-porco-gets-ink-in-half-quart-press.html The legend is clear and well known. Izzy Young was the first to book acts at Gerde's for Mike Porco. Within 5 months, Izzy was out but not without providing the Village with Blues legends Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry for 5 of the last six weeks under Young. By May of 1960, Mike ran the show. He had help, though. Future music rep, Charlie Rothschild, and New York Times critic Bob Shelton were the ones to re-christen the club in June of 1960. The "Fifth Peg'' would now be known around town as Folk City. From Blog post 12.28.13 https://folkcityatfifty.blogspot.com/2013/12/izzy-young-and-fifth-peg-first-five.html Back in early 1960, before Gerde's Folk City was 'Folk City' it was called 'The Fifth Peg,' a name given to the new venture/adventure between three relative strangers: Izzy Young, Tom Prendergast and Mike Porco. Mike owned the restaurant with the liquor license and Izzy and Tom were willing to book the musicians and take care of the door for evenings that Gerde's Restaurant would normally be closed. Before 'the rest became HISTORY' there was the matter of Izzy and Tom trying to turn a profit. This happened very infrequently, if at all. Mike Porco made out just fine. Not only was he selling the booze, but Gerde's was a fine Italian restaurant, to boot. Whatever Izzy promised the musicians in pay wasn't coming from him. It would come from the gate, which Izzy (bless him) counted to the PENNY! During our first physical meeting and discussion, Izzy G. Young could only recall in round numbers 'who and how much.' But between our first meeting and his most recent visit in June 2013, Izzy had found the actual ledger where he kept the most unbelievable record of the first 5 months of the club commonly known now as FOLK CITY. From Blog post 8.11.14: https://folkcityatfifty.blogspot.com/2014/08/sneak-peek-of-gerdes-documentary-august.html For those of you lucky enough to be within 100 miles of Ashokan, New York, you're invited to see a DIRECTOR'S CUT of Positively Porco on Friday, August 22nd at THE SUMMER HOOT. I'll be there showing a clip entitled ''THE FIFTH PEG: Izzy Young brings music to Gerde's Restaurant.'' I'm the 11:15 act. The entire lineup is right here. I'm honored to say that a couple of Mike Porco's friends will be performing that weekend. David Bromberg and John Cohen will be featured along with my friends and hosts Mike+Ruthy, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, Robert Sarazin Blake, DB Leonard, Elizabeth Mitchell, Amy Helm and many others. 'The Hoot' series shows no signs of ever taking a hiatus. Here's another ground floor opportunity for you to experience a festival in its early years. Don't think twice!

Two Good Men Woody Guthrie Content found during: 7:06 - 9:43 No impact Torna a Surriento (Return To Sorrento) Instrumental Guitar Masters Content found during: 4:18 - 6:15 No impact Family Affair Sly & The Family Stone Content found during: 23:20 - 23:43 No impact Tryin' To Win (Album Version) Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee Content found during: 18:41 - 19:11 No impact Santy Anno Odetta Content found during: 20:09 - 21:20 No impact Satisfied Mind (Live At Newport) Joan Baez Content found during: 16:32 - 17:12

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

PICTURES OF ISRAEL GOODMAN YOUNG 2015 FOUND


At Matt Uminov's







at Luke's Bar and Grill 79th and 3rd
with Izzy's distant cousin Marilyn Goodman
and hubby



On E78th
enjoying a June evening





Along my path 
Izzy Young and I became buds.
I wouldn't be a part of the story without him.

 

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

MIKE PORCO Still in the musical limelight 89 years since his arrival to the States


 Wonderful article by Luigi Michele Perrifrom Italy recognized on 2.22.22.

Here's the link:

https://icalabresi.it/cultura/mike-porco-padre-calabrese-bob-dylan-folk-greenwich-village/

Here's the English translation:


(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 protรฉgรฉ 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 Josรฉ 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 Josรฉ 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.