Between 1961 and 1965, Friends of Old Time Music (F.O.T.M) brought fourteen concerts of traditional folk music, old-time country music, bluegrass, blues, and religious music to New York City audiences. The founding directors were Ralph Rinzler, John Cohen, and Israel Young. The liner notes to the 2006 Folkways compilation Friends of Old Time Music: The Folk Arrival 1961 – 1965 (SFW40160) revealed how other folk music advocates, musicians, and folklorists made significant contributions, including Mike Seeger, Alan Lomax, Jean Ritchie, and Sam Charters—they all played a major role in developing a new paradigm for the presentation of traditional music in concert. For many, this was the first time that urban “folk” audiences saw the performances by the likes of Clarence Ashley, Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, Maybelle Carter, Fred McDowell, Roscoe Holcomb, and Dock Boggs.
Smithsonian Folkways have today revealed a new release, taken from a key F.O.T.M 1965 Live Concert in the midst of the Civil Rights Era:
The Complete Friends of Old-Time Music Concert by Bessie Jones, John Davis & The Georgia Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young, presents a riveting, historic look at the intersection of Black folk traditions and civil rights activism. Taken from a concert in April 1965, this recording showcases the haunting songs of the Georgia Sea Islands Singers, led by Jones and Davis–Black folk songs and spirituals that have influenced everyone from Jerry Garcia to Afrofuturist Folkways artist Jake Blount.
Bessie Jones featured alongside the Georgia Sea Island Singers on a Folkways album titled Lest We Forget, Vol. 3: Sing For Freedom which featured recordings from the 1964 “The Sing for Freedom Workshop”— described by Folkways as “a remarkable event that brought together the best of freedom singers to share the history of this tradition, better organize the freedom song movement, and enrich an already powerful repertoire of song.” When asked why she sang these songs, Jones is quoted as saying, “Your children are gonna call your music old later on, too… You should know the bottom before you come to the top.”
Even today, the songs of the Gullah Geechee people of Georgia retain deep connections to Africa and were encoded with powerful messages of resistance to slavery and oppression. In our interview with Jake Blount for his New Faith album, he shared how influential the Gullah Geechee were:
“They just have a really incredible body of work song then most other Black people have in this country just because they were able to hold on to more in in that time, so, when I go back and listen to old songs, and I definitely look for songs from everywhere, but I tend to find that a lot of the most wonderful things are songs that come from the Gullah Geechee tradition.”
KLOF Mag interview with Jake Blount
The concert also featured the country blues of legendary singer and guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell and Mississippi cane fife player Ed Young. It was a star-studded concert, and the excitement of these seminal musicians joining together on songs and inspiring each other is palpable. But the powerful subtext of this concert was clear even then.
McDowell himself was one of the great stars of the folk revival, first encountered in Mississippi by Lomax right before Lomax returned to the Georgia Sea Islands in 1959. Lomax’s assistant at the time, the soon-to-be famous British folk singer Shirley Collins, said she’d never forget meeting McDowell, remembering the image of him walking out of the woods with his guitar after picking cotton all day. His guitar playing has a tranced-out sound to it, heralding him as a precursor of the Mississippi Hill Country Blues that others like R.L. Burnside and The Black Keys would popularize. Listen to his guitar work opening up the song “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.” McDowell lasers in on a much slower, rawer tempo for this powerful old spiritual, while the Georgia Sea Island Singers lift their voices beneath him. From the same region as McDowell, Young’s fife playing is so old as to almost be primordial. It was the oldest Black American instrumental music that had survived, though it had fused with military traditions at a certain point. Young and McDowell weave in and out with the Georgia Sea Island Singers in creative ways throughout this evening’s program, delighting in the collaboration and creating something new and indelible together.
“We’re on the road to world peace, and freedom, and integration,” says famed folklorist Alan Lomax brightly in his introduction to the concert. Behind him on the stage, some of the greatest Black folk singers of their time say nothing. Their thoughts on Lomax’s overly optimistic prediction come through in the songs they presented that evening. Songs that prayed to a Biblical God for justice, songs that spoke of the pure barbarity and horror of slavery, the death and murder of so many brought from Africa over the centuries, songs that spoke of the thousands and thousands of marchers in America at that very time during the Civil Rights movement. “If I can’t march, I can sing,” said Mable Hillery of the Georgia Sea Island Singers, herself a noted Civil Rights activist and frequent marcher who had stayed back from protests to testify before this crowd of mostly young, white people in New York City.
By bringing out an unheard tradition of Black American music and showcasing the music in such a direct, engaging way, all the performers on stage this one evening in 1965 hoped to leave a lasting mark on the audience. They reveled in playing together, and they found common ground across very different Black communities in the United States. But as Siegel pointed out, they had very clear motives for their music. “Bessie Jones and John Davis were very aware of their mission to help people understand this music,” says Peter Siegel, who recorded the original concert. “Where it came from and how it could inform the future.”
Purchase/Stream: The Complete Friends of Old-Time Music Concert by Bessie Jones, John Davis & The Georgia Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young
Smithsonian Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu/georgia-sea-island-singers/the-complete-friends-of-old-time-music-concert
Bandcamp: https://georgiaseaislandsingers.bandcamp.com/album/the-complete-friends-of-old-time-music-concert
All other platforms: https://orcd.co/georgia-sea-island-singers-concert