I was just watching the WUNC-TV beg-a-thon featuring Peter Paul and Mary and was reminded why I didn’t like them back in the day. Their style always seemed preachy and contrived, which wasn’t an accident. They were thrown together by some A&R man, groomed, dressed and name-changed (Paul’s name is really Noel) to glom the folk trend.
I had been a Kingston Trio fan since about 1959 and had learned to play guitar by listening to their albums. When folk music became radicalized by the civil rights movement I made the jump from Nick, Bob and Dave straight to Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton, and later Eric Andersen, Donovan and Ian & Sylvia.
Tonight’s show also reminded me of something else. While I was a civil rights liberal, I wasn’t a socialist or a communist. All that baggage came later when the Vietnam War became more of an issue than integration.
On display tonight were old commies like Pete Seeger and The Weavers who had their problems with the House Un-American Activities Committee because, well, they were communists using folk music in an effort to push communist issues among young people.
My favorite folk singer for years was Paxton. He played at the Salaam Cultural Center in Durham in about 1983 and I went to see him. I took a letter he had written to me in 1967 in response to a letter I had written him. It had been in my guitar case all those years. I showed it to him backstage and he was blown away to see it.
Anyway, he honored my request that he play “Wild Flying Dove” for my wife, but I went away disappointed in his lefty preaching and felt the “Question Authority” button he wore was more suited to a teenager or at least a college kid than a middle-aged singer.
But I’ll always be grateful for the many hours of pleasure I got from his records, and for the alternating-thumb finger picking style I learned from listening to his songs.
