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The Newport Folk Festival is an annual folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island founded in 1959 by Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Peter Seeger and George Wein, founder of the already-well-established Newport Jazz Festival, and his partner, Albert Grossman.
Grossman was soon to become the manager of Bob Dylan, who would become the artist most famously (and infamously) associated with the festival. Dylan appeared without incident in 1963 and 1964, accompanied by Joan Baez (who in turn had been one of the first discoveries of the first Newport Folk Festival in the company of Chicago musician Bob Gibson).
The festival draws on folk music a wide sense. For instance in the 1960s there were famous performances by Johnny Cash and Howlin' Wolf, artists usually described as representing country music and blues respectively. The festival was associated with the Blues Revival of the 1960s, where artists "lost" since the 1940s were "rediscovered".
The Newport Folk Festival fell on hard times in the later 1960s, even briefly closing its doors in 1971, but survived to continue as one of the major folk music festivals in the United States, alongside the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which began in 1960. It has run without interruption ever since.
Concerts have been a rich source of recordings, as searching CD catalogues for phrases such as "live at newport" or "newport folk" will reveal. Murray Lerner directed the 1967 film Festival based on the 1963-1965 festivals.
In recent years a multi-act bill, only loosely centered around folk music, has toured the US under the Newport Folk Festival moniker.
The Electric Dylan Controversy
As rock legend has it, Bob Dylan was roundly booed at the 1965 festival for appearing backed by an electric blues band. The lineup included three from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Sam Lay, drums and Jerome Arnold, bass, plus Al Kooper, organ and Barry Goldberg, piano. Dylan was regarded by folk purists as betraying his "folkie roots" by doing this. Defenders noted he had an album in the Top Twenty radio airplay charts for most of 1965 which used electric instrumentation, and that the performance was modelled on the standard practice of Muddy Waters, who had been using the electric guitar in his performances for years.
Some controversy surrounds the existence, extent and motivation of the booing from the crowd.
Footage of Dylan's performance at the Newport Folk Festival surfaced publicly in 2005 in Martin Scorsese's documentary, No Direction Home. The footage begins with emcee Peter Yarrow's introduction of Dylan: "Ladies and gentlemen, the person that's going to come up now has a limited amount of time ... His name is Bob Dylan." In the documentary footage, the sound of loud booing and sporadic cheering begins just a few bars into Dylan's first song, "Maggie's Farm", and continues throughout the next song, "Like a Rolling Stone" (which was the closing number of most of his performances around this time).
Many of the festival's performers were backstage during this part of the performance. Peter Seeger said that he went to the sound system and told the technicians, "Get that distortion out of his voice ... It's terrible. If I had an axe, I'd chop the microphone cable right now." A rumour spread instantly among the performers that Seeger was backstage with an axe and was threatening to cut the cables.
The band played "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry" (not shown in the documentary); Dylan said to them, "Let's go, man. That's all," and walked off-stage. The sound of loud booing and clapping can be heard in the background. Peter Yarrow returned to the microphone and begged Dylan to continue performing. Dylan, by some accounts highly distressed, was coaxed back by Yarrow and Joan Baez. Accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and harmonica, he sang two songs to the now-silent audience — "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," perhaps a farewell to the "traditional folkies" who objected to his electric guitar, and "Mr. Tambourine Man" — and left Newport, not to return until 2002, when he was welcomed back with open arms.
The crowd's motivation is unclear. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans Dylan alienated with his electric guitar. An alternative account has it that audience members were upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. Prior to the release of the documentary, Bruce Jackson, who was a director of the Newport Folk Festival, called the stories of the audience booing Bob Dylan at Newport '65 "the myth of Newport". (His article on the subject may be found here). Professor Jackson was present at the 1965 concert and in 2002 reviewed an audio tape of the performance (see the link above for a partial transcript); he contends the booing was directed at Peter Yarrow, who upset the crowd when he attempted to keep Dylan's spot to its proper length rather than let the crowd hear more of his music; Professor Jackson maintains there's nothing to indicate the crowd disliked Dylan's music, electrified or not.
Dylan himself said, "I had no idea why they were booing ... I don't think anybody was there having a negative response to those songs, though. Whatever it was about, wasn't about anything that they were hearing."
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Pete seeger was quoted later in an interview that the reason why he wanted to cut the cables with an axe was that Bob Dylans lyrics were so important and Pete Seeger felt like the world needed to hear his lyrics. Pete seeger directly said that this particular part of no direction home was innaccurate.
Folk festivals | Newport County, Rhode Island | Rhode Island culture
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