Letters to the editor:
More to the point, he is one of the most assiduous scholars of folk music I have ever encountered. I first met Pete 60 years ago come September. As a member of the Almanac Singers (his colleagues: Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell), he stayed with us for a couple of weeks. During that time he and his buddies were singing Child ballads and their Appalachian variants and adapting them to the situations at hand. They brought forth the songs of Aunt Molly Jackson and Florence Reese (the miner’s daughter who wrote “Which Side Are You On?”). When Big Bill Broonzy came over, there was the richest exchange of black and white folk songs and blues I have ever experienced. Of course, Win Stracke came over too. He was in the same league as they were.
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May I tell you how the Old Town School came to be? In the early 50s, when the folk-song revival was just getting under way, there were Monday night performances at the Blue Note, the city’s most prestigious jazz club. It was a twice-a-night concert called “I Come for the Sing.” There were four of us. Big Bill Broonzy sang the blues; Larry Lane, Child ballads; Win, American frontier songs; I, the wise-guy narrator. There developed a sizable cult following. Folk-music interest was just aborning. Frank Holzfiend, the club owner, was delighted. The place would otherwise have been dark on Mondays. Everybody was happy, except Win. Like Pete Seeger, he felt something was wrong.
Mara Tapp replies:
I intended no disrespect to Pete Seeger or Win Stracke. My article tried to look at the current state of folk music and how it survived the last couple decades. After 20 years of camaraderie, I continue to consider Studs a mentor, hero, colleague, and friend, and I hope that these clarifications relieve his sense of injustice.
