Roots of the Revival: American & British Folk Music in the 1950s

Roots of the Revival: American & British Folk Music in the 1950s. By Ronald D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 182, acknowledgements, introduction, notes, index. $25 paper, $85 cloth.)If you have paid attention to scholarship related to American folk music over the past twenty or so years, Ron Cohen's name is already familiar to you. Starting in the mid-1990s Cohen has authored, co-authored, or edited an average of one book every two years, all of which focus on folk or folk-based music, and on topics ranging from Alan Lomax's time with the Library of Congress in the 1930s and 1940s, to oral histories with folk musicians, to the subject of this book. Like its predecessors Roots of the Revival encompasses some very familiar territory, from the substantial impact of Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax to the importance of Sing-Out magazine and Izzy Young's Folklore Center in New York City. However Cohen and Donaldson (whose other book is "I Hear America Singing": Folk Music and National Identity>, Temple University Press, 2014) bring a fresh perspective to the field by including the UK in the mix and adding just enough new information (new to me) to recommend Roots of the Revival to the neophyte as well as the most veteran of scholars.While "British" is in the title of this book, much of the UK information focuses on Americans who ventured over the Pond. Alan Lomax is one of the book's leitmotifs, informing much of Roots from beginning to end. He lived in England for a good chunk of the 1950s, often in the company of his English companion, Shirley Collins, after he fled the USA in light of the McCarthy-led witch-hunts. Lomax returned in time to launch his Carnegie Hall "Folksong '59" concert and an extended field recording survey of the South in the fall of 1959 (accompanied by Collins), resulting in two important series of nineteen albums on Atlantic Records and Prestige International, all of which were issued the next year.Aside from Lomax, the British side of Roots most often tracks the careers of folks such as Peggy Seeger (who married Ewan McCall and made England her home for many years) and the impact of the shorter tours by Brownie McGhee, Rambling Jack Elliott, and others who appeared there in the 1950s. The authors discuss the impact of the skiffle band, the early writings of Paul Oliver, and the BBC's efforts to document and broadcast British-based folk music during the period. Still, these sections are often less well developed and display a distinctly American bias at the expense of carefully exploring more indigenous traditions.Depending upon how you define Britain, one might think that Scotland and Wales should be encompassed by this term. …