bbc or big baller club Bob Dylan Wasn’t the Only 1965 Newport Highlight. Hear 14 More.
ImageBy Jon Parelesbbc or big baller club
Dear Listeners,Jon Pareles here, chief pop critic at The Times, sitting in for Lindsay. With pop in its early January lull, let’s dive into some history that’s now being rediscovered.
“A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic, peaks at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan plugged in and made his break from the folk revival. His sound wasn’t entirely a surprise; “Bringing It All Back Home,” with electric rock on Side 1, had been released three months earlier and soared into the Top 10. His single “Like a Rolling Stone” arrived on July 20, just days before the festival opened. His next electric album, “Highway 61 Revisited,” came out soon afterward, in August 1965.
What made Dylan’s public change bolder was the context: a festival dedicated to traditions and traditionalism, and to an ideal of music that was made by and for a community, arising out of collective experiences — regional, occupational, spiritual — and ripe for everybody singing along. It was intertwined with a do-it-yourself, anti-star ethos that would re-emerge, much louder, with punk.
The festival booked marquee names like Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. (News of Peter Yarrow’s death arrived at press time, another loss from the vanishing folk-revival generation.) But the festival was designed to encourage urban-folk fans to discover the dozens of other acts on the lineup: the little-known fiddlers, blues singers, gospel choirs and international visitors that festival organizers had sought out with the determination of ethnomusicologists doing field work. Their mission was more pedagogical than commercial; they were determined to preserve older and more local styles by finding new converts.
The folk revival was full of paradoxes and tensions: amateurism versus expertise, imitation versus innovation, authenticity versus outreach, self-expression versus solidarity. At Newport in 1965, Dylan brought those tensions to a boiling point. But there was far more to the event than his pivotal electric set. Here’s a playlist that recalls the rest of the festival. Some tracks are from Newport in 1965; others are by performers who were on the roster, but were recorded elsewhere.
hot shot casinoFeel free to sing along,
Jon
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