Musical Escapades and Crimes
On a July morning in the early 1950s, we Raskins boarded a train at LA’s Union Station bound for Taos, New Mexico, where we would spend a week at San Cristobal Valley Ranch, a left-wing family camp. The program at the camp was packed with socially significant educational and recreational activities. I wasn’t privy to the hot political debates among the parents, but I remember vividly the hot slime between my toes from squishing mud into adobe bricks with which we kids, supervised by artisans from a local Pueblo tribe, built a stout hut.
For all the daytime fun, the nights were marred by a grave injustice that, in the opinion of us aggrieved children, violated the camp’s progressive ethos. After dinner and the evening square-dance, the program became adults-only, so we second-class citizens were banished to our dormitory. All week, we grumbled and protested to no avail. Then, on the eve of our departure for home, I resolved to vote with my feet. Creeping pajama-clad from the dorm to the big lodge, I peered through a side window to espy the grownups seated around a man tuning his guitar.
By some preternatural instinct, my mother sensing my presence, turned to stare scoldingly at me. But when I mouthed “please,” her expression miraculously melted, and she motioned for me to come sit on her lap. I scurried across the smoke-filled hall and nestled in as Earl Robinson, the fellow with the guitar, began to sing his poignant song about Joe Hill, the old Wobbly poet, rebel, and martyr. I was transfixed and transported.
To this day, that song evokes the joyous night I rebelled against the children’s curfew, and surrounded by love, heard tell of the man who never died. Hearing it also brings a wave of sadness for all the bygone people and their lost dreams. Then I remember Joe’s plea before his execution: “Don’t mourn, organize!”
I spent the summer of 1962 meandering the American South in search of the roots of traditional music. My friend Ken Frankel and I stuffed banjos, guitars, cots, and some clothes into his white Chevy Impala and headed east from Los Angeles. A fellow physics major at Berkeley, Ken was a student of old-time music and a multi-instrumentalist then performing with Richard Greene, who became a renowned bluegrass and rock fiddler, and later with Jerry Garcia, who became Jerry Garcia.
We embarked on our pilgrimage without a clear plan or itinerary, only the vague aim of seeking out an aging generation of authentic rural musicians before they—and their music—passed from the scene. Amazingly, we succeeded. We found many of these old-timers; some we knew of from obscure recordings and some we discovered along the way. We devised an effective strategy for finding them: pulling into some likely town, parking the garish Impala discreetly out of sight, and finding a conspicuous spot where we’d belt out songs with Ken on banjo and me on guitar, or vice versa.
Passers-by would stop to listen, and, often as not, one would be a fellow picker or knew of one we just had to meet. Many strangers opened their doors and hearts to two young vagabonds from California, with convivial hours of talking and jamming often ensuing. My memories of many of these encounters have faded, but a few remain engraved sharply in my mind.
In Asheville, North Carolina, a rich vein of Appalachian music, we spent some time with Bascom Lamar Lunsford, an influential musician who had been recorded in the 1920s, a crusty lawyer, and a sophisticated folklorist. Bascom suggested we look up Big Red Parham, directing us to a farm a few miles down the road. Red’s kindly wife answered our knock, saying Red was out back. We drove the Impala across a muddy field to where we found Red, who hesitatingly hopped down from his tractor. When we explained ourselves, he warmed up and asked to borrow a guitar. Then he stuck a harmonica in his mouth the long way and started singing “I thought I had met pretty girls in my day.” Somehow, while picking the guitar and blowing a hands-free harmonica solo, he began to clog dance!
Next, we searched for Obray Ramsey, another musician suggested by Lunsford, but couldn’t find his place. So, we stopped to ask directions from a fellow on the side of the road shooting groundhogs; maybe he knew Obray. “Obray Ramsey?” He said, “Why do you want to see that son-of-a-bitch?” Reluctantly, he took us to Obray’s house, where he walked right in like he owned the place, which he did because he was the gifted and witty Obray Ramsey! A highlight for us was learning Obray’s haunting “Cold Rain and Snow.” Back in the Bay Area, Ken taught the song to Jerry Garcia, who later included it on the first Grateful Dead album.
In Independence, Virginia, where we headed next, an area that once had been the source of a few early recordings, we discovered that the old-time music persisted. One memorable day, we wended our way to the ramshackle house of Wade Ward, a picker we’d been told about. We arrived unannounced, yet Wade and his gracious wife welcomed us, even offered us a meal, and let us set up our cots on the front porch. Wade was a terrific banjoist and conversationalist, so our jam sessions and bull sessions were both superb. In the morning, after a big southern breakfast, courtesy of Mrs. Ward, and more picking, it was time to hit the road. As we were leaving, elated and proud to have discovered Wade, he asked us to sign his guest book. What? Curious about who else had visited, I flipped back the pages to find entries for Alan Lomax (1937), as well as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger (1939). Better late than never.
Wandering through southern Virginia, we happened by the Airport Drive-in Cinema, where the marquee announced that the Stanley Brothers, a top-shelf bluegrass band, would be performing that very evening! Not to be missed. Although the concert was still hours off, we decided to pull in to get a good spot and a bite to eat. But both the ticket booth and snack kiosk were still shuttered. So, we rolled across the deserted parking area right up to the outdoor stage, pulled out our instruments, and sat on the hood of the Impala picking our hearts out as cars gradually filed in. At concert time, we realized that we had entered without a ticket, a happy thought for two wayfarers traveling on short money. Besides, no one would ever know—or would they? The band walked onto the stage to car horns honking as Carter Stanley stepped to the mic. “Before we start,” he said, gesturing our way, “we want to welcome these two fine young musicians from California. Boys, we’d like you to be our guests tonight.”
The Hazard, Kentucky, area was a moveable feast of music making, including a notable day with Roscoe Holcomb. Roscoe had been recorded a few years earlier by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, who produced an album on the Folkways label of the “high, lonesome sound.” Indeed, the sound was intensely high and lonesome as we sat knee-to-knee with Roscoe on his rickety front porch. On a sour note, he grumbled about getting shorted on album royalties, a complaint I asked John Cohen about decades later at a party at the Greenwich Village loft of my wife Pamela’s cousin, Suze Rotolo. John shook his head and said, “I lost my shirt on that project,” adding that he and Roscoe remained close friends.
We heard tell of one Badeye Bolling, a lifelong miner and banjo player. Finding his place was an adventure through labyrinthine back roads eventually leading to a muddy lane that terminated in a verdant hollow. Grabbing our instruments, we wobbled across the suspension bridge swaying over a rushing stream, then stumbled down a rocky path to Badeye’s cabin. A squat man came to the door and looked at me with one eye and Ken with the other—Badeye had earned his name honestly. Despite missing a couple of fingers, Badeye frailed his banjo with aplomb as we played into the evening. If by chance, Badeye Bolling had been discovered by an Alan Lomax or a John Cohen, he, too, would have entered the old-time music pantheon.
When we reached Washington, DC, the time had come to turn back toward the west and home. But before leaving DC, we busked for gas money at the Washington Monument. At first the listeners were sparse and so was the change. Then out of nowhere, a huge crowd, coming from a Shakespeare-in-the-park performance, surged toward us. The audience swelled and our guitar cases filled with greenbacks, but the Capitol Police unceremoniously halted the concert, dispersed the crowd, and sent us packing. Happily, though, we were able to pocket our lucre and avoid detention for the disreputable crime of playing folk music, a charge I faced a few years later in Italy (more on that soon).
We spent the night in a bug-infested Salvation Army flophouse, enduring the morning sermon over a bowl of cement-like grits. More than ready to bid DC adieu, Ken headed for Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry, and I hitchhiked to my sister’s place in St. Louis, where Ken and I rendezvoused in a few days. From there, we drove straight through to LA, two lunatics switching drivers at 65 mph, stopping only to refuel. We logged 1,800 miles in 30 hours, tired yet elated as our wondrous summer receded in the rearview mirror.
I spent the summer of 1964 traipsing all over Europe lugging a heavy rucksack and heavier guitar in its hard-shell case (today I strain to carry it a few blocks). But the Gibson, as it often had before, served as a passport to new comrades and adventures. Off the plane, I headed for the Troubadour in London, where I opened for Bert Jansch. Many music scenes were to follow as I trekked across the continent.
Italy was the setting for the wildest experience. The tale begins in a Paris youth hostel, where I came across one Mark Birnbaum, a mellow pothead from the University of Chicago and fellow guitar shlepper. Mark was a solid picker and strong singer whose repertoire of blues and rags overlapped with mine. We quickly bonded and set off hitching and busking our way across France and Spain. Then, we doubled back through the Italian Riviera and south to the city where all roads lead.
Once in Rome, we befriended two American girls from Antioch College, and headed to the Spanish Steps to make music and enough money, we hoped, to finance dinner for four. With the first chords, a crowd gathered around the fountain at the base of the Steps and soon swelled to fill the entire piazza. Linda Black, one of the Antioch students, circulated among the audience holding out my red cap, which in no time overflowed with lira. Repeatedly, she emptied the cap into my guitar case and went back for more. Was a two-star Michelin restaurant in reach?
Then our luck turned, and our fortune vanished. We were singing “I got the blues for my baby down by the San Francisco Bay” with Linda Black working the crowd when the Carabinieri appeared. They weren’t there to listen or contribute. Barking in Italian, they scattered the spectators, confiscated our take, and brusquely marched us off to a nearby jail.
The four of us spent the night behind bars in adjacent men’s and women’s holding pens. Outside our cells, an agente di polizia sat at a table in full regalia pounding out terms of indictment on an archaic typewriter. At dawn, we were presented with the document describing our offences—written in Italian, which none of us could read. Only one unforgettable sentence was decipherable: “Black Linda was arrested for soliciting money with a red cap on the Spanish Steps.” Nevertheless, we signed at the bottom confessing to our crimes, whatever they were, anxious to be sent on our way admonished and impoverished.
But it wasn’t that simple. One of the jailers explained in very broken English that, unbeknownst to the tourists of the day, Italy had a visa requirement, which the authorities only actuated to expel undesirables, such as us. We had 48 hours to leave the country, or we would find ourselves in really hot water (“problema profondo”). The little Caesar did not specify the consequences and we didn’t want to find out, so it was time to bid Italy arrivederci. Little did we know that events were about to get even weirder.
Without delay, Linda Black and I gathered our gear and hit the road with the others to follow. Our plan was to hitchhike south toward Naples, and then take the highway east to Brindisi, where we would catch the ferry to Greece. We took a bus to the outskirts of Rome, found the A1 to Naples, and stuck our thumbs out as a rattly convoy of canvas-covered trucks approached. One pulled over, the door flew open, and the two men inside ushered us into the space behind their seats.
As the truck rumbled south, the animated Italians in the front bombarded us with questions about each of us and our relationship. Thinking I would avoid offending local mores, I told them that Linda and I were cousins—a big mistake. They proceeded to ply me with a bottle of red wine as they spoke excitedly of their beautiful home in Catania, Sicily, the place where they were headed. We must come with them, they urged, so Linda could meet their handsome, eligible cousin. If the two of them hit it off, I, as Linda’s cousin, could give the bride away. “Perfecto!”
Through a wine-soaked stupor, I registered in horror that the truck had passed the cutoff to Brindisi. We were speeding toward Catania. Kidnapped! Our elated captors ignored our increasingly agitated pleas to disembark; then fortune smiled on us. Somewhere south of Naples, the truck directly ahead blew a tire. Our driver pulled over behind it, and his partner opened the passenger-side door. At once, I grabbed the guitar and backpacks and jumped out with Linda right behind. Our captor grabbed her arm, and I pulled the other one in a tug of war that I won with the critical help of Linda’s well-placed kick. Once free, we ran up the highway leaving the evil convoy in the dust and a lonely Sicilian cousin to ponder what could have been. Ciao, Italy.
After leaving for college and throughout graduate school, I stayed connected to the vibrant LA folk music scene during family visits. My old high school picking buddies kept me plugged into the widening circle of musicians drawn to the West Coast capital of the folk revival. At the epicenter was the Ash Grove, a club where I often hung out to hear the country blues masters who cycled through. Occasionally, the owner, Ed Pearl, aware that I had time and a car, enlisted me to shepherd visiting performers around town.
The highlight for me was the weekend I served as driver for Mance Lipscomb, the great Texas blues guitarist and songster. On our long hauls across the sprawling city, this warm and wise man filled the time with endless stories, philosophical reflections, and autobiographical anecdotes. Mance spoke of his life as a tenant farmer, who on Saturday nights played his music for audiences in and around his hometown of Navasoto. And how everything changed in 1960, when urban collectors in search of country blues artists discovered him at age 65 and brought him north to record and perform.
Crisscrossing the freeways of La La Land, I could see that Mance took his new life of far-flung travel and adoring crowds in stride. He was the same whatever the venue—riding in the car, a small house concert, a noisy club, a big folk festival. His personality, like his music, exuded a captivating authenticity that entranced those fortunate enough to hear him, none more than his 20-year-old chauffeur.
On a Saturday night in 1963, I threw a music party at my parents’ Studio City apartment. An extraordinary group of up-and-coming musicians and singers showed up. The virtuoso guitarists included David Cohen, a respected studio musician, and the brilliant Steve Mann, who soon after partnered with a young blues singer from Texas named Janis Joplin—until mental illness brought him crashing down. Roger McGuinn, then known as Jim and later of the Byrds, played smooth licks on his 12-string guitar as he sang traditional songs with rhythmic power (folk rock was germinating in that room.)
When the doorbell rang, the jam was in full swing. At the front door stood an older woman (perhaps 40) and a teenage kid with a big guitar. She asked, “Is it okay if Ry joins you?” I didn’t know young Ry Cooder, but welcomed him in. The others made way as he pulled out his Martin and, picking with eye-popping wizardry, nearly stole the show. His mom returned all too early to fetch the budding master.
Perry Lederman was a guitar genius and the pivotal influence in my musical development. I met Perry in Berkeley when I was 20 and spent the next year and a half hanging out and studying with him. I thanked my lucky stars for the good fortune of crossing his path, and still do.
Before Perry, my primary instrument had been the banjo. As a teenager, I also learned basic guitar and a raft of songs from my wonderful Uncle Walter, an infectiously enthusiastic music-maker and uncommonly affable human being. I then sought out big David Cohen, the studio musician who later came to my music party. He introduced me to enough technique to launch a lifelong hobby of breaking down recorded guitar pieces.
Then off to Berkeley, where I fell in with the burgeoning folk set. At 38, Rolf Cahn, who had recorded several albums for Folkways (blues with a German accent!), was the gray eminence. Rolf and Debbie Green opened a folk club called The Cabale on San Pablo Avenue. (Debbie had taught Joan Baez guitar and much of her repertoire back in their Boston University days.) The club featured a stellar lineup of recently rediscovered artists like Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Fred McDowell, along with up-and-coming urban folkies.
That’s where I first heard Perry Lederman, who, paired with singer Al Young, became a Cabale regular. Perry was a charismatic guitar player, a true artist who endlessly invented riffs both lyrical and muscular, yet always firmly rooted in a traditional foundation. He’d wrap his small body around his antique Martin, forming one being with laser-eyes and flying fingers. His left-hand vibrato, inspired by his own teacher, Josh White, was otherworldly. All who beheld these intoxicating performances understood we were witnessing a fleeting, transcendent moment in the art of the guitar. For my part, I stowed my banjo permanently in its case, befriended Perry, and started working long and hard to play like him. Still am.
Sadly, Perry’s recorded legacy from his Sixties heyday consists only of a couple of poor-quality cuts taped at a live performance. How did this musician’s musician fall through the cracks of public awareness? Part of the answer lies with Perry’s hubris in refusing to play the careerist game. The story goes that when Bob Dylan asked Perry to back him up on Dylan’s breakout Freewheelin’ album, Perry snapped, “I don’t have time for this shit. I’m going to be famous.” More to the point, Perry’s reckless life, marred by a broken marriage, drugs, and petty hustles, cost him the wider recognition he deserved.
When I headed to New York City for graduate school in 1964, I feared that Perry was doomed to drift further down the skids, and that I would never see him again. But the story has a poignant epilogue. Thirty years later, Elijah Wald, a writer and musician, told me about discovering an amazing guitar player by the name of Perry Lederman. Perry had survived! A couple of years earlier, Elijah’s brother had stumbled across a down-and-out busker playing beautifully in a doorway on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Elijah’s parents, George Wald, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and Ruth Hubbard, a Harvard professor of biology, took Perry under their wing. To help him get back on his feet, they brought him to stay in their summer house in Woods Hole on Cape Cod. There, he met a lovely potter, got married, had a daughter, and started performing again in clubs around The Cape.
Perry and I had an emotional reunion at the Walds’ Cambridge house in 1994. He remembered well our old times in Berkeley, but I barely recognized the gaunt figure before me, who, I was soon to learn, was suffering from terminal lung cancer. Still, his guitar playing, although lacking the tone and intensity I recalled, remained great by any standards. Over the next several months, Elijah and I repeatedly drove from Cambridge to the Cape to spend time and play music with Perry. With my help, Elijah produced a CD of his music drawn from contemporary live tapes and tunes we recorded in his living room. Perry was an instrumentalist, never a vocalist, but on the night before he died, we captured him singing an old spiritual. “This World Is Not My Home” became the title track of the CD.
Do you know where you were on the first Earth Day? I spent that sunny spring day in 1970 in a dark midtown studio recording the soundtrack for an antiwar movie called Cowards. Danny Kalb of Blues Project fame was originally slated to do it, but when he dropped out, my singer-songwriter friend Steve Lerner was offered the job. We quickly assembled a band with Steve on vocals and rhythm guitar, me on my Fender Telecaster, and other friends on drums, bass, and back-up vocal. It took all day and many takes in that cave festooned with audio equipment, but our band, christened the Merry-Go-Round, finally grooved.
Later that year, Cowards screened at the Cannes Film Festival before opening at the Little Carnegie Theater in Manhattan. The opportunistic director and screenwriter Simon Nuchtern, hoping to capitalize on the prevailing youthful antiwar sentiment, fused a timely theme (draft evasion) with a timeless one (sex). The film’s opening run was deservedly short, and it didn’t fare much better when rereleased two years later as Love-In ’72. The reviews ranged from “flat footed” (New York Times) to “best forgotten” (TV Guide) despite a cameo appearance by monologist Spalding Gray. The critics neglected to praise the fabulous soundtrack.