The Mayor Of MacDougal Street (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
The Coen brothers stole his songs for "Llewyn Davis," but Dave Van Ronk is much more than that twerpy little fictional distortion. No other single performer embodies the spirit of the mid-sixties folk revival as perfectly as Van Ronk: its generosity, its respect for tradition, its openness to change. Dave Van Ronk was a native New Yorker who lived in the Village from the early 50's until his death in 2002. He played trad jazz during the decline of the card-carrying protest singers of the Seeger generation, began his solo gigs during the rise of the slicker professionals, the Oscar Brands and Theodore Bickels, and began making his mark in the folk scene during the late fifties. These were the days of the early folk revival, when--inspired by the authentic sounds of Harry Smith's 1952 anthology--a host of local college-age enthusiasts, talented but with few opportunities for work, congregated in Washington Square Park and the Folklore Center on McDougal and began to build a movement. Soon after, a more ambitious crowd of young people from all over the U.S. and Canada (Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joanie Mitchell, etc.) started working in the new clubs like the Gaslight, and the movement grew in professionalism and sophistication. Then Dylan hit big, and everything changed.This book is not an autobiography. It is Van Ronk's memoir of his involvement in the Village music scene. He says little about his mother or his ex-wife Terry, for example, but shares his own theories about folk music, relates a lot of good stories about musicians (including his encounters with roots artists like the Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt), spins a few good yarns about left-wing politics (Dave was an anarchist), and makes it clear why everybody he knew loathed the "beatniks" (not to be confused with "the beats," who were writers and musicians). He also speaks of the changes at the end of the sixties that made him temporarily bitter (yes, Bob Dylan comes in for a mention here), but he also demonstrates an overarching gratitude for his good fortune, for the gift of being at the center of a scene where so many good musical things were happening. This is a moving and entertaining book, particularly for the way it reveals the personality of Van Ronk: his self-taught erudition, his wit, his energy, his enthusiasm, and--above all--his generosity. Co-author Elijah Wald--a fine music critic--has here produced a small volume worthy of Johnson's Boswell, and he has done so without Boswell's considerable advantage of being able to follow his subject, with notebook in hand, off and on, for a score of years. True, Wald had some tapes recorded by Dave in anticipation of their collaboration, but the tapes themselves may have been few, for Dave succumbed to cancer soon after the book became an actual joint project instead of a mere shared dream. But the good news is that Wald had been Dave's guitar student for years, and had deliberately scheduled Dave's last appointment of the day for his lessons, hoping that by doing so he could engage his teacher in longer conversations. It worked: Dave often invited him for dinner, and the many nights he spent sitting at Dave's table, listening to Dave's record collection and treasuring his reminiscences lay the groundwork for what eventually became this marvelous "self-portrait" delivered convincingly in Dave's first-person voice. Occasionally the mask drops (for example, I detect a little more Wald than Dave in the early disquisitions on folk music), but for the most part the voice of Dave Van Ronk, as transmitted by Wald, is a persuasive and loving re-creation.For those of you who come to this book by way of the Coen Brother's film, know that--although the Coens may have filched a few details of Dave's life--the cautious, self absorbed, disagreeable Llewyn Davis is the antithesis of the expansive, gregarious Van Ronk. During the folk revival, Dave was a major presence, and, unlike most of the other musicians on the scene, he was married, relatively stable, with regular gigs and an honest-to-god Village apartment. He was an elder brother who routinely reached out to help younger performers. Unlike Llewyn, he didn't sleep on other people's couches: they--including the not-yet-great Dylan--slept on his.
I picked this book up as homework ahead of seeing the Coen Brothers' new flick, Inside Llewyn Davis later this week, a film loosely based on Van Ronk's memoirs. Now, if my memory is trustworthy (which it often is, but in this instance it is a bit fuzzy), I first discovered the music of Van Ronk some years back through my appreciation of the music of Bob Dylan. Van Ronk, nicknamed "the Mayor of MacDougal Street," was influential not only for Dylan but on many artists of the so-called "Great Folk Scare," or the "folk revival" of the 1960s. But, my discovery of Van Ronk may just as well have been through some of Van Ronk's influences -- my admiration for the music of many blues musicians, and in particular the Reverend Gary Davis. The first Van Ronk song that I picked up was on a collection of covers of Reverend Gary Davis songs -- in this case the song was "Soon My Work Will All Be Done," on the tribute album Gary Davis Style. Regardless of how I first discovered Van Ronk, I next developed a minor appreciation for his music through an album called Dave Van Ronk Sings. But it was not until I first heard of the new Coen Brothers film that I really dived into Van Ronk's musical repertoire, especially cultivating a growing appreciation for much of his later music (from the 1980s and beyond). I picked up The Mayor of MacDougal Street expecting an autobiography, but as Elijah Wald writes in the Afterword, "Dave never considered this an autobiography." Rather the "primary intention" was to give a "representation of Dave's memories and opinions about the 'Great Folk Scare.'" Though the work was ultimately finished by Wald, as Van Ronk passed before seeing this work to its end, it does paint an interesting picture of these early and mercurial years, filled with humorous anecdotes, engaging commentary on music and politics and fascinating descriptions of many giants and "first-rate second-rate" figures from this era, including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Mississippi John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis and Phil Ochs, among others. I often found the footnotes the most enjoyable part of the book, and I wished that some parts were expanded (his friendship with Dylan or Tom Paxton, for instance) while also feeling that other parts should have been condensed, but overall I found it an enjoyable read, even if it didn't leave me completely satisfied. The stories about Gary Davis (to whom an entire chapter is devoted) were some of my favorites. I enjoyed his political discourse in the third chapter. And, most of all, I enjoyed learning about Van Ronk's musical roots and his serendipitous journey to folk music. I always had thought of Van Ronk as a folk or blues singer, but his roots were really in traditional jazz -- he was just born too late to become a great trad jazz musician. And although I enjoy many of Van Ronk's jazz albums, as a fan of some of the music he's best known for, I'm sort of glad -- for myself at least -- that things worked out as they did. This book is a wonderful read for any fans of Van Ronk's music, or of the 60s New York folk scene in general. It is a portrait of a time when change was stirring in the wind, when big things were happening and when the old traditions of music greats like Mississippi John Hurt, Gary Davis and Muddy Waters were blending with the new. And I can't help but agree with Van Ronk that the musicians of this period were not necessarily any better than those of today, but the social conditions of the period were forever changing and the musicians were caught up in this revolutionary time when everything, including the music world was changing forever -- creating resentments for some and catapulting others to stardom. Van Ronk was never a big star, despite his prominence in this little folk community of the late-1950s and early-1960s, but he was a great musical interpreter and, it seems from this book, a good-humored, well-read and witty man to boot. I am now more excited than ever to see the new Coen Brothers film, and as a fan of their previous work (and from what I've heard of the movie so far) I don't expect to be disappointed.
What do You think about The Mayor Of MacDougal Street (2006)?
Reading it felt somewhat like sitting down for coffees and cigarettes with Van Ronk and listening to him talk about the old days. He spent years involved in anarchist politics, tells jokes that your Dad might tell*, interchanges Latin with merchant marine slang, and has inside gossip on nearly everyone playing folk music sometime from about 1955 onwards in Greenwich Village. All this to say he's a unique and intelligent voice. At times I felt he was forcing objectivity, perhaps to avoid criticism that he's just bitter he didn't 'make it'. Maybe I was looking too hard. I thought the Dylan passages were awkward. He knew Dylan well -- Dylan spent a lot of time on his couch when first in NYC and Van Ronk's first wife was Dylan's first manager -- and Van Ronk seems to know people will want to hear about him. But while he doles out some compliments, he doesn't seem to care for him as a person at all, and describes Dylan at the moment of their falling-out telling Van Ronk what he should do to make it as a star. This book is lovely when Van Ronk talks about music and the evolution of music. His thoughts on the interaction between trad jazz, folk and blues, on political folk, on Dylan's transition away from folk music, and on musicians like Reverend Gary Davis all make the book worth reading. *"...they would be over by the Sullivan Street side of the square, singing 'Hava Nagilah.' Footnote: Have another nagilah. Have two nagilahs, they're small."
—Lisa
Folkie Dave Van Ronk and author Elijah Wald wanted to write the definitive history of the Greenwich Village folk music scene in the 1950s and 1960s. Sadly that was not to be as Van Ronk died of cancer during the writing. What we have instead is the memoirs of Van Ronk that Wald put together from the discussions he had with Van Ronk. Despite the tragedy that prevented Van Ronk and Wald from achieving their original goal, the end result is one of the funniest music memoirs I've read.There is the fantastic incident of shipping illegal Japanese absinth to Cape Cod. There are some moving vignettes of Bob Dylan as he was starting his career in New York. Dylan may have had a difficult start (Sam Hood, the proprietor of the Gaslight Cafe stated that he would only use Dylan on crowded nights when he wanted to clear the house) but he had a heart of gold as we learn that he spend hours and hours by the hospital bed of Woody Guthrie who was at that time terminally ill. There is the tale of the origins of Van Ronk's musical talent that come from his Brooklyn Irish grandmother who never stopped singing except to talk or eat and who drove the neighbors nuts. And as the subject is counterculture we learn that the struggle of up and coming folk singers to make a living and get recognition was not an easy one. In the beginning, after several years of performing, Van Ronk had nothing to show for his troubles except a taste for Irish whiskey and a borderline case of malnutrition.This book is must for everyone interested in folk music, 1950s and 60s downtown New York as well as in American counterculture.
—Kimmo Sinivuori
Dave Van Ronk's memoir was filled with revelation after revelation for me about so many musicians I admire, and vividly evokes the scene in Greenwich Village in the '50's and '60's during what Van Ronk refers to as "The Great Folk Scare". Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and the Reverend Gary Davis are all wonderfully evoked here (warts and all but with love, in Mr. Zimmerman's case), and Van Ronk also shares his thoughts on the politics of the time, and the meaning of what actually is meant by the term "folk music", and the ethos and politics behind that as well. I was sad to have this book end.
—Mike
