12. Citations and References
What Was the Berkeley Folk Music Festival?
“the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island….” For more on the history of the Newport Folk Festival, see Rick Massimo, I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017) and Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties (New York: Dey Street/HarperCollins, 2015).
“The Berkeley Festival offers an entrance into crucial questions of culture and democracy in the United States during the decades after World War II….” For an overview of folk music festivals in the US, see Ronald D. Cohen, A History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008). The Berkeley Folk Music Festival also connects to a history of folk music on university campuses. See, for instance, David Blake, “‘Everybody Makes Up Folksongs’: Pete Seeger’s 1950s College Concerts and the Democratic Potential of Folk Music,” Journal of the Society for American Music 12, 4 (November 2018), 383–424; Archie Green, “The Campus Folksong Club: A Glimpse at the Past,” in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, ed. Neil Rosenberg (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 61-72; and rich photographic representation of the University of Chicago Folk Festival in Raeburn Flerlage, Chicago Folk: Images of the Sixties Music Scene, ed. Bob Riesman (Toronto: ECW Press, 2009). For a focus on the folk revival in the Bay Area, see Mark F. DeWitt, Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2008) and Evo Bluestein and Juliana Harris, eds., Road to Sweet’s Mill: The West Coast Folk Music Revival in the 1960s & 70s (Fresno, CA: The Press at California State University Fresno, 2017).
For overviews of the folk revival’s overall history, see Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Ronald D. Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002); Ronald D. Cohen, ed., Wasn’t That a Time! Firsthand Accounts of the Folk Music Revival (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1995); Rachel Clare Donaldson, “I Hear America Singing”: Folk Music and National Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014); David King Dunaway and Molly Beer, Singing Out: An Oral History of America’s Folk Music Revivals (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Grace Elizabeth Hale, “Black as Folk: The Folk Music Revival, the Civil Rights Movement, and Bob Dylan,” A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 84-131; Robbie Lieberman, My Song Is My Weapon: People’s Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-50 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); Kip Lornell, Exploring American Folk Music: Ethnic, Grassroots, and Regional Traditions in the United States (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2012); Stephen Petrus and Ronald D. Cohen, Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2015); Rosenberg, ed. Transforming Tradition; Barry Shank, “‘That Wild Mercury Sound’: Bob Dylan and the Illusion of American Culture,” Boundary 2, 9, 1 (Spring 2002), 97-123; and Dick Weissman, Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (New York: Continuum, 2005).
For more about the history of Berkeley in the 1960s, see W. J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley At War: The 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) and the documentary film Berkeley in the Sixties, dir. Mark Kitchell (Oakland: California Newsreel, 1990). For more about the East Bay and Bay Area’s history more generally in the post-World War II era, see Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Two additional books that provide context are the museum exhibition catalog What’s Going On?: California and the Vietnam Era, eds. Marcia A., Eymann and Charles Wollenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) and West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California, eds. Iain Boal, Janferie Stone, Michael Watts, and Cal Winslow (Oakland: PM Press, 2012).
“When a deeper history of conquest, the crazed years of the Gold Rush, and more recent waves of migration to the Bay Area….” For more about the history of conquest in California, see Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). On Gold Rush history, see H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Doubleday, 2002) and Brian Roberts, American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Among the rich range of scholarship on immigrant and ethnic experiences in the Bay Area, see Tomás F. Summers Sandoval, Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Wendy Rouse, The Children of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Judy Yung, Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Meredith Oda, The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); and Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). For more about the history of the Bay Area as Silicon Valley emerged, see Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin, 2005); and Margaret O’Mara, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (New York: Penguin Press, 2019).
“Met up with the futuristic, technological postwar setting of jets, aeronautics, computers, the modern research university, new suburban housing tracts, and other unprecedented factors….” For more about the history of the Bay Area as Silicon Valley emerged, see Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin, 2005); Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and Margaret O’Mara, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (New York: Penguin Press, 2019).
Barry Olivier: Festival Director
“The folk festivals on the campus at UC Berkeley….” John Fogerty, Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2015), 56. For more on the influence of the Festival and taking guitar lessons with Olivier on Fogerty, see Thomas M. Kitts, John Fogerty: An American Son (New York: Routledge, 2015), 15-16.
“Barry is a genius….” Sam Hinton, “Handful of Songs,” unpublished manuscript, ed. Adam Miller, 222.
The Early Years: 1958-1961
“He had been performing folk music around Berkeley since he was a teenager….” For more on Barry Olivier’s childhood and background, see Olivier, “Berkeley Folk Music Festival History and Collection,” BFMFC.
“As for my part in this festival….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Betty Connors, 21 April 1958, Box 21, Folder 1, Records 1958, BFMFC, 2.
“The folk song collector Frank Warner….” For more on Frank Warner, see Cantwell, “Prologue: Tom Dooley,” When We Were Good, 1-10.
“The 1958 ‘Weekend of Folk Music’ Festival at UC was one of the most important….” Barry Olivier, “1959 Summer Folk Music Festival Proposal Documents,” n.d., Box 21, Folder 2, Records 1959, BFMFC, 1.
“The innovative African-American performer Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller….” For more on Jesse Fuller, see the oral history interviews available online in the Jesse Fuller Collection, African American Museum & Library at Oakland Public Library.
“The folklorist Alan Lomax delivered a lecture….” For more on Alan Lomax, see John Szwed, Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World (New York: Viking, 2010). See also, Shirley Collins, America Over The Water: A Musical Journey With Alan Lomax (London: SAF Publishing, 2005).
“The unannounced appearance by Woody Guthrie’s running buddy and eventual folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott….” For more on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, see Hank Reineke, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009).
“The New Lost City Ramblers, who were quickly gaining a reputation on the college folk circuit for their faithful renditions of old-time American stringband music from the 1920s and 30s.” For more on the New Lost City Ramblers, see Ray Allen, Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010).
“Skillfully shaped….” Al Frankenstein, “UC’s Folk Festival Is Skillfully Shaped,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1960, Box 21, Folder 3, Records 1960, BFMFC.
“Over 15,000 people attended approximately….” Robert Shelton, “The Folks Out West,” New York Times, 22 July 1962, Box 24, Folder 8, Winter 1962 Press Clippings, BFMFC.
“The Berkeley Festival provides a kind of Cape Canaveral….” John Bryan, “Folk Concert Well Received,” S.F. Examiner, 29 June 1961, 26, Box 21, Folder 4, Records 1961, BFMFC.
“Would have Charlie Seeger discussing theoretical aspects….” Sam Hinton, “Handful of Songs,” unpublished manuscript, ed. Adam Miller, 222. For more about Charles Seeger, see Ann M. Pescatello, Charles Seeger: A Life in American Music (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).
“spirit that pervaded both audience….” Olivier, “1959 Summer Folk Music Festival Proposal Documents,” Box 21, Folder 2, Records 1959, BFMFC, 1.
The Height of the Folk Revival: 1962-1964
“Free Speech Movement….” For more on the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, see Robert Cohen and Reginald E. Zelnik, eds. The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); David Lance Goines, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1993); and the documentary film Berkeley in the Sixties.
“Many reviewers of the events at Berkeley in the summer of 1962 were particularly drawn to Bessie Jones and Roscoe Holcomb….” See the newspaper articles and reviews in Box 24 Folder 08 Press Clippings 1962, BFMFC.
“bringing together Southern vernacular musical styles across the segregated color line….” For historical context, see Karl Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). See also, Hale, “Black as Folk.” Among the many studies of this important topic, see Matthew D. Morrison’s essays, “Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, 3 (December 2019): 781–823 and “The Sound(s) of Subjection: Constructing American Popular Music and Racial Identity through Blacksound,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 27, 1 (January 2017), 13–24.
“The Festival enjoys probably the best physical setting and organization….” Robert Shelton, “The Folks Out West,” quoted in Olivier, “Berkeley Folk Music Festival History and Collection,” 7.
“Some 20,000 people attended according to Olivier’s box office receipts….” Lawrence Linderman, “Big Folk at Berkeley,” Cavalier, November 1964, 23, Box 25, 2 Press Clippings 1964, BFMFC.
“Sam Hinton commented that we now worry….” Barry Olivier, “Winter Folk Music Festival Comments,” Box 21, Folder 5, Records 1962 Winter Festival, BFMFC, 1.
“Discussing subjects such as ‘The Folk Revival in the United States’ and “Topical Songs.’….” Berkeley 1963 Brochure, Box 49, Folder 6, 6th Annual Festival, June 1963, BFMFC.
“The African-American civil rights movement reached its heyday of integrationist activism, musicians and audiences explored criss-crosses of race and genre….” Among the many studies of the early-middle 1960s moment within the larger African-American civil rights movement, see Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
“The presence of renowned traditional ballad scholar and Berkeley English professor Bertrand Bronson….” See Bertrand Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads: With Their Texts, According to the Extant Records of Great Britain and America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959); The Ballad as Song (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969); and The Singing Tradition of Child’s Popular Ballads (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).
“He had rented the basement apartment of his house in Berkeley to the eccentric Harry Smith….” See John Cohen, “A Rare Interview with Harry Smith, December 1968,” Sing Out! 19, 1 (April–May 1969), 9, reprinted in American Magus Harry Smith: A Modern Alchemist, ed. Paola Igliori (New York: Inanout Press, 1996), np.
“Mayne and Janet’s father was the famous ‘myth and symbol school’ American Studies scholar Henry Nash Smith….” See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950).
“The Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952….” See Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, ed. Harry, Smith, originally released 1952; first released on CD by Smithsonian Folkways, SFW 40090, 1997.
“Arriving in Berkeley in a van that barely made it from North Carolina and back home….” Comment from Jim Beaver, Obituary for The Rev. Joseph Emmett “J.E.,” Independent Tribune, 19 January 2020.
“Smith in fact planned to include one of their songs on a Volume Four of his edited collection that did not see the light of day until 2000….” Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4, Revenant Records, 2000; also released on LP as Anthology Of American Folk Music Volume Four: Rhythmic Changes, Mississippi Records MRP-073, 2014.
“Mainer had been an important participant in the formation of country music….” For more on J.E. Mainer and his family’s musical history, see Chris Strachwitz, “J.E. Mainer Interview,” The Chris Strachwitz Collection, n.d.
“Lomax would later record J.E….” See Szwed, The Man Who Recorded the World, 145-146.
“Chris Strachwitz also captured the group for an album, The Legendary Family From The Blue Ridge Mountains….” J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers, The Legendary Family From The Blue Ridge Mountains Arhoolie F5002, 1963. See J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers Album Sleeve, Box 37, Folder 5, Miscellaneous Posters, BFMFC.
“We maintain an informality in all the events….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Glenn Mainer, Box 37, Folder 4, Mainer, J.E., BFMFC, 1.
“In 1964, the Seventh Berkeley Festival attracted 7,000 fans to the final Jubilee concert alone….” Bill Steele, “Seventh Festival: Folk Festival Performers Draw New Respect,” n.d., Box 25, Folder 3, Press Clippings 1965, BFMFC.
“It featured, most excitingly, the first major West Coast appearance by “Mississippi” John Hurt….” See Philip R. Ratcliffe, Mississippi John Hurt: His Life, His Times, His Blues (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 120-173 and Dick Waterman, “John Hurt; Patriarch Hippie,” Sing Out!. (February/March 1967), 7.
“Watson’s own story reminds us that folk revivals are not simple progressions from acoustic, rural roots to electrifed, urban contexts….” See Kent Gustavson, Blind But Now I See: The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson (New York: Blooming Twig Books, 2012).
“That song inaugurated the 1960s folk revival when the commercial group the Kingston Trio….” See Cantwell, “Prologue: Tom Dooley,” When We Were Good.
“When Watson began to perform the song for folk revival audiences, however, he chose an interpretation drawn from the Kingston Trio…..” Listen to Doc Watson, “Tom Dooley,” Doc Watson, Vanguard VRS-9152, 1964.
“He performed duets with mandolinist and bluegrass inventor Bill Monroe….” Their collaborations can be heard on, among other releases, the album Bill & Doc: Live Duet Recordings 1963-1980 (Off The Record, Vol. 2), Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40064, 1993.
“Bill Monroe, whose career was also resuscitated by Ralph Rinzler in the 1960s….” See Jim Rooney, Big Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters (New York: Dial Press, 1971), 79-85.
“An African-American Mississippi songster who loved country music and a white Appalachian flatpicker who loved the blues joined together to perform music across the color line….” See Michael J. Kramer, “Glitching History: Using Image Deformance to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival,” Current Research in Digital History 1 (2018).
“Having grown up singing folk songs in Palo Alto and Cambridge, Massachusetts.” For more about Baez’s upbringing see Elizabeth Thomson, Joan Baez: The Last Leaf (London: Palazzo, 2020).
“Almeda Riddle also performed….” See Almeda Riddle: A Singer and Her Songs—Almeda Riddle’s Book of Ballads. ed. Roger D. Abrahams (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1970).
“Joining the Festival was also a newcomer, Alice Stuart….” See Michael J. Kramer, “Video: Alice Stuart in Conversation and Concert @ Northwestern University, 25 May 2012,” Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project Blog.
“In the 1940s, Green had been a shipwright in San Francisco….” For more about Archie Green’s career, see Sean Burns, Archie Green: The Making of a Working-Class Hero (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).
“Peter Tamony, a local folk-etymologist who tracked vernacular culture with a passion….” For more about Peter Tamony, see Archie Green, “Peter Tamony (1902-1985),” in Torching the Fink Books and Other Essays on Vernacular Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 183-198.
“Always strongly opinionated on questions of authenticity, disliking what he called “Mickey Mouse music,” Strachwitz’s legacy to the Northern California folk scene and the revival as a whole is easily as important as any other figure….” See This Ain’t No Mouse Music!: The Story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records, Kino Lorber, 2015.
“I’ve never enjoyed a Festival more than this one. You have REAL people out there….” Doc Watson quoted in Johnny Rodrigues, “Joan Baez Provided Electricity,” Berkeley Gazette, 4 July 1964, Box 25, Folder 2, Press Clippings 1964, BFMFC.
“Barry Olivier issued a confident announcement to ‘West Coast Folk Leaders.’….” Barry Olivier, “Letter to West Coast Folk Music Leaders,” 1 September 1964, Box 22, Folder 1, Records 1964, BFMFC.
“The ‘Great Folk Scare,’ as some would later call it….” The origins of this phrase are obscure. Some credit it to folksinger Utah Phillips, others to Dave Van Ronk, others to Chicago-based folksinger Ed Holstein. See Dave Van Ronk with Elijah Wald, The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir (2005; updated edition, 2013, New York: Da Capo Press, 2013).
The Transition Years: 1965-1966
“With great controversy, Bob Dylan infamously “went electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island….” See Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!.
“Bob Dylan, though not here in person, was certainly here in spirit….” Monroe Moen, “Strings and Things: Good Show in Berkeley,” The Independent, 5 July 1964, Box 25, Folder 3, Press Clippings 1965, BFMFC.
“Dylan himself thought as much in his memoir….” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 69-70.
“One would think that drawing close to 20,000 participants the previous year….” Lawrence Linderman, “Big Folk at Berkeley.”
“We had a magnificent festival….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Forrest Tregea, Box 22, Folder 5, Records 1965, BFMFC, 1.
“‘This year,’ he wrote to topical songwriter Phil Ochs….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Phil Ochs, Box 38, Folder 2, Ochs, Phil, BFMFC, 1.
“‘I feel that at the Festival this year, we have the opportunity to make the first major statement’….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Matthew Katz, 8 June 1966, Box 35, Folder 10, Jefferson Airplane, BFMFC, 1.
“Perhaps he came to the Berkeley Festival as a guest of the Jefferson Airplane….” See Dennis McNally, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 170.
“Olivier would try to book the Dead the following year and at the final 1970 Berkeley Folk Music Festival…” Letter from Barry Olivier to Danny Rifkin, 27 May 1967, Box 33, Folder 11, The Grateful Dead, BFMFC, 1 and Bill Belmont Notes, n.d. (circa summer 1970), Box 29, Folder 10, Big Brother & the Holding Co.
“Most famous for her stinging critique of postwar consumer society ‘Little Boxes’….” For more about the song, see the website Charles H. Smith and Nancy Schimmel, “Little Boxes,” Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems.
“I remember one year he had a wonderful group he got from Mexico…” Hinton, “Handful of Songs,” 222.
“I am now finally in the unsafe camp….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Ralph Gleason, 23 July 1966, Box 26, Folder 3, Correspondence 1966, BFMFC.
The Counterculture Years: 1967-1970
“This is going to be a revolutionary year for us…” Letter from Barry Olivier to Phil Spector, 16 May 1967, Box 26 Folder 4, Correspondence 1967, BFMFC.
“We face a musical revolution on the West Coast, particularly in San Francisco….” Memo from Barry Olivier to Forrest E. Tregea and Garth Blier, 12 May 1967, Box 26, Folder 4, Correspondence 1967, BFMFC.
“Olivier assembled a long list of conceptual ideas….” Barry Olivier, “Conceptual ideas for 1967 Berkeley folk Music Festival,” n.d., Box 22, Folder 4, Records 1967, BFMFC.
“That would become the ballet Astarte, which premiered in the Fall of 1967….” See Sasha Anawalt, The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1996), 241-250.
“Meier had begun writing excitedly about rock ‘n’ roll music as the folk music of the young….” See Kurt Von Meier, “Rock and Roll and the Avant-Garde,” Artscanada 25, 2 (June 1968); “Elvis Aron Presley and the History of Rock and Roll,” The New York Free Press, series of five articles, July-August 1968; “Brian Wilson: The Beethoven of Rock,” Eye 1, 6, August 1968; and “History of Rock and Roll,” unpublished manuscript, n.d.
“The label Drag City released an album in 1998….” The Red Crayola, Live 1967, Drag City DC92, 1998.
“Some hated the music….” N.A., “The Story So Far of the Red Crayola and the Red Krayola: A Biography,” Drag City Records Press Release, n.d. See also, ED Denson, “Folk Scene: Even Mellow Yello has a mark-up?,” Berkeley Barb, 21-28 July 1967, Box 25, Folder 5, Press Clippings 1967, BFMFC; Laurie Lewis, Instagram comment to Michael J. Kramer, 6 April 2021; Dev Singh, oral history interview with Michael J. Kramer, 17 April 2021.
“Serving on the Festival staff, Dev Singh relayed back to Barry Olivier….” Barry Olivier, “Barry Olivier Is a Punk,” Box 22, Folder 4, Records 1967, BFMFC.
“Hal Cohen noted….” Hal Cohen, “Napalm Chills,” Berkeley Barb, 7-13 July 1967, Box 25, Folder 5, Press Clippings 1967, BFMFC.
“Calling out the director from the stage for not returning Davis’s contract in time….” See Barry Olivier, “Berkeley Folk Music Festival History and Collection,” Box 1, Folder 1, History of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival, Berkeley Folk Music Festival Collection, Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Libraries (hereafter BFMFC). 2.
“Whatever happened to folk music?” Marilyn Tucker, “You Can Have Folk Festival,” n.p., n.d., Box 25, Folder 5, Press Clippings 1967, BFMFC.
“The rise of the psychedelic ballrooms such as Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium and events such as the Monterey International Pop Festival….” Among other studies of the rise of the so-called San Francisco Sound, see Michael J. Kramer, The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
“Olivier had designed a folkloric Uncle Sam figure for the print program. In the overheated moment of the Vietnam War, the radical politics of the New Left, and the counterculture, a few older citizens of the Bay Area wrote to the University of California in protest….” 10th Annual Berkeley Folk Music Festival Brochure, Box 49, Folder 10, 10th Annual Festival June-July 1967, BFMFC and “Letters About Use of Uncle Sam Image,” Letter dated 22 June 1967 from Barry Olivier to Mr. and Mrs. William R. Mullins. Letter dated June 20, 1967 from Margery F. Mullins to Barry Olivier. Letter dated 22 June 1967 from Barry Olivier to University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Roger Heyns, Box 22, Folder 4 Records 1967, BFMFC.
“The year 1968 became known across the world as the “year of the barricades.'” See David Caute, The Year of the Barricades: A Journey through 1968 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Charles Kaiser, 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture, and the Shaping of a Generation (New York: Grove Press, 1988); Mark Kurlansky,1968: The Year That Rocked the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003); and Jeremi Suri, The Global Revolutions of 1968 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007).
“The 1968 Festival once again attracted large crowds over the course of its four days.” John L. Wasserman, “A ‘Jubilee’ Triumph at UC,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10 July 1968, Box 25, Folder 6, Press Clippings 1968, BFMFC; Paul Hertelendy, “Music Kaleidoscope in Greek Theater,” Oakland Tribune, 8 July 1968, Box 25, Folder 6, Press Clippings 1968, BFMFC.
“We put a great emphasis on the exploration—as usual….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Charles Seeger, 27 June 1968, Box 26, Folder 5, Correspondence 1968, BFMFC.
“Our festival has always been known for exceptionally good control….” John Chambless, “Report on Folk Festival Dance, July 4th, 1968,” 2, Box 22, Folder 5, Records 1968, BFMFC.
“Mike Seeger would eventually record them and others….” Berkeley Farms: Oldtime and Country Style Music of Berkeley, Folkways Records, 1972, FW02436, FA 2436.
“Olivier had been hired by various newly flush rock impresarios to put on what became known as the Wild West Festival….” For more about the Wild West Festival, see Kramer, “The Wild West Is You and Me In a Cooperative Association,” The Republic of Rock, 94-131.
“As identity politics emerged….” Most histories of the 1960s cover this political shift, but a close study of it is John Hazlett, My Generation: Collective Autobiography And Identity Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998).
“Seemed to confirm the very nature of folk music itself….” John Martin, KCRA-TV, 23 October 1969, Center for Sacramento History, Internet Archive.
“Declared the 1970 festival the fifteenth annual one….” Letter from Barry Olivier to Dev Singh, 27 August 1970, Box 26, Folder 6, Correspondence 1969-1970, BFMFC.
“…more kinds of “ethnic” musical heritage….” For the shift from “folk” to “ethnic” music, see Ray Allen, “In Pursuit of Authenticity: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Postwar Folk Music Revival,” Journal of the Society for American Music 4, 3 (August 2010), 277–305; Michael F. Scully, The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); and DeWitt, Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California.
“The Mexican-American ‘Norteño’ band Los Tigres Del Norte….” See Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 7-18; and Elijah Wald, Global Minstrels: Voices of World Music (New York: Routledge, 2006), 127-132.
“Barry Olivier wrote to Jabberwock Coffeehouse owner Bill Ehlert….” Letter from Barry Olivier to William Ehlert, 6 February 1970, 1, Box 26, Folder 6, Correspondence 1969-1970, BFMFC.
“Freight and Salvage….” N.A., “Freight and Salvage History and Mission,” Freight and Salvage Website, n.d.
“A Berkeley Fiddler’s Convention started in 1968….” See Rick Shubb, “The Berkeley Fiddlers’ Convention,” n.d.
“Olivier himself would sometimes contribute ideas to the non-profit Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse….” Larry Kelp, “The Berkeley Renaissance,” Berkeley Insider 1, 10 (November 1993): 19-21; Conversation with Michael J. Kramer, 23 December 2013.
Other Festivals: The Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive and the West Coast Folk Scene
“He was even asked by a group of rock music impresarios to direct the Wild West Festival.” For more about the Wild West Festival, see Kramer, “The Wild West Is You and Me In a Cooperative Association,” The Republic of Rock, 94-131.
“Just as New Left political activists asked….” See James Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); Todd Gitlin, The Sixties : Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987); Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal (1982; reprint, Rutgers University Press, 1989); James J. Farrell, The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism (New York: Routledge, 1997); Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Alice Echols, Shaky Ground: The ’60s and Its Aftershocks (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); John McMillian and Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002); and Van Gosse, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Conclusions
“The ‘Long 1960s’….” See Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).
“A venue that was, after all, modeled after the ancient amphitheater at Epidaurus….” For more on the history of the Hearst Greek Amphitheater, see Carol Hyman, “UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre Turns 100 Years Old This Month,” 11 September 2003.
“Such as Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog,….” See Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture.
“Silicon Valley dreams….” See Markoff, What the Dormouse Said and O’Mara, The Code.