Folk Festival Fails to Excite

Sixty-six thousand people attended the Newport Folk Festival last weekend.

Some came to hear music.

Many others came to worship the priests and priestesses of their various religions. (The high priest and priestess, Bob Dylan and Joan Bezz, were noticeably absent.)

On two successive nights the fans demanded encores from Buffy sainte Marie, a University of Massachusetts graduate who represents "good" and the cause of the American Indian in a trembling, affected and poorly accompanied voice. Simultaneously, they ignored the amazing performance of Chicago blues giant Howling Wolf and the musical genious of Ali Akbar Kahn, sarod player of India.

The money paid by the teeny-boppers, nevertheless, provided some excellent music that prevailed despite an insensitive audience and several pretentious organizational efforts of the festival's administration.

The quality of music heard at the festival seemed inversely related to the cost of hearing it. The Sunday morning religious concert, the best of the festival, was free to the public. Dorothy Love, singing "Come into My House" backed by her red-robed Gospel Harmonettes, gave one of the most beautiful and moving performances I have ever heard at Newport.

Daytime workshops charged only a small general admission and produced some of the festival's best music. Here the musicians played in intimate atmosphere for attentive audiences and had enough time to work into their particular folk idiom.

Sunday afternoon theoretically highlighted "New Directions" in folk music. Happily, however, two legendary figures of my youth appeared unannounced. Apparently some devoted director had ferreted them out of California.

Tim Hardin reportedly left for the West Coast a year or two ago aboard a Greyhound bus with the intention of "kicking the habit" enroute. People have told me for some time that Hardin is the best white male blues singer they ever heard. They were right: His "Old Time Smuggling Man" was great.

When I last heard of Long Gone Niles he was singing in the now defunct Insomniac in Hernosa Beach. At Newport Long Gone evoked memories of early, classic rock and roll with "Shake it, Baby, Shake it."

Cambridge bred duo, Mitch Greenhill (guitar) and Jeff Gutcheon (piano), stood out as the most inventive and amusing of the new performers. Their performance of "The Sweet Wild Turkey Waltz" was a festival occasion.

A platitudinous monologue written by Allan Lomax marred Saturday night's concert. The script eulogized America's "wide prairies" and "tumble-down churches" and was intended to unify the program. Unfortunately, it only succeeded in flattening an evening that included such highly original talents as Joseph Spence, Ed Young and the Southern Fife And Drum Corps, Yomo Toro, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Billie and Dede Pierce, and the Lovin' Spoonful. The eagerly anticipated Chuck Berry failed to appear.

Friday night offered a "Battle of Music" featuring a fiddle contest, blues cutting, ballad topping, and gospel battle. This gimmick consumed a great deal of musical time and allowed Dorothy Love and the Gospel Harmonettes and the Swan Silvertones, led by Claude Jetter's beautifully controlled falsetto, only two songs apiece. The Gospel Harmonettes sang again Sunday morning but the Swan Silvertones left immediately for a revival in Belglade, Florida.

The simplicity of emcee Pete Seeger along with Ali Akbar Khan and the Kweskin Jug Band saved the Sunday night concert. Khan displayed an amazing command of the sarod and improvised brilliantly, building a raga that totally engrossed the third of the audience that was seriously listening.

Faced with following Khan, Geoff Muldaur of the Jug Band quipped, "If Ravi Shankar can't Ali Akbar Khan" and completely reset the mood of the evening.

Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band turned everybody on.

Several months of constant booking has made this colorful and exuberant group a tight knit performing unit. Almost everyone sings at some point and all play several instruments including a few home-made ones. The band's renditions of two old time rags and "Mr. Hippy" John Hurt's "Richland Woman's Blues" were musically satisfying and highly entertaining.JUDY COLLINS