#52 -- The Weavers

We just tipped our hat to the Motown hit machine.  Here's another admiring heads up, this time to the Folk music of the '40s and '50s.  With The Weavers, traditional ballads, blues, social commentary and the sing-along pointed popular music towards inclusiveness, protest against injustice, and the first hints of world music.

I was raised on such standards as "On Top of Old Smoky", "Good Night Irene" (I can hear my mother's mother singing it).  And, at a summer camp run by an ex-New Yorker who was steeped in organized labor, sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "If I Had a Hammer" and "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena"--the second of these I sang well over 100 times.  

Naturally, "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", another summer camp hit, was considered a bit risque when, as a teen, I got to sing about both kissing and drinking.  

Weavers material covered by other artists includes "Sloop John B" and "Wimoweh (the Lion Sleeps Tonight)".

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Each band will be graded on four things:

  1.  Innovation

  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American

  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)

  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

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4/3/6/1 = 14 out of a perfect 40

'Good For Him' Fact:  the late Pete Seeger left the Weavers in 1958 when he objected to the group 'selling out' for a tobacco company radio jingle.