Tag Archives: Folk

What we’re reading — Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman’s Visionary Record Label by Mick Houghton

If you’re a classic Rock fan with a particular interest in the 1960s like me then Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman’s Visonary Record Label by Mick Houghton is a must read piece of music history. As its long subtitle proclaims, Becoming Elektra is both a biography of legendary music executive Jac Holzman and also a testament to Elektra Records’ uniquely eclectic and pervasive impact on the popular music of the baby boomer generation. Houghton traces Holzman’s pioneering technical efforts and prescient eye for talent with admirable thoroughness from the Folk boom of the 1950s and early ’60s to the LA-based psychedelic Rock explosion of the late ’60s to the Soft Rock adult contemporary acts that came to dominate radio in the ’70s.

Most famous for signing The Doors, Holzman’s legacy is much more than that admittedly awesome feat. He comes across as a fascinating and driven guy with an unusually compassionate feeling for his artists, as well as something of a technical visionary and studio perfectionist with a super wide range of musical tastes. A native New Yorker from a reasonably prosperous family, Holzman returned to the city determined to make his mark in music after precociously forming Elektra while still in college. Like so many of his generation he found that the action was happening downtown in Greenwich Village, where he opened a record store in 1951 with a small recording studio in the back. Holzman’s soon realized that the sound on the records for the folk performers of the time was nothing like the richness of their live performances. So Holzman abandoned selling records and focused on seeking out unique new talents and then recording them to their best possible advantage. That became the Elektra signature throughout his years running the label.

The list of artists that Holzman corralled is nothing short of astonishing. In the folk era it included Village stalwarts like Jean Ritchie, Phil Ochs, Judy Henske, Fed Neil, Tom Paxton and Tom Rush, as well as reviving the career of Blues pioneer Josh White and discovering a young Coloradan with a big voice named Judy Collins. Continue reading →

Earworm of the day — America by Simon and Garfunkel

I blame that damn Volkswagen commercial with the nice old Irish lady and her family. Or maybe it’s a hangover from a certain Vermont senator’s 2016 campaign. But Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” has been absolutely stuck in my head for weeks now. And so I’m going to inflict it on you, as well, in an attempt to exorcise it from my ear canal

Obviously it’s a gorgeous 1960s classic redolent of complex youthful emotions, lyrics that effortlessly paint a detailed and profoundly human mise en scène and lifted skyward by those patented soaring S&G harmonies.  There’s even a very George Harrison-like guitar sound in there rendered instead by Larry Knechtel’s Hammond organ, as well as Hal Blaine’s thundering drums, giving what could otherwise be a straight forward folk ballad complexity, texture and heft. Essentially it’s a perfect single where the words seamlessly dovetail with the music — “Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together” — and one that profoundly captures the troubled, fraying zeitgeist of 1968 America. I just hope that by finally posting it I’ll be rid of this masterpiece in my mind’s ear for a while. Sorry if it infects you in the process but it has to be done!