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OVERVIEW The folk music revival is sometimes said to have begun with Pete Seeger . The Weavers , formed in 1947 by Seeger, had a big hit in 1949 with Lead Belly 's " Goodnight, Irene ". This hit was probably one of the first glimmerings of the folk music revival. Although carried along by a handful of artists releasing records, the folk-music scene's development was still only as a sort of , but not terribly widespread. In the 1950s and after, acoustic folk-song performance became associated with the Coffee House s, private parties, open-air concerts and sing-alongs, and college-campus concerts. It blended, to some degree, with the so-called Beatnik scene, and dedicated singers of folk songs (as well as folk-influenced original material) traveled through what was called "the coffee-house circuit" across the U.S. and Canada . The Kingston Trio , while playing at a college club called the Cracked Pot, were discovered by Frank Werber , who became their manager and secured them a deal with Capitol Records . Their first hit was a catchy rendition of an old-time folk song, " Tom Dooley ", which went Gold in 1958 . The following year, the group won the first Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording category for the album '' The Kingston Trio At Large ''. At one point late in 1959 , The Kingston Trio had four records at the same time among the Top 10 selling albums according to '' Billboard Magazine's'' "Top Ten Albums" chart for the week of December 7, 1959, a record unmatched for nearly 40 years. The contemporary-songwriter and folk-music scene during these times often had a facet of Social concern. Young singer-songwriter Bob Dylan , playing Acoustic Guitar and Harmonica , had been signed and recorded for Columbia by producer John Hammond in 1961 . Dylan's record enjoyed some popularity in the Greenwich Village folk-music cult, but he was "discovered" by an immensely larger audience when a Pop-folk -music group, Peter, Paul & Mary had a hit with his song " Blowing In The Wind ". Their songs often shared in the Humanitarianism and social idealism of the Weavers, and a few of the earlier folk-scene notables, and this and other songs by Dylan fitted the bill. Dylan’s general popularity was soon so great that record companies began to sign, and distribute records for, many new, young, sometimes-scruffy singer/songwriters – Phil Ochs , Tom Paxton , Eric Von Schmidt , Buffy Sainte-Marie , Dave Van Ronk , Judy Collins , Tom Rush , Fred Neil , Gordon Lightfoot , Billy Ed Wheeler, John Denver , Arlo Guthrie , John Hartford , and others, among them. Some of this wave had emerged from family singing and playing traditions, and some had not. Archivists, Collectors, and Re-issued Recordings During these same years, the devoted and growing folk-music crowd that had developed in the United States began to want and to buy records by obscure older folk musicians, from the Southeastern Hill Country and from urban inner-cities. LP records made up of re-issue collections of ethnic and regional 78-rpm records (studio recordings) stretching back to the 1920s and 1930s were put on sale. Also becoming available were LP-record collections made from original folk-music field recordings originally made by ethnomusicologists. Many smaller record labels, such as Yazoo Records , grew up to distribute reissued older recordings and to make new recordings of the survivors among these artists. This was how many White American s first heard Country Blues and especially Delta Blues , that had been recorded by Mississippi folk artists 30 or 40 years before. Artists like The Carter Family , Robert Johnson , Blind Lemon Jefferson , Clarence Ashley , Buell Kazee, Uncle Dave Macon , Mississippi John Hurt , and The Stanley Brothers , as well as Jimmie Rodgers , the Reverend Gary Davis , and Bill Monroe came to have something more than a regional or ethnic reputation. The revival turned up a tremendous wealth and diversity of music and put it out through Radio shows and Record Store s. Living representatives of some of the varied regional and ethnic traditions, including younger performers like Southern-tradition singer Jean Ritchie , enjoyed popularity through enthusiasts' widening discovery of this music. Rock subsumes folk See also: Folk Rock After the darling of the young enthusiasts, Bob Dylan, began to record with a rocking rhythm section and electric instruments in 1965 (see '' Electric Dylan Controversy ''), many other still-young folk artists followed suit. Meanwhile, bands like The Lovin' Spoonful and the Byrds , whose individual members often had a background in the folk-revival coffee-house scene, were getting recording contracts with folk-tinged music played with a rock-band line-up. Before long, the public appetite for the more acoustic music of the folk revival began to wane. "Crossover" hits ("folk songs" that became rock-music-scene staples) happened now and again. One well-known example is the song " Hey Joe ", copyrighted by folk artist Billy Roberts , and recorded by rock singer/guitarist Jimi Hendrix just as he was about to burst into stardom in 1967. The anthem " Woodstock " was written and first sung and accompanied on keyboard by Joni Mitchell while her records were still nearly entirely acoustic, and while she was labeled a "folk singer" — receiving big airplay when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded a high-energy rock version. Legacy By the late 1960s, the scene had returned to being more of a lower-key, afficianado phenomenon, although sizable annual acoustic-music festivals were established in many parts of North America during this period. The acoustic music coffee-house scene survived at a reduced scale. Through the luminary young singer-songwriters of the 1960s, the American folk-music revival has influenced songwriting and musical styles throughout the world. MAJOR FIGURES
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ETHNICITY Although singers such as the Weavers and Joan Baez occasionally included Spanish-language material in their repertoires, the folk-music revival in North America (as it existed in the coffee houses, concert halls, and radio and TV) was overwhelmingly an English-language phenomenon. In that sense, it bypassed a lot of ethnic folk traditions to be found in North America (e.g., Italian , French , Portuguese , German , Polish , Russian ) – except in a small proportion of instances where songs’ lyrics had been translated into English. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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