Dave Van Ronk, another great Folksinger

Van Ronk, “the mayor of MacDougal Street”, was the uproarious epicenter of the Greenwich Village coffee house scene, holding court with his huge personality, loud opinions, vast repertoire and encyclopedic knowl­edge of everything from New Orleans jazz to blues, gospel, ragtime and, of course, folk. With his gruff voice and blues-fueled guitar, this album — including House Of The Rising Sun, Stackalee and Cocaine Blues —was widely influential and vigorously inspirational among the new breed of singers. It brought him neither fame nor riches, though he was later immortalised in the Coen Brothers movie Inside Llewyn Davis.