Dave Van Ronk, a legendary folk artist

David Kenneth Ritz "Dave" Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002)

Virtually every account of the folk re­vival of the late 1950s and early 1960s acknowledges the significant role Dave Van Ronk played in it. Physically a large man, Van Ronk made a contribution to that revival that easily equaled his size, for here was a white man playing and wail­ing the blues.

Today that doesn't seem very unusual. But a dozen or so years ago, before it was popular to be listening to the Blind Lemon Jefferson’s, the Furry Lewises and all the other blues men who were to be “rediscov­ered” around 1963, it was unheard of. Folk music consisted of the Weavers (in that group's various incarnations and reunions), the Kingston Trio and eventually Peter, Paul and Mary. Male folksingers wore suits, shirts and pencil-thin ties, the exception be­ing an occasional Harry Belafonte who, des­pite what under other circumstances would have been considered informal attire, was also “dressed” for his show. Listening to folk music meant either going to very formal concerts or getting hold of some Library of Congress or Folkways records. Real aficio­nados had 78s of some of the blues singers who had been recorded during the 1920s and 1930s. And the one who had the most influence in this vein was Leadbelly.

Then came Dave Van Ronk — Brooklyn born and bred, strains of both the Dutch and Irish traditions in his blood. Well versed in the verities of New York street life. A jazz singer. A blues singer. A man whose growl could be heard within a one mile radius, who could scat sing with the best of them, who threw in a children's song and a soft ballad just to throw everything off balance once in a while.

In his early years, Van Ronk sang with several local New Orleans-style bands, while listening to those 78s mentioned pre­viously. Then came intermittent stints with the Merchant Marines. With them he made trips to various southern ports where he was to soak in still more of an understand­ing for the blues idiom. There was always much beer and even more of just being around New York's Greenwich Village at the right time. 

Then there was a need for a tran­sition from the rurality of the blues to the reality of city life, literally from the black man’s soul to the white man’s ears. Life- raw and brutal—had to be given to the songs that the Lomax family had collected over the years. The white kids who came to Washington Square Park to sing and play on Sunday mornings didn't really know what the blues were, but they were ready to accept a new form—provided it was at least somewhere along the line related to what they already did know. Rock and roll had started the process of assimilation into mo­tion, but rock and roll was raunchier than it was raw. The Mississippi Delta style of peo­ple like the late Fred McDowell needed an introduction, for it was a grating sound, not harmonic in the sense that the Weavers' versions of Leadbelly tunes such as “Rock Island Line” and “Midnight Special" were. Above all, this was music that was essen­tially technically simple, but emotionally as complex as the fabric of American (and Af­rican) history from which it came.

Van Ronk, however, did more than fill in a cultural gap. He was there, as an influence, and to be influenced by others, at a time when a growing body of commercial (and that term is not used in any derogatory sense) folk musicians were coming to maturity. The Monday night stage which hosted the first hootenannies at Gerdes Folk City in 1961 provided a focal point for reinforcement: The performers needed stages from which to try out their material, as well as audiences to react to it. Often those audiences were largely composed of other musicians and singers, who offered both encouragement and criticism to each other. Van Ronk, who by then had achieved a modicum of success, participated in this aspect of things as well.

At events like the Philadelphia Folk Festi­val he would come on at two or three in the morning and get a frozen and half asleep audience to yell and move around. Then, later that afternoon, he would sing at a bawdy song workshop, being the bawdiest of the nine or ten participants, of course.

"Cocaine Blues” and “Candy Man” are probably still his most oft-requested numbers. And though any other performer would let a number fall from the repertoire after one or two seasons, Van Ronk contin­ues to sing them with all the passion and emotional fire you would expect had he just gotten the songs set in his mind.

With the coming of age of all those people who used to sit around morally supporting each other at Gerdes, Van Ronk expanded his scope. (And here one must note that he was one of the first to record a Bob Dylan song — “He Was A Friend of Mine.’’) Songs by Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel provided some of the tenderer moments and ex-Fug and present Holy Modal Rounder Peter Stampfel some of the more boisterous ones.

One press release of a few years back made the analogy of Van Ronk being a “Lear of a man.” Somehow I think of him more as a Paul Bunyan-like legendary fig­ure. He and Terri had provided a home for Dylan and others as they came to the Big Apple. And Dave Van Ronk had provided an example of the sensitivity and the dedica­tion (not to mention the capacity to con­sume a bit of ale) required to see a hopeful performer through to a degree of popular acceptance and success. One hears stories and tales of Dave Van Ronk which, knowing his size, one wouldn't dare dispute. Listen­ing to him sing tells you that most of them are as true as those we’ve heard about Bunyan—if not literally, at least spiritually.

—Ira Mayer (written 1989)