Photo by Letitia Smith

This past Saturday night the Bearsville Theater was packed for the Pete and Peggy Seeger concert. Pete led many sing-a-longs and told lots of stories. In one he told of composing “Where Have all the Flowers Gone” on his way to a concert at Oberlin College—one that Joe Hickerson had a hand in organizing. Some years later Joe, while at Camp Woodland, added several more verses and this version was recorded in 1961. In 2010 the New Statesmen listed the tune as one of the “Top 20 Political Songs” of all time.

Frank Spinelli on the Village Green, circa 1965

In the 1960s Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, The Band and later Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were active in the Woodstock area. So, what was it like to grow up Woodstock in the 1960s? Recently I chatted with Frank Spinelli, the photographer and writer, to explore his life and early times.

Frank’s family moved to Woodstock during the summer of 1963. While attending Onteora High School he used to ride the school bus into town. A favorite hangout was the News Shop across from the Village Green. Frank was friendly with the proprietor’s son, Fred, and used to snack on after-school burgers and milkshakes.

Spinelli’s main coming-of-age passions were chasing girls and having a good time. Other hangouts besides the News Shop included the Village Green and the Woodstock Youth Center. In 1965 he was the WYC’s first president.

The countercultural movement was a parallel scene and it didn’t really impact him, but this began to change in 1966 when Frank had to enroll for the selective service and became eligible for the draft. Consequently, he began to pay more attention to the issues of the day. He remembers one time that a lefty told him that he “should not be cannon fodder,” and that he “should go to Canada.”

The summer of 1970 was a watershed moment for Frank. The Woodstock Festival took place the previous year and all kinds of people moved to town. It was also the time that the psychedelic movement hit Woodstock. Kids older than Frank used to hop in a car with a shotgun and head into the woods to shoot bottles and cans. His generation got their recreational high from pot. Spinelli didn’t really relate to the music or the musicians of the day. For the most part they were ordinary folks that he would see around town. One place he saw a good bit of local musicians was as bartender at the Sled Hill Café.

Some years ago, in a letter to the editor in the Woodstock Times, he had this to say about the Sled Hill Café:

“It was a cobbled together construction of dump castoffs, bargain lumber and garage sale secondhand. Its retro fifties design looked before its recent demise as much as it did back then. The floor was an uneven slab of concrete supporting the only splash of elegance in the large open room, three ancient leather banquettes sitting like old ladies along the east wall. On the opposite side of the room were faded polyethylene ceiling panels that diffused the interior light to a daunting hepatitis yellow. The kitchen was behind the bar and the cook actually kept a notched count of murdered rats. The bathrooms never worked and although the juke box was lively, the strangest songs came during the August thunderstorms which spawned the streams that flowed from Tinkers Street through Mower’s market parking lot (now Oriole 9), gained momentum and detritus as they plowed down Deanie’s Alley, crossed Deming Street, and then hurried down Sled Hill to find its natural resting place, the concrete floor of the Café itself. The arrival of the tidal wave was generally unannounced due to the music and the crowd, but it’s presence was known by the universal sigh let out by the revelers when they realized they were up to their shins in water.”

As one of four bartenders during 1970 at the Sled Hill Café, Frank met his share of musicians: Billy Batson, Tim Hardin, Van Morrison, Leslie West and Paul Butterfield. He recalls that around 2:45 a.m. members of The Band—Levon, Rick and Richard—used to amble in and order ten or twelve Go Fasters (two shots of brandy and a spritz of ginger ale). As these were lined up on the bar the boys worked their way through them. Then, amply fortified, they turned their attention to the stage and performing. It was at this moment, according to Spinelli, that they became larger than life—and that he connected with them as artists. The rustic rough-hewn quality of place would be magically transformed by the glorious music. The potent mix made for a giddy high and Frank recalls that he loved it.

~Weston Blelock

Ian Turner, John Sebastian and Jud Yalkut (photo by Letitia Smith)

Jud Yalkut, the filmmaker, was on hand to introduce the films and answer questions. Gerd Stern, who helped to produce Clarence, was also in attendance. Both films were made in the USCO tradition, meaning that they combined film with video plus special effects and live actors. Stern is the current president of USCO while Yalkut was the filmmaker-in-chief during the late sixties. The last time Yalkut and Stern were together was at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era exhibit in 2007.

At the reception immediately following the screening, FishCastle, comprised of Cyril Caster (folk musician and ’69 Sound-Out producer) and Catherine Braik Selin, entertained the audience with exquisite tunes.

On August 13, 2011 at 1 p.m. the Historical Society of Woodstock plans to hold a special screening of Jud Yalkut’s films, Clarence and Aquarian Rushes, at Upstate Films in Woodstock. Yalkut, an award-winning film and visual artist, will be on hand to introduce his work. Clarence is a short 16 mm experimental piece on Clarence Schmidt. Schmidt was a local sculptor and pop icon who lived in a found-art house atop Ohayo Mountain. His seven-story house was the subject of a Life Magazine article in the 1960s. The film includes some of the only footage taken of Clarence while living in his home—before it burned down in the winter of 1967 to 1968. The sound is by Mel Lyman, Jim Kweskin and the Lyman Family, and includes a narrative by Clarence Schmidt. The work was selected for the “Anthropological Film” program at the Film Forum in New York City and the “Flick Out” broadcast series on educational television in Houston, Texas. The second work on the bill, Aquarian Rushes, is 47-minute film and videotape of the Woodstock Festival of 1969. This film was selected for the Montreal International Festival of Film in 16 mm at the Musée des Beaux Arts; the Encounter with The American Cinema at Sorrento, Italy (selection of Martin Scorsese); and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris American Underground Film Weekend.

Yalkut was born in New York City in 1938. He was educated at the City College of New York and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He taught film and video at the School of Visual Arts, the City University of New York and at New York University. He first came to Woodstock in 1959 and stayed at the Millstream Motel. From 1962 to 1968 he lived in Woodstock. His home was located across the road from the Shady post office. It was during this time that he connected with USCO, the media art collective. From 1965 to 1972 he was the principal filmmaker-in-residence for the group.

USCO was founded by Steve Durkee, Gerd Stern and Michael Callahan. USCO pulled together a psychedelic orchestra of film, color slides, kinetic sculpture, strobe lights and live actors. Jud Yalkut’s films Clarence and Aquarian Rushes were conceived and shaped by the USCO milieu. During Yalkut’s time in Woodstock he also was on the Group 212 faculty—over the Woodstock line in West Saugerties.

When the producers of the Woodstock Festival put out a bid to have the event filmed, Jud, on behalf of USCO, put out a proffer. He was slated to direct. The plan was to enlist members of the crowd to film parts with hand-held 8 mm mini cameras. At the last minute Michael Wadleigh was tapped to film the festival, because he had secured a distribution deal with Warner Brothers. Nonetheless, Yalkut and his team soldiered on and filmed the event. The resulting documentary has been shown on the underground film circuit ever since. It has 16 mm optical sound and the term “rushes” in the film’s title was used to evoke the era’s drug use.

Sonia was born in France in 1923, the daughter of Anarcho-Syndicalist activists. When the Second World War broke out she and her family fled Paris to Toulouse. In 1943 Sonia joined the Spanish Resistance, which fought alongside the French underground forces. She worked until 1945 as a messenger for the Resistance.

Through her mother, May Picqueray, Sonia met and married Georges Malkine, the French Surrealist painter. Together they immigrated to the United States. One day Sonia’s mother came to visit the family in New York City. She learned that Stella Ballantine, niece of her old friend, Emma Goldman, lived in Woodstock, NY. The Malkines visited Woodstock and decided to relocate in 1951. At first they stayed on the Maverick, but in 1952 they moved to the Woodstock hamlet of Shady.

In 1958 Madame Malkine was invited to a party at Sam Eskin’s, a folklorist and folksinger, on Chimney Road in Woodstock. During the party Sonia wandered into Sam’s kitchen to put her glass in the sink. Suddenly Ed Chavez approached, asking her point blank if she was a singer. Sonia tried to put him off, but he wouldn’t take no for answer. So Sonia began to sing “Robin,” a thirteenth century folksong from Jeu de Robin et Marion. After finishing three verses she realized that the house was dead quiet. (Sam had silenced his guests in the living room so he could hear her sing properly.) When she finished he swept into the kitchen and buttonholed her immediately. He peppered her with questions about her singing. “Where do you sing,” he asked? She replied that she sang in the shower, in her kitchen and to her children. Next he asked if she knew a lot of songs. She admitted that she knew quite a few French folk songs. He insisted that she return to his home within the next few days so that he could record her. She did so, and together they recorded seventeen songs in short order. These formed the basis of her first album with Folkways.

Soon Sam was booking her locally for gigs at the Polari Gallery, the Woodstock Playhouse, Saratoga Springs’ Café Lena and New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Eventually Malkine had her own radio shows on WKNY and WBAI. In 1967 she starred in her own series on PBS’s Channel 13.  She has performed throughout the world: in Paris, Hong Kong and Australia, among other locales. Sonia continues to perform to the present day, albeit closer to home.

During the 1950s Faier became proficient on the five-string banjo. He recorded a series of albums, including two for the Riverside label and another on Electra. In 1959 he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. By 1962 Billy was an accomplished and connected folk music veteran, so it makes sense that he co-founded the Woodstock Folk Festival, which occurred that year. After the festival Bernard and Mary Lou Paturel hired him as a talent booker for the Café Espresso.

The Café Espresso was the brainchild of Franklin “Bud” Drake and Jim Hamilton, two enterprising graduates of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. They transformed a former ice cream and sandwich eatery known as The Nook into a Parisian-style bistro. They set the ambience with a hand-painted bar, an indoor fountain and red-and-white-checked tablecloths. The carefree atmosphere encouraged artists and locals to mix in a warm and friendly manner. Drake and Hamilton were not restaurant professionals, so they relied on a Russian chef and a maître d’ with local connections to run the business. Faier made reference to the Drake/Hamilton management style on his album the beast of Billy Faier, in a cut titled, “The Unpleasantness at the Nook.”

Under the Paturels, who soon purchased the café, Faier began booking well-known local and national folk acts to play at the club. One such talent was Happy Traum. The latter came up to Woodstock on the bus from New York one cold spring weekend. Traum remembers that it was the weekend in 1963 that Bob Dylan played Town Hall. Other notable talents who played at the Espresso included Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Billy Batson, Jerry Moore, Major Wiley, along with many others.

One day in 1963 the Paturels lent their upstairs studio to Dylan to live and work. His presence attracted the likes of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, John Sebastian, the Farinas, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, and Peter, Paul and Mary to after-hour jam sessions at the café.

Dan Adams, Eleanor Walden and Gerry Parsons at the Woodstock Folk Festival in 1962

Eleanor Walden, social activist and folksinger, recently told me in a phone interview that she believes she was the catalyst for the first Woodstock Festival. That festival took place in 1962 at the Woodstock Estates on Friday, September 14th, through Sunday, September 16th.

Pete Seeger donated concert proceeds from an August gig at the Woodstock Playhouse to help fund the festival. According to the program there were square and folk dances, demonstrations, dulcimer-making workshops, storytelling and a hootenanny. The model for the festival was to bring country traditional singers and city topical-political songwriters into the same arena to share influences. Altogether there were nine co-founders and organizers. They included folksingers Eleanor Walden, Mona and Frank Fletcher, Sonia Malkine, Billy Faier, producer Bill Hoffman and folklorist Sam Eskin. Pete and the co-founders mentioned above, plus Barbara Moncure, Harry Siemsen, Squire Elwyn Davis, and recording artists Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Hedy West and Native American singer/songwriter Peter LaFarge, all performed during the festival. Fiona Fletcher, Mona and Frank Fletcher’s daughter, said that she and her siblings had a blast. They were allowed to stay up late, and they had the run of the event.

Eleanor Walden took a circuitous route to Woodstock. She was raised in New York’s Greenwich Village and her father was a Wobbly. She grew up knowing Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays. She remembers the weekly songfests in Washington Square Park in the 1940s.  In 1948 when the Progressive Party organized the singing Wallace Caravans she went on one of those multi-state tours with Pete Seeger. Walden says she was not a good musician, but she did sing well. In fact, when Lee Hays and some others were forming a group, she was invited to join them. She says she laughed off the invitation, claiming that she was too young. This berth was offered to Ronnie Gilbert, and The Weavers, as the group became known, went on to fame and fortune with such hits as “Goodnight Irene” and “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena.”

Walden’s inner voice led her in a different direction. In 1950 she left the safe confines of Greenwich Village and moved to Atlanta, Georgia. There her liberal New York inclinations caused her to form alliances with black musicians like Buddy Moss and SNCC Singers’ alto Bernice Johnson Reagon. She was stunned by the depth of the hatred exhibited by certain whites towards their black neighbors. She herself readily admits that she arrived with several prejudices of her own. For example, she naively assumed that all whites were hostile to blacks and that the Southerners’ drawl was an indication of bigotry and ignorance. She was relieved of these preconceptions when she met indigenous anti-racist whites like Myles Horton, of Highlander Folk School, and rural native folk. Walden says that they had unfathomable knowledge and insights into human conditions that she has drawn on to the present day.

In 1960 Walden arrived in Woodstock with Bill Hoffman and her five children. Soon she met the established folk singing group and a folk society was formed. Out of this evolved the first Woodstock Folk Festival. Walden says her proclivity is to impulsively jump into projects, and like a cat find her way. She and her family didn’t stay in Woodstock long. When a kerosene delivery failed to reach her log cabin home in time for the first snows she decamped with her brood back to Atlanta. Using the Woodstock Folk Festival program as a model, she helped stage the Atlanta Folk Festival in 1965 and 1966.

In the early 1980s she moved to the Bay Area of California where she promoted the Freedom Song Network in 1982. More recently, in 2008, she organized a petition drive to nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize: www.nobelprize4pete.org.

What lies ahead? Well, Eleanor Walden, co-founder extraordinaire of folk festivals, may be returning to Woodstock for a gig. Stay tuned!

~Weston Blelock

A 1968 Draped Painting by Nina Yankowitz: "Oh Say Can you See?"

The Woodstock Festival of 1969 was officially named the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. According to Michael Lang in Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the inclusion of “art” in the festival name was a nod to Woodstock, NY’s status as an art colony—beginning in the early 1900s with Byrdcliffe and the Maverick Festivals, and later with organizations like Group 212.

Recently I spoke by phone with Nina Yankowitz of nyartprojects about her days at Group 212. A 1969 Fine Arts graduate of the School of Visual Arts, Yankowitz doesn’t recall where she first heard about the fusion collective, but she says that word about it was on the street in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Nina loved Group 212′s fearless collaborative spirit, and remembers that she first installed her draped paintings on the trees in the surrounding Group 212 landscape. She says that Group 212′s propulsive and adventurous style of mixing music, painting, sculpture, photography, electronic sounds, poetry, and performance art opened her up to embrace new technologies and emerging artistic disciplines. For example, she met Ken Werner, a musician, at 212 in the summer of 1968, and she recalls their collaboration. Werner made an audio rendition to realize Nina’s desire to include sound that would mimic the musical score, Oh Say Can You See, on her draped canvas. This embodied the concept of hearing and seeing sounds as they unfolded from her draped paintings. The installation was exhibited later that year at Kornblee Gallery in New York City.

Nina Yankowitz (in Foreground) Dancing at Group 212

Yankowitz remembers running to catch the bus to Greenwich Village from South Orange Junior High School in New Jersey. She would sneak out of school to attend performances by Dylan and Hugh Romney at the Cafe Wha in the Village, returning without her delinquency having been discovered. Her later Woodstock experience put her in touch with many new and exciting musicians and artistic collaborators. She met people like Sunny Murray, Dave Burrell, and Chuck Santon—an artist who spent most of his time at Robert Wilson‘s Byrdcliffe, devoted to experimental workshops/productions. She also met musician Juma Sultan, and it was he who encouraged Nina and a friend to dance while Juma, Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, and Dave Burrell were jamming. She remembers the music director wanting to “pull the cane around our necks!” Juma also took her to Byrdcliffe to meet Bob Dylan, and they, with others from the community, attended a Sound-Out at Pan Copeland’s farm. Yankowitz recalls people jumping through the fences, lying on the grass and watching acts like Tim Hardin and Ritchie Havens.

One detail eludes Nina about her time at Group 212. She remembers a friend there who created marvelous performances based upon the myth of Icarus. He also made beautiful photographs with his box camera, and she wonders what happened to the fellow who created and played this bird-man role. Can anyone help her out on that?

~Weston Blelock

A Woodstock Playhouse program cover from August 1960, courtesy of Joe Hickerson

The Historical Society of Woodstock’s Folk Songs of the Catskills: The Spirit of Camp Woodland exhibit and related events drew hundreds of attendees this past summer. For example, on August 14 nearly 100 people attended the presentation/folk concert with Sue Rosenberg, Pat Lamanna, Joe Hickerson, Mickey Vandow and Eric Weissberg.

During the exhibit people asked about the linkage between Camp Woodland (near Phoenicia, NY) and Woodstock. As it happens, there are innumerable links. Herb Haufrecht, one of the authors of Folk Songs of the Catskills, and a Camp Woodland music counselor, lived in Shady, NY, a hamlet of Woodstock. Another connection was through Barbara Moncure, a local folk singer. She and Alf Evers (for many years the Woodstock Town Historian, and author of Woodstock: History of an American Town) used to venture over to Camp Woodland for the annual festivals. Barbara performed at them, and eventually recorded an album of Catskill Mountain songs for Folkways. In 1959, Alf organized the First Annual Catskill Mountain Folk Music Festival at the Colony Arts Center. Several Catskill Mountain folk singers like “Squire” Elwyn Davis and Harry Siemson, who had previously appeared at Camp Woodland, performed at that festival. Another instance of Camp Woodland/Woodstock linkage occurred in August 1960 when Joe Hickerson, a counselor at the camp, headlined a concert with Carolyn Hester at the Woodstock Playhouse.

Pete Seeger, a big influence at the camp, was connected to Woodstock via his wife, Toshi, who grew up in the town. Pete played at a Woodstock Playhouse concert in 1962. Funds from that concert partially financed the Woodstock Folk Festival at the Woodstock Estates in 1962. Bob Dylan arrived in town around 1963 and John Herald, a former camper, came up to Woodstock in 1965. John Cohen, a former camp counselor, played the Sound-Outs with his band the New Lost City Ramblers.

Many of these interconnections are spelled out in Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, published last year by WoodstockArts.

Joe Hickerson in June 2010 at the Washington Folk Festival

Woodstock, NY—On Saturday, August 14, from 2 to 4 p.m., Pat Lamanna and Sue Rosenberg will give a talk about Camp Woodland at the Eames House, 20 Comeau Drive in Woodstock. Located near Phoenicia from 1939 to 1962, Camp Woodland helped to spark a revival in Catskill Mountain roots music. Throughout the presentation Pat Lamanna, a folk singer with The Raggedy Crew in Poughkeepsie, will reprise many old Catskill Mountain/Woodland folk songs. This event complements the Historical Society’s current retrospective exhibit on Camp Woodland, which is on exhibit at the Eames House through September 12.

 Joe Hickerson, the noted folklorist and folksinger, will also be sitting in on August 14. Hickerson was a Camp Woodland counselor from 1959 to 1960. In the late 1950s Pete Seeger stopped by the camp and parked an unfinished tune with Hickerson. The latter added two verses and the song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” became a folk classic. Joe Hickerson served as the librarian and director of the Archive of Folk Song/Culture at the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1998. Pete Seeger calls him “a great song leader.”

 Attendees on August 14 can expect surprise guests on rousing sing-alongs for many old favorites like “Guantanamera” and “Everybody Loves Saturday Night.” The Historical Society of Woodstock gratefully acknowledges the support of Ulster Savings and Heritage Folk Music. The Eames House museum is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. For more information call 845.246.3436 or log onto www.campwoodland.org.