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Dave Van Ronk

{{short description|American folk musician (1936–2002)}}

{{use mdy dates|date=February 2024}}

{{use American English|date=February 2024}}

{{Infobox musical artist

| name = Dave Van Ronk

| image = Dave Van Ronk.jpg

| caption = Van Ronk at the 1968 Philadelphia Folk Festival

| birth_name = David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk

| birth_date = {{birth date|1936|6|30|mf=y}}

| birth_place = Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2002|2|10|1936|6|30}}

| death_place = New York City, U.S.

| genre = {{hlist|Folk|ragtime|blues|country blues}}

| occupation = {{hlist|Musician|songwriter}}

| instrument = {{hlist|Guitar|vocals|piano}}

| years_active = 1959–2002

| label = Folkways

}}

David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street".{{Cite web|title=Dave Van Ronk|url=https://folkways.si.edu/dave-van-ronk/american-folk-blues-gospel/music/article/smithsonian|access-date=2021-02-01|website=Smithsonian Folkways Recordings|language=en-US}}

Van Ronk's work ranged from old English ballads to blues, gospel, rock, New Orleans jazz, and swing. He was also known for performing instrumental ragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of "St. Louis Tickle" and Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag". Van Ronk was a widely admired avuncular figure in the Village, presiding over the coffeehouse folk culture and acting as a friend to many up-and-coming artists by inspiring, assisting, and promoting them. Folk performers he befriended include Jim and Jean, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Joni Mitchell. Dylan recorded Van Ronk's arrangement of the traditional song "House of the Rising Sun" on his first album which The Animals would later cover and which would become a chart-topping rock single for them in 1964,Rohter, Larry. [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/arts/music/the-singer-who-inspired-coen-brothers-new-film.html "For a Village Troubadour, a Late Encore"], The New York Times, December 5, 2013. Retrieved 2024-01-27. helping inaugurate the folk rock movement.Von Schmidt, Eric, and Jim Rooney (June, 1994), p. 261. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated History of the Cambridge Folk Years.

Van Ronk received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in December 1997.

Life and career

Van Ronk was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to a family that was "mostly Irish, despite the Dutch 'Van' name".Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll. p. 255, Pearson: 1987; {{ISBN|0137822936}} He moved from Brooklyn to Queens around 1945 and began attending Holy Child Jesus Catholic School, whose students were mainly of Irish descent. He had been performing in a barbershop quartet since 1949, but left before finishing high school spending time in the Merchant Marine.{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/meet-the-folk-singer-who-inspired-inside-llewyn-davis-243730/|title = Meet the Folk Singer Who Inspired 'Inside Llewyn Davis'|magazine = Rolling Stone|date = 2 December 2013}}

His first professional gigs were playing tenor banjola, a wooden bodied combination of mandola and banjo, with various traditional jazz bands around New York City, of which he later observed: "We wanted to play traditional jazz in the worst way ... and we did!" But the trad jazz revival had already passed its prime, and Van Ronk turned to performing the blues he had stumbled across while shopping for jazz 78s by artists like the Reverend Gary Davis, Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt.

By about 1958, he was firmly committed to the folk-blues style, accompanying himself with his own acoustic guitar. He performed blues, jazz and folk music, occasionally writing his own songs but generally arranging the work of earlier artists and his folk revival peers.

He became noted both for his large physical stature and for his expansive charisma which bespoke an intellectual, cultured gentleman of diverse talents. Among his many interests were cooking, science fiction (he was active for some time in science fiction fandom, referring to it as "mind rot",{{cite book|author=Dave Van Ronk, Elijah Wald|title=The Mayor of MacDougal Street|place=New York|publisher=Da Capo Press|year=2005|pages=230|isbn=978-0306814792}} contributing to fanzines), world history, and politics. During the 1960s he supported left-wing political causes and was, at various times, a member of the Libertarian League and the Young Socialist League, at that time the youth wing of the "Shachtmanite" Independent Socialist League.{{Cite book |last=Thal |first=Terri |title=My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me |publisher=McNidder & Grace |year=2023 |isbn=9780857162489 |pages=161}} In 1964, he was part of a group expelled from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party which would eventually go on to become the American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI, later renamed the Workers League{{Cite web |title=SWP Political Committee decision suspending Wohlforthites |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/idb/swp-pc-min/PC%20Apr%201964-Sep%201966/45-PC-decision-suspending-Wohlforthites-jun-30-1964.pdf |access-date=8 January 2024 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}{{cite book|author=Robert Jackson Alexander|year=1991 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_eUtQjseKaIC&pg=PA552 |title=International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: a documented analysis of the movement |publisher=Duke University Press |page=552, para. 2 |isbn=978-0-8223-1066-2}}).

In 1974, he appeared at "An Evening For Salvador Allende", a concert organized by Phil Ochs, alongside such other performers as his old friend Bob Dylan, to protest the overthrow of the democratic socialist government of Chile and to aid refugees from the U.S.-backed military junta led by Augusto Pinochet. After Ochs's suicide in 1976, Van Ronk joined the many performers who played at his memorial concert in the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden, playing his bluesy version of the traditional folk ballad "He Was A Friend Of Mine".{{cite web|url=http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/introjs.htm?/~acsa/songfile/HE1WASA.HTM|title=He Was A Friend of Mine (Just A Hand To Hold)|publisher=Grateful Dead Lyric & Song Finder|access-date=August 13, 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708164150/http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/introjs.htm?%2F~acsa%2Fsongfile%2FHE1WASA.HTM|archive-date=July 8, 2011}} Although Van Ronk was less politically active in later years, he remained committed to anarchist and socialist ideals and was a dues-paying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) almost until his death. According to former wife and manager Terri Thal, Van Ronk "insisted that he was a Trotskyist until he died."

Van Ronk was among 13 people arrested at the Stonewall Inn June 28, 1969, the night of the Stonewall Riots, which is widely credited as the spark of the contemporary gay rights movement. He had been dining at a neighboring restaurant and joined the riot against the police occupation of the club and was dragged from the crowd into the building by police deputy inspector Seymour Pine.{{cite book |last=Bausum |first=Ann |date=2015 |title=Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights |edition=1st |chapter=Chapter 5: Revolution |pages=50–51|publisher=Viking}}{{cite web|title=Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square|author=Lucian Truscott IV|work=Village Voice |date=July 3, 1969|url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/voice_19690703_truscott.html|format=Transcript|access-date=August 14, 2010}} [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/voice1.html page scans]{{cite book|author=Carter, David|title=Stonewall: The riots that sparked the gay revolution|isbn= 978-0312671938|publisher=St. Martin’s Griffin|year=2010|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j04jLSvGNSMC&dq=%22+folksinger+was+yet+a+third+person%22&pg=PA155|pages=155–156}} The police slapped and punched Van Ronk to the point of near unconsciousness, handcuffed him to a radiator near the doorway, and charged him with assault.{{cite news|author=Howard Smith|url=https://www.villagevoice.com/2015/06/26/full-moon-over-the-stonewall-howard-smiths-account-of-the-stonewall-riots/|title=Full Moon over the Stonewall|publisher=The Village Voice|date=July 3, 1969|access-date=July 2, 2019}} Recalling the expanding riot, Van Ronk said, "There were more people out there [outside the building] when I came out than when I went in. Things were still flying through the air, cacophony—I mean, just screaming and yelling, sirens, strobe lights, the whole spaghetti."{{cite book |last=Carter |first=David |date=2010 |title=Stonewall: The Riots That Started the Gay Revolution |edition=1st |publisher=Griffin|page=174}} The next day, he was arrested and later released on his own recognizance for having thrown a heavy object at a police officer.Eskow, Dennis. "4 Policemen Hurt in 'Village' Raid: Melee Near Sheridan Square Follows Action at Bar", The New York Times, June 29, 1969, p. 33. City records show he was charged with felony assault in the second degreeCriminal Court of the City of New York, docket number A9798: original charge against Van Ronk: pL 120.05 and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of harassment, classified in 1969 as a violation under PL 240.25.

In 2000, he performed at Blind Willie's in Atlanta, speaking fondly of his impending return to Greenwich Village. He reminisced over tunes like "You've Been a Good Old Wagon", a song teasing a worn-out lover, which he ruefully remarked had seemed humorous to him back in 1962.

He continued to perform for four decades and gave his last concert just a few months before his death.

Personal life

Van Ronk was married to Terri Thal in the 1960s,Terri Thal [http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/12/dave_van_ronk_inside_llewyn_davis.php Dave Van Ronk's Ex-Wife Takes Us Inside Inside Llewyn Davis] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150225225745/http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/12/dave_van_ronk_inside_llewyn_davis.php|date=2015-02-25}}, Village Voice, December 13, 2013. lived for many years with Joanne Grace, then married Andrea Vuocolo, with whom he spent the rest of his life.

On February 10, 2002, Van Ronk died in a New York hospital of cardiopulmonary failure while undergoing postoperative treatment for colon cancer.Chris Morris (February 12, 2002). [http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4364590-1.html "Influential Folk Artist Dave Van Ronk Dies"], Billboard Bulletin; archived at AllBusiness.com; accessed June 21, 2016 He died before completing work on his memoirs, which were finished by his collaborator, Elijah Wald, and published in 2005 as The Mayor Of MacDougal Street.{{Cite web |title=THE MAYOR OF MACDOUGAL STREET | Kirkus Reviews |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dave-van-ronk/the-mayor-of-macdougal-street/}}

Influences

Van Ronk's guitar work, for which he credits Tom Paley as fingerpicking teacher, is noteworthy for both syncopation and precision.{{cite book |last=Milward |first=John |author-link= |date=June 2021 |title=Americanaland: Where Country & Western Met Rock 'n' Roll |url=https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/92gqf6qf9780252043918.html |location= |publisher=University of Illinois Press |page= |isbn=}} Revealing similarities to Mississippi John Hurt's, Van Ronk's main influence was the Reverend Gary Davis, who conceived the guitar as "a piano around his neck." Van Ronk took this pianistic approach and added a harmonic sophistication adapted from the band voicings of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington.

Van Ronk was among the first to adapt traditional jazz and ragtime to the solo acoustic guitar{{citation needed|date=June 2016}} with arrangements of such ragtime staples as "St. Louis Tickle", "The Entertainer", "The Pearls" and "Maple Leaf Rag". Van Ronk brought the blues style to Greenwich Village during the 1960s, while introducing the folk music world to the complex harmonies of Kurt Weill with his many Brecht and Weill interpretations. A traditional revivalist who moved with the times, Van Ronk brought old blues and ballads together with the new sounds of Dylan, Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Dylan says of his impact:{{cite book |last=Dylan |first=Bob |author-link=Bob Dylan |title=Chronicles: Volume One |title-link=Chronicles: Volume One |date=Oct 11, 2004 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=0743272587 |edition=illustrated |pages=15–16 |chapter=Chapter 1: Markin' Up the Score}}

{{Blockquote|text="I'd heard Van Ronk back in the Midwest on records and thought he was pretty great, copied some of his recordings phrase for phrase. [...] Van Ronk could howl and whisper, turn blues into ballads and ballads into blues. I loved his style. He was what the city was all about. In Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was king of the street, he reigned supreme".}}

Van Ronk was one of the first mentors to Dylan when the young Minnesotan arrived in New York City in 1961, and quickly recognized Dylan's promise, and his unique persona.

{{Blockquote|text=He was marvelous. He was marvelous. I wish there were films. He had a kind of a herky-jerky stage presence, that was almost Chaplinesque. And a master of timing - he could make anything hilariously funny just by using timing. The nearest thing I can think of to his mastery of timing is Jack Benny. He had people in stitches all the time. He did the same thing with his harmonica. He would blow a note. And then another note. Playing all the time. And he would play his notes so that you never could tell when one was coming. Always with an absolute straight face... As a performer, I think most of his power came from his sense of timing.... Nobody thought he was anything more than an exceptionally good performer at the outset. We were tremendously shocked at how good a songwriter he was when he really got growing.Interview with Dave Van Ronk, filmed for No Direction Home, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLbF5zOVM4w}}

Dylan frequently slept on a couch in the apartment Van Ronk shared with his wife, Teri Thal, Dylan's first manager."Bob Dylan and Me," by Win McCormack, The New Republic, February 16, 2025

Van Ronk gave guitar lessons in Greenwich Village, including to Christine Lavin, David Massengill, Terre Roche and Suzzy Roche. He influenced his protégé Danny Kalb and the Blues Project.

Van Ronk once said, "Painting is all about space, and music is all about time."{{Cite web |last=Pedro |date=2017-03-28 |title=On this Day in Music (TWO) |url=https://historum.com/t/on-this-day-in-music-two.126343/page-17}}

Legacy

The Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis follows a folk singer similar to Van Ronk, and incorporates anecdotes based on Van Ronk's life.{{cite news|author=Russ Fischer|url=http://www.slashfilm.com/coen-bros-film-based-folk-musician-dave-van-ronk/#more-106431|title=The Coen Bros. New Script is Based on the 60′s NYC Folk Scene|publisher=slashfilm.com|date=June 25, 2011|access-date=June 25, 2011}} He is mentioned in David Bowie's 2013 song ‘(You Will) Set the World on Fire' on The Next Day{{Cite web | url=https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/david-bowie-tribute-to-bob-dylan-final-masterpieces/ | title=David Bowie's tribute to Bob Dylan on one of his final songs | date=3 February 2022 }} and was mentioned among the dead musicians and recording artists in the song "Mirror Door" by the Who in 2006 on the album Endless Wire.

His friend and contemporary Tom Paxton wrote "The Mayor of Macdougal Street" about Van Ronk, noting" "Never knew a man to suffer fools less gladly.

Or to view this world of ours with more jaundiced eye..."

In 2004, a section of Sheridan Square, where Barrow Street meets Washington Place, was renamed Dave Van Ronk Street in his memory.[http://www.ottofocus.net/vanronk/ Dave Van Ronk street naming ceremony & pictures by Otto Bost.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080703193019/http://www.ottofocus.net/vanronk/|date=2008-07-03}} Retrieved July 9, 2008. Van Ronk was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously by the World Folk Music Association in 2004.{{Cite book |last=Noble |first=Richard E. |title=Number #1 : the story of the original Highwaymen |publisher=Outskirts Press |year=2009 |isbn=9781432738099 |location=Denver |pages=265–267 |oclc=426388468}}

Joni Mitchell said that Van Ronk's rendition of her song "Both Sides, Now" (which he called "Clouds") was her favorite version of the song.{{Cite web |title=Joni Mitchell Library - Top Tunes: Evening Star (Washington DC), December 7, 1968 |url=https://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=4361 |access-date=2021-09-08 |website=jonimitchell.com}}

Van Ronk was portrayed by Joe Tippett in the 2024 film A Complete Unknown.

Personal characteristics

Van Ronk refused for many years to fly and never learned to drive (he took trains or buses or, when possible, recruited a girlfriend or young musician as his driver), and he declined to ever move from Greenwich Village for any extended period of time (having stayed in California for a short time in the 1960s).Van Ronk & Wald (2005). pp. 113-114. Van Ronk's trademark stoneware jug of Tullamore Dew was frequently seen on stage next to him in his early days.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

Critic Robert Shelton described Van Ronk as "the musical mayor of MacDougal Street" -

..."a tall, garrulous, hairy man of three quarters, or, more accurately, three fifths Irish descent. Topped by light brownish hair and a leonine beard which he smoothed down several times a minute, he resembled an unmade bed strewn with books, record jackets, pipes, empty whiskey bottles, lines from obscure poets, finger picks, and broken guitar strings. He was [Dylan]'s first New York guru. Van Ronk was a walking museum of the blues. Through an early interest in jazz, he had gravitated toward black music—its jazz pole, its jug-band and ragtime center, its blues bedrock.... His manner was rough and testy, disguising a warm, sensitive core."{{Cite book |last=Robert Shelton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pjA21i7xCUMC&dq=%22garrulous+hairy+man+of+three+quarters%22&pg=PT174 |title=Bob Dylan: No Direction Home |publisher=W. Morrow |year=1986 |location=New York|isbn = 9780857126160}}{{Page needed|date=June 2021}}

Discography

For an in depth, illustrated discography, see https://www.wirz.de/music/vanronk.htm

=Studio albums=

=Live=

=Compilation albums=

{{unreferenced section|date=April 2016}}

=As guest=

  • 1958: Skiffle in Stereo (The Orange Blossom Jug Five)
  • 1959: The Unfortunate Rake{{cite web |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/dave-van-ronk-729891.html |date=April 5, 2002 |location=London |author=Chris Welch |publisher=The Independent |title=Dave Van Ronk |work=Obituary |access-date=August 12, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110424042833/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/dave-van-ronk-729891.html |archive-date=April 24, 2011 |url-status=dead }}
  • 1959: Fo'csle Songs and Shanties (by Paul Clayton)Van Ronk & Wald (2005). p 88: "... The LP was issued as Fo'c'sle Songs and Chanties, by Paul Clayton and the Fo'c'sle Singers, and has remained in the Folkways ..." - Van Ronk sings on all songs.
  • 1963: Newport Folk Festival 1963 The Evening Concerts Vol. 2
  • 1964: Blues from Newport
  • 1964: The Blues Project
  • 1995: Life Lines, Peter, Paul and Mary,
  • 1998: Other Voices, Too, Nanci Griffith
  • 1999: The Man From God Knows Where, Tom Russell

=Tributes=

  • 2005: Hotwalker, Tom Russell album including the tribute song, van Ronk about Dave Van Ronk
  • 2007: Dave on Dave, David Massengill album tribute to Dave Van Ronk
  • 2015: Redemption Road, Tom Paxton album including the tribute song, The Mayor of MacDougal Street about Dave Van Ronk

Bibliography

Van Ronk was author of a posthumous memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street (2005) written with Elijah Wald. Anecdotes from the book were used as a source for the film Inside Llewyn Davis.{{cite web|last=Wald|first=Elija|title=The World of LLewyn Davis|url=http://www.insidellewyndavis.com/us/historical-context|work=Inside Llewyn Davis official site|publisher=CBS Films|access-date=September 24, 2013|quote=the Coens mined the work for local color and a few scenes}}

Van Ronk and Richard Ellington collected and edited The Bosses' Songbook: [32] Songs to Stifle the Flames of Discontent, Second Edition – A Collection of Modern Political Songs and Satire (Richard Ellington, publisher: New York, 1959).{{Cite web|url=http://www.sds-1960s.org/TheBossesSongbookPart1.pdf|title=The Bosses Songbook Part 1|website=Sds-1960s.org|access-date=September 30, 2019}}{{cite web|url=http://www.sds-1960s.org/TheBossesSongbookPart2.pdf|title=The Bosses Songbook Part 2|website=Sds-1960s.org|access-date=September 30, 2019}}

References

{{Reflist}}

External links

  • [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/12/arts/dave-van-ronk-folk-singer-and-iconoclast-dies-at-65.html NY Times obituary]
  • [http://www.elijahwald.com/vanronk.html Dave Van Ronk – The Mayor of MacDougal Street], About the book. ElijahWald.com.
  • {{cite web| url=http://www.wsws.org/arts/1998/may1998/dvr-m7.shtml |title=A Conversation with Dave Van Ronk |author=Dave Walsh |publisher=World Socialist Web Site |date=May 7, 1998 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19991019002848/http://wsws.org/arts/1998/may1998/dvr-m7.shtml |archive-date=October 19, 1999}}
  • Stefan Wirz. [http://www.wirz.de/music/vanrofrm.htm Illustrated Dave Van Ronk discography]
  • Otto Bost (June 30, 2004). [https://web.archive.org/web/20080703193019/http://www.ottofocus.net/vanronk/ Dave Van Ronk Street Renaming Ceremony] Photo essay. OttoFocus.net
  • Charles Freudenthal (August 2005). [http://efanzines.com/EK/eI21/index.htm#ronk Walking Down Dave Van Ronk Street]. Anecdotes. e*I*21. (Vol. 4 No. 4)
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20140710035052/http://www.folkways.si.edu/searchresults.aspx?sPhrase=dave%20van%20ronk&sType=%27phrase%27%2F Dave Van Ronk Discography]. Smithsonian Folkways.
  • Dave Read (December 2, 2013). [http://www.berkshirelinks.com/remembering-dave-van-ronk/ Remembering Dave Van Ronk] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131204042440/http://www.berkshirelinks.com/remembering-dave-van-ronk/ |date=2013-12-04 }} article about meetings with Dave Van Ronk in the 1970s and 1999.
  • David Browne (December 2, 2013). [https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/meet-the-folk-singer-who-inspired-inside-llewyn-davis-20131202? Rolling Stone. Meet the folk singer who inspired 'Inside Llewyn Davis'.]
  • Aaron J. Leonard (July 8, 2018) [https://truthout.org/articles/newly-unearthed-fbi-file-exposes-targeting-of-folk-singer-dave-van-ronk/ Newly Unearthed FBI File Exposes Targeting of Folk Singer Dave Van Ronk]

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