Het is ondertussen een paar weken geleden dat het voorgaande deeltje van deze (ondertussen behoorlijk lange) serie op Birdeyes werd gezet. Soms heb je dat soort dingen. Eerlijk gezegd is het langzamerhand een beetje tijd geworden om weer een nieuw deeltje Bill Clifton te plaatsen. Bill Clifton was slechts één jaar – in 1963 – verbonden aan het Newport Folk Festival. De voorgaande paar deeltjes gingen uiteraard over de 1963 editie van het Newport Folk Festival, dit deeltje vanzelfsprekend ook…
Arrangements at Newport
Transcription:
We just talked about that first Newport Festival that was, as you emphasized, a nonprofit festival. When did that change? When did it change? It didn’t change. I say that. I don’t know that but as far as I knew, as a founding director I should know but I don’t. I haven’t kept up with it at all. They haven’t sent me any; I just did it that one year. I started to organize in ’61 with the committee and it took until July of ’63 before we mounted that festival. So it took a year and a half of work to put it together and then I left almost immediately after that. I left in September of ’63 so a month and a half after the festival I was gone. And Mike Seeger took my place for the following year and I think three years. I think each person was supposed to stay on three years, if I remember right, so Mike did that. And then probably Ralph Rinzler took over, I don’t remember, but anyhow somebody else who knows the music pretty well. And I didn’t really keep up with it.
The attorney, a man named Hoffman, I think Elliott Hoffman was his name, Elliott was responsible for sending out the minutes of meetings and any financial information that he would have. But after I moved to England I think I asked for him to send it one time, because I’d never heard anything, and they sent it one time. And that was that. And I didn’t keep up with it after that. And I figured Mike Seeger would keep me informed, if there was anything I really needed to know that he would tell me. But I’ve never asked him whether it changed from non-profit or not. But as far as I know it still runs that way. But when I say non-profit, we always paid everybody’s expenses. In other words we’d pay if they had to fly from California we paid their return airfares. If they had to stay at Newport, which they did of course, then we provided accommodation. They had to eat three meals a day; we provided three meals a day. So whatever they got for a fee, which was fifty dollars on the first festival, it probably changed after that but the first festival it was fifty dollars a day, for each person. So, like The Morris Brothers were there two days and they got $100 dollars each day, with no expenses, I mean, everything else was paid for. So they were able to take something home at the end of it. It worked for everybody. I mean Joan Baez was willing to work for fifty dollars. Peter, Paul & Mary for $ 150, ‘cause there’s three of them.
I imagine that Joan Baez would not be interested in playing nowadays, would she? I don’t know what Joan is doing nowadays. I have no idea. She was very politically motivated, probably by Pete Seeger, as many people were. In fact the city people in general were very much motivated by Pete Seeger. And if they were not actually members of the communist party they certainly leaned very heavily towards that way of thinking. I don’t know where people have gone with that since the break-up of the Soviet Union. I often wonder what happened to anybody. I mean I read terrible stories about people who left America to go to the Soviet Union because they believed in the cause. And now they were 75 years old and they had to walk six floors up to their flat and lived in a place that the rain still came in through the roof and, you know, those kinds of things. And you think ‘well’, I mean, it must hurt so bad to think that everything that you believed in has gone down the drain. And you’re left with nothing.
And your high ideals are all smashed. I can imagine that. We saw Joan Baez in York, England two years ago and we tried to get her to do an interview but no. She wouldn’t do it?
No, nor sign autographs, nothing. She didn’t even come out after the show. So we were a bit disappointed by that. I don’t know her at all. I’ve only talked to her a couple of times. She gave a party in London one time, to which I was invited. And I went and there were hundreds of people there and most of them I didn’t know. And even those I did know were sort of estranged to me. Theo Bikel is another person I’ll mention again. He was there and he’d grown a beard and a moustache and I didn’t recognize him at all.
Interessant verhaal weer! Te kort… Zou je het hele interview niet als boekje kunnen uitgeven? Hartelijke groeten uit Bad Aussee, Dennis Schut
Ha Dennis! Leuk weer van je te horen. ‘k Volg je avonturen ook op Facebook, maar een reactie op een stukje is natuurlijk ook leuk. Jouw vraag is een goede vraag! Destijds is Kees Jansen ontzettend ijverig geweest alles netjes uit te tikken. In principe zou ik het hele verhaal in één keer kunnen publiceren natuurlijk. Ik heb er bewust voor gekozen er een soort van feuilleton van te maken; het levert volgens mij meer lezers op (alle afleveringen in deze reeks zijn tot dusverre gezamenlijk circa 45000 keer gelezen). Met alle plezier stuur ik je – als alles er binnenkort een keer op heeft gestaan – het volledige verhaal toe. Wist je trouwens dat Bill Malone’s boek over Bill Clifton voor een groter deel dan we dachten op deze interviews is gebaseerd?