← Back to Genres

American Folk

Baltimore-born, raga on steel strings

Robbie Basho

Robbie Basho was born Daniel R. Robinson Jr. in Baltimore in August 1940 and was adopted as an infant. At the University of Maryland he got to know John Fahey, bought his first guitar in 1959 and took his new name from the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō. Ravi Shankar's music sent him to study with Ali Akbar Khan, and he set about building a raga system for the American steel-string guitar. Fahey's Takoma label put out The Seal of the Blue Lotus in 1965. The Voice of the Eagle and Zarthus came out on Vanguard, and Visions of the Country on Windham Hill in 1978. He died in Berkeley in February 1986, aged 45, from a stroke brought on by a chiropractic procedure.

El Paso to Greenwich Village, 1962

Phil Ochs

Phil Ochs was born in El Paso, Texas, in December 1940. He studied journalism at Ohio State and walked out in his final quarter without a degree. In 1962 he got to New York, worked the small folk clubs of Greenwich Village and wrote songs and articles for Broadside magazine. He made three albums for Elektra, starting with All the News That's Fit to Sing in 1964, then moved to A&M for Pleasures of the Harbor, Tape from California and Rehearsals for Retirement. He helped create the Yippies, was in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic convention and testified at the Chicago Seven trial. A 1973 robbery in Dar es Salaam damaged his vocal cords. He died by suicide in Far Rockaway in April 1976.

The Mayor of MacDougal Street

Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk was born in Brooklyn in June 1936 and grew up in Queens. He quit high school for the Merchant Marine and played in traditional jazz bands before the records of Reverend Gary Davis, Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt pulled him toward blues. They called him the Mayor of MacDougal Street. He was at the center of Greenwich Village's 1960s coffeehouse scene and was one of Bob Dylan's first mentors. His records run from Folkways in 1959, through Inside Dave Van Ronk and his Ragtime Jug Stompers in 1964, to Sunday Street in 1976. He died in New York in February 2002, aged 65. The Coen brothers took scenes from his memoir for Inside Llewyn Davis.

The Collection