Dave Van Ronk | |
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 Van Ronk at the 1968 Philadelphia Folk Festival | |
| Background information | |
| Born | David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (1936-06-30)June 30, 1936 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | February 10, 2002(2002-02-10) (aged 65) New York City, U.S. |
| Genres | |
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| Instruments |
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| Years active | 1959–2002 |
| Labels | Folkways |
David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an Americanfolk singer. An important figure in theAmerican folk music revival andNew York City'sGreenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor ofMacDougal Street".[1]
Van Ronk's work ranged from old English ballads toblues,gospel,rock,New Orleans jazz, andswing. He was also known for performing instrumentalragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of "St. Louis Tickle" andScott 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 includeJim and Jean,Bob Dylan,Tom Paxton,Patrick Sky,Phil Ochs,Ramblin' Jack Elliott, andJoni Mitchell. Dylan recorded Van Ronk's arrangement of the traditional song "House of the Rising Sun" on his first album whichThe Animals would later cover and which would become a chart-topping rock single for them in 1964,[2] helping inaugurate thefolk rock movement.[3]
Van Ronk received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in December 1997.
Van Ronk was born inBrooklyn, New York City, to a family that was "mostly Irish, despite the Dutch 'Van' name".[4] He moved from Brooklyn toQueens around 1945 and began attending Holy Child Jesus Catholic School, whose students were mainly of Irish descent. He had been performing in abarbershop quartet since 1949, but left before finishing high school spending time in theMerchant Marine.[5]
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 thetrad jazz revival had already passed its prime, and Van Ronk turned to performing the blues he had stumbled across while shopping for jazz78s by artists like theReverend Gary Davis,Furry Lewis andMississippi John Hurt.
By about 1958, he was firmly committed to the folk-blues style, accompanying himself with his own acoustic guitar. He performedblues,jazz andfolk 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 inscience fiction fandom, referring to it as "mind rot",[6] and contributed tofanzines), world history, and politics. During the 1960s he supported left-wing political causes and was, at various times, a member of theLibertarian League and theYoung Socialist League, at that time the youth wing of the "Shachtmanite"Independent Socialist League.[7] In 1964, he was part of a group expelled from the TrotskyistSocialist Workers Party which would eventually go on to become theAmerican Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI, later renamed the Workers League[8][9]).
In 1974, he appeared at "An Evening ForSalvador Allende", a concert organized byPhil 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 byAugusto Pinochet. After Ochs's suicide in 1976, Van Ronk joined the many performers who played at his memorial concert in theFelt Forum atMadison Square Garden, playing his bluesy version of the traditional folk ballad "He Was A Friend Of Mine".[10] 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 theIndustrial 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."[7]
Van Ronk was among 13 people arrested at theStonewall Inn June 28, 1969, the night of theStonewall 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 inspectorSeymour Pine.[11][12][13] 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.[14] 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."[15] The next day, he was arrested and later released on his own recognizance for having thrown a heavy object at a police officer.[16] City records show he was charged with felony assault in the second degree[17] 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 inAtlanta, 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.
Van Ronk was married to Terri Thal in the 1960s,[18] 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 forcolon cancer.[19] He died before completing work on his memoirs, which were finished by his collaborator,Elijah Wald, and published in 2005 asThe Mayor Of MacDougal Street.[20]
Van Ronk's guitar work, for which he credits Tom Paley as fingerpicking teacher, is noteworthy for bothsyncopation and precision.[21] Revealing similarities toMississippi John Hurt's, Van Ronk's main influence was theReverend 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 ofJelly Roll Morton andDuke Ellington.
Van Ronk was among the first to adapt traditional jazz and ragtime to the solo acoustic guitar[citation needed] with arrangements of such ragtime staples as "St. Louis Tickle", "The Entertainer", "The Pearls" and "Maple Leaf Rag". Van Ronk brought the blues style toGreenwich Village during the 1960s, while introducing the folk music world to the complex harmonies ofKurt 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 andLeonard Cohen. Dylan says of his impact:[22]
"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.
He was marvelous. He was marvelous. I wish there were films. He had a kind of a herky-jerky stage presence, that was almostChaplinesque. 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 isJack 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.[23]
Dylan frequently slept on a couch in the apartment Van Ronk shared with his wife, Teri Thal, Dylan's first manager.[24]
Van Ronk gave guitar lessons in Greenwich Village, including toChristine Lavin,David Massengill,Elijah Wald,Terre Roche andSuzzy Roche. He influenced his protégéDanny Kalb andthe Blues Project.
Van Ronk once said, "Painting is all about space, and music is all about time."[25]
TheCoen brothers filmInside Llewyn Davis follows a folk singer similar to Van Ronk, and incorporates a number of songs and guitar arrangements from his repertoire as well as several scenes from his memoir.[26][27] He is mentioned inDavid Bowie's 2013 song ‘(You Will) Set the World on Fire' onThe Next Day[28] and was mentioned among the dead musicians and recording artists in the song "Mirror Door" bythe Who in 2006 on the albumEndless Wire.
His friend and contemporary Tom Paxton wrote the song "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 ofSheridan Square, where Barrow Street meets Washington Place, was renamed Dave Van Ronk Street in his memory.[29] Van Ronk was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously by theWorld Folk Music Association in 2004.[30]
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.[31]
Van Ronk was portrayed byJoe Tippett in the 2024 filmA Complete Unknown.
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).[32] Van Ronk's trademarkstoneware jug ofTullamore Dew was frequently seen on stage next to him in his early days.[citation needed]
CriticRobert 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."[33]
For an in depth, illustrated discography, seehttps://www.wirz.de/music/vanronk.htm
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Van Ronk was author of a posthumous memoir,The Mayor of MacDougal Street (2005) written withElijah Wald.[6] Anecdotes from the book were used as a source for the filmInside Llewyn Davis.[26][27]
Van Ronk and Richard Ellington collected and editedThe 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).[36][37]
the Coens mined the work for local color and a few scenes
