Flock of Fresh Folk Singers. March 9, 1962 Life Magazine

Exerpt from March 9, 1962 Life Magazine.

1960's Folk Singers

Folk music has plenty of room for almost everything and everybody because its range is huge–from funereal laments and bitter satire to sweet ballads and rollicking fables. Old-timers like Burl Ives and Josh White have been mining this range for years, but right now a whole school of irreverent young groups is playing folk songs for laughs. When Dave Guard's new Whiskeyhill Singers launch a number, they often give it the full comedy treatment. Other lighthearted folk singers have helped heighten the mania that is sweeping records, TV, nightclubs and the concert circuit. The brightest of the new folk singers are shown in these pictures acting out their favorite numbers in their own distinctive and varied styles. Not all of the performers rely solely on laughter. In fact, they exploit the enormous breadth of the folk music repertoire to shift easily from broad humor to touching drama. Almost all of them dress up and popularize the old and often familiar tunes—except the finest new singer of them all, Joan Baez. She is a loner, a rabid traditionalist who specializes in sad songs of love and death which are delivered with a stylistic purity that places her in a class almost by herself.

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