folk rock

Folk rock arose mainly from the confluence of three elements: urban/collegiate folk vocal groups; singer-songwriters and the revival of North American rock and roll after the British Invasion. Of these, the first two owed direct debts to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Popular Front culture of the 1930s.

The first of the urban folk vocal groups was the Almanac Singers, whose shifting membership during the late 1930s and early 1940s included Guthrie and Bob Sagit and Lee Hays. In 1947 Seeger and Hays joined Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman to form the Weavers, who popularized the genre and had a major hit with a cleaned-up cover of Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene", but fell afoul of the U.S. Red Scare of the early 1950s. Their sound, and their broad repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs inspired other groups such as the Kingston Trio (founded 1957), the Chad Mitchell Trio, New Christy Minstrels, and the (usually less political) "collegiate folk" groups such as The Brothers Four, The Four Freshmen, The Four Preps, and The Highwaymen. All featured tight vocal harmonies and a repertoire at least initially rooted in folk music and (in some cases) topical songs. The successors of such groups were bands such as We Five and The Mamas & the Papas (1965-8).

When the term singer-songwriter was coined in the mid-1960s, it was applied retroactively to Bob Dylan, Fred Neil, and other (mainly New York-based) folk-rooted songwriters. Paul Simon, Australian Bruce Woodley of The Seekers, and the Scottish songster Donovan also fit this mould. Dylan's material would provide much of the original grist for the folk rock mill, not only in the U.S. but in the UK as well.

None of this would likely ever have intersected with rock music, though, if it had not been for the impulse of the British Invasion. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and numerous other British bands reintroduced to America the broad potential of rock and roll as a creative medium. One of the first bands to craft a distinctly American sound in response was the Beach Boys; while not a folk rock band themselves, they directly influenced the genre, and at the height of the folk rock boom in 1966 had a hit with a cover of the 1920s West Indian folk song "Sloop John B", which they had learned from The Kingston Trio, who, in turn, had learned it from the Weavers.

However, there are a few antecedents to folk rock in pre-British Invasion American rock; one could cite Link Wray (a full-blooded Apache drawing upon tribal drum rhythms) in "Fatback and Beans", as well as some of the later recordings of Buddy Holly, which strongly influenced artists like Dylan and the Byrds, and to some extent some recordings by country-influenced performers like The Everly Brothers. This was not a recognized trend at the time, and probably would have not been noticed if not for subsequent events.