In this business ��

This fall ended up being somewhat of a confluence of events. PBS aired Martin Scorsese's phenomenal portrait of Bob Dylan's early years, No Direction Home, that we were excited to get to play a teeny, minuscule part in (as a resource for some early photos and material ... little of which even made the final cut). Watching the four-hour program focused and, in some cases, reset my opinions about Dylan. Still eternally present is the awe and admiration of his body of work, in particular those early years. But, the human side of Mr. Zimmerman has never before, to my knowledge, been so well juxtaposed to the near insanity of his adoring public and the media lunacy that deified him ... and stood always ready to demonize him for following his own muse.

For Sing Out!, a piece of the context behind all this simply has to include our founding editor's infamous "Open Letter to Bob Dylan," published in v.14#5, November 1964. At the time, and often since, the piece has been criticized for being paternalistic and judgmental. But, with the benefit of a serious chunk of hindsight and context, I think I'm really coming around to understanding what Irwin Silber was getting at between the lines he wrote. The music business has its way of using and abusing its artists even when it's doling out a heaping helping of success. It would take an actual deity to be able to keep a sane mind through the circus of fame. And in the package that was and is Bob Dylan, there is without question a fair sampling of plain old human. Rereading Irwin's words today, I feel a genuine compassion and caring from someone who was there from the beginning, and someone who found a perch just on the outskirts of the "system" of starmaking machinery, and who viewed folk music--including the music that Dylan was making--as more important than a mere commodity.

For all my grey hair today, I was a mere pipsqueak when those words hit the page, and Sing Out! was still a bit off my radar. But when I did discover the magazine, I devoured each and every back issue I could lay my hand on. I guess, for me, Irwin Silber became a little bit larger than life and something of a hero. Here was a guy with a deep understanding of the context music can have with our lives ... and both the stones to put it right out there on the page and the chops to back it up.

By the time I started volunteering with the magazine, Irwin had left his post, but it was always a goal of mine to get to meet him and ask a few questions about those days. That chance came a few years into my tenure, when we started some friendly correspondence over some issues arising from digging through the history of those early days. When the Folk Alliance honored Sing Out! in 2003, I jumped at the opportunity to invite Irwin to accept the award for us. It was the perfect opportunity to ask him some of those questions that don't really work over e-mail ... and to get a chance to actually meet the man.

It was very empowering to find out just how human Irwin is. He had lots of great anecdotes about the heady HUAC days, his own shifts in focus for the magazine, and later for his own professional life as he decided to leave his editor's post in 1967. A very impressive man.

When Barbara Dane, Irwin's partner and another former SO! staffer, among other accomplishments, wrote to let me know that Irwin turns 80 this October, I knew where a good bit of this page was heading. Let's all raise a glass to celebrate the birthday of the guy who laid the groundwork for this work. Happy birthday, Irwin ... and thanks for your friendship!

Just as we were finishing up this issue, I got the word of the passing of another non-musician who deserves as much credit for folk music as any other individual in our community. Now, I met Harold Leventhal very early on in my Sing Out! life. He was there to offer advice and assistance for my very first Sing Out! benefit concert (that I helped to organize back in 1971). It was Harold who helped us navigate the realities when Pete Seeger and I worked together on the interim "bulletins" as we moved the magazine from New York City to Pennsylvania. And he was there countless times since with sage advice or counsel ... always so damn smart, and so quiet and respectful with how he shared that input. A true mensch.

I think my favorite Harold story, though--and one that really shows just how important a guy he was--came from a somewhat more public forum. Dave Marsh was doing an oral history with Harold at another Folk Alliance conference, asking Harold how he first became involved in the concert production piece of his profession. With his soft, even voice, Harold recounted how he had been stationed in India during WWII, assigned to Ghandi as that world leader was navigating his own non-violent philosophy in an increasingly violent world.

On Harold's return to New York's music row, he got the opportunity to bring the great Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson to what I remember him describing as her first concert at Lincoln Center. As he described the concert, a sell-out, he remembered a young African American minister from the South showing up looking for a ticket for the already underway show. As Harold and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. started talking, the Reverend became intrigued when he found out that Harold had worked so closely with Ghandi, and the two men sat in the lobby, with Jackson's soaring vocals wafting in from the concert hall, talking about the use of non-violent protest to make changes in the world. There was a pregnant pause in the telling, as the interviewer--and all of us in the listening crowd--marveled at this seeming inspiring, yet bizarre, historical confluence. Then Harold, with a twinkle in his eye, dryly posits: "In this business ... you meet people."

I guess you're right, Harold ... indeed one does.

Mark D. Moss

Editor/Executive Director

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