Folk Rock
When you are talking about “folk rock”, I immediately think of “Dylan”, the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, some of its most famous of prophets. However, is it all just them? As great as they are “folk rock” was a confluence or a perfect storm of a genre that popped up in mid-sixties out of acoustical folk music. So, when did folk rock start?
Did it start with that controversial moment when Dylan plugged in on July 25th, in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival? Did folk rock start with the Byrds releasing their debut album in June of 1965? or was it that night August 28th in 64′, at the Delmonico in NYC where Dylan first turned on the Beatles and led to a friendly competition of “one-up-man-ship” that permeated the Beatles northern way. Or does it go back further?
The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and even Elvis had been mixing rock & roll and folk music for years by the time of the mid-sixties when “folk rock” became the next big thing.
Late 1950s Folk Music Revival
Folk music, as a separate form of music from rock & roll, was a big thing in the early sixties with its strong emphasis on the acoustic stringed instrumentation. The “folk movement” that was growing in the college crowds was parallel to that of the social awareness and equal rights movements of the late 50/early 60s. The folk music revival was started in the late forties/early fifties by artists like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger in folk groups like the Weavers which led to a late 50s explosion of new artists like the New Christy Minstrels, the Brothers Four, the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Limelighters, the Highwaymen and the Kingston Trio with their notable 1958 hit “Tom Dooley”.
Bob Dylan grew out of the folk music revival inconspicuously with his brilliant but highly unknown anthological first album in 1962. The folk music circuit was having hits by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and the Kingston Trio in being somewhat synonymous with the civil rights movement that was coming about partially (in music) from white youth’s acceptance of R&B music of the 50s.
A Master Poet Emerges
Dylan controversially plugged into an amp and rocked with a rock band at the Newport Folk Festival riding a string of folk rock hit singles and albums. The Byrds embodied the folk rock ethos as the quintessential folk rock group, with a string of “anthemic” original songs, as well as Dylan penned songs and a string of hit albums in the mid-sixties. However, almost simultaneously the Beatles showed interest in folk rock early on, after their first tour of America. The music on “A Hard Day’s Night” their 3rd album, and first hit film, shows a clear focus on incorporating folk music elements into their original music.
Sometime, just after the British invasion in 1964, many rock & roll groups on both sides of the Atlantic, adopted folk and blues music elements into a newer form of rock music simple called “folk rock”. This newer form of rock that developed was unique in that it was instigated by both sides of the Atlantic (US & UK). Just before the “invasion”, America was in its pinnacle of the doo-wop years with new rock sub-genres of surf rock, garage rock and “Jersey” rock over a backdrop of doo-wop Rhythm & Blues music as strictly popular music. This whole scenario was then completely interrupted and usurped by the freshly naive British bands playing old time rock & roll and bubble gum chewing “power pop”, thereby causing a slow revolution in rock music that took a couple of years for the waves to settle into a new idiom called “Rock Music”.