What below an influential music venue which changed little until its closure featured an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years ?
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Bunjies Opened in 1953 or 1954, and one of the original "folk cafés" of the 1950s/1960s, Bunjies Coffee House & Folk Cellar was situated at 27 Litchfield Street (just off Charing Cross Road), London WC2. Below the café, in a 400-year-old wine cellar, was an influential music venue which changed little until its closure (and conversion of the premises into a restaurant) in 1999. Allegedly named after the first owner's pet hamster, the venue featured, early in their careers, Tom Paxton, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Al Stewart secured a residency at the Folk Cellar in 1965, at the age of 19, which was a significant factor in his later success.
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Tom Paxton Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is noteworthy as a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.
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Samantha Bumgarner "Aunt" Samantha Bumgarner (October 31, 1878 - December 24, 1960) was an American acclaimed early country and folk music performer and singer from Dillsboro, North Carolina. She won much praise for her work with the fiddle and banjo. In 1924, accompanied by guitarist Eva Davis, she traveled to New York City and recorded about a dozen songs for Columbia Records. The recordings are also notable for being the first use of a 5-string banjo on a recording. She was a yearly staple at Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival from 1928 until shortly before her death.
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Bobby Jameson Robert Parker Jameson (April 20, 1945 – May 12, 2015) was an American singer-songwriter who was briefly promoted as a major star in the early 1960s and later attracted a cult following with his 1965 album "Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest", issued under the name Chris Lucey. The album's dark lyrics and sophisticated arrangements led its advocates to note similarities with Love's 1967 album "Forever Changes". For decades, little was known about Jameson or his origins, and he was more famous for engaging in public disturbances and suicide attempts than his music.
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Stevie Ray Vaughan Stephen Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. In spite of a short-lived mainstream career spanning seven years, he was one of the most influential guitarists in the revival of blues in the 1980s and one of the greatest guitarists of all time. AllMusic describes him as "a rocking powerhouse of a guitarist who gave blues a burst of momentum in the '80s, with influence still felt long after his tragic death."
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Blaze Foley Michael David Fuller (December 18, 1949 – February 1, 1989), better known under the stage name Blaze Foley, was an American country music singer-songwriter.
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Richie Havens Richard Pierce "Richie" Havens (January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk, soul, and rhythm and blues. He is best known for his intense and rhythmic guitar style (often in open tunings), soulful covers of pop and folk songs, and his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
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Kitty Kallen Kitty Kallen (born Katie Kallen; May 25, 1921 – January 7, 2016) was an American popular singer whose career spanned from the 1930s to the 1960s, to include the Swing era of the Big Band years, the post-WWII pop scene and the early years of rock 'n roll. Kallen performed with popular big band leaders of the 1940s, including Jimmy Dorsey and Harry James, before establishing a solo career.
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Nyman Furr Nyman Furr (1949-2007) played fiddle, bass, was a singer and songwriter from Camden, Tennessee. He was also known as 'The Tennessee Fiddler', and played with 'The Little Juice Band'. This band played many locations in the panhandle area of Florida, including Sil's Place in Ft. Walton Beach, The Bowery in Destin, The Firehouse in Shalimar, and Mr B's Place in DeFuniak Springs, among other places.
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Mama Lo's Mama Lo's was a popular and well-known soul food restaurant located in Gainesville, Florida. It was founded by, operated by, and named for Lorene "Mama Lo" Alexander in 1975 until her retirement in 2005. Located only a few blocks from the University of Florida, the establishment proved popular with students, townsfolk and travellers alike. It was also frequented by many local musicians such as Bo Diddley, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Stranger Band and Sister Hazel.
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Fred Holstein Fred Holstein (December 12, 1942 – January 12, 2004) was an American folk music singer. Holstein was a prominent figure in the Chicago folk music scene in the 1970s. He owned a sequence of clubs in the Old Town and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was not a songwriter, but his talent for singing with his resonant baritone and arranging was well recognized.
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Eric Von Schmidt Eric Von Schmidt (May 28, 1931 – February 2, 2007) was an American singer and guitarist, songwriter, painter and illustrator, and Grammy Award recipient. He was associated with the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s and a key part of the Cambridge folk music scene. As a singer and guitarist, he was considered to be the leading Cambridge specialist in country blues at the time, thus the Cambridge analogue of Greenwich Village's Dave Van Ronk. Von Schmidt co-authored with Jim Rooney "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years".
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Lefty Frizzell William Orville Frizzell, known as Lefty Frizzell (March 31, 1928 – July 19, 1975), was an American country music singer-songwriter and honky-tonk singer. A vocalist who set the style of singing "the country way" for the generations that followed, Frizzell became one of the most successful and influential artists of country music throughout his career. He gained prominence in 1950 after two major hits, and throughout the decade was a very popular country performer. He smoothed out the rough edges of a honky tonk song by sounding out syllables longer and singing longer. Because of this, his music become much more mainstream without losing its honky-tonk attitude and persona.
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Peter La Farge Peter La Farge (born Oliver Albee La Farge, April 30, 1931 - October 27, 1965) was a New York-based folksinger and songwriter of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known best for his affiliations with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
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Don Robertson (songwriter) Donald Irwin Robertson (December 5, 1922 – March 16, 2015) was an American songwriter and pianist, mostly in the country and popular music genres. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. As a performer, he hit the US Top 10 with "The Happy Whistler" in 1956 (Peaking at 6th). The track reached #8 in the UK Singles Chart the same year. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.
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Cumberland Gap (folk song) "Cumberland Gap" is an Appalachian folk song that likely dates to the latter half of the 19th century and was first recorded in 1924. The song is typically played on banjo or fiddle, and well-known versions of the song include instrumental versions as well as versions with lyrics. A version of the song appeared in the 1934 book, "American Ballads and Folk Songs", by folk song collector John Lomax. Woody Guthrie recorded a version of the song at his Folkways sessions in the mid-1940s, and the song saw a resurgence in popularity with the rise of bluegrass and the American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957, the British musician Lonnie Donegan had a No. 1 UK hit with a skiffle version of "Cumberland Gap".
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Alice's Restaurant: The Massacree Revisited Alice's Restaurant: The Massacree Revisited is a 1996 album by American folk singer Arlo Guthrie. The album is a new recording of all material from the entire original "Alice's Restaurant" album, as performed live 29 years later at The Church in Housatonic, Massachusetts. The album cover of this release also pays homage to its predecessor as it pictures Arlo in the same pose as the original album—sitting at the dinner table holding his fork and knife, waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to begin. This time he is without his hat (displaying a full head of gray hair) and 29 years older.
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Folk Den Folk Den is a folk music website founded in 1995 by Roger McGuinn, former front man of The Byrds. Hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's ibiblio, the site is intended to preserve and promote folk music and offers a new folk song on a monthly basis. Each posting provides an MP3 of a traditional folk song along with a descriptive paragraph, lyrics, guitar chords and related images. The site has received positive reviews from "The New York Times", the Discovery Channel, and CNET.
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D. Whitfield D. Whitfield (1920-?) was a folk and gospel musician who played to small, Midwestern towns in the 1940s and 1950s. As a musician, very little is known about Whitfield, as he has only a few surviving recordings - none of which were very popular during his tenure. However, he has influenced a small number of musicians, mostly in Kansas and Oklahoma.
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Big Bill Broonzy Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1893 – August 14, 1958) was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
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Mark Gray (singer) Mark Eugene Gray (October 24, 1952 – December 2, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter and country music artist. He recorded both as a solo artist for Columbia Records and as a member of the country pop band Exile, of which he was a member between 1979 and 1982.
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The Weavers The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads, and sold millions of records at the height of their popularity. Their style inspired the commercial "folk boom" that followed them in the 1950s and 1960s, including such performers as The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul, and Mary; The Rooftop Singers; and Bob Dylan.