Using a Camera to Get Closer to Dad

Legendary folk singer and storyteller extraordinaire Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is never at a loss for words. In fact, in the award-winning documentary “The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack,” Elliott’s longtime friend Kris Kristofferson jokes that the folkie got his nickname not because of his nomadic wanderings, but from his rambling conversations.

But he has been at a loss when it comes to talking with his daughter, filmmaker Aiyana Elliott, who directed, produced and co-wrote the documentary that opened Friday. During the three years she spent making the film, she tried repeatedly to get Elliott to open up and talk about their relationship. He never would.

After completing the film, Aiyana, who was born in 1969, came to the conclusion that their relationship would never change. Elliott would never talk about the fact that he was a less than fantastic father, that he was barely around while she was growing up. And she still didn’t know him even as an adult.

“I felt I would have to accept our relationship as it is,” she says, during a recent joint interview with her father in Los Angeles.

“Making the movie was very difficult. But then since completing the film, though, I think we have had good talks. I think we had a big breakthrough about six days ago.”

Elliott, who at 69 resembles Gene Kelly in his later years, perks up when Aiyana mentions the breakthrough.

“Where was that?” he asks her. “Was I there?”

Trying to find out about the breakthrough takes a while as Elliott lives up to his ramblin’ reputation.

Question: So how did the breakthrough happen?

“I don’t know,” says Aiyana, looking over at her father, who is sitting next to her in a conference room at the office of the film’s publicists. “Maybe because my other dad was there. Maybe that helped.”

“He’s always very helpful,” adds Elliott. “I call him my brother-in-law for lack of a better term.”

“He’s Jerry Kaye,” explains Aiyana. “In the movie, we call him a friend, he was a friend of Jack’s, but he’s more than that.

“Jerry, he was the real hero of this story,” says Aiyana. “The fact that Jerry provided some great stability enabled me to appreciate my dad for what he had to offer.”

Question: Well, what happened six days ago?

“We were in New York for the premiere,” says Aiyana. “Jerry was there.”

“That was a big thing,” pipes in Elliott. “I was thrilled with that.”

Question: So what happened at the premiere?

“We were in New York and Jerry was there and we were sitting around and my dad just started telling me he appreciated what I was doing,” says Aiyana, beaming ever so slightly as she glances over at her dad. “He thought we had gotten to know each other better making the movie and he had gotten to respect me and what we had done.”

A pervading feeling of sadness prompted Aiyana Elliott to document her father’s colorful life and career.

“I don’t know why, but I get really sad when I think of a time when he might not be around,” she says, as her father caresses her arm. “I think part of it is because my dad is somebody who has lived life to the fullest and really enjoys life and because there is nobody around to tell the stories he’s telling. There is no one like him.”

Staring at the window, Elliott interrupts his daughter: “I am going to have to write some songs,” he proclaims. “The time has come to try to write some songs. I don’t know what it is about me, lazy I guess. I don’t have a typewriter.”

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Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is his own creation.

He was born Elliott Adnopoz 69 years ago in Brooklyn, the son of a middle-class Jewish doctor. Young Elliott felt out of place in Brooklyn, where his parents wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps. He fell in love with westerns as a little boy, attended rodeos and listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. At 15, he ran away from home for three months and joined a rodeo where he learned to play a guitar.

Hearing the late, great folkie Woody Guthrie on the radio in 1950 changed Elliott’s life. He sought out the plain-spoken troubadour, and ended up living at Guthrie’s house and honing his craft. Traveling the U.S. performing, Elliott ended up become partners with an Oregon banjo picker named Derroll Adams. After marrying the first of five wives in 1954, Elliott toured Europe, becoming the toast of England.

In 1961, he returned to the U.S., where he had become a legend among the burgeoning folk crowd in Greenwich Village. Considered the best flat-picking folk guitarist, Elliott balked at the commercialization of folk music and remained a pure folk artist, though it meant eking out a living as a wandering minstrel. And along the way, Elliott battled booze and drugs.

After a 20-year absence from recording, Elliott won his first Grammy in 1996 for his “South Coast” album and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1998 by President Clinton. Elliott still plays about 60 concerts a year, though he admits he’s tired of all his ramblings.

Elliott was in favor of doing the documentary when Aiyana approached him. “I had no idea what it was going to be like to do,” he says. “It was a lot more work. I thought it would be a six-month thing. It turned out to be three years.”

He felt most comfortable when the camera caught him performing. “I could just be myself,” he says. “But when we got down to the nitty-gritty of interviewing daughter and father, I got real grumpy.”

As he says this, Elliott shakes his head and tries not to look at his daughter. “I couldn’t stand the pressure of constantly being asked questions that were impossible or I couldn’t think of an answer. So that was really difficult for me.

“The reason you had such a difficult time getting those answers out of me--you might have done better to have someone else reading those questions. . . . When you did ask me those personal questions on camera or even off camera, it was hard to face up, hard to know the answer and double hard if you have to answer those questions on camera.”

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The documentary, which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, is peppered with wonderful, revealing interviews with Elliott’s friends like Kristofferson, Odetta and Pete Seeger, as well as two of his ex-wives including Aiyana’s mother, Martha, who talks about how hard it was for young Aiyana to have her father on the road so often.

“I thought that stuff was entertaining,” Elliott says. “Her mom was like a professional actress. I was amazed at Martha’s ability to freely rap on camera. I am the one she was talking about and it wasn’t very complimentary, but I couldn’t help adoring that ability to do her thing in front of the camera.

“I think having you, her daughter, being the one [behind the camera] made it easier for her,” Elliott tells Aiyana. “She wasn’t relating to the camera, she was relating to her daughter. She said what was on her mind and enjoyed saying it and was getting even with me by saying what a jerk I was. I think she was one of the stars of the movie.”

“The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack” is chock full of archival footage Aiyana unearthed, ranging from home movies of young Elliott in Brooklyn to clips of him from 1969 performing on ABC’s “The Johnny Cash Show” to a wonderful bit of 1966 footage from a never-before-seen documentary in which a fully clothed Elliott is sitting in a bathtub waxing poetic as he’s smoking a joint.

“That was the part they should have left out,” says Elliott with a sheepish grin. “I am not embarrassed about smoking pot on camera, but the way I was doing it. It was such a chintzy little joint. I was also a drinking a bottle of mescal with the worm in the bottle. I was trying to see if I could get totally crazed-stoned and drunk and still think of smart things to say in front of the camera.”

The documentary also focuses on Elliott’s relationship and mentoring of a young Bob Dylan, who seemed to glean all he could from Elliott before breaking off their friendship.

“I feel a little self-conscious about always harping on my relationship with Bob Dylan, which doesn’t exist,” says Elliott.

“I think Bob is sensitive and resentful about the bad press he got when people used to say that he stole my style and stuff like that. He did learn a lot from me and I didn’t object to that. I was happy to share it with Bob.

“Everybody else thought it was not nice of Bob to be doing that. His first record he sounded a lot like Jack Elliott, but he’s changed hundreds of times over since then. He’s not imitating me anymore.”