A History of American Folk, as Reported in Feisty Broadside

When musicians wanted to rage against the machine in the early ‘60s, they didn’t have the weaponry they do now. Instead of depth-charge drums and strafing electric instruments, it was a gentler war, conducted with acoustic guitars and verses that detailed injustices or roused a rally.

The dissident tradition established by Woody Guthrie and his disciples in the ‘40s was in a lull toward the end of the ‘50s, but it was about to be revitalized by a phalanx of young artists, among them Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan and Eric Andersen.

With record label options scarce for topical songwriters, and with no Internet to spread the word, much of this music might have died on the vine if it hadn’t been for a feisty little publication called Broadside, a mimeographed, stapled volume that debuted in February 1962. Sis Cunningham, a singer and former labor organizer, and her husband, Gordon Friesen, a writer and journalist, sensed the need for a platform for socially minded songs, and they launched Broadside out of their New York apartment as a labor of love.

That’s what it remained. The couple struggled with their finances and health for the duration, according to the accounts in the book that accompanies this five-CD collection. It’s amazing that Broadside managed to survive (with some breaks) into 1988.

Equally amazing is the quality of the songs that were published in Broadside. This was music not for consumers but for a community, and one quickly formed around the magazine.

In order to get the words and music they would transcribe for publication, Cunningham and Friesen would have the songwriters come to their apartment and sing into a tape recorder. These sessions might find Ochs, Paxton, Dylan, Len Chandler and other luminaries unveiling their latest works.

Some of those tapes are included in “The Best of Broadside,” which also features more professional recordings made for the three volumes of Broadside songs released by the Folkways label, as well as selections from the artists’ own albums and other sources.

Cunningham and Friesen were admittedly not selective, preferring to throw in as much as they could and let nature take its course, and not all of the 89 songs on this set are great.

But it does gather some of the staples of the folk era: Peter La Farge’s “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” (later a hit for Johnny Cash), prolific matriarch Malvina Reynolds’ “What Have They Done to the Rain” and the first recording of Dylan’s “Blowin in the Wind” (by the New World Singers).

Dylan, a champion of Broadside who was listed on the masthead as a contributor, is represented by some of the songs he recorded under the name Blind Boy Grunt, and by other singers’ recordings of his songs, including Happy Traum’s version of his spirit-lifting “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.”

Most of the songs address the compelling activist issues--the labor movement, disarmament, civil rights, Vietnam, feminism, the environment. But Broadside also admitted some more personal music, allowing a song such as Lucinda Williams’ “Lafayette” into the mix. This was also the first recording home of Janis Ian’s cause celebre hit-to-be “Society’s Child.”

Besides the songs, “The Best of Broadside” includes detailed notes on the publication, the singers and the songs. It adds up to a stirring, sobering document on the great currents of dissent in 20th century America--stirring for its ability to provoke thought and action, sobering in its reminder that most of the issues that inspired it four decades ago are still around, waiting for a song.