The Folk Music "Pony Express"

Back in the mid 1970's, there was no internet, no email (at least not for the general public - military and government personnel had access to crude email messaging, as did scientists and possibly academic institutions), no cell phones, personal computers...

There were telegrams or long distance phone calls for quickly communicating with people in other cities, countries, or continents, and of course, good old snail-mail - letters, postcards, aerograms (special letters on extra light paper sent by airmail).

 

Advert in 1979 Mariposa Folk Fest program guide

  

However, the Folk music community had an unofficial network of "Folklore centers" in many cities and towns all over North America, music shops that sold and repaired musical instruments, but also served as informal information and communication hubs for the music community. 
Aside from postcards and long distance phone calls between such centers, musicians and other travelers would drop in and bring news from other locations, from other people, and there was a bulletin board with notes and notices left by such travelers for the local community and for people who might be passing through. 

 

Ottawa Folklore Centre 

Back in 1977-1978, I ran a small Folk Coffeehouse in downtown Toronto (The Fingerboard in the basement of the 519 Church St. Community Center), and I would receive postcards from coffeehouses and Folklore centers across the country, introducing themselves to me, offering me places to perform in their area, often also offering me a place to stay for a night or two as well, and recommending musicians who might be traveling my way and would like to perform at my coffeehouse.

 

The Fingerboard Coffeehouse - first month 

This ad hoc network worked quite well, and although I never managed to go to Edmonton, Vancouver, or other locations to perform, I did meet many artists who were passing through, introduced myself to them at local Folk festivals, jammed with some of them at open jams, and featured a few of them on the stage of The Fingerboard. 

 

Toronto Folklore Center advert  - 
1970 Mariposa Folk Fest program guide  

Hanging out at the Toronto Folklore Center, I met quite a few local "celebrities" like master guitar-builder/luthier Linda Manzur, or singer songwriter Willie P. Bennet, and sometimes an informal jam session took place...I would also get to hear a little bit of local Folk gossip, as well as get early notice about Folk festivals or other special events that were brewing. 
I almost got into an apprenticeship in guitar-building from a local artist by hanging around the Toronto Folklore Center, but that a story for another time...

Whenever I visited my parents in Ottawa, I always popped in to the Ottawa Folklore Center to find out what was going on in town musically, and often met interesting fellow travelers with stories from other parts of the country or the world.   

Within the Toronto area, we had a number of Folk coffeehouses, each one operating weekly on a different night of the week so as not to compete with each other, and also to allow musicians to rotate between the different venues. The Fingerboard ran on Saturday nights, Fat Albert's on Bloor St. was on Wednesdays, the veteran Fiddler's Green up on Eglinton St. East was on Friday nights, and I think that the Trinity Church (behind the Eaton Center on Yonge St) ran on Thursdays. There was also a coffeehouse somewhere up in Scarborough in north Toronto...A musician could do a small "tour of Toronto" in a week, gaining new fans and audiences, and also a little bit of pocket money from the door tickets ( I normally paid the featured guest at The Fingerboard all of the door take, minus a small amount to help cover the rental of the sound system). 

 Advert in 1976 Mariposa Folk Fest program guide 

 

We all knew each other in the Folk community,and recommended artists to each other - the main method of communication being word of mouth, which is actually one of the most basic elements of the Folk process - passing information and Folklore from one person to another and one generation to the next. 

And.. that is what I would call the Folk music "Pony Express". 

       

Sonny Rhodes Turban driven Blues

For more than 30 years, Sonny Rhodes (1940-2021) was known as the Texas Bluesman who plays slide with a steel guitar on his lap, and wears a colorful turban. The turban was one of his trademarks, along with a full three piece suit and a tie. 

Sometime right after 9/11 happened in America, someone threatened Sonny with a .38 pistol, simply because of the turban, so he decided to set the turban aside, but he continued to wear a colorful suit and tie and sport a regular hat.

Born in Smithville Texas in 1940 as Clarence Edward Smith, he acquired the nickname Sonny Rhodes while sharecropping the cotton fields as a kid. He traded cotton picking for guitar picking sometime in the 1950's, recording his first single in 1958 - "I'll Never Let You Go When Something Is Wrong". 

After graduating from high school, Rhodes enlisted in the US Navy and served for a number of years before returning to music and making his next recordings in California in 1966 and 1967. 

 

In 1976 he began touring Europe, where he and the Blues received better recognition and respect than at home, and recorded a number of albums with independent European Blues labels. 

Still frustrated with the recording industry in the US, he created his own independent record label in 1978 - Rhodes-Way Records. 

                

"Rhodes can coax either a banshee wail or a saxophone-like croon from the thing, and he fires off writhing single-string passages that sound like a frenzied “amen” choir one minute and the voice of a possessed alter ego the next..."  
David Whiteis - Chicago Reader 

 

 

Rhodes was definitely one of a kind