The Mayor of MacDougal Street [2013 edition]

June 1, 2005
Van Ronk (1936 -2002) was one of the most influential guitarists and singer/songwriters in folk music history. A staple of the folk music scene in New York City's Greenwich Village during the late 1950s and early 1960s, he presided over such legendary venues as the Gaslight Café and Gerde's Folk City. In this rollicking book that is part memoir and part history of the times, Van Ronk, with the help of coauthor Wald ("Josh White: Society Blues"), recalls his early fascination with music -he picked up the ukulele at 15 and later graduated to the blues and jazz classics that greatly influenced his music. The narrative is most valuable, however, as a commentary on the folk scene of the early 1960s (the book ends late in the decade). Van Ronk unflinchingly tells the story of this era as he believes it should be told: Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso were never accepted into the folk music scene, even though many people think of them as predecessors to the movement; Tom Paxton, not Bob Dylan, was responsible for the new direction that folk took in the early 1960s; and Joni Mitchell was "the best writer of the 1960s, a very playful lyricist in the same way that John Donne was." For an insider's guide to the folk movement, one can hardly do better than Van Ronk's book. Highly recommended for all libraries. -Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2005
Singer-songwriter Van Ronk did more than most to earn the heady title of his memoir, gussied up for publication by the author of the outstanding blues history " Escaping the Delta" (2004). In the folk-music ferment of late-fifties/early-sixties Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was a larger-than-life presence with a blustery personality to match his big frame, headlining the famous folk-music haunts and mentoring such up-and-coming stars as Bob Dylan. A masterful storyteller and robust singer who prided himself in making a living without leaving the Village, he was a musical sponge who picked up a wildly eclectic repertoire. He recalls the heyday of the pretourist, 1950s Village, before the so-called Folk Scare, when regulars went to Washington Square on Sunday afternoons for loose sessions that continued late into the night. He recalls first hearing Dylan--"the scruffiest-looking fugitive from a cornfield I do believe I had ever seen"--at a Village coffeehouse and being impressed (the new arrival thereafter often crashed on Van Ronk's sofa). A richly evocative paean to a lost era.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)