Gary Davis - Sing Out! - Ralph Stanley

Sing Out!

For over 50 years "Sing Out!" Magazine has been the written record of the folk revival. A feisty and scrappy little magazine, its pages have brought songs, technique, history and politics to thousands of users (readers seems too passive a word) and the debates great and small of the folk music world have been fought out in letters and articles in Sing Out!'s pages. The seeds that led to "Sing Out!"'s development were planted in 1946 with the creation of People's Songs, a collective formed by artists returning from military service in World War II and wanting to keep in touch with each other. Among the artists in the People's Songs collective were Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Lena Horne, Carl Reiner and others. The organization served as a booking agency and also published a monthly newsletter called "People's Songs" which contained both traditional and newly composed music including political songs, labor songs, and other material. The openly political newsletter was among the first to publish songs in a magazine.

By late 1949 People's Songs was bankrupt, having spent a great deal of money on the Henry Wallace presidential campaign. People's Songs dissolved, publishing the final issue of their newsletter in December of that year. From the ashes of People's Songs, sprang a new organization, People's Artists, which served as a booking agency for political singers and blacklisted performers, staged hootenannies and, according to Irwin Silber, "Maintained a Left public presence during those years when, aside from trials and witch-hunts, much of the Left had been made invisible."(Irwin Silber in "Wasn't That A Time: Firsthand Accounts of The Folk Music Revival"; Scarecrow Press, 1995, Page 100)

As part of their activities, People's Artists began a new magazine with a title drawn form Seeger and Lee Hays' Hammer Song. "Sing Out!" published its first issue, a 16-page black-and-white pamphlet in May of 1950. As a Left-wing political magazine in early 1950s America, "Sing Out!" faced tremendous challenges, but the dedication of a small group of people including Irwin Silber, Jerry Silverman, and Pete Seeger kept the magazine going. Although the publication of the book Lift Every Voice in 1953 provided a brief economic lift to the organization, financial challenges forced the magazine to switch from a monthly to a quarterly format in 1954.

By the mid 1950s the political landscape in the U.S. and the world had changed and Sing Out! changed as well. The censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy by the U.S. Senate signaled the end of the worst anticommunist excesses of the period, allowing many blacklisted artists to again work in the mainstream entertainment industry. This lessened both the need for and the viability of People's Artists and the booking agency was dissolved in 1956, its assets going to support the magazine now being run by a small committee including Irwin Silber and Pete Seeger and called "Sing Out!", Incorporated. In 1956, Nikita Kruschev both revealed the full extent of Stalin's atrocities in a speech to the Soviet Communist Party Congress and sent tanks into Hungary to crush a popular uprising. These two events, coming on the heels of McCarthyism, destroyed the communist party in the U.S. as membership plummeted. While "Sing Out!" remained a politically progressive publication, the writing became less doctrinaire, more issue specific, and more music focused, as the editorial staff by-and-large left the party.

As the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s was heating up, Moe Asch at Folkways Records both hired Irwin Silber to help at Folkways and became a partner in "Sing Out!". Asch's financial contributions recapitalized the magazine in time for it to take advantage of the folk boom. The magazine came to be seen as the sounding board of the revival as it covered commercialism, civil rights, politics versus tradition, Bob Dylan and all the other issues that captivated the folk world of the time. The magazine championed young writers, publishing songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Len Chandler and other stars of the revival as well as the music of older traditional musicians. "Sing Out!" became a respected voice in the folk world and its subscriber base grew to close to 20,000 people.

In 1967 editor Irwin Silber, losing interest in the magazine, was bought out by a newly constituted editorial board and left the magazine, going on to become a founder of Paredon records and editor of The Guardian. Following Silber's departure, the magazine missed publishing several issues and nearly went broke. The editorial staff was cut back and the magazine struggled through the 1970s as the folk revival waned. Under the editorships of Happy Traum and, later the trio of Bob Norman, Alan Senauke and Estelle Schneider, the magazine continued its commitment to left-wing politics and new music. During the 1970s several issues of the magazine came with flexible records containing recordings of the songs printed in that issue of the magazine.

The late 1970s was a terrible time for commercial folk music in the US. Changing tastes and an economic recession wreaked havoc in the folk world as scores of festivals and venues closed down or stopped presenting folk artists. "Sing Out!"'s subscriber base fell to about 2,000 people 1/10th of its size during the folk boom fifteen years previous. As the magazine once again teetered near extinction, a group led by Pete Seeger and current editor Mark Moss canvassed the magazine's remaining subscribers and planned a new structure for the magazine. They raised money to pay off "Sing Out!"'s considerable debts, moved the magazine's headquarters from New York to Pennsylvania and created a tax-exempt non-profit structure for the magazine.

Since the reorganization, the magazine has continued to present the best of both newly composed and traditional folk music to larger and larger audiences. The magazine is now a glossy, professional 200-page magazine full of songs, teaching materials, and feature articles with a circulation of nearly 13,000; a far cry from the tiny, mimeographed publication of 50 years ago. In addition to publishing the magazine, "Sing Out!" now sells a variety of music books, and publishes books under the Sing Out Publications imprint. Their best-known title, Rise Up Singing, has sold nearly 750,000 copies since its debut in 1988.

With a newly renovated permanent home in Bethlehem, PA, "Sing Out!" continues its mission to "to preserve and support the cultural diversity and heritage of all traditional and contemporary folk musics, and to encourage making folk music a part of our everyday lives." In the words of Utne Reader: "As long as traditional styles of folk music are preserved and new styles created, "Sing Out!" will be there, earning its exclamation point."

For More Information

Website:     www.singout.org

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Ralph Stanley Ralph Stanley is the reigning elder statesman of bluegrass music and has been a key figure in the music for more than half a century. Both as a member of the famed Stanley Brothers and on his own, Stanley has helped to define the sound of bluegrass, writing and recording countless hit records and launching the careers of many artists including Ricky Skaggs, Bobby Osborne, Keith Whitley, Larry Sparks, Charlie Sizemore, and many others. The Stanley Brothers, Ralph and his brother Carter, and their band the Clinch Mountain Boys were major stars in bluegrass for a generation. They began their professional careers in 1946 on radio station WCYB in the town of Bristol on the Tenessee/Virginia border, hosting a daily one hour program called "Fun and Farm Time". Their show was a hit, allowing the group to tour constantly throughout Southwestern Virginia, Eastern Tenessee and Western North Carolina, and leading to recording contracts with tiny Rich-R-Tone records and, in 1949, Columbia records. The Stanley Brothers first recorded a number of their classic songs during this period, including, "Little Glass of Wine", "I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow" and "The Fields Have Turned Brown". At this time, the Stanley brothers sound and repertoire, though containing more elements of traditional southern music, were modeled closely on Bill Monroe, a fact that caused friction between Monroe and the Stanley Brothers. During a slow period in 1950, the Stanleys disbanded and Carter joined Monroe's band, a maneuver that turned Monroe from a rival to a friend. Regrouping in late 1951, the Stanleys continued to record and tour throughout the southeast, leaving Columbia for Mercury in 1953, later recording for Starday and several smaller labels. Though they toured Europe and had something of a home base in Florida, economic constraints made it tough for the Stanleys to maintain a full band; they often performed accompanied only by guitarist George Shuffler. The stresses and uncertainties of a musicians life and a burgeoning alcohol problem caused Carter Stanley to take ill. He died in December of 1966. After a brief mourning period, Stanley began his career anew. As a member of the Stanley Brothers, Ralph played banjo, mostly sang harmony with only a few lead vocals and left the emcee work to Carter. With Carter's death, Ralph was forced to the forefront. Rising to the challenge, he hired a new band including singer Larry Sparks, bassist Melvin Goins and fiddler Curly Ray Cline and he recast his performing style, adding elements from the old-time music traditions and developing an a cappella quartet style that, though completely new, was rooted in older church styles and sounded old fashioned. Stanley has led the Clinch Mountain Boys for the last thirty-eight years, schooling artists including Keith Whitely, Ricky Skaggs and Charlie Sizemore in the ways of playing bluegrass professionally. He has recorded countless albums and appeared in the US and abroad. He has received numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from Tennessee's Lincoln Memorial University and a National Heritage Fellowship from the NEA. He is among the last of the pioneers of bluegrass to continue performing, and since the death of Bill Monroe, is regarded as the music's elder statesmen. Stanley's profile has increased greatly in recent years. His 1993 recording Saturday Night And Sunday Morning featured performances by Ralph with a number of stars from the bluegrass and country fields. The album received several Grammy nominations. The film O Brother, Where Art Thou? featured musical performances by Stanley and by others performing songs identified with him and brought him his first Grammy awards. He continues to perform for legions of new and old fans and to record new material. He continues to live in southwestern Virginia where he stages the annual "Hills of Home" Festival, held just off Dr. Ralph Stanley Highway, near Coeburn, Virginia. For More Information Books:     Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music by John Wright (University of Illinois Press, 1993) Website:     http://drralphstanley.com/index.shtml 962 Wayne Ave., Suite 902      Silver Spring, MD  20910-4480 phone: (301) 588-8185      fax: (301) 588-8186 email: fa@folk.org © 2000-03 North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance. All Rights Reserved