The art of minstrelsy, deep rooted in American customs and manners, continues to find a willing patron in Max Gordon of the Village Vanguard. With the presentation of The Weavers, a bizarre group of singers whose repertory includes blues, ballads, hoe-downs, folk tunes, work songs, prison songs and originals, he adds to the distinction of his Greenwich Village basement club.
It was in 1939 that Gordon, seeking a means of building up business with a novel form of entertainment, engaged the late Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Then came Josh White, Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Tom Scott and Pete Seeger—all highly respected contributors in the modern field of minstrelsy.
The same lanky, banjo-strummin’ Seeger is an important member of the group now entertaining nightly except Mondays at the Village Vanguard. Like a schoolboy fresh off the farm, when it’s his turn to accentuate the positive with his instrument, he holds the drum part up to the microphone and strums away.
His companions are Lee Hays, rotund ex-preacher from Arkansas, who in addition to singing homey, down-to-earth tunes, writes spine-chilling mystery stories; pert Ronnie Gilbert, the refreshing young lady who used to be a secretary over at CBS, and Fred Hellerman, recent graduate of Brooklyn College.
Unlike most night-club acts, The Weavers have no set routine. There’s no telling what songs they may pick from their extensive portfolio, but here are a few they do: “Midnight Special,” “Dog Sled.” “Wimoweh,” “I Don’t Want to Get Adjusted to This World,” “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Venga Jaleo.”
“Midnight Special” was one of Leadbelly’s most powerful songs. The Weavers do it in a rousing manner, with plaintive undertones. It’s a tradition in Southern prisons that if the light from a midnight train falls on a prisoner he will be free.
SOURCE World-Telegram, January 11, 1950.
One of the most unusual is “Wimoweh,” the only word of a Zulu chant which Pete Seeger transcribed from a South African recording, and pundits consider it more startling because of Seeger’s peculiar high wailing sounds.
“Dog Sled” is a parody on “Mule Train.” The old hymn “I Don’t Want to Get Adjusted to This World” is modernistically presented as an anti-psychiatrist song. Customers can’t keep their feet still when the Weavers sing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” hymn of the traveling evangelist, and if they’ll close their eyes during the singing of “Venga Jaleo,” Spanish fighting song, they’ll think they’re at El Chico.