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9. The Chambers Brothers: “I Got It”
Before the Chambers Brothers discovered psychedelic soul glory with “Time Has Come Today,” they flaunted their gospel upbringing with full-throated, raspy-voiced, call-and-response harmonies straight from the Baptist church. “I Got It” is a rocking affirmation of religion, propelled by handclaps and — even at Newport — a distorted electrical guitar.
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10. Odetta: “Troubled”
With her deep contralto and her fiercely strummed guitar, Odetta might — and did — sing nearly every part when she emerged within the Nineteen Fifties: spirituals, pop, jazz, blues, gospel, even opera. She introduced the facility and dignity of her voice to the civil rights motion, and Dylan acknowledged her as an inspiration. “Troubled” is from her 1964 album “Odetta Sings of Many Things”; it’s a plaint delivered with steely dedication.
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11. Spokes Mashiyane: “Jika Spokes”
The pageant’s producer, George Wein, recalled in his memoir, “Myself Among Others,” that the South African pennywhistle participant Spokes Mashiyane was an sudden sensation on the 1965 pageant. In South Africa, Mashiyane was a hitmaker who formed the lilting, whistle-topped fashion known as kwela; at Newport, he received impromptu (and doubtless much less swinging) backup from Pete Seeger on banjo and Wein on piano. Here’s one among his South African hits, “Jika Spokes.”
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12. Ed Young: “Hen Duck”
Colonial-era fife-and-drum teams received an Africanized makeover from staff on Mississippi plantations. For huge outside picnics, they made music with piercing melodies on fifes minimize from sugar cane, and drumbeats much more syncopated than “Yankee Doodle.” The ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, a pageant board member, recorded this fife-and-drum tune in 1959 on a visit to Mississippi, and the fifer Ed Young’s group appeared at Newport in 1965. There’s a kinetic, tantalizing snippet of their efficiency within the 1967 Newport documentary “Festival.”
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13. Cousin Emmy and the New Lost City Ramblers: “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?”
Who had the unenviable spot simply previous Dylan on the 1965 pageant? With true folkie egalitarianism, it was Cousin Emmy: Cynthia May Carver, born in 1903 in Kentucky, who wrote songs, performed banjo and different devices and sang with a vivid Appalachian twang. Her first, profitable profession was largely in acting on radio, not information, in the course of the Forties and Nineteen Fifties; most of these reveals are misplaced. She was rediscovered by the New Lost City Ramblers: city followers of outdated string-band music who turned adept, research-oriented revivalists. They made an album together with her and backed her at Newport in 1965. This Cousin Emmy music, together with her twangy near-yodels, discovered a second life when the Osborne Brothers turned it right into a bluegrass normal.
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14. Eck Robertson: “Sallie Gooden”
Back in 1921, Eck Robertson — Alexander Campbell Robertson, a fiddler born in Arkansas who settled in Texas — recorded what have been later acknowledged as the primary nation singles. The pageant’s folklorists tracked him right down to carry out in 1965, and his recorded Newport efficiency was vigorous. But right here I’ve included that very first Victor Records single, launched in 1922: a solo model of the standard tune “Sallie Gooden.” Robertson spins out a dozen variations, over drone notes that make the monitor sound timeless and mysterious.
