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OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

  1. What Is This Book About?
  2. Beginning in the Middle - Mariposa, 1961
  3. The Invention of Folk Music
  4. A Child Shall Lead Them
  5. Canadian Beginnings
  6. Gibbon and the Canadian Mosaic
  7. Red Is The Colour- The Other Mosaic –1900’s-30’s
  8. The Early Labour Song Tradition in Canada
  9. Red Front to Popular Front
  10. New Deal and No Deal
  11. Birth of a Nation
  12. Put Canada First!
  13. People’s Songs and People’s Music
  14. The Golden Age of Canadian Folk Song 1947- 1962- The Beginning
  15. The Emergence of a Repertoire
  16. The First Tour- The UJPO Folksingers
  17. Foreign Affairs
  18. World Music in the Golden Age
  19. Founding Folkies
  20. From Bonavista to the Vancouver Island
  21. Sam Gesser and Folkways Canada
  22. Country and Folk
  23. The “Revival”- Folk as Pop
  24. Mariposa Revisited- The End of the Beginning
  25. The Boom - Early Canadian Folk Professionals and the Marketplace
  26. The Songwriters
  27. East is East and West is West- Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver & Smaller Towns and Smaller Scenes
  28. Folk Rock
  29. The Real Boom- Folk in the 70’s
  30. The Festivals
  31. The Message in the Music- Political and Social Images in Songwriting and Folk Music in Canada in the 60’s and 70’s
  32. Bigger Than Ever- the 80’s
  33. New World, New Music
  34. The Little Folk- Children and Folk Music
  35. Looking Forward – Looking Backward- Folk Music at the End of the Century and the Beginning of the New Millennium
  36. What Does It Mean
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK
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26. The Songwriters

In 1962 Bob Dylan did with Blowin’ in the Wind what The Kingston Trio had done 4 years before; he changed the rules of the game. The folksinger as interpreter of traditional songs was replaced by the singer-songwriter or the interpreter of the songs of the singer-songwriter. Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, & Leonard Cohen met the test. Others didn’t. Folk music became stratified between amateurs, local professionals and semi-professionals, and the “stars”.  Increasingly folk singer and singer-songwriter were interchangeable.

Page 1, letter from Gordon Lightfoot to John Uren of the Depression coffee house in Calgary in May 1964. Outlines Lightfoot’s booking rate at the time and also mentions he will soon be signing with legendary NYC agent, Albert Grossman.
Page 2, letter from Gordon Lightfoot to John Uren of the Depression coffee house in Calgary in May 1964. Outlines Lightfoot’s booking rate at the time and also mentions he will soon be signing with legendary NYC agent, Albert Grossman.
Photo of folk singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot
Photo of folk singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn
Sam the Record Man ad for albums by Joni Mitchell (Song to a Seagull, and Clouds) and Neil Young (Neil Young, and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere) as printed in the Mariposa Festival Program 1969
Poster advertising Duel, the Literary Magazine of Sir George Williams University, featuring an interview with Leonard Cohen, circa 1960s
Photo of Ian Tyson and Sylvia (Fricker) Tyson, as printed in Chatelaine Magazine, January 1964. page 22
Copyright © 2008-2015 Gary Cristall. All rights reserved.