Fact #81387
When:
Short story:
When The Limeliters play at The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, California, USA, the show is recorded and released as the LP The Limeliters Tonight - In Person. Backing them on guitar is Roger McGuinn, who will later form The Byrds.
Full article:
Barry Melton (guitarist, Country Joe And The Fish) : I grew up in L.A., so I was an Ash Grove [L.A. folk club] kid. David Lindley is from that group of folks, [as well as] Sol Feldthouse [who played with Lindley in Kaleidoscope]. So was Leo Kottke, sort of as an early L.A. guy who was sort of a follower of John Fahey's. And Al Wilson, I remember him as an L.A. folkie. And I remember David Crosby, and Steve Mann, who was an underground folk guitar player, was Sonny & Cher's first guitar player (laughs), had a lot of influence on early players. Dick Rosmini. A lot of instrumental L.A. musicians and guitarists. And Taj Mahal played in an electric band. He played with David Cohen, L.A. David Cohen, in King David and the Parables, which was the sort of Ash Grove mime troupe band. But I really was not interested in playing electric much.
Another L.A. folkie I knew at the time was Mike Wilhelm. I knew Mike from L.A., before there was a San Francisco scene. And had met David Crosby and Jim McGuinn through my friend Steve Mann, who was a studio guitarist, folk guitarist, and one of the early white guys who could play the country blues. It was early '60s, like '63. And I was sixteen. By that time, I'd been playing guitar eleven years already, and I was sort of part of the L.A. nightlife, Ash Grove, McCabe's scene.
There weren't that many people. In retrospect it was fairly small. The Ash Grove was postage-stamp sized, in truth. The Ash Grove had like 50 seats in it, man. But it was home for all of us. It loomed like a gigantic thing in my past -- all these incredible performers, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Elizabeth Cotten, phenomenal icons of American music. That kind of music, which today, the equivalent would draw 1500 people in a theater, in those days, drew forty, fifty people. The music really didn't have an audience yet. It's folk-rock that made the audience for that music.
And then the guys from the East Coast would come through, like the Kweskin Jugband and Fritz Richmond, Doc Watson, and we'd all play together in the area between McCabe's and the Grove. So the folk scene was twenty people playing in at the same time kind of scene (laughs), and a real nursery for musical ideas and young musicians. That cross-blending ended up in rock with a little Doc Watson, B.B. King, Lightnin' Hopkins all mixed together, which you hear so much of in the folk-rock idiom.
(Source : Eight Miles High, book by Ritchie Unterberger, 2003)
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Another L.A. folkie I knew at the time was Mike Wilhelm. I knew Mike from L.A., before there was a San Francisco scene. And had met David Crosby and Jim McGuinn through my friend Steve Mann, who was a studio guitarist, folk guitarist, and one of the early white guys who could play the country blues. It was early '60s, like '63. And I was sixteen. By that time, I'd been playing guitar eleven years already, and I was sort of part of the L.A. nightlife, Ash Grove, McCabe's scene.
There weren't that many people. In retrospect it was fairly small. The Ash Grove was postage-stamp sized, in truth. The Ash Grove had like 50 seats in it, man. But it was home for all of us. It loomed like a gigantic thing in my past -- all these incredible performers, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Elizabeth Cotten, phenomenal icons of American music. That kind of music, which today, the equivalent would draw 1500 people in a theater, in those days, drew forty, fifty people. The music really didn't have an audience yet. It's folk-rock that made the audience for that music.
And then the guys from the East Coast would come through, like the Kweskin Jugband and Fritz Richmond, Doc Watson, and we'd all play together in the area between McCabe's and the Grove. So the folk scene was twenty people playing in at the same time kind of scene (laughs), and a real nursery for musical ideas and young musicians. That cross-blending ended up in rock with a little Doc Watson, B.B. King, Lightnin' Hopkins all mixed together, which you hear so much of in the folk-rock idiom.
(Source : Eight Miles High, book by Ritchie Unterberger, 2003)