Folksinger

Dave Van Ronk was bemused by the title of this album. He didn’t think of himself as a folksinger and had mixed feelings about what he wryly called ‘the Great Folk Scare’ of the 1960s.

And yet, he was a central figure on that scene and this album was instrumental in shaping a new sense of what it meant to be a folk musician. A generation of guitarists took him as a model and honed their skills on his arrangements of ‘Come Back Baby’ and ‘Cocaine Blues,’ and his masterful reimagining of older traditions made him a defining voice of the folk-blues revival, showing that a young, urban performer could reshape songs from rural sources into modern, personal statements that were as rough and honest as anything from the hills or prairies.