Dave Van Ronk

Van Ronk's posthumous memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, is the most engaging memoir I've read in years. Focusing on the music scene in Greenwich Village in the 50s and early 60s (it was "over" by 1967, says Van Ronk), Van Ronk, in the center of the action and a man on whose couch the young Bob Dylan crashed, has a first rate Bullshit Detector (to use Hemingway's term), accepting few of the facile analyses of the time and place. Describing himself variously as an anarchist, a Trotskyist, a cynic, Van Ronk has a voice filled with wry observations and dry wit. This book is a hoot to read, a book that's hard to put down.

It was co-written with Elijah Wald, a former guitar student of Van Ronk's, and at first I feared the wonderful voice here was Wald's. But Wald served more as a literary secretary. A working musician usually on the road, Van Ronk had no time to write a book and so put his memories to tape, which were transcribed by Wald. But Van Ronk died before the project was completed, so Wald assembled the book from what he had as well as from years of listening to Van Ronk's stories. Friends of Van Ronk say the voice is authentic.

Here is a man I would have loved to know. He also is a fine interpreter of songs and, in fact, has the best version of Brecht/Weill's "Mack the Knife" that you will ever hear. His album of Brecht songs is a treasure (something I inherited from my late friend Ger Moran).

Dave Van Ronk was always suspicious of "art." I don't blame him in this age of hype and charlatanry. As Van Ronk says, "Focus on craft and the art will take care of itself."