Gordon Friesen

Gordon Friesen and wife Agnes “Sis” Cunningham were the founders of Broadside, the influential music journal that initial published some of the most popular and long lasting tracks from the folk revival era, including seminal contributions from then-fledgling performers Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs. Friesen was created March 3, 1909, in Weatherford, Alright; when he was seven, his family members briefly relocated to Kansas, time for Oklahoma with time for the start of the Melancholy as well as the ensuing Dust Dish migration. Even though many from the Friesens eventually made the eager trek searching for a new lifestyle in California, Gordon continued to be in Oklahoma, functioning like a reporter for regional papers and Midwest cable services furthermore to writing many unpublished books. As an associate of the brand new Deal-funded Federal Authors Task, he also worked well alongside future Traditional western novelist Louis L’Amour and pulp icon Jim Thompson. Some letters Friesen published towards the Oklahoma Occasions denouncing an FBI raid on Oklahoma City’s Communist Party bookstore eventually brought him towards the interest of condition party mind Bob Solid wood, who in 1940 asked him to be chairman from the Oklahoma Politics Prisoners’ Protection Committee. For this period Friesen fulfilled Cunningham, herself an ardently leftist songwriter and celebrity presently touring with the neighborhood theatrical troupe the Crimson Dirt Players. The few wed in 1941, immediately after relocating to NEW YORK around the encouragement of their close friends Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and getting into their communal Greenwich Town house, dubbed Almanac Home. The few also became a member of Guthrie and Seeger in the Almanac Performers, widely regarded as the first metropolitan folksinging group. In 1942, the Almanac Performers — whose roster also included Cisco Houston, Bess Lomax, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell, Arthur Stern, and Baldwin and Peter Hawes (and occasionally Josh White colored and Burl Ives) — documented the recording Dear Mr. Chief executive, with Cunningham adding the standout “Belt Collection Ladies.” By year’s end, with a lot of the lineup providing in World Battle II, the Friesens shifted to Detroit, where they shaped a Motor Town branch from the Almanacs; Gordon also proved helpful being a reporter for The Detroit Moments. Upon the couple’s go back to NY in 1944, he visited work for any office of War Details, and was eventually blacklisted; their musical actions were held to the very least as the family members struggled only to pay the bills, but during this time period Cunningham did compose two of her best-known tracks, “Mister Congressman” as well as the civil rights-themed “Fayette State.” The theory behind Broadside originated with Seeger — while touring Britain in 1961, he got note from the sharp upsurge in brand-new protest music penned by United kingdom songwriters, but discovered no parallel upon coming back home towards the U.S. Identifying how the oppressive silence mandated with the witch hunts from the McCarthy period were responsible, Seeger recommended to songwriter Malvina Reynolds that she make a magazine made to publish brand-new tracks motivated by current occasions; when Reynolds opted to rather concentrate on her carrying out career the task was shelved, before Friesens decided to get the helm. Dubbing the publication Broadside in tribute towards the English custom of printing tunes on linens of paper on the market around the roads, the couple put together the first concern in their house in Manhattan’s Frederick Douglass casing project, welcoming leftist-minded musicians to execute their latest tunes right into a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Printed on the mimeograph machine once possessed with the American Labor Party and smuggled from the house with a baby carriage because of the illegality of owning a business from their house, the first problem of Broadside made an appearance in Feb 1962, its six music highlighted by “Talkin’ John Birch Culture Blues,” the initial Bob Dylan structure ever released. Dylan demonstrated a Broadside regular, as well as the magazine’s 6th concern included his discovery track, “Blowin’ in the Blowing wind,” released a 12 months before Peter, Paul & Mary documented their strike rendition. Broadside continued to publish a lot more than 1,000 tunes during its 26-12 months lifespan, including essential early compositions by Phil Ochs (“I Ain’t Marching Anymore”) and Janis Ian (“Society’s Kid”) aswell as efforts from Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Eric Anderson, and Peter La Farge furthermore to originals from founded authors like Seeger and Reynolds. At its maximum, the magazine made an appearance regular monthly, but as the folk revival dropped momentum, its publication dwindled to bimonthly and eventually semi-annually by the finish from the 1960s. Although its blood circulation by no means exceeded four numbers, the Friesens held Broadside afloat until 1988, posting 187 issues in every. Gordon Friesen passed away in 1996; 3 years afterwards, Cunningham released their collaborative memoir, Crimson Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography, and in 2000, Smithsonian Folkways gathered the magazine’s perhaps most obviously music in the five-CD container set THE VERY BEST of Broadside 1962-1988. Agnes Cunningham passed away in 2004.