David Van Ronk, b. June 30, 1936 in Brooklyn, NY, d. February 10, 2002 in New York City, NY, folk blues singer, active 1950s - 2000s. Van Ronk was a leading light of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 60s, acting as a mentor to the young Bob Dylan. After a spell in the merchant marines Van Ronk became a professional performer in the mid-50s. Highly proficient on the guitar and banjo, his first love was New Orleans jazz and he began his musical career playing in jazz groups. His initial involvement with folk music did not come about until 1957 when he worked with Odetta. From this, his interest in blues grew, inspired by Josh White. A regular at Greenwich Village's Washington Square, Van Ronk's reputation for playing blues, together with his distinctive gruff voice, grew until he was signed by Folkways Records in 1959 for Sings Ballads, Blues & A Spiritual. An album with the Orange Blossom Jug Five appeared the previous year on the Lyrichord label. After one further release, Van Ronk switched to Prestige Records in 1962, and from the mid-60s concentrated more on jazz and jug band music. He formed a band called the Ragtime Jug Stompers, and in 1964 signed to Mercury Records. He continued playing concerts both in the USA and abroad and in 1965 played the Carnegie Hall as part of the New York Folk Festival.
Van Ronk reduced his work rate during the 70s, but still released several well-received albums for Philo Records. In 1974 he took the stage with Dylan and Phil Ochs at An Evening With Salvador Allende, performing a closing version of the former's 'Blowin' In The Wind'. Van Ronk continued to record for various labels and remained a tireless live performer up until his death from colon cancer in February 2002.
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By Richard Skelly
Guitarist, singer, songwriter, and native New Yorker Dave Van Ronk inspired, aided, and promoted the careers of numerous singer/songwriters who came up in the blues tradition. Most notable of the many musicians he helped over the years was Bob Dylan, whom Van Ronk got to know shortly after Dylan moved to New York in 1961 to pursue a life as a folk/blues singer. Van Ronk's recorded output was healthy, but he was never as prolific a songwriter as some of his friends from that era, like Dylan or Tom Paxton. Instead, Van Ronk's genius was derived from his flawless execution and rearranging of classic acoustic blues tunes.
Born June 30, 1936, in Brooklyn and raised there, Van Ronk never completed high school, and left home for Greenwich Village, a few miles away, in his late teens. He took his inspiration from blues and folk singer Odetta, who encouraged the then merchant seaman to play the classic jazz music that he was so keenly interested in. Often regarded as the grand uncle of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene, the self-effacing Van Ronk, an engaging intellectual and voracious reader, would have been the first to tell you that there were others, like Odetta, who were around the Village before him. As the blues and folk boom bloomed into the '60s, Van Ronk became part of an inner circle of musicians who lived in the Village, including then up-and-coming performers like Dylan, Paxton, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Joni Mitchell. An expert fingerpicker, Van Ronk was influenced as a vocalist by Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong.
Van Ronk's recording career began in 1959 with Sings Ballads, Blues & a Spiritual on Moses Asch's Folkways label. His reputation wasn't solid, however, until he began recording for the Prestige label in the first half of the '60s. These recordings allowed him to tour throughout the U.S. and perform at major folk festivals like Newport. Although he had a short-lived folk rock band called the Hudson Dusters in the mid-'60s, the bulk of Van Ronk's recordings were solo acoustic affairs. Van Ronk's various recordings serve different purposes; to check out Van Ronk the songwriter, pick up Going Back to Brooklyn (Gazell Productions, 1985), which was his first all-original album, containing only his own songs; for students of Van Ronk's complex guitar technique, pick up Dave Van Ronk, a compact disc reissue of two earlier Prestige albums, Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger and Inside Dave Van Ronk. Another compilation, The Folkways Years (1959-1961), is available from Smithsonian Folkways. His 1967 album for Verve Forecast, Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters, is worthy of reissue on compact disc for its sound quality and for the statements it makes about American society in the '60s.
Van Ronk continued to record throughout the '90s and beyond, with the Alcazar Records label releasing From...Another Time and Place in 1995 and Justin Time issuing Sweet and Lowdown in 2001. He died unexpectedly while undergoing post-operative treatment for colon cancer on February 10, 2002. A CD of his last concert, from October 2001 in Takoma Park, Maryland, was released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2004 as ...And the Tin Pan Bended and the Story Ended.