Various Artists - Sing for Freedom: Festival of Negro Folk Music and Freedom Songs, Old Campus, Atlanta, GA, 5-9-1964

Here's a really rare and unusual concert bootleg, from way back in 1964. It features four short acoustic sets by folk singers Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Len Chandler, and Theodore Bikel. This is historical, when folk music was helping to power the civil rights movement.

This concert took place a pivotal time, a month before "Freedom Summer." The civil rights movement was growing in power, and challenging racist segregation in the South. The plan was that civil rights activists from all over the U.S. would converge on Mississippi from June until August, and help Black people there register to vote, despite restrictive Jim Crow laws. Here's a Wikipedia entry about Freedom Summer:

Freedom Summer - Wikipedia

This concert was part of three days of workshops and concerts. All these events were arranged by the Highlander Center, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). These organizations and participants, especially the SNCC, were also very involved in Freedom Summer. 

I found a Folkways album that has some songs from this very concert, so I was able to learn some about it. These concerts and workshops were designed to help civil rights activists get on the same page musically, because protest songs were a big part of motivating people in the movement. Basically, there was an older group of people, mostly Black, who were raised on spirituals, many of them addressing the issue of slavery. But there also was a younger generation, many of them white, who were most interested in recently written folk music, best exemplified by the songs of Bob Dylan. So the concerts allowed different crowds to learn key folk songs, many of which would be sung during Freedom Summer events. In fact, a booklet was later made and distributed containing the lyrics to about 50 songs performed during these events, so people would be better able to sing them together that summer.

I have to admit that, being a non-religious person, I wasn't interested in the gospel groups singing almost entirely gospel songs in this concert. And there were a handful of those groups. So I focused on the sets by the younger generation, consisting of singer-songwriters and their new songs. Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton are pretty well known, and I've posted albums by both of them, so I won't say more about them here. 

Len Chandler was an interesting figure. He was a rare example of a Black man in the highly influential folk music scene in Greenwich Village in New York City in the early 1960s. He didn't release his first solo album until 1966. But the songs he wrote were influential before then. For instance, he sang with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the famous 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech. King also quoted Chandler's lyrics to his song "Keep On Keepin' On" in a different speech. (That song is included here.) The Serendipity Singers had a Top 40 hit in the U.S. with his song "Beans in My Ears."

Dylan fans will be interested to learn that Chandler was very influential on Dylan, practically from the moment Dylan arrived in New York City for the first time. Dylan later wrote this about him in "Chronicles: Volume One," his 2004 memoir: "One thing about Chandler was that he was fearless. He didn’t suffer fools and no one could get in his way. He was powerfully built … brilliant and full of good will, one of those guys who believed that all of society could be affected by one solitary life."

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Len Chandler - Wikipedia

But this is a better link, in my opinion, an obituary for him in the Guardian, after he died in 2023: 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/22/len-chandler-obituary

The final main performer featured here is Theodore Bikel. He too had a prominent role in the music of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But, born in 1924, he had a long career as an entertainer before that movement even began. He began a very successful career as an actor in the early 1940s. He appeared in hundreds of movies and TV shows, often in minor character actor roles, but sometimes in major roles. Then, in 1955, he released the first of a couple dozen studio albums. He could sing in over 20 different languages, and had a role in popularizing songs from different parts of the world. 

Bikel also had an influential role in Dylan's life. He was the first person besides Dylan to sing "Blowin' in the Wind" in public, and he generally championed his music when few did. In 1963, he convinced Dylan to accompany him to a civil rights rally in Greenwood, Mississippi. This trip helped inspire Dylan to write some of his most strident political songs from that era. Also, in 1965, when Dylan famously "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival, Bikel was the one to calm Pete Seeger down and prevent him from rushing the stage to try to stop the performance. He reportedly told Seeger, "Peter, this band, these rebels - they are us. They are what we were 20 years ago. Remember?" Apparently, that was enough to cause Seeger to pause and rethink.

That just scratches the surface of Bikel's long and varied career. Here's his Wikipedia page if you want to know more:

Theodore Bikel - Wikipedia 

I had to guess about the order of the performers. It's obvious that Bikel was the last one (as you can hear if you listen to the last song especially). I had to guess on the others. The Tom Paxton set included one song by the Georgia Sea Island Singers. I'm not sure, but it's possible that Paxton played guitar on that song. I didn't include their set, because it was almost entirely gospel songs that I don't enjoy. But I decided to keep this one, since it was more of an overt civil rights song.

I mentioned above that there's an official Folkways album about the three days of music that this concert was a part of. It's called "Sing for Freedom: Lest We Forget, Vol. 3." Only one of the songs performed here made it on that album, "Do What I Have to Do," by Phil Ochs. The rest generally are the gospel-type songs I'm not so keen on. 

I found this bootleg on a pretty obscure corner of the Internet. I had to split the audio streams into mp3s. I don't think any music from this concert has been shared in the usual bootleg sharing sites until now. 

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Phil Ochs)
02 talk (Phil Ochs)
03 Do What I Have to Do [False Start] (Phil Ochs)
04 Do What I Have to Do (Phil Ochs)
05 talk (Phil Ochs)
06 Talking Birmingham Jam (Phil Ochs)
07 talk (Phil Ochs)
08 Links on a Chain (Phil Ochs)
09 Keep On Keepin' On (Len Chandler)
10 talk (Len Chandler)
11 Oklahoma Talking Blues (Len Chandler)
12 talk (Len Chandler)
13 Time of the Tiger (Len Chandler)
14 talk (Len Chandler)
15 I'm Going to Get My Baby Out of Jail (Len Chandler)
16 talk by emcee (Tom Paxton)
17 talk (Tom Paxton)
18 A Rumblin' in the Land (Tom Paxton)
19 talk (Tom Paxton)
20 The Dogs of Alabama (Tom Paxton)
21 talk (Tom Paxton)
22 Bottle of Wine (Tom Paxton)
23 talk (Tom Paxton)
24 This Land Is Your Land (Tom Paxton)
25 talk by emcee (Georgia Sea Island Singers)
26 Which Side Are You On (Georgia Sea Island Singers)
27 talk by emcee (Theodore Bikel)
28 talk (Theodore Bikel)
29 Mangwane Mpulele (Theodore Bikel)
30 talk (Theodore Bikel)
31 Michael, Row the Boat Ashore (Theodore Bikel)
32 talk (Theodore Bikel)
33 Come Away Melinda (Theodore Bikel)
34 talk (Theodore Bikel)
35 We Shall Overcome (Theodore Bikel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eG9zMfaN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bCkS4Tr2iBtQVPt/file

The cover image shows Tom Paxton (in a checkered shirt) with Phil Ochs. Since I couldn't find any photo from this exact concert, I went looking for photos of the main performers here. I found this one, with Paxton, Ochs, and Eric Andersen at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Andersen was sitting down. I removed him, using Photoshop, then moved Paxton and Ochs closer together. Also, the original was in black and white, but I colorized it.

Phil Ochs - Burg-Waldeck Festival, Dorweiler, Germany, 6-1968

Here's something I'm especially proud to present. I'm a fan of folk singer Phil Ochs. I've been wanting to post something from him for a long time, but I wanted it to be something special. I finally found it with this concert.

This is a completely unreleased bootleg, with excellent sound quality. It seems that a German radio station made the recording, though it appears it was never actually broadcast. However, despite the quality, this bootleg hasn't gotten around much due to many sonic flaws. But thanks to many recent improvements with audio editing technology, I was able to fix nearly all of the flaws, so this should be a really good listen.

Since this is my first (but hopefully not last) Phil Ochs post, I just want to say that I think he's very underrated. He was most popular in the 1960s, then had increasing mental problems in the early 1970s (he suffered from depression and being bipolar), finally committing suicide in 1976. Being a politically progressive person myself, I like the fact that his songs were very political and pulled no punches. He probably isn't so well remembered today precisely because he was so provocative and radical with his songs. For instance, he didn't just sing in "stop the war" generalities about the Vietnam War, he sang about human rights atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers (this before events like the My Lai Massacre were generally known) as well as the overall immorality of certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy. A lot of people may disagree with his views, but it can't be denied that felt strongly about his opinions and thought he was being patriotic in his own way by shining a spotlight on problems he thought needed fixing.

If you want to know more about him, here's his Wikipedia page:

Phil Ochs - Wikipedia

This concert recording is directly tied to his political activism. It took place during a rock festival, but not a typical one. The following is a relatively short summary of what I learned from the German Wikipedia entry about the festival (translated into English). The Burg-Waldeck Festival began in 1964, held in a remote location near the ruins of the Waldeck castle in Germany. It started out both as a festival and kind of a workshop, where creative people of all types could meet and exchange ideas. There were lectures, poetry readings, training sessions, and more, as well as typical musical performances, mostly of acoustic folk music. 

With each passing year, the festival got larger, but also more radical with its leftist politics. The youth of many countries were getting radicalized as the 1960s went on, thanks to the Vietnam War and the counter-culture movement. That was especially true in Germany, where many youths were having a dramatic opposing reaction to the Nazism of their parents' generation. So, for instance, by the 1967 festival, the official theme of the festival was the political song.

Things got even more radical in the 1968 festival. It also was the biggest, with 6,000 people showing up. Phil Ochs and Odetta were the only big names from the U.S. to show up, but there were performers from other countries, especially Germans singing in German. But even as radically leftist the festival had become, it wasn't radical enough for some. Many German socialists and even communists came to the festival and caused trouble, especially when there were performers who they didn't consider radical enough. They often occupied the stage, waved Vietcong flags, read leaflets, and demanded political discussions instead of musical performances. Due to this chaotic situation, many performers were afraid to go on stage. There were numerous delays and cancellations.

Given all that, it was probably a fortunate thing for Ochs that his songs were almost all political, and often expressed some pretty radically leftist views. But even he had trouble with some elements in the crowd. You can hear that on this recording with his comments in the very first track. And later, he made more comments along those lines, and also played some songs that criticized people on the left as well, for instance "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends."

By the way, the next Burg-Waldeck festival in 1969 would also be the last. The political situation got more out of hand as some people radicalized even more, while others did not. Plus, the general folk music tone of the festival was out of touch with the increasing focus on rock music with full bands. There even was some violence, apparently most done by conservative locals who hated the festival. For instance, cables were cut, car tires were punctured, a wooden stage was burned down, and a stage sculpture was blown up!

Anyway, getting back to the music, the festival went from June 12th to June 17th. Ochs performed multiple times. It seems there's no telling what date or dates this music is from, which is why I didn't give a special date in the album title. It almost certainly is from at least two different concerts, and probably three (if not more), since he performed six songs twice and one song three times in the bootleg recording I took this from. I've cut things down so there is just one version of each song. There's also no telling the "correct" order, so I generally stuck with the order of the bootleg I came across, but I moved two songs to the end that sounded like natural closers.

It turns out there was also great variety in the sound quality of the songs. The first few had no problems. But after that, the overall sound quality stayed high, but there were static interruptions and slight cuts of silence here and there. In the notes I found, this apparently was on the original recording, not some later digital artifacts. For the silent bits, I generally just deleted the gaps when they were small enough, usually only a fraction of a second. But bigger ones were problematic, since simply deleting them interrupted the rhythm of the songs. Luckily, there weren't too many of those. But when there were, I often managed to patch in bits from elsewhere in the song, for instance with repeating choruses. For one particularly big gap in the song "Joe Hill," I had to use a few seconds from a bootleg of a different concert.

But just as common, or more common, were the bursts of noise or static. Up until recently, I would have been helpless to fix this. But I found a way, using the iZotope audio editing program. I ran the troubled parts of songs through that program's "de-rustle" feature, and that got rid of the noises nearly every time while keeping the music. Probably some of the musical richness was lost, so I tried to use that only when necessary. Those are the songs with "[Edit]" in the names. I actually made even more edits than for just those songs (and it would be long and boring to explain them all), but those were the really tricky ones. There's probably a few little problems remaining here and there, but hopefully I got rid of the vast majority of them.

Anyway, it was a lot of work, but this should now be one of a handful of the best Ochs recordings out there, bootleg or official. For all the songs, it was just his voice and his acoustic guitar. There's also a fair amount of interesting banter before most of the songs.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 talk (Phil Ochs)
02 Flower Lady (Phil Ochs)
03 talk (Phil Ochs)
04 Outside of a Small Circle of Friends (Phil Ochs)
05 talk (Phil Ochs)
06 Changes (Phil Ochs)
07 Rhythms of Revolution (Phil Ochs)
08 talk (Phil Ochs)
09 Joe Hill [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
10 talk (Phil Ochs)
11 Draft Dodger Rag [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
12 White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
13 I'm Gonna Say It Now [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
14 talk (Phil Ochs)
15 Crucifixion [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
16 Floods of Florence [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
17 talk (Phil Ochs)
18 There but for Fortune [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
19 Is There Anybody Here [Edit] (Phil Ochs)
20 talk (Phil Ochs)
21 The Highwayman (Phil Ochs)
22 talk (Phil Ochs)
23 Cops of the World (Phil Ochs)
24 talk (Phil Ochs)
25 I Ain't Marchin' Anymore (Phil Ochs)
26 talk (Phil Ochs)
27 The War Is Over (Phil Ochs)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MshzUys6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jncKXCQM5VejCyU/file

This cover photo is from this exact concert. I found a black and white movie of one of the songs, and took a screenshot from it. Then I used the Palette program to colorize it. After that, I used the Krea AI program to sharpen the image.