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Which Side Are You On: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America.

Article Excerpt
Which Side Are You On: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America. By Dick Weissman. New York: Continuum, 2005. [296 p. ISBN 0-8264-1698-5. $24.95.] Bibliographical references, index, discography.

Dick Weissman is known to many as the author of the Folk Music Sourcebook (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1989) and the guide, The Music Business: Career Opportunities and Self Defense (New York: Crown Publishers, 1979). His qualifications for writing those books, and indeed for the volume at hand, include his role in the folk-pop group the Journeymen, playing as a sideman on recordings by the Brothers Four, The New Christy Minstrels, and Peter, Paul and Mary, and as a record producer for ABC. With those credentials, one might expect a set of personal recollections telling an inside story of the folk music revival. Weissman, however, chooses a different path, attempting instead to write a history of the American folk music revival by exposing its conflicts, both in business relationships and personal ones. Hence his title comes from the coal miners' labor song, "Which Side Are You On?" Only briefly, at the end of each chapter, does he relate any personal experiences.

Weissman adopts several approaches to support this history of conflict in the folk song revival. He identifies underdogs in the movement who have been unjustly ignored, while at the same time downplaying the importance of more iconic figures who he feels "may have received more attention than...

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