April 23, 1978 review: First night of the Buffalo Folk Festival

The Buffalo Folk Festival firmament was speckled with rising stars like Bonnie Raitt in the early 1970s. By this time, its pleasures were more down-to-earth. 

April 23, 1978 review

Folk Festival Rocks

With Old-Time Music

          Three hours into Buffalo Folk Festival ’78, it has all the earmarks of becoming one of the most satisfying such celebrations of old-timey music ever to grace the University at Buffalo Main Street Campus.

          Even the performers on the triangular stage before 1,000 in the Fillmore Room of Squire Hall are giving it good marks for organization.

          “It’s a pleasure to be on such a good program,” says bluesman John Hammond, “an unexpected pleasure.”

          Friday is star night, and Hammond, junior to the legendary Columbia Record talent scout of the same name, is one of the stars.

          Still to come at this hour is the Woodstock Mountains Revue – a bit of a folk festival in its own right.

          The revue includes eight young old-timers from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s. Among them are Happy and Artie Traum, John Herald and Amherst native Eric Andersen. Advance reports say they’re a delight.

          Tonight at 8, the program offers a mini Mariposa Folk Festival for those folks who can’t be among the lucky 10,000 who get into the annual pastorale on Toronto Islands.

          Tonight’s lineup includes English singers Jacquie and Bridie, Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys, Jay and Lyn Ungar, Jean Ritchie and the team that festival director Judy Accardi liked best at last year’s Mariposa – Stan and Garnet Rogers.

          Accardi’s fine efforts don’t end with the evening shows. She’s set out a free program of workshops and mini-concerts from noon to 5 today in Squire Hall that will present some of the nighttime favorites in a more intimate setting.

          There’s a mummer’s play, puppets, a juggling demonstration, a children’s concert and even an invitation to learn to play the spoons (3:30 in Center Lounge).

          The festival started with a strong nod to traditions. The biggest deference went to the weather.

          Frigid temperatures commonly greet the Buffalo Folk Festival and Friday’s snows wrote a new chapter in the annals. Thank heaven they aren’t still holding these things outdoors.

          Opening singer Bodie Wagner evoked traditions by singing of hobos, highways and Kentucky coal mines.

          Next were the Buffalo Gals, a five-woman bluegrass band from Nashville via Syracuse. The Buffalo Gals are a feminist band that attempts to straddle the chasm between mountain music and pop. They opened with a banjo version of the ‘60s dance hit, “The Locomotion.”

          Although they suffered the pains of continual sound problems, fiddler Neil Levin and mandolinist Elaine Elia from Niagara Falls soon proved that their intentions are serious.

          Hammond heats up an already sweaty roomful of fans, sitting on the floor with his rapid-fire renditions of ancient country blues.

          Dressed in an earth-toned suit, wearing a $20 haircut, he never interrupted his flow long enough to credit the bluesmen who provided the material for his excellent one-man blues festival, not even Mose Allison. P.S.: Allison himself will be in town Wednesday.

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IN THE PHOTO: John Hammond Jr., looking pretty much the way he looked throughout the ‘70s in a photo by David Gahr in the liner notes for his Grammy-nominated 1982 album, “Got Love If You Want It.”

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FOOTNOTE: John Hammond Jr., who prefers to be known as John Paul Hammond or John P. Hammond (he had little contact with his legendary dad), has endured for decades as a star of the second magnitude, hanging out with a lot of first-magnitude people since he came up in the heyday of the folk scene in Greenwich Village. Wikipedia notes that he had Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix in his band at the same time when he played the Gaslight Café in the 1960s. He’s continued to be active – eight albums since 2000. The last tour date on his website, though, was in January 2022.

          Also still with us is Bodie Wagner, though the internet doesn’t tell much about him. His famous friends are folk luminaries like the late Utah Phillips and John Prine. Bodie, a native of Yellow Springs, Ohio, got his start as a songwriter during spare moments when he was doing service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, driving a Goodwill truck.

          The Buffalo Gals were making a repeat visit to this folk festival, having appeared in 1977. As noted in the footnote to my review then, they were the first all-female bluegrass band. Bassist Nancy Josephson married singer and guitarist David Bromberg.

          Since this account appeared in a Sunday paper, which was a morning edition, the words “still to come at this hour” suggest that I had to turn in this review in the seventh inning of a nine-inning game, either leaving the show to write at the office downtown or cozying up to a pay phone (ah, those bygone days of pre-digital telecommunication!) to dictate it to a clerk or perhaps the night city editor.

          The website of another fine folkie of that era – Jim Rooney – notes that the Woodstock Mountains Revue had a revolving lineup and includes a photo of eight guys who just might have been the crew at UB that night: Eric Andersen, Artie and Happy Traum, John Herald, Bill Keith, Pat Alger, Roly Salley and Rooney himself. At various times, the Revue also included Bernie Leadon of the Eagles, Toni Brown from Joy of Cooking, Eric Kaz, John Sebastian, Buffalo-born Paul Siebel, Rory Block and Maria Muldaur.

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FOOTNOTES TO THE FOOTNOTE: Roly Salley? Really? Actually, Rowland Salley. His Wikipedia page tells us he’s bass guitarist and vocalist for Chris Isaak’s band and has appeared regularly in Isaak’s TV series. At UB, he probably performed what would become his best-known song, “Killing the Blues,” which he wrote in 1977. The version of it by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant won a Grammy in 2009.

          As for well-organized festival director Judy Accardi, she became Judy Accardi Zygmunt and is living on Grand Island.