by Mike Zebe
Aug. 14, 2009
The Philadelphia Folk Festival takes place this weekend, but this,
the oldest continually running folk festival in the country, actually
began in Paoli, as the Hootenanny, founded by the the Philadelphia
Folk Song Society of Mount Airy.
It first took place in 1962 on the 15-acre horse farm of C. Colket
Wilson, a one-legged horse-breeder who had built an open-air stage
and first invited the nascent Pennsylvania Ballet to perform there.
That first Hootenanny was a two-day affair and featured the likes of
Pete Seeger, the Rev. Gary Davis, Rambling Jack Elliot and the
Greenbriar Boys. Seeger gave the event instant credibility, said Gene
Shay, cofounder and an emcee for the event since its inception. About
2,500 attended the first event, and the crowds grew.
A 1963 preview in the Sunday Bulletin wrote of "the local members of
the Hootenanny tribe - young, old and in-between, fuzzy-cheeked,
clean-shaven and bearded-beatnik style." Reports put the crowd that
year at 10,000, and the event began to draw national attention. The
next year, attendance swelled to 18,000.
That's when the troubles started. Residents complained. A concert ran
past midnight in 1964, and the township revoked a special exemption,
saying the now-three-day gathering violated a carnival ordinance.
But the feisty folkies appealed in the courts and won, allowing the
show to go on. Name acts in 1965 included Phil Ochs, Mississippi John
Hurt, Judy Collins, Tom Rush, and Tom Paxton.
That would be the last year in Paoli. Organizers realized the
festival needed breathing room. About 20 sites in the area were
considered, co-founder Lew Linet told a reporter in 1966. George
Britton, musician and cofounder, later said that the festival's
"natural habitat should be the Robin Hood Dell, with camping
permitted on nearby Belmont Plateau." But the costs associated with
that site made it a nonstarter.
So the musical circus sought greener pastures and went to the Spring
Mountain Ski Resort in 1966; a crowd of 30,000 was expected. But
parking was an issue, and people just kept rolling down the ski hill,
said Shay. It wasn't an ideal site for camping either. Acts included
Buffy Sainte-Marie, Michael Olatunji and his Drums of Passion, and Bill Monroe.
The following year, Upper Salford invited the festival to a township
park up the road on land donated by Abe Poole. "With the Upper
Salford reception in mind," Linet said in 1967, "the festival has
very possibly found a permanent home."
But in 1971, the township asked the festival to leave, citing traffic
and moral problems. It was welcomed by Abe Poole to the unused meadow
adjacent to the park on the Old Poole Farm.
In 1972, after attempting to ban the event, the township agreed with
the society on guidelines concerning noise and traffic. The local
fire department and Ladies' Auxiliary were given food concessions to
operate as fund-raisers, and the rest is history.
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