Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall

1962-09-22, Carnegie Hall Hootenanny, New York, NY

Photo via San-Antonio Express News

“Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall” is the perfect linguistic encapsulation of the transition point Bob Dylan stood at in September 1962.

On the one side of the phrase: “Hootenanny.” The folkiest of folk terms, as informal as it gets, an extremely freewheeling jam session that in many cases anyone can join, regardless of experience or stature.

On the other side: “Carnegie Hall.” The most prestigious music venue in America. Not the sort of place just any random folkie can play. Such a synonym for “you’ve made it” that there’s a famous old joke with that as the understood premise.

Bob Dylan at this point is moving rapidly from the “Hootenanny” side of the ledger to the “Carnegie Hall” side. His days playing hootenannies were almost over. His days playing venues like Carnegie Hall were not.

Photo via Asides

Being at Carnegie Hall, though, this event wasn’t quite as informal as the word “hootenanny” implies. There was a proper lineup, and tickets were sold. Pete Seeger had been putting on these annual events for a few years (Folkways released an album from the 1958-59 incarnations). The idea was to bring the scrappy downtown folk scene to the buttoned-up uptown crowd.

The concert is pictured in A Complete Unknown when Bob performs “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” to an audience in suits and ties. “This your dream,” Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) tells Seeger (Ed Norton) in the film. “Folk music reaching everybody.” Seeger’s reaction is inscrutable.

For all the movie’s looseness with facts, Dylan did indeed debut “Hard Rain” as part of his five-song set at Carnegie Hall. And the brief intro Seeger gives Bob is also a bit inscrutable. On the tape, he simply tells the audience Bob is “a very prolific guy”—which is certainly true, but not explicitly praise.

Elsewhere Seeger was more overtly complimentary. He recalled this event to Rolling Stone years later:

I heard him once, and I asked him to be at a Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall. I remember sitting down on a long table with a bunch of other people who were going to be on. I said, ‘Folks, we all only have time to sing three short songs because we all have about 10 minutes apiece.’ And this skinny guy raises his hand with a wry smile. He says, ‘Well, one of my songs takes 10 minutes.’ I think it was ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.’ What a song.

Dylan actually sings five songs, and this is the first known live performance of three of them: “Highway 51,” “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” and “Hard Rain.” (With the usual caveat in this series that we don’t know many early setlists.)