The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind-A Female Take

By Leslie Dumont

[You never know how things will turn around in the media business. One day you can’t get a thing published for love or money and the next you have more offers than you can shake a stick at. I originally was a stringer, a free-lancer, on this site a number of years ago when Allan Jackson was running the show but never got past that status despite submitting a number of articles that would later be published in places like Progressive Nation (both hard copy and on-line) and Women’s Weekly. Never got past a few short reviews of folk music when Allan decided to go all out and feature the folk revival of the 1960s, long dead except for devoted aficionados like myself. That fate for my major work despite the fact that at the time I had a relationship with Josh Breslin who Allan had known ever since they met out in California in 1967 during their Summer of Love adventures. I wasn’t expecting to be given a by-line gratis but did feel my work was good enough to see the light of day as it did later. 

Recently with the changeover in management after Allan retired (there have been other rumors of a coup and such but knowing guys like Josh and Sam Lowell, who knew Allan from back in high school, involved that is boys will be boys stuff from their youthful political intrigue when every move had some such ramification) the new manager Greg Green contacted me, contacted from what I heard a number of women writers to give this site a better-rounded and more inclusive look. Finally (and maybe while he is at how about some black writers, women ones too). That contact started an avalanche of offers from some other on-line sites asking for articles mostly on folk music and books, maybe an occasional film. Some I have taken or will do so soon but I committed myself to a series of articles for Greg. Recently Sam Lowell mentioned above wrote a nostalgia article about his folk music experiences-The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind where he talked about the almost universal phenomena among college women folkies of emulating the leading straight long-haired women folk singers of the day Joan Baez, her sister Mimi, and Judy Collins. Greg when he contacted me asked as my first piece to give the women’s side of the story since he had heard from Sam who had heard it from Josh that I had a story to tell. Tell from what he quaintly called the distaff side like this was about 1960.  So here goes. Leslie Dumont]     

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Sam Lowell was as much a folk music junkie as I was back in the 1960s which he or somebody called the “folk minute” and strangely that seems about right since it got swamped by the British invasion and later acid-laced rock. I am a couple of years younger than him so I missed the very start when guys like Bob Dylan was working his way east to sit at Woody Guthrie’s feet (literally I think if some documentary I saw at the Orson Welles Theater out of Harvard Square on a college date about Woody and Arlo is right), Dave Von Ronk was switching from jazz combos and creaky-voiced folk song poetry session clear-outs and Joan Baez and her younger sister were walking around Harvard Square trying to get somebody, anybody to listen to their traditional folk song gigs featuring old-time Child ballads. My baptism came in 1964 but was nevertheless a big deal for me in breaking out, like a lot of us of whatever was happening at the time to make us jump out of our skins. 

I grew up in Ardsley-on-Hudson (we just called it Ardsley but that was, and is, its official name) about thirty miles from New York City and when I was in high school there, a senior, I had a boyfriend, Lenny, from town who went to NYU not far from what turned out to be one of the serious folk meccas, the Village. He would, for the eternal college boy cheap date which every guy who was into folk music blessed to high heaven and which I will give my view on soon, take me to the arch in Washington Square where every weekend budding folk singers would strut their stuff. Some good, some frankly bad who maybe knew a couple of chords and tried to work that into something mainly I think as a way to meet girls since if you looked at the obligatory guitar case “basket” it would be empty of donations. That was the cheapest of cheap dates which I didn’t care that much about because I was just thrilled to be in New York City away from stuffy Ardsley. When Lenny had some money we would move up a step he would take me to a coffeehouse for a cup of coffee, a lingering cup of coffee, and a sandwich or pastry. Occasionally when I had some money, allowance money, I would take pity on him and we would go “dutch treat” but I will go further into that social custom so more later.

Like I said what did I know about what in those days a guy was supposed to do for dating purposes since Lenny was my first serious boyfriend. I thought it was great that a college guy was interested in me, would take me to New York City (usually without telling my parents where I was going since they would have had a fit if they thought I was going  to “sin city” especially at night), and buy me a meal. I know a few of my girlfriends were jealous that I had a boyfriend in college when all they had were stupid high school guys whose idea of a date was to go down to the river and try to “feel them up.” I heard a few guys who wouldn’t give me the time of day suddenly let it be known that they were interested in me. (Probably figuring if I was with a college guy I was “easy” knowing the guys although it did not turn out like that with Lenny whom I still talk and meet occasionally when I am in Boston for a conference or some event.) It wasn’t until I was in college that I found out that guys in those days who were interested in me would spring for a real dinner in a nice place. Were supposed to do that. But that had nothing to do with folk music which I did seriously get into with Lenny and would continue to like to hear until this very day.              

Of course knowing Sam, although we hadn’t been in contact for a number of years since when I was a stringer, he had to go on and on in his article about every trend that led a certain small section of our generation to grab onto folk music as a way of showing our rebellion and, here I agree with Sam, a revulsion of what was passing for our youthful rock and roll which seemed to have run out of steam. Had to do all of that just to get to the point about how in a short while, particularly after the mainstream media of the time, Time magazine for one, dubbed Bob Dylan the king of the folk scene and long straight raven-haired Joan Baez the queen, his queen the silly bastard, young women, women who included me as well, were wearing their hair longer-and straighter. He seemed to think this was something from out of space or something when it was merely us keeping up with a fashion which women have been doing one way or another and not just for men don’t’ forget since  Eve.                

What had gotten Sam in a tizzy was an old photograph of Joan Baez, Mimi Farina (her married named then being married to hell-bent songwriter-poet Richard) and Judy Collins at Newport in I believe 1963 where he noticed the long-haired effect. The photograph graced one of the months in a New England Folk Song Society calendar. That got him wondering once again about how they were able to keep it that long or get it that straight. That is when he thought back to the whole hair-ironing experience and a story about one of his dates at the time.  

Sam also made an outlandish comment and I will quote here just to make sure I don’t fumble up what he said:        

“Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from North Adamsville High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.”

He stands in the dock condemned by his words. Stands condemned for his small part in “forcing” women into making a certain fashion statement if they wanted dates from folkie guys. Maybe it was too early although maybe it was more gentile Lenny but he never made a big issue about it, never insisted that I “do something with my hair.”  But standing in the docket with Sam is Stan Gower, a guy whom I was dating when I was in college in Boston at Boston University, and who had the same nasty attitude as Sam although he was slier about it. I had first met him at the Joy Street Café around Charles Street near Boston Common one night when they had their folk night (before every night was folk night at the place when Eric Von Schmidt put the place on the map by writing Joshua Gone Barbados which he sang and which Tom Rush went big with on the local folk radio programs) and then we had a coffee together, That night I had my hair kind of, oh I don’t remember what they called it then but something like beehive or flip or something which highlighted and enhanced my long face. I thought I looked fine. I was not then hip to the long straight hair thing and so I thought nothing of it while I noticed many of the young women, they were almost all young women in a place like that then unlike now when it is almost all older women in the occasional coffeehouse venues hiding out in church basements and a few remnant places in Harvard Square or Berkeley but I kind of let it pass without any comment. 

Then one night many weeks later after we had had a couple of subsequent dates and I hadn’t seen him for a while wondering what had happened to him since I was very interested in “going out with him” he called and asked for a date saying some nonsense about being busy with school work. I startled him when he picked me up at my dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. I met Stan at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made my face even longer. He smiled that Stan smile that always got to me and said the real reason he didn’t call me up was because he was not sure that he liked my hair the way it was. Instead of showing him the door, I really was interested in him, I blushed like crazy. When Stan asked me a couple of minutes later why the change I did have a good comeback, did lie to him, when I declared that I could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing my idol Joan Baez (and later Mimi and Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish. He smiled that Stan smile again but I think he knew I had done it to please him. 

Of course Stan then compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking me if I had it done at the beauty parlor or something and I looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go. Still silly schoolgirl me let that go. Little did he know then or later that just before our dates I would get the iron board out and either I or one of my roommates, proably best friend Anna, and try to starighten out as best I could my hair that would turn kinky every time I washed it. So I joined the crowd, Stan always when we were together said he loved it and after a while I did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses that Sam mentioned his girlfriend started wearing instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things I used to wear under strict orders from my mother to essentially show no signs of having shape to tempt errant boys with).    

That recollection by Sam got me thinking about other funny ideas we had back then.  About the occasions when Lenny and  had to go “dutch treat” which I never told my high school girlfriends about or they might not have thought it was not so cool to be dating a college guy, a poor college guy. That “dutch treat” thing was thus not very popular then unlike now when it is no big deal although there were slight changes and essentially has gone the way of one breadwinner fathers in the household economy. As much as I liked Stan that “dutch treat” is what happened when we went to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue thing. Stan and I were thus by definition not on a heavy date, by definition neither supposedly had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after those first few dates and so no social stigma attached to this understanding although I was hurt having let my hair grow long with certain expectations. Folk music was our bold.  Despite my persistent BU dorm roommate rumors what with Stan hanging around all the time listening to my albums on the record player we had had never got to the serious lovers stage. A few years later I mentioned that Club Blue night to Stan, who after all that dorm hanging around and rumor stuff actually was hanging around to see my best friend roommate Anna Jacobs who was by his side that night, as we waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Jim Lawrence, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.

He asked me, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” I had replied yes and that I too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.

As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph which jogged Sam memory their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk times (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother I was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yes, ladies, the photo is still around.