Self-Titled - Dave Van Ronk And The Hudson Dusters (1968)

ideated from: cleaning out the inbox

Van Ronk was a king of Greeenwich Village folk in the early 60s, with a voluminous knowledge about American traditional song and keen ear for adapting blues and folk tunes. You can find different narratives about whether he saw his young friend Bob Dylan as a rival or a protoge (maybe both), and there’s some argument about how willingly he helped advance Dylan’s career. One way or the other, he was on top of a scene that Dylan conquered, moved on from, and made basically irrelevant by the second half of the 60s.

So Van Ronk apparently decided to take a stab at a “mainstream” record. A rock record, yes, with a pretty fun sound (if not real original).

Listening to this weird little record, I can’t help but think that even after what he’d witnessed in the previous years, Van Ronk still saw rock music as kids’ music and didn’t take it seriously. Opening the record with a silly cover of a silly 50s tune, Alley Oop, followed shortly afterward by a Bing Crosby standard seems to be making a point: Even when he felt he had to make a rock record to get noticed, he still felt too clever to really embrace it.

None of this is bad, but none of it is essential. Van Ronk is kind of a footnote now, partly because he didn’t change with the times.

Tracks I Liked

Chelsea Morning - Joni Mitchell cover that sounds pretty good

Cocaine - an old tune that Van Ronk played a lot, and (intenionally or not) taught to Bob Dylan. Dink’s Song was another staple of early Dylan repertoire he got from Van Ronk that shows up here.