>> Stephen Winick: Welcome.
I'm Steve Winick from the
American Folklife Center
at the Library of Congress,
and I'll be chatting
with Walter Parks in an oral
history interview related
to his Homegrown at Home
concert, which he recorded
for us earlier this year, and
you can watch that at loc.gov
So Walter, let's
begin by just talking
about your background a
little bit, where you're from
and how you got started
in music.
>> Walter Parks: Well, I grew
up in Jacksonville, Florida,
which is the northeast
part of Florida.
It's very swampy and marshy,
and I tell you, I've been all
over the world, but that area
of the of the world is prettier
than anything I've ever seen, so
I grew up in those parts, and I,
as is required by most young men
in their teens, I was compelled
to play sports and those sorts
of things, but sports were --
they didn't hook me like
music did and I was coming
up in the era of
Woodstock and Jimi Hendrix
and Jefferson Airplane,
and Richie Havens,
and artists like that, and I
wanted to be a part of that,
but had -- for some reason,
I was just, in retrospect,
I was just quarantined.
I had no idea how to find a rock
and roll band in Jacksonville,
Florida or something
like that, so the closest
that I could get was
the school orchestra,
and I started playing viola, so
that was my first instrument,
and I just succumbed
to the peer pressure
that viola was absolutely not
cool, and I had to put that down
after a couple of years, and
then picked up the guitar
and kind of started
finding my own identity
through the guitar
rather than sports,
and I'm very happy I
made that decision.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah, so
you're really a guitarist first
and foremost, I guess,
in the music world.
>> Walter Parks: Yeah, and
I've kind of fallen in love
with singing more lately at this
part of my life, and if you zoom
out and you look at my whole
time with music, I taught myself
to sing years after I taught
myself to play the guitar
and I had to learn how
to sing in order to play
at people's weddings to make a
living, and I'm the kind of guy
that will say, "Yup,
I can do it.
I'll be there.
Tell me what time," and I
just figure out how to do it
after I make the commitment,
and it's worked out good.
When I first started singing
for weddings or in a rock
and roll band, I was blowing
my voice out, and I had nothing
to give after one evening.
The first evening would be
great, and if I had four nights
to play in a row of
four-hour gigs, I had nothing.
I mean, I was hurting
myself, so I found a lady
who was a Juilliard opera
teacher, and she taught me voice
through Italian arias, so I
learned how to save my voice
by studying in a
classic methodology,
but there was a problem with
that, because when you sing,
when everything is
[sings in Italian],
when you sing everything like
that, then when it comes time
to sing Born to Run or
whatever, by Springsteen,
you don't know how to sing that.
So it was up to me to try to
figure out how to translate
and bridge those two worlds,
but I did save my voice,
and then I found
out how to project
and to have my voice last.
You know, and I could sing
2 gigs, 12 nights in a row,
three-hour shows if I
need to, and that's just
because I learned how to pace
myself, but it's been a very,
very interesting and for the
most part, delightful journey
with music with the
guitar and with the voice.
>> Stephen Winick: Sure.
And so let's talk about a couple
of your sort of musical projects
that you became known for before
you started doing this work,
and I guess we can
start with The Nudes --
>> Walter Parks: Yeah.
>> Stephen Winick: -- which
was an interesting duo
that you were in
for a long time.
>> Walter Parks: Well, you
know, Stephen, I had a --
when I when I lived
in Jacksonville,
Florida as a young adult,
I always dreamt of moving
to New York City, and when
I got to New York City,
I'd saved up some
money but, you know,
I realized that having
a rock and roll band
in New York was logistically
a nightmare.
You have to have a place to
rehearse and the rehearsal costs
so much money per hour.
I'd never -- I wasn't
used to any of that stuff
in Jacksonville, Florida.
So I said oh, I can't
I can't bear this.
And so I want to have
an acoustic group that's
just simple.
I want to get back a little bit
and mix my classical training
with the acoustic guitar and
folk music that I was kind
of starting to get
into, so I placed an ad
in The Village Voice
looking for a cellist,
and a woman named Stephanie
Winters answered the ad,
and we were off and
running for 10 years.
We traveled all over Canada
and the United States,
and we had a good run of it
through in the folk realm,
you know, festivals like the
Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
and those sorts of festivals
all over the country.
We would eventually sign
up with a booking agent
who was also Richie
Havens's booking agent,
and so we got the opportunity
to open for Richie Havens a lot,
and that's kind of how
I met him, and later on,
I would end up playing
with him, but that's --
it was mostly just out of
the necessity to survive
in New York City as to why I
put an ad for just a cellist
and we were just an acoustic
duo and it was out of the need
to just survive and
keep my music out there,
but do it in a practical way.
>> Stephen Winick: So
did your background
as a previous viola player
influence your decision
to look for a cellist?
>> Walter Parks: Well, yeah, it
did, because I knew the power
of that extended melody,
and when you've got a guitar
that's just going [strums
guitar] that kind of a vibe,
and if you've got [vibrato
singing imitating cello],
I love how they kind
of leafed together,
and so also another thing is
that because I studied viola,
I knew how to speak with
a classical musician.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: When I was
a kid and dealing with rock
and roll bands, you -- there's
this ethic of, you know, in rock
and roll, there's this ethic of,
you know, just throw it at me.
I'll deal with it.
Whatever you me to do, I'll
deal with it, you know?
You want me to play where
I can't hear myself?
That's fine.
You know, let's go for it.
It's too loud for me.
It's uncomfortable,
let's go for it.
But in classical music,
they're not -- they --
classical musicians are used
to a certain level of comfort,
and that is the prerequisite
to them doing a good job and,
you know, it's easy to
label classical musicians
as prima donnas, and so on,
but when you realize
how much concentration
and how much relaxation you
have to have in order to deliver
that music, you begin
to understand that a lot
of times what we deem
as divaesque behavior,
or prima donnaesque behavior
is just a desire to focus
on the music and that wonderful
connection that is enabled
by relaxing, and so I was able
to bridge those two worlds
of rock and roll and blues and
so on with the classical world
because I think I started
playing viola, so --
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: -- you know?
>> Stephen Winick:
But it's always good
to have different musical
experiences to fall back
on when you're charting a
new territory, you know?
I gives you more
resources, and that's key.
>> Walter Parks: Yeah.
>> Stephen Winick: So you
mentioned Richie Havens,
of course, as an act that
you shared a manager with
and then opened for a
lot and then of course,
you moved over to
playing with Richie,
so talk about that experience.
>> Walter Parks: Well, I
- when I was a kid in 1969
and it was 1970, I
guess when the movie
for Woodstock came out, I
would go to the music store
and this is how you experienced
a musical phenomenon back then.
You couldn't go to YouTube and
say I just -- let me get --
let me find out the
way it went down.
You'd go to a music
store and look
at the sheet music for it first.
Can you imagine experiencing
Woodstock via the sheet music --
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: -- and
trying to get the vibe
of Woodstock, but
that's all I had?
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: Yeah,
but before, you know,
before I could really go into
clubs and see this phenomenon,
that was not available to me
in the town in which I lived,
so I would see these pictures of
Jimi Hendrix and Richie Havens,
and I remember just being
absorbed by Richie Havens
and his golden robe, and
that that long beard that,
oddly enough, kind of is
about like mine at this point.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: He looked
like some kind of African king,
and he sounded like when you
finally saw the Woodstock movie,
he sounded like all the world's
music in one man, and I was --
Stephen, this guy epitomized
completeness of a solo act.
And that's what I
wanted to have.
I didn't want to necessarily
look like him or act like him,
but I wanted to figure
out what was the secret
of his completeness?
And it would be years later
that when I finally got to know,
Richie, as to what that actual
mystery was, but fast forward.
So that was my enticement
with him initially was just
through the Woodstock
sheet music --
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: --
and then, you know,
I want to take this
moment to just say,
when you think something in life
is just beyond your capability
of understanding or beyond your
reach, the light should go off
that maybe you need
to rethink that,
because when I first saw those
pictures of Richie Havens,
and those -- and the images
of him playing at Woodstock,
I thought, I am here in this
theater in Jacksonville,
Florida, and these gods, if
you will, are somewhere else,
and I shall never -- we
shall never meet, you know?
It's going to -- there's
always going to be this chasm
of mystery between us and
unattainability, and I'm here
to tell you, so many times
in my life, along the path
of my story, I have realized
that one needs to keep oneself
in check with when you think
something is unattainable,
because fast forward, I can fast
forward to my very last days
of playing with Richie
Havens, and I'm going to --
I started at the beginning,
my enticement with him,
and the very last days when
it was evident that Richie,
because of a condition
that he was developing,
that would eventually
retire him, did not have
that magic anymore, and it
was very sad in one sense,
but wonderful in the
in the other sense
because as Richie started --
as it became more and
more difficult for him
to remember his lyrics
and to orient himself,
still two things were intact,
his delivery and his connection.
He still had that flow.
He still had that,
that wonderful gallop
to his playing style and, you
know, like a [guitar strumming].
You know, like that.
♪ Here comes the sun.
♪ That was all there, you know?
He could still do
this, "Freedom.
Freedom," that kind of thing.
And the other thing
that was still intact,
the lyrics might have fallen
by the wayside here or there,
but the other thing that was
intact was his love for people
and their love for him,
and it was wonderful to see
that forgiveness and that
support from the audience
in spite of them knowing that he
was challenged at the very end
and it so in between, now
I'll go back to the in between
of my time with him, but I will
say that when the time came
for Richie to look for a --
he needed another guitarist.
He had always had a kind of a
solo guitarist behind his music,
and I'd tell you when I when
I got asked to come audition
for that, because I thought
he was all the world's music
in one man and so
complete, I asked myself,
what can I bring
to this picture?
What could I -- well, how do I
deserve to sit at this table?
And, you know, for a couple
of months I just floundered
around just trying to figure
out how to not get in his way
and how to contribute to it, and
Richie at one point could sense
that I was kind of
searching and struggling.
I got the gig, by the way,
because I think Richie
was just familiar with me.
He felt good about me.
He knew I was a good musician,
but he was comfortable with me
from having opened for
him for so many years.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: And that's
that was why they called me.
They knew about me
because of that,
my connection with The Nudes.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah, well,
it's important, like someone
that you can work with
just interpersonally is
so important, so.
>> Walter Parks: Absolutely.
And Richie knew that I
could communicate with him.
He knew that I understood
him, and I'll get to that
in a second, but it's, you
know, when I was first trying
to figure out how
to play with him.
He said look, it
boils down to this.
I want our two guitars, your
guitar, Walter, and my guitar
to sound like one guitar,
and when he told me that,
I realized I had to go
in a different direction
than what he was going in, but
yet I needed to weave with him.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: So I started to
lean back on my southern roots,
and my banjo picking style that
I had developed in from living
in the area where the
Okefenokee Swamp is,
so I started leaning back
on my roots at that point a)
to save my job, but it was
also the most natural place
for me to go.
In other words, when
I realized I needed
to head towards what I knew
best, and what I knew best was
where I came from,
and that was something
that Richie couldn't say.
Richie didn't come from
the swamp like I did.
He came from Brooklyn.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: So what I had
to do is to bring this kind
of southern southeast
Georgia/northeast Florida swampy
vibe to his thing,
but not overcome it.
He didn't hire me to be
a swamp guitar player.
He hired me to give him a
sense of comfort on stage,
so that he wouldn't have to do
the heavy lifting constantly,
and so that I could do a fill
here or then when he got --
when he needed a break
from his singing.
That's what he hired me for,
but at the end of the day,
in the quest of trying to
blend with him and sound
like one guitar player, I just
leaned on my banjo picking style
and instead of --
so Richie's going,
and I'm going, backup
[inaudible].
Is my foot tapping
too much for the mic?
Is it breaking up the -- is it
distorting it or is it okay?
Can you hear that okay?
So you can hear how that's
a banjo kind of style.
Can you hear that?
[inaudible]
>> Stephen Winick: [inaudible]
fine in the [inaudible].
>> Walter Parks: Okay.
All right.
Great. So in other words, if
he's going ♪ Here comes the sun.
♪, in and of itself,
that kind of sounds like,
"Wow, where's the beat?
You know, I can't find
one in that," but when you
when you combine that with
-- it sounds wonderful.
It just weaves together,
so that's how I got my gig
and how I sort of saved my gig
and it went off for 10 years
with Richie Havens, and it
was it was a wonderful trip
around the world, so to
speak, and it was all --
I learned so much about
what doing a job was
when you serve somebody or
when you serve anything,
and I can remember one of
my first couple of gigs.
We were playing at the Edmonton
Folk Festival up in Alberta,
and it was the first time I
played for like 20,000 people
in one hit or something like
that, and I was kind of all
into the moment as wow, here I
am on stage with Richie Havens.
And look at all these people and
how do -- what do I look like?
You know, I'm thinking
all of this rubbish
that didn't have anything
to do what my job was,
and I just realized
that at one point I was
so nervous my fingers would
hardly work, and this is early
on in the gig before I
came to the epiphany,
and it's like no, no, no.
My job is to look to my left and
keep my eye on Richie Havens.
I don't need to be
worrying about how I look
or how many people are out
there or what country I'm in,
or how high the stage
is, or any of that.
My job is to focus on the
reason for why I'm here,
which is Richie Havens.
And the pathway, that pathway,
and that sense of attachment is
so meaningful that it took
care of everything else.
So in other words,
how I sounded,
how I was coming across,
how I might have looked,
all of that was fine once I
realized how to do my job.
So that's just a little piece
of experience that has helped me
to get through other situations,
I quickly identify who
or what I'm supposed
to serve, and it can be
if I'm producing a record
for somebody, it's --
if they want me to
provide ambience
or something underneath their
song, my job is not to come in
and say, well, you need
to have the verse --
this, it's got too many
verses here, you know?
If they like -- if
they are hiring me
for the particular atmospheres
that I can bring to a record,
I got to stick to
the darn atmospheres.
I don't need to get
involved in anything else,
and once I establish
myself, then we can expand.
But so expand I did,
with Richie.
And, boy, the job, if you will,
morphed from being just a solo
guitar or a lead guitar player
in the background
of what he did,
to I ended up being his
road manager and, you know,
I speak French so when we
traveled to Europe that came
in handy and, you
know, I got our --
we'd travel all over the
place and I could do business
in countries that had a --
you know, Spain and
Italy and France.
Anything like that I
could kind of survive in
and make Richie's life easier
in, and at the very end, I mean,
I was driving the band
in certain places.
I mean, occasionally
we had a road manager,
but sometimes I'd be driving
across different countries
and handling the money
and dealing with the music
and dealing with the PA company.
It was a tremendous experience
and all that was possible
because I love presenting
concerts and the whole picture.
Since I've been a kid,
I've been fascinated with,
with big festivals
like Woodstock.
I've been festival --
I've been fascinated
by how they're put on,
how they're marketed,
and how they sound, how
you get people out to them,
and so just with being
with Richie Havens,
it was a wonderful experience.
And I'll tell you.
If I can -- can I tell one
story about taking Richie?
>> Stephen Winick: Absolutely.
>> Walter Parks: Here's
another little lesson.
It's like if -- what I'm
passionate about as an aspect
of life, or in this case,
an aspect of music is not
necessarily what everybody else
is passionate about,
but that's one
of the wonderful
things about humanity.
I can remember when we were
on the road, I would --
if we had a day off,
I would take Richie
to see all these old
venues, you know?
I would say, you know, I'm just
going to pull something out.
I'd say Richie, this is
where the band Free played
on their first tour, or this
is the Dane County Coliseum
in Madison, Wisconsin.
This is where Pink Floyd
opened their Dark Side
of the Moon tour.
Richie, isn't this
amazing and, you know,
he could care less, you know,?
And I remember one day I took
him to the Monterey Fairgrounds,
because in 1967, that's where
Jimi Hendrix cracked open
and I don't know
who else was there.
I think the Mamas
and the Papas, maybe.
The Who, I think came on that
night, and I would go to the --
we'd have the day off
or the afternoon off
and I'd say Richie, you
want to go see a gig?
And he'd go, "Yeah," you know,
because he was just sitting
around in the hotel room.
So and we -- I remember the
Monterey State Fairgrounds were
wide open.
You know, they normally
have, you know, cattle shows
and blue ribbon contests
and so on at this place,
but there was a gate
that was open
that took you right
into the fairgrounds.
And if you all look at the --
see, I'm getting excited
just talking about this.
If you look at the
movie, and the grandstand,
the roof of the grandstand
has got a bunch of points,
one point after the other,
going all around the state
fairgrounds, so we were driving
in the middle of that, and we
kind of felt like a matador
in the middle of
a bullfight ring,
and here we are just driving
through it where in 1967,
thousands of people were sitting
and watching Jimi Hendrix.
And, you know, and Richie was
just like, "Wow," you know?
He wasn't infused with --
because that was a
part of his life.
I think next -- the following
year, in '68, he would end
up playing there and it --
you know, venues for Richie
were just a kind of a tool,
just like old guitars, you know?
And, you know, they just
didn't have the attachment
and the folklore
that they did for me,
and the reason was he
lived it, you know?
He lived it.
And for me, I read about it,
and I watched it in movies,
but Richie just lived it.
And I'm looking around for a
guitar that I want to show you.
I don't know if it's up
here, but I have an old --
one of Richie's old guitars,
and maybe I'll take a second
break and go grab that.
No, it's not here.
Oh, well, but I've got one
of his old guitars with me.
But anyway, so that's, you know,
that's a story of supporting him
and playing with him
for so many years,
and I learned most
importantly, that the name
of the game is connection
with people,
and Richie took great pains
after a concert to hang out
and meet everybody who
wanted to meet him,
but during the concert, he
always gave you the feeling
that he was there for you, and
you only, if you were listening.
It didn't matter if you were on
the last row in the auditorium.
He had this way of he would
get in real close to the mic
and he would say, "And
that's how you can tell
that the moon knows more than
you do," or something like that.
He actually never said that,
but that was what he would do.
He would get in real close, and
it was as if he was right there
on your ear, you know?
But that was not bad.
That's something like
he might have said.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: But I want to
say one more thing about my time
with Richie, unless you have
other questions about it,
but I think one of the
reasons I stayed on with him
for so long was that I
could speak his language
and I understood his language.
Richie did not talk in terms of
music, and I remember early on,
I almost got fired because,
you know, I would make a chord
like I don't know what's --
this is an E flat major seven.
Now, who cares?
Nobody cares about that.
Richie certainly
didn't care about that,
but that's the first chord of
The Who's See Me, Feel Met,
not that we played that,
but if we were playing that,
I would say, oh, well, Richie,
that's a major seven chord.
You just need to go to --
you need to go to the F,
the F suspended chord,
and then and all of this
and I thought he
wanted to know that.
He didn't care about that.
He called these kinds of
chords, a mystery chord,
so when he called --
when I figured that he had these
psychedelic hippie babble names
for all of these college chords,
as I call them, and I realized,
oh, I need to change my language
up a little bit with him,
and I realized that he
spoke in terms of effect.
He spoke in terms of the musical
effect that he eventually wanted
that chord to have on his
audience, and at the end
of the day, that's as
legitimate as knowing
that this is an E flat
major seven chord.
As a matter of fact, the fact
that that's an E flat major
seven chord is just something
that I've laboriously put
into my head, and I'm proud
that I can recall that and
affix that to that, but really,
what does that matter?
You don't get up on
the microphone ago ♪
"E flat major seven, F sharp
suspended, or F suspended.
G suspended, G dominant seven."
♪ Nobody cares.
They care about how it makes
them feel and Richie understood
that from the very
get-go because he came
up through doo-wop on
the streets of Brooklyn.
He came up understanding how the
different notes in the chord,
four notes of which, because
each voice sang a note
of every chord in the doo-wop
band on the streets of Brooklyn,
and that's how he learned
music, is the effect that it had
on people, and that's what I
learned from Richie Havens,
if I learned nothing
else is that there has
to be a connection
with the listener
that is not intellectual,
and I mean that from respect.
I don't mean that
from disrespect.
I mean, that it's deeper
because it's not intellectual,
and so anyway, that's my little
story about Richie Havens.
>> Stephen Winick: That's great.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting
how some of the standard sort
of music theory terms for chords
and musical relationships
actually refer
to the way it makes you
feel, like the dominant chord
>> Walter Parks: Suspended.
>> Stephen Winick:
[inaudible] viola.
>> Walter Parks: Yeah, right.
>> Stephen Winick: And yet, you
know, that in order to make sure
that you can reproduce
the exact same chord,
you have to be more precise,
and that's where the --
>> Walter Parks: Yeah.
>> Stephen Winick: --
the theoretical precision
comes in, so.
>> Walter Parks: Right.
That is a very --
that's insightful,
and I never quite thought
of the dominant seventh
aspect, but that's very cool.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: Yeah.
You've given me something
to think about?
I love that.
I love that.
>> Stephen Winick: All right.
Well, so I mean, it's just
great to hear about your time
with Richie, because of,
you know, the sort of figure
that he was, but we want to talk
also about the great, you know,
film and Homegrown concert
that you put together for us.
>> Walter Parks: Thank you.
>> Stephen Winick: And start
by talking a little bit
about the collection
that you used
from the American
Folklife Center's archive.
>> Walter Parks: This is a --
there's a certain irony to me
searching for what you all have
in the archives in that, I just
had this idea that when I came
to the conclusion that my
own roots were going to have
to play an integral part
in me surviving in music,
before I even listened to the
American Folklife collection,
when I came to the conclusion
that I needed to lean
into my roots, because that was
my best hope of being unique
and finding my own little
irreplaceability, so to speak,
when I came to that
conclusion, I had this thought
that maybe there was some
music made out there.
I mean, nobody told me
that there was music.
I'd gone camping in the
Okefenokee and loved it and
but my whole time in Boy
Scouts, Stephen, Boy Scouts,
it was the one of the biggest
deals of the year to go
out camping in the Okefenokee,
and we would do it maybe twice
a year, and we would talk
to the rangers and
everything and, you know,
go to the visitor center and
then we'd go off on our own.
You don't really go off on your
own in the Okefenokee anymore.
You have to have a guide,
but back then the times
when you had a guide
nothing was said about music.
It was all about alligators
and alligator the alligator,
you know, the business
and the logging business
and nobody talked
about the music.
I found that out for myself.
And I have to say that
the -- what's really --
I want to drive home the point
that there is a small trove
of music that is in the
American Folklife collection
that pertains to the Library --
pertains to the Okefenokee
Swamp.
It's not vast.
I mean it's maybe 28 or
30 little song bits but --
well, I'm going to say this.
When I first started
listening to the collection,
I'm going like what am I
going to do with 30 songs?
This is kind of going
to be a -- this is --
you know, I've come a long way
to follow the gold at the end
of this rainbow and there's
not that much gold in this pot,
and I thought at first
I was bummed out.
And I tell you, lesson
number two here is that it
when you think that -- don't let
yourself be misled by quantity
when you first start
doing research.
Just dig into what you can
find and it's going to lead
to other things, and that's
what happened with my research
on the music of the Okefenokee,
and I kind of companioned
that research with some books
that were written,
very few books.
One is by a man named Professor
Delma Presley, who teaches
or used to teach at
Georgia Southern University
in Statesboro, Georgia.
And I want to mention right
now that if you get a --
if you all get a chance to
see the piece that I did
for the American Folklife
collection, I mistakenly said
that he used to teach at
Georgia State University.
That's in Atlanta.
To Georgia people, this
makes a big difference,
and to all my friends in
Georgia, please forgive me.
I was -- this was an important
piece of archiving to do
for the Library of Congress,
and I took it very seriously
and I was a little bit
nervous at that moment.
I just made that little mistake
and I feel bad about
it, but anyway.
>> Stephen Winick:
We forgive you.
>> Walter Parks: Okay.
Well, thank you, but so
one thing led to another.
I read a little bit
about this guy
in the book named Hamp
Mizell whose family did some
of the singing and
the shape note singing
in the American Folklife
collection,
but yet Hamp was never recorded
in the American Folklife
collection,
so but he was referred
to in one of these books.
So I had to find
the closest version
to it in another recording.
My point is, is that I started
to put all the pieces
together just
because I had a little
information
that I originally got from
the Library of Congress,
and one thing led to
the other, and in trying
to do a thorough job
of it, sometimes you go
down rabbit holes, you know?
And I remember, there was
a song that was referred
to called Catfish, and even
in you all's collection,
there is a picture of Hamp
Mizell, I think playing fiddle,
I believe, but I know that it's
Hamp Mizell because I've seen
that -- the shape of that human
being identified in a book,
but in the movie, it doesn't
say that it's Hamp Mizell,
but so but there's
no sound to it.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: So it's just a
movie of all these people kind
of doing what they call a frolic
on Sunday, and they're all
in their Sunday best, and
they're just playing music.
So two things came
to mind there.
I realized what musicians were
involved and how this likely was
to have sounded, so I looked for
other types of groups that had
that same configuration,
fiddle, banjo,
and maybe acoustic guitar, what
were some of the other groups
that might have been recorded in
the South around that same time
and I found something in
Charleston, South Carolina
that gave me the song,
the sound of the song
and then I put the lyrics.
Then I got the lyrics from
a book about the Okefenokee
and then once I put the
song and the melody together
with the lyrics from the
book about the Okefenokee,
then I recorded it for my piece
with you guys, so it was just
because -- so I used
those three points.
I used the visual
from your film.
I use the lyrics from the
book that Mr. Presley wrote,
and some other music that
I had found from some guy,
a group called the Poplin Family
Singers out of Charleston,
South Carolina, so that came
from the Smithsonian Folkways,
but sometimes with
research, you just got
to hit it from all points.
So I just -- so I took
this music and one song
after another, I would try to
ask myself exactly what I asked
when I got when I got hired
to play with Richie Havens.
What can I bring to this table?
This music has already been
recorded in 1944 and 1945,
and it's been archived,
thankfully, by you guys,
the Library of Congress.
Now who am I to come along
in 2020 and do anything
with that that's going
to be meaningful?
And so what I decided
is I wanted to try
to put a little contemporary
twist with it.
I might play it with an electric
guitar, or I might just want
to give it a little contemporary
beat, a little lift.
Or in the case of spiritual
music like what they used
to sing when they
were at a frolic
and they were all
sitting facing each other
for a shape note singing,
I took it to a church.
There was a church that I --
was nice enough to let me use
their stairwell, and I sang one
of the hollers note for note
in the stairwell of a church
in St. Louis, and it
was a wonderful sound.
You can hear it on the piece
that I that I did for you guys.
That's the first piece
that I start with.
Now, my point is, I
took this and I wrote
out what I found
in your collection.
I wrote out the music that was
sung by man named Tom Chesser.
I wrote that out note for note,
and I re-sang it, and I did it
with a little bit
of my own style.
I did it in a scenario that was
different than in the swamp,
and so it has a little
bit of a --
it has a totally
different effect,
and the here's my
overarching point.
Because of my studies, my
early studies of opera,
and because of what I knew of
classical music, from the study
of viola, and because
of the power that --
the spiritual power that I knew
this music to be inspired by,
what created this music,
I decided I'm going to try
to sing this in a church rather
than out in the wilderness.
Now there are films that
I submitted to you guys
of me singing these
hollers in the woods,
because I wanted people to
hear that echo, but I also just
for the sake of doing
something different with it,
I sang it in the church.
Now I want to be clear,
my intent was not to be --
I have no spiritual or
religious agenda with this.
I just wanted to put it in
a situation that in a sort
of a spiritual situation
that inspired the song
in the first place,
and now that was --
I'm referring there to the
song Idumea, which I sang
with an acoustic guitar
in a little chapel,
also in St. Louis, but I think
those hollers which were sung
by people -- well,
let me back up.
There was -- the main type
of music that you have
in your collection that really
magnetized me, were hollers.
There was also Appalachian-style
music banjos, and I've kind
of covered that, and there
was also shape note singing,
which is spiritual,
and I've covered that,
but the hollers were a
practical way of communicating.
If a man had been off in the
woods hunting for three days,
and you've got a 600 square
mile swamp, it's easy to go
out for three days, and if
you come back on your house,
without some kind of notice,
you're likely to get shot
at because you're
coming out of the woods.
Nobody knows when
you're coming back.
If you let them know a mile
out, if you're a mile away
from your house, and
you give a whoo-hoo-oo!
I'm not in good voice right now.
Whoo-hoo-ooo!
You give your characteristic
holler, and they know okay,
all right, Bill's been out.
He's okay.
That's Bill, he's -- and
he'll be here in about an hour
because the sound would
travel through the pines
for about a mile, and because
of my affinity, my magnetism
to my passion for those
classical and operatic sounds,
I just -- these things kind
of, they had that power,
that operatic power to me.
And, you know, when folks do --
hollering is today, reproduced
and sung, and people win
blue ribbon awards for it
and it's all kind of presented
like with fiddle music
and banjos and folk music
in western North Carolina
and so on, and that's
all well and good,
but this stuff sounded
operatic to me.
It sounded.
It sounded glorious.
It sounded a little spiritual.
Now, I want to be real clear.
The guys who were singing
this music, they didn't think
of it as music at all.
This was practical communication
to them, and it was just
like us using cell phones now.
Hey, I'll be home 10
minutes, you know?
Anything -- can I pick up
some eggs or something?
That's the way they were holl
-- that's what hollering was.
You know? Whoo-hoo-ooo!
That mean, okay, yeah, I've
got a dead deer on my back.
I'll be there in a
couple of minutes.
Get the fire on.
Let's boil the hide
or do whatever we got
to do with it, you know?
And so this was not
considered music.
This was a tool to them, and
so along comes me in 2020
and I turned it into music,
and I was fortunate enough
to connect with a man
named Wade Chesser,
who in your collection I
don't know if I told you this
but maybe I did, but in
your collection -- oh, boy.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Let me -- I don't know.
I want to show you.
I don't know if I have it.
I want to show you.
Well, I've got an old letter
that Wade Chesser wrote me.
I wrote Wade Chesser,
and he wrote me back.
Wade Chesser on your tape,
on the tape that you have
in the Library of
Congress, he is introduced
as now we'll hear one of
the old fashioned songs.
This is the Coming Home Holler
by 17 year old Wade Chesser,
and he's performing the Coming
Home Holler interspersed
with a few of the
old-fashioned songs.
I think that's almost
the wording exactly.
And so I was told by Delma
Presley, the professor
at Georgia Southern, that this
Wade Chesser guy is still alive,
and you got to chase
him down, so I did.
I wrote him.
All of -- most of
his adult life,
he had been a bank executive
in a town in the middle
of Georgia, and I wrote him.
He had since retired.
He wrote me back, and he
-- when he wrote me back,
he was at the tail
end of his life.
He wrote me back in
very scribbled hand.
I'm pretty sure I
was probably one
of the last letters
he ever wrote.
He passed away.
But he wrote me back.
He said, well, I
-- this is so odd
that you're singing this
music in auditoriums,
and we just thought of this
as bringing the cows home
or letting our family know we
were coming home from a hunt
and he says I wish you
luck with your project.
I can't help you with
it because I'm a old,
feeble man at this point, but I
wish you luck with the project.
It was just -- it wasn't that
he was being discouraging to me.
It was just that it
was perplexing to him.
So because of your collection,
I connected with this man and,
you know, honestly, I can't say
that I got his blessing
to do it.
I don't even think he
was thinking that way
or I wasn't asking
for the blessing.
I was just letting them know
I'm doing this, and I wanted
to know more about
it, and I did get
to meet his brother who's still
alive, and these guys, you know,
I tried to do whatever I could
to get his brother who's younger
to sing a holler and he's also
preserved in your archives.
That's just a part of their --
that's a bygone part
of their lives.
They're not anymore going to
do a holler now than anybody.
You know, they'll
talk about their days
when they were working in
corporate America or something
like that, when they moved
to the big city,
Jacksonville nearby.
I don't want to hear about that.
I want to hear about
the hollers.
I want to hear about how
they lived out in the swamp.
They got out of the swamp.
They're glad to be out of the
swamp, but here, guys like you
and me who are impassioned
by the tale and the lore
of these guys living in
the middle of nowhere,
and making the best of it, and
they don't really want to go
down memory lane, but I
tell you, I've tried and
but they have given their
blessing to me and they've come
to my concerts when I play
in that area of the country.
It's really great.
It's fascinating to have a
person who was recorded in 1945
and is forever preserved in
your archives in the Library
of Congress, American
Folklife Collection,
and that individual has
come to my shows in probably
in the year 2018,
and seen me perform,
and whereas I'm much
better about --
my performances are much
better now in the year 2020,
especially after I've prepared
for what I submitted to you all,
but I passed the test
and even in 2018,
I entertained him enough,
so the first thing Mr. Bill
Chesser said to me is --
you know, I was nervous
when I met him --
he said -- he leaned in.
He got in real close to me
and he said, can you yodel?
And because yodeling is
a -- that's kind of a --
that's what hollering
is [yodels].
There we go.
That's actually a yodel.
[yodels]. And this brings to
mind one other quick thing
that I want to -- a little
side road that I want to go
down that's kind of crucial
if you wouldn't let me --
if you wouldn't mind
me doing this.
When I -- part of the reason I
so stubbornly resisted anything
to do with the swamp as what
defined me in my early days
of performing, in my early
quest for uniqueness and style
when I moved to New York
City, is because I was one
of two types of Southerners.
I was brought up, for
better or for worse --
there were kind of
two mentalities
of white Southerners,
and I can't speak
for any other cultures or
races because I'm not that,
but with white Southerners,
you were either kind of --
either came from
the working class
or you came from something else.
You know, you might
have had farmland,
and if your people had farmland,
then they might have been
connected for better for worse
to the plantation
economy and that reality.
Again, for better or for worse,
the grand disclaimer,
I was in the latter.
My people had farms, and they
probably had plantations,
and I'm -- well, I know they had
plantations, and they probably,
if you trace it back far enough,
they probably had slaves.
Not happy about that, but my
point is, I had this feeling
of disdain for anything that
related to fiddles, banjos,
yodeling all of that, and
I talked to my friends
in North Carolina,
not too long ago
when I first started
this research,
and I have a good friend named
Landon Walker, who now lives
in Greensboro, North Carolina,
and he's got a brother
who runs a Walker family
traditional music camp
up around Boone, North
Carolina, or Blowing Rock
or something like that.
Anyway, it's string music.
It's traditional North
Carolinian music,
and I was talking to him about
his family history with that
and he -- the light
went off when I talked.
He said no, we didn't
like that music.
My father had nothing
to do with this.
We listened to classical music.
And I realized, I never
listened to it either.
I never, once.
I grew up in the South.
I never once listened to
string music, folk music,
banjo music, yodels, none of it.
It was considered low
class, and we listened to --
we didn't listen to classical
music, but we listened
to what they call beautiful
music or Henry Mancini
and all of that stuff.
That's what I grew up on,
Perry Como Andy Williams,
and we would not be caught
dead listening to folk music,
and so I got on the folk
train much later in my life,
ironically, when I
moved to New York City.
My point in all of this is to
say, when I largely, I mean,
it's been a struggle,
even through my research
in the Library of
Congress collection,
to accept that this music
was part of me, and I've kind
of felt like I was -- it's been
a real growing process for me,
because for some reason, I could
always play this music well.
It was always part of me,
in the sense that it flowed
out of me easily, and when
I moved to New York City,
and I thought of myself
as all European connected
and everything, and
my German friends
and my Japanese friends
would keep saying to me, oh,
you have such a swampy
vibe in your play.
And I'm like, oh, geez, I
can't hear that one more time.
I want to be, you know, I
want to be all, you know,
I just want to be as modern
and cutting edge as possible.
Don't tell me about the swamp.
Finally the light went off.
I've got to embrace it.
Once again, I'm trying
to bring this back
around to your roots is --
that's your life preserver.
If you're an artist and you
want to find your unique voice,
you have to turn and
embrace your roots.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: If
you run from them,
you are fighting
an uphill battle
that you will probably
never win,
and I have to say this
Library of Congress adventure
for me has been life shaping.
I mean, it was -- for me to get
this music back into my psyche,
into my genes, if you will,
was in a certain way healing
and it was a certain
way enlightening.
Now you might say but you
just got through telling us
that this wasn't in your genes.
This is -- you listened
to classical music
and Henry Mancini, and that
may be what I was supposed
to be listening to, but for some
reason, I related to this music
in a deeper way, and I
had to accept it in order
to perform it correctly,
and even if you look
at my first versions that I made
in like 2016 of me in a theater
in Jersey City, I'm singing
a holler like [sings].
I'm singing it operatically,
not [sings loudly].
I'm not kind of really owning
the yodel part of it --
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: -- because
God forbid, I actually yodel,
because then that's just --
that's accepting
that I work the land.
I'm going back to my
upbringing, and so on,
but it's been a journey that
you all had helped me with,
and it's I feel like I'm
authorized to do this,
and I'm authorized because
I used to spend so much time
out there in the swamp.
What I'm not authorized
to do is to talk
about the history
of the Okefenokee.
If you all want that, you go
to a book, and you read that,
but what I can talk about is the
music that was made out there,
and that's what I can also play,
and I think I do it pretty well
now, and what's really kind
of supportive and encouraging
to me is I can remember
the first time I heard your
collection and I first started
writing it out, Stephen.
I've got -- I don't -- it'd
take me too long in the books
to show you the first page.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: When I first
started writing this down,
I scribbled it out in
hand before I put it
into a music program, and
I just started shaking,
and kind of I just
started shaking.
I was -- I could barely write
and I was in New York City
at the time, and I'm
like, this is crazy.
I'm writing this music that
came from Washington, DC.
Well, it first came
from the archives.
I mean, it first came from the
field in the Okefenokee Swamp,
was archived by Francis
Harper on equipment on loan
from you guys, sat in
the Library of Congress,
American Folklife
Collection for years,
then was loaned a
little bit of it,
some of it to the Georgia
Southern University,
which I first heard it, and
now I took it to New York City,
and I'm writing it out and
I'm shaking, I'm going like,
nobody's ever done this before
with this piece of music.
I don't even know that
people have really listened
to this little bit of music
probably in 30 years, who knows?
And it was just the
import of it,
in that I realized I was
going to be a bridge to this
for some people who had never --
who would never otherwise
hear this, you know?
And believe me, I -- you know,
I am patting myself on the back
and saying, all right,
it's important.
I did something that's
worthwhile, but you know,
I have had people come up to me.
I mean, the proof is in what
people say to me after my shows.
It's like I've had men
come up to me in tears.
I remember I played at
the Stephen C. Foster Park
in northeast Florida,
Live Oak, Florida.
There's a festival there
called the Magnolia Fest,
I think is what it is.
It's a folk festival,
and there was a gentleman
who came up in tears.
He goes, I haven't heard that
since my grandfather used
to holler, and it
sounded just like him.
I go, yeah, because
it's from this area.
It's from this neck
of the woods.
We're on the Suwanee River.
I said the Suwanee River
starts up in the Okefenokee.
That's where the
spring is for it.
It all comes from this area.
And he was in tears, and he
says I want more of this.
And now, when people come to
me after shows, I can say well,
there's a whole review of it.
There's a whole show that I did
for the Library of Congress,
and because of the COVID --
now this is being recorded
in in 2020, and we're still
in the middle of a
coronavirus epidemic.
I've not had any -- I've not
performed any live concerts,
so I haven't been able to
say to anybody at this point,
there's a whole -- the fruits
of my efforts are compiled
in the Library of
Congress collection,
the Library of Congress,
American Folklife Collection.
You just have to find it in a
lot, and so now I can say that,
and I can't wait to
do that live on tour.
>> Stephen Winick: That's great,
but you know, one of the things
that we found really interesting
about the COVID-19 pandemic,
and how it affected our concert
series was that, you know,
we had to retool very quickly
and create our concert series
to be online, and
that gave artists
like yourself more
free rein to do things
that they couldn't do live
in the Coolidge Auditorium,
and for some of the
concerts, including yours,
we think that that actually
ended up being a real asset
because one of the
things that we love
about your video particularly,
is the sense of place
that we get out of the fact that
you actually went to the swamp
and to the Chesser homestead
to record some of these songs,
so could you talk about that,
about your [inaudible]
journey [inaudible]?
>> Walter Parks: Yeah, that
was -- that took place.
My pilgrimage was twofold.
I go there just -- I stop
by the Okefenokee just
about any time I'm in
my neck of the woods,
but I went there
specifically for this project
that I submitted
to you all, once,
and then there was also one
time before, that I filmed,
I got myself up at five
in the morning and went
out to the Okefenokee.
Now when you see the piece that
I've done for you all you all,
you will -- there's a song
called Ain't Nobody's Business.
It starts with a holler.
It's all black backdrop.
I'm playing a Fender
guitar, and you'll see a film
in the background of me.
Now that's a film that I took on
a canoe in the Okefenokee Swamp
that didn't come from
stock footage, you know?
That came from me holding my
camera as my canoe drifted
through the Okefenokee,
and that was about 7:30
in the morning one October,
and the coolness of the air,
the frost in the air,
was meeting the warmness
of that water and it
was just exquisite.
I was -- I can't believe I kept
the cameras as still as I did,
because I was just -- inside
I was shaking with the majesty
of it, and what I
did is I underlaid
that behind me playing.
So that's actual footage,
and I don't think --
I'm pretty sure that I didn't
mention that in the Library
of Congress film that I made for
you all, but that was my footage
that I overlaid under
me playing.
So that was trip number one.
Trip number two, I specifically
made for you guys and I went
to the Chesser homestead in July
a month before I released the
film to you all.
And I'm sitting there.
I've never had Mother Nature
put me under such pressure
to make -- to do a
recording project
as Mother Nature was doing.
It was hot as hell out there
and it was in the swamp in July,
and not only that, what
you didn't realize is
that mosquitoes were
just going crazy
and I was fighting
mosquitoes and the heat and I'm
from that area and I
could barely take it,
and but every now and then
I would be sitting there
on the porch and at one point
I had to place all to myself.
It's the beautiful
Chesser homestead,
though there's a -- the sand.
Now I want to -- a lot of people
don't understand, you know,
you're talking about a homestead
in the middle of the swamp.
If you've never been
out to a swamp,
you don't realize there
are islands in a swamp.
It's not just all water and
alligators and water moccasins.
There are little islands
where people lived
and they had livestock
and they --
different families
had different islands.
That's the way it
worked in the Okefenokee.
When I went down there
to the Chesser Island
and the Chesser homestead,
they gave me permission to walk
up there and film on the front
porch, and I took my 1929 banjo,
and I did that because I
wanted it to be an instrument
that would have been
played in the period
when people were listening
-- we're living out there,
so I played that song Catfish
that Delma Presley refers
to in his book The
Okefenokee Album,
and so when I'm sitting
there on the porch by myself,
I'm sitting there playing
and I'm kind of in --
you don't know this
because you're watching it
from the perspective
of the camera,
but I get through playing, and
I can't play it because it's
in a different tuning right now,
but I'm playing and I look up
and there's 10 people
there watching me
and I get finished playing,
and they said can you tell me
a little bit about the house?
And can we go into the house?
In fact, the house was closed.
They were doing some
repairs on the road,
and nobody was really
supposed to be back there,
but apparently, they'd
gotten to --
the tree had fallen across the
road, and they'd open it up.
Now the tourists are there.
Now what they think I am, they
think I'm a costumed guide,
like you see Ponce
de Leon walking
around in St. Augustine,
Florida, you know?
They think I'm a prop.
They think I'm just like
in Williamsburg, Virginia
or something, you know?
But no, I'm out there doing
research, and as a matter
of fact, a couple of
my takes were ruined
because people would
start clapping.
I wanted it to kind of seem
like, I was really authentically
out there in the middle
of nowhere and, you know,
and I wanted it to be this kind
of like this stealth
moment, you know?
But a couple -- so
it took me forever
to get that recording done.
And, you know, it was primitive,
and the microphone is all
bumping around, and forgive me
for that, but I thought it was
really important that you hear
that version of Catfish
the way it was played,
and sung way back then.
And then I had seen
that with a version
of me playing it on
electric guitar --
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks:
-- and what I did.
when I was at that
Chesser homestead,
because I have experience
in a lot of recording,
I did that with my
foot on that porch,
and I could hear the
medicine bottles inside
that cabinet just rattling.
I could hear the silverware
in that kitchen just rattling.
And then of course, the
wonderful resonance and that
that sort of bass response of
the porch in and of itself,
and I just made a
recording of that thumping.
And then when I came back
to St. Louis, I put that --
I did a time loop of me playing
that thumping, so I just --
I played to that loop.
So I took modern technology,
and I married it to a recording
of me exactly as I would
have sounded in 1929
when that banjo was first made,
so my foot stomping was 1929,
but I bring it together with
an electronic loop from 2020,
and I just thought that was
an interesting little marriage
of the old and the new.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah,
it sounds totally natural.
Like nobody would know
that you did that.
>> Walter Parks: Nobody, yeah.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: No, it
just -- but it's the --
but Steven, the have, --
you could go to a
music store these days
and buy these things
called porch boxes.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: They have a
little guitar plug on them,
and it's a little, you know, a
microphone pickup inside of it,
and the whole concept is
that it sounds like a porch.
Well, I was on a porch.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: I was
on the porch from 1921,
one of the most quintessential
porches that's available
to us right now because it was
the same porch that was there
around the turn of the century,
all the way to when folks were
kicked out of the Okefenokee.
And I want to make one more
thing really clear here
about the Okefenokee Swamp,
is that I think it is --
it could accurately be
described as the East Coast
of the United States'
last frontier,
because there were,
up until 1929.
I mean, in 199 -- mid-1920s,
there were parts of that swamp
that nobody had ever seen.
Now 1929, you know,
every place else
in the East Coast
would had already --
most of the trees
had been cut down.
And, you know, everybody had
kind of mapped it all out by
that point in the eastern part
of the US, and there's a ranger
out there who's been very
helpful to my research,
and she said to me, on my
last trip, she says, Walter,
you know, there's some --
there's a cypress stand
that still nobody's been to,
and I said, well,
how do you know?
If nobody's been to it,
how do you know it exists?
And she says because
of drone photography,
and we found some old growth
700-year-old Cypress out there,
that was so deep in the
swamp, it wasn't worth it
for those guys to get to, and
they never knew it was there
because they didn't
have drone photography,
and they didn't use airplanes
for that purpose back then.
So anyway, and I said well, is
there a chance that I can go
out and see it someday?
And she says we know where
it's there and I'll see
if I can get you -- I think
I can get you a personal tour
out there next time, so I really
want to schedule that because,
Stephen, they took 700-year-old
cypresses that were big
around as the redwoods, and they
shaved the whole swamp bear.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: On the
other hand, you know,
none of this music
probably would have been --
there wouldn't have
been attention put
on the swamp had it not been
for the logging business.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: And this
guy might not have come
down with this recording
equipment,
and I might not be
talking to you now --
>> Stephen Winick: Right,.
>> Walter Parks: --
if they hadn't done
that logging out there.
Who knows?
But anyway, that's my story
on going out there to record.
I also did some field hollering.
I did go to -- when I
first heard the music
in you all's collection,
I noticed that there was
a long tail on the sound
when a man would go [yodels], it
would carry on, and I thought,
well, that's kind of weird.
They didn't have special
effects back then in 1945.
There was no such thing
as reverb or any of that.
And it took me a couple of
listens to key into that,
and then I went out to the
ranger station a couple
of years later and she said
-- one of the rangers said,
you know, it carries like that,
and I'm like, naw, come on.
And so I took an
assistant out to the swamp,
and I had a little battery
powered recording unit,
and I got him to position
himself a half mile away,
and I drove down the road,
and I sang and sure enough,
it sounds like the cathedrals
in France or something.
It has this -- just this long
sound, and I think that's
because -- you know, I got
a couple of pencils here.
I didn't save him for that
reason, but in that part
of the country, the
trees kind of --
I'll put it on the
-- here we go.
The trees kind of
look like this.
The leaves and everything
are up top.
I mean, the branches are
up top, but the trunks
of the trees could
be 40, 50 feet high,
and they're just bare.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: My point
as there's no branches
on the lower part of the trees,
so the those trees kind of serve
as a spring, as an echo
chamber, and it's beautiful.
You can hear it.
I recorded it on the tape that I
did for you guys, and you can --
I demonstrated that, and
that was a big thrill
to just hear it, and there's --
what's weird is it has
this carry to it for miles.
It's a double treat,
because there's something
about the trees, they echo it
back to you, but they carry it.
It's a phenomenon that I'm not
scientific enough to understand,
but maybe that'll be part of my
research as the years roll by.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah, no, it
is amazing, and you know, yeah,
you think about it,
and you're right.
If the leaves were further down,
they'd break up that
sound, but --
>> Walter Parks: It'd be dead.
If they're --
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah, yeah.
That's amazing.
So one thing that I want
to sort of go back and fill
in because we talked about
you're learning viola
and you're learning guitar,
but we didn't actually talk
about the banjo and
when you decided to make
that [inaudible]
learning a banjo,
because you're good
banjo player, man.
>> Walter Parks:
Oh, well, thanks.
Well, I'm really a guitar
player and -- your --
this is going to totally
discredit me in the folk world
but the -- you know,
remember when I said earlier
in this interview that
I'll just say yes,
and figure out how
to do it later.
You know, when somebody asked
me to sing their wedding,
initially, I thought,
oh, yeah, I'll do that,
and I didn't really
even know how to sing,
but I taught myself to sing.
I've been playing banjo for
years and I love the banjo,
and I realized two
things about the banjo.
First of all, I had to accept
it as something that was --
I had to embrace it as something
that I would allow myself
to play because the
banjo forever used
to symbolize the just the
all the negative connotations
of being a rural southerner and
there are those connotations.
The banjo was part and
parcel with that stereotyping
and I bought into it even as
a southerner, so I had to --
I realized that, well, first
of all, I had to accept it
as an instrument that I would
be willing to be seen with,
you know, because there's
so many bad banjo jokes
and everything, but I did not
start a love for the banjo
because of folk music.
My interest in banjo was
through jazz, actually.
And jazz, banjo plays
an intricate part
of Dixieland music, and in
trying to find employment
as a young man in Florida, I
started a Dixieland jazz band
and nobody else in my town
could play that type of banjo.
Given that I grew up in North
Florida there were plenty
of five-string banjo
players who played bluegrass
but I could find none who
played ragtime-style banjo
which is more picking.
It's kind of like what they
do in the mummers parade
in Philadelphia and that kind
of thing in that in that area.
So it was the New
Orleans ragtime kind
of vibe is what introduced
me to banjo and I had
to find a banjo that
was four string.
It's a tenor banjo is
what I'm playing on.
Now, I have a feeling --
well, it's not a feeling.
I know that a lot of the
banjos that were played
in those southern areas,
given that they had the
Appalachian influence,
they were five-string banjos.
There's a picture of Hamp Mizell
in the Okefenokee playing
a five-string banjo.
I've found no evidence of any
four-string tenor banjo players.
Nonetheless, that's what I play,
and that's what I like to play,
and it -- my attachment
to that instrument came
through jazz, Stephen, actually.
But so that was a survival
mode, and when I first --
so it's when at a before
a point in my life,
I moved to Nashville, and I --
one of the things that I did
for extra money when I moved
to Nashville was I started
recording live bands,
and I would do live field
recordings of string bands
and contra dance bands
and that sort of thing.
And, you know, you
know this about life,
when you immerse yourself in
something, you kind of start
to appreciate it on a level
and all your prejudices kind
of go away about
it, and I've been --
again, because of the reasons
that I confessed to you
of feeling like I was elitely
above most rural southern
folk music, I had no use
for contra dance music until
I started recording it,
and I started listening to
this great songs like Red Wing
and those sorts of things,
and I was like oh my gosh,
this is beautiful, and it just
loops and loops and you get more
into this mental
froth, you know this --
you just get more delivered
and you go on this journey
as a dancer more and more every
time the song goes around,
and I started contra dancing,
and it's like I started
to understand that culture.
And so I began to
experiment a little bit
with claw hammer banjo, which I
still don't have but I realized
that the banjo is a -- the
banjo is a humbling instrument
because if you try to play
the banjo, if you try to play
that notey stuff that I'm
doing in the recording for you,
and you try to do it
really hard, it loses all
of its tone, you know?
If you just slam into a
banjo, it turns to mush.
It's just like, it sounds like
a coffee can, a metal coffee can
with paperclips in
it or something.
>> Stephen Winick: Right.
>> Walter Parks: It has no
beauty to it, but if you just --
you know, I -- you know,
my banjo is over there,
but if you -- you know, you
have to play a banjo sort
of delicately to get
the tone out of it.
And that kind of
imposition, that when I found
that the banjo has a set of
rules I had to follow, you know?
--
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: -- that little
humbling made me respect it a
lot more, and that's --
then I started translating
this swamp music to the banjo,
and in a sense bringing that
music back home because I think,
you know, it's no secret
that the banjo is
originally an adaptation
of an African instrument, and
so I think that oddly enough,
I think my usage of
a very simple banjo,
a more simpler banjo
given the fourth string,
and given that the banjo,
they think came to this --
to the what's now known as
the United States mostly
through the Gullah
islands off South Carolina,
and from that area, maybe
there's some meaning
to me just kind of bringing it
back to that area in some sense.
I mean, I don't play country
and bluegrass-style banjo,
but what I did with that song
Catfish is I learned this
Appalachian style of playing
because as I said in the
in the movie that I did for
you guys, it was quoted by one
of the old timers
in the Okefenokee,
if you can't play Catfish,
you're not a banjo player,
so I took it upon myself to
learn that and it was hard.
That song is -- that song
was tricky, and it's --
I didn't play it that
well on the porch,
but I played it really well,
when I right when I followed it
up with that recording in
my studio, so the porch,
the recording that I submitted
to you all, it's the real thing,
and there's a couple of
times that I kind of trip
up a little bit, but you
all forgive me for it,
because that was real, and
there were mosquitoes biting me
and the heat was so unbearable,
but I got through it,
and but I think it was
pretty realistic [inaudible].
>> Stephen Winick: It
sounded great to us,
so we were not -- we
had no complaints.
>> Walter Parks: Oh, good, good.
>> Stephen Winick:
And generally,
the whole concert was kind of
an amazing job that you did
to put all that stuff together
in a way that, you know,
as I said, was a you saw
the whole at-home aspect
of this concert series as
an opportunity to do stuff
that you couldn't have done
if you came to the library
to do it, and we
really appreciate that.
>> Walter Parks: Thank you.
>> Stephen Winick: And that
brings me to, you know,
to another question that I know
that you have also been
a concert presenter
and have run some
concert series,
so talk about that experience,
and what some of the artists
that you presented
and that experience.
>> Walter Parks: Well, the most
important aspect of this is
that I got to the point -- I
lived in Jersey City for --
well, I moved to Jersey City
because I got hired by to play
with Richie Havens, and at the
time, Richie Havens was living
in Jersey City and I thought,
I'm going to make myself
more indispensable,
as much as a human being can
make oneself indispensable,
if I lived near him.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: So in that
sense, that strategy paid off
because every day Richie
was over at my house
and we were rehearsing, when
we were not on the road.
Generally, almost every day,
we got together and rehearsed
in my studio, but there was
a point that I just got tired
of living in the
shadow of New York City.
There's so much of
everything there.
It's just, I love
the neighborhood.
I still love the neighborhood,
but I had to leave,
and I went to Savannah,
Georgia for a couple of years,
and I really got back
in touch with my roots,
and that's when I
began my research
on the Okefenokee Swamp,
so but I still had property
in Jersey City, and when I
left Savannah to come back
to Jersey City, I
said to myself --
my wife and I said to
ourselves, no more complaining,
no more complaining about
the shadow of New York City,
the chaos of Jersey
City, and how we're kind
of culturally a fish out
of the water, you know?
-- and how we are the
artists in the community,
and it's mostly a
working class community.
What are we going to do about
the community to make it a place
that we would want to live?
So we started giving concerts
in our loft, free concerts
to the general public.
We would have jazz
concerts, opera concerts,
classical music concerts.
We would hire ballet dancers,
and then the concert series grew
so much that we couldn't do
them in our loft anymore,
and the public was coming
to our house three it --
four times a year, every
quarter for these free concerts
that we were giving, and we
were hiring the musicians,
and it was it was a great
thing for the musicians.
It was great for the community.
Nobody paid for them.
I mean, the general public
didn't have to pay to come
to see them, and that's
very important to me.
And we started looking
for another space and I --
we had noticed this abandoned
bridge in Jersey City
that was not being -- that
had been cordoned off.
The city wasn't using the
roadway underneath the bridge
for traffic, because it
was a cobblestone street
and they deemed it too unsafe,
and so we got the
city's permission
to do a concert series
under a 50 foot long street
that has an arched
roof for 50 feet.
It's got a wonderful
arched roof.
I'm trying to get it right
for the -- there we go.
It's kind of like a cavern
that goes 50 feet long.
It's open on both ends
because it's a tunnel,
so we did this concert series,
and the first one we did was
a -- we had a ballet dancer.
I wrote the music for it.
Then we had a baroque
classical quartet,
and then we had an opera singer
from Brazil or something,
and people were just blown
away, and we did it every year.
Fast forward four more years.
We came up with a name
for the concert series.
We called it The Vault Allure,
the lure of the vault,
The Vault Allure.
We got a major sponsor
in Nokia Bell Labs,
and we grew from having
an audience of 1,000 --
an audience of 100 to an
audience of 1,000, and my --
I had two prerequisites or
two adages that I lived by is
that I wanted the concerts
to be -- three adages.
I wanted the concerts to be
free to the general public.
I wanted the performers
to play in the round,
so that the audience could
encircle the musicians
or the dancers and feel the
power and hear the power
that the musicians were feeling
and hearing, and I also wanted
to present classical forms
of music or forms of music
that were not largely popular.
I want -- we presented
opera music.
We presented ballet.
We presented some blues, some
jazz music, like a Savannah,
swing jazz kind of band, and
we would bring fire dancers
in from different areas of the
country, and this was just stuff
that it was just
musical entertainment
that people had never had
access to because keep in mind,
for the most part, Jersey
City still is a working
class neighborhood.
The only time these folks will
see ballet is in a magazine.
>> Stephen Winick: Yeah.
>> Walter Parks: And they're not
going to go to Lincoln Center
and pay $100 or $200 a
ticket, so we brought ballet
to this neighborhood, and rather
than just perform something
like Swan Lake or something
with tutus, I would put up --
there would be dancing in
front of this image map,
highly technical projections on
the walls of a cobblestone wall
that was built during
the WPA era,
so each one of those Belgian
block bricks was a different
image map that was
-- that different --
that a computer could project
a different image onto in front
of which was a classical
ballet dancer
or a classical singer,
an opera singer.
My point is that I presented
in a modern way, old music,
and people were saying to me,
I never knew this music had
such a sensual allure to it.
And I go well, yeah, because
you can feel it now finally,
and it's being presented
to you in a way
that you can understand it.
So we're very proud of that.
We didn't have one this
year because of the COVID,
but I'm working -- we're still
working with it and, you know,
people can go to the website
vaultallure.com and see what's
up with it, and I'm also doing
a project called The Unlawful
Assembly, which is
spiritual music.
It's a mixed-race band.
The two of us are white guys,
and the rest is there was four
black members of the group,
and we're just playing
historical American spirituals,
hymns, work songs, and hollers,
and it's a wonderful way
to present the soundtrack of the
making of this country in a way
that has no political
agenda, no spiritual agenda.
It's just here's what was going
on when we were making
this place,
and this was the soundtrack.
This is what -- it doesn't
matter if you were working
in the fields or if you were
praying in the churches,
what was the music that was
going on concurrently to all
of that, and it's a
beautiful project,
and I'm also I'm rehearsing
with that, and I'm kind
of weaving the work that I've
done for the Library of Congress
into that project, because
at the end of the day,
I think there's a very spiritual
power to some of these hollers,
and the shape note
singing that was sung
in the Okefenokee
also works well
with this Unlawful Assembly
band that I have, so that's,
it's all of this is going on.
And, you know, I'm still --
I'm itching to perform
again on the road, so.
>> Stephen Winick: Thank you so
much for all you've done for us
and with our material, and I
should say just for the audience
that that collection is the
Francis Harper Collection
of Music of the Okefenokee
Region,
and Walter Parks's concert
can be found on the Library
of Congress website at loc.gov.
Just search on his
name, Walter parks,
and you will find
the concert as well.
So thank you so much, Walter.
I see you have your
guitar with us.
Do you want to play
[inaudible] to take us out?
>> Walter Parks: Yeah, I'll
just play a little quick holler.
And I will say that, again, I
want to drive home the point
that my research work
that was made possible
because of what the Library of
Congress has preserved has --
the research -- the music
that I've researched
has changed me forever,
and has shaped how I perform
and what I perform for the rest
of my career, and I remember --
I don't remember if it was
Toronto or where I was, Montreal
or some other city when I
first met you at a table
at the Folk Alliance, I
just had a great feeling
that we were going to --
that we shared a passion,
we shared a passion for
research and historical music,
and I'm so glad that you took
an interest in what I'm doing
and so I'm indebted
to you and I --
so I've chosen to
sing a little bit
of a holler called the
Coming Home Holler.
[ Singing ]
>> Stephen Winick: Walter
Parks, thank you so much.
>> Walter Parks: My pleasure.
That was old school
mixing there.
I hope it sounded all right.