建立于1947年的The Weavers，是一支传奇的美国民歌四人组——Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman和Pete Seeger。他们所演唱的民歌来自世界各地，还包括蓝调、福音音乐、童歌、劳工音乐以及美国民谣。在他们最鼎盛时，唱片销量为数百万张。时隔几十年，听一听当年的流行歌，The Weavers朴实无华的曲风仍能让人陶醉不已by Bruce EderThe Weavers had the most extraordinary musical pedigree and pre-history of any performing group in the history of folk or popular music. More than 50 years after their heyday, however, their origins, the level of their success, the forces that cut the group's future off in its prime, and the allure that keeps their music selling are all difficult to explain -- as, indeed, none of this was all that easy to explain at the time. How could a song as pleasant and tuneful as "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" be subversive? The quartet went from being embraced by the public, and selling four-million-records, to being reviled and rejected over the political backgrounds of its members, and disbanding after only four years together. Yet, despite the controversy that surrounded them, and the fact that their work was interrupted at its peak, the Weavers managed to alter popular culture in about as profound a manner as any artist this side of Bob Dylan -- indeed, they set the stage for the 1950s folk revival, indirectly fostering the careers of the Kingston Trio, among others, and bridging the gap between folk and popular music, and folk and the topical song, they helped set the stage for Dylan's eventual emergence. And the songs that they wrote or popularized, including "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "Wimoweh," "Goodnight Irene," "Wreck of the John B," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," and "On Top of Old Smoky," continued to get recorded (and occasionally to chart) 50 years after the group's own time. The Weavers bear a striking resemblance to an earlier group called the Almanac Singers. Pete Seeger (born May 3, 1919) and Lee Hays (born 1914) had worked together for the first time in 1940 as part of the Almanac Singers, who had enjoyed brief but notable success on radio, and as a recording outfit doing topical songs in a folk idiom, until their leftist political views became an issue; the group members had been caught in the uncomfortable position, as dedicated Communists, of having pushed pacifism and American neutrality during 1940 and early 1941, and then reversing themselves after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In the intervening years, during and after World War II, Seeger and Hays had both been involved in various causes involving international peace, civil rights, and workers' rights, and late in 1948, Hays had suggested trying to form an ensemble similar to, but better organized than the Almanac Singers. The notion went through some evolution, including the idea -- later abandoned -- of a multiracial sextet, before it settled on Seeger, Hays, Fred Hellerman (born May 13, 1927), and Ronnie Gilbert (born September 7, 1926). The Brooklyn-born Hellerman and New York-born Gilbert had first met Seeger and Hays through People's Songs, a loosely knit assembly of songwriters and musicians formed in the basement of Seeger's house in Greenwich Village in 1946, which was intended to bolster the postwar union and social activism. People's Songs started with a great deal of promise but faltered two-and-a-half years later, along with the left in general, after the election of 1948, in which the leftist presidential ticket of Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor ran last in a four-way race. It was just after the election that Hays had suggested a new singing group, and he, Seeger, Hellerman, and Gilbert, along with a fifth member named Jackie Gibson, who dropped out soon after, had initially performed that Thanksgiving. The surviving group, known informally as "the No-Name Quartet," performed at various venues around New York and once on radio, courtesy of folk singer Oscar Brand, before settling on the name the Weavers, derived from a play of the same title by Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann.The Weavers' first year was spent avoiding starvation. Their intention had been to help support union-sponsored events and other progressive causes, but the members discovered that, in the wake of the collapse of the Wallace campaign, there were hardly any events at which they were welcome, or which could pay them anything. If 1948 had been a disastrous year for the left, 1949 was nothing short of catastrophic, as the forces of reaction, emboldened by Wallace's defeat and with an angry, obstructionist Republican minority in Congress to give them a national platform, went on the attack. In some instances, the attacks were literal -- during the late summer of 1949, rioting broke out at a concert in Peekskill, NY, in which hundreds were injured by members of veterans groups infuriated by the presence of singer and leftist political activist Paul Robeson, who was also the target of an aborted assassination attempt. Challenges became commonplace, to the loyalties of an
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