Tag: music

Anthology’s Victoria Cafe Honored by Saint Paul

For the first time ever, a site gets official historic status due to a connection to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music


The Victoria Theater in winter.  Its 1927 house band recorded the only unambiguously Northern recording of the Anthology of American Folk Music.

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It’s official.  The Victoria Theater is now a Heritage Preservation Site of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

As a primary cause, the city’s preservation commission cites the building’s role in Harry Smith’s influential Anthology of American Folk Music. The Victoria’s 1927 house band recorded “Moonshiner’s Dance Part One,” now familiar from the 1952 Anthology.

The Victoria appears to be the first historic site— anywhere, at any level of government —protected by means of an Anthology connection.

Five years ago, I faced a different and rather depressing situation, being the only person alive who’d connected the dots between this building, “Moonshiner’s Dance,” and Harry Smith’s Anthology.

Nobody interested in the Anthology knew where the Victoria Cafe had been.  And Saint Paulites didn’t know about the recording — including the historians who’d been commissioned over the years to survey the Victoria building.  Worst of all, the very day I understood this, the building seemed to be under imminent threat from multiple directions.

Well … now, things have changed.

The point of my work has never been to save any old buildings.  My project has always been to deeply understand the cultural context of “Moonshiner’s Dance,” and to develop ideas about what this fresh history really means to us, now.

And yet, when the Victoria Cafe itself — the recording’s immediate context — was about to become a pile of bricks, I knew I had to set aside the microfilm and speak up.  I figured I could sleep at night if Saint Paul let the building be torn down — but only if I could have my say first.

In the past 18 months, I’ve attended dozens of hearings, written a slew of nominations and articles, been interviewed by journalists dozens of times, networked feverishly.  I’ve also thought a hell of a lot about Wordsworth’s “Happy Warrior,” and decided I am not he.

Now, after a unanimous city council vote and the mayor’s signature, I feel I’ve come out of a dark tunnel, blinking at the sunlight.  I intend to re-focus on my history research and writing, and on blogging.

Still, there’s more work to do on the Victoria’s future.  It’s a vacant building with an owner who doesn’t respect its history — a point he’s emphasized many times.  Until the building finds a respectful use, it will remain threatened.

I also can’t help wondering … would the Victoria’s working-class neighborhood still have this cultural resource if I hadn’t begun poking around at the Historical Society five years ago?

What other buildings, maybe in comparable neighborhoods down South, would benefit from somebody — particularly a fan of the Anthology — just showing up, doing some research, and doing a little writing?

It’s odd to consider how important, as tangible assets, “Moonshiner’s Dance” and the work of Harry Smith have become to a hard-working neighborhood in the capital city of Minnesota.

Here’s a little further reading:

History of the Victoria Theater — a short sketch at the Frogtown Neighborhood Association website.

Save the Victoria Theater — the Facebook group with nearly 700 members.

A Geography of the Anthology — a map of the influential Anthology, a reminder of the geographic element in the idea of American “roots music”.

North Country Blues — thinking about the American musical canon, and what it means that the Upper Midwest is too often neglected.

Moonshiner’s Parking Lot? — when the wrecking ball was coming for the Victoria, I shared a little of my thinking, at the time, on why I thought the building mattered.

Louis Armstrong at the Coliseum, 1939 — Frank Cloutier, the Victoria’s bandleader, moved to the Coliseum at Lexington & University, where he became Musical Director.

Harry Smith Archives — the Victoria’s preservation is announced at the Archives.

Email Me — if you have questions, or answers, about the Victoria or Moonshiner’s Dance, or anything else.

See also “Anthology of American Folk Music” links at the upper left of this blog.

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Talkin’ Michael Gray

The Monochord rides a tour bus to Hibbing with one of the world’s top Dylan scholars


Gray contemplates Hibbing’s open-pit iron-ore mine

A noted Dylan expert and critic offers his home in France (and himself) for conversation.

Early one morning in March 2007, I was riding in one of those tourist buses that deliver senior citizens to casinos — tinted windows, plush seats, TV screens in the ceiling.  That foggy Minnestoa morning, this bus was filled to capacity with about sixty Bob Dylan scholars.

The trip, from Minneapolis to Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, was the opening event of the largest scholarly Dylan conference ever held.

In my aisle seat, I talked to the stranger in the window seat next to me.  He turned out to be an evangelical Christian Tennessean researching Dylan’s spirituality.  A smart guy — curious, thoughtful, and original.

Still, it was hard to concentrate on the conversation.  If the first guy I met was THIS guy, who else might be slouching toward Hibbing on this infernal bus?

Immediately across the aisle, an Englishman and an American were engaged in a lively discussion (about Bob you-know-who).  Eavesdropping, I gathered that the Englishman — proper accent, eccentric dress, soul patch — was Michael Gray himself.

In 1972, Michael Gray authored the world’s first critical study of Dylan’s work and, in 2007, had recently completed The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, offering as much obsessive Dylan knowledge as any book ever published.  A kind of paper cinder block, The BD Encyclopedia comes at you like an authoritative reference but winds up snaring you in an idiosyncratic maze — the strategy reminds me of the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Recognizing a once-in-lifetime opportunity, I turned to Michael Gray and asked the obvious question:  Who threw the glass in the street?

It was a rhetorical question and a bit of a joke — after all, the answer represents the quintessentially unknowable cipher that is the object of all Dylanology — so I was gobsmacked when Gray actually knew the answer, and offered a couple minutes of historiography contextualizing both the answer and the question itself.

We talked, excitedly and with a lot of laughter, most of the way to Hibbing. During the long days of the Dylan conference, I’m not sure what I would’ve done without Michael Gray — I kept seeking him out whenever I felt like a wallflower and needed a friendly conversation.

Not the kind of Dylan author who doesn’t suffer fools (I should know), he was generous with his time and knowledge, listened closely, laughed easily, gave useful advice when I asked for it, remembered my name.  I find myself repeating his anecdotes in my own conversations even today.

Days later, at the end of the conference, Gray gave the closing keynote address.

Built around a series of film clips of Dylan throughout his career, Gray described the “moment” that surrounded them — the atmosphere, the shocks and conflicts, the relationships and revelations going on in Dylan’s life and work, and in the life of the United States and the globe.  He was contextualizing the clips, breathing new life into them, and the effect was moving and revealing.

That reconstruction of gone significance is at the heart of my own efforts at cultural history. The question for me is no longer “what does it mean?” but rather “what DID it mean?”  The change in tense seems to transform the entire landscape of possibility and impossibility.

I haven’t had the opportunity to see him speak since, but Gray does speaking engagements — it would be interesting to see what he’s doing now.

Given all of this, I’ve been very amused to see that Gray has been offering himself up as a conversationalist to paying Dylan fans. You get to talk (and talk) about Bob Dylan with one of the world’s leading Dylanologists, and enjoy his wife’s gourmet cooking, in his lovely home in southwest France.

It’s one of those vacation ideas you read about occasionally in the “news of the weird” — it’s utterly cracked, but you would surely do it if you had the chance.

Mostly, I keep chuckling about the mindset that makes it possible. Are authors who aren’t assholes so rare that you can charge admission to talk to them?

During the conference, I sought out Michael Gray because his very presence relaxed me, amused me, made me feel smart and attractive, and — most of all — because he had very interesting things to say. Who recognizes having this effect on people and thinks, “Hey, I can charge for this”?

I mean, I’ve been thinking about charging people to NOT talk to me!

For more information:

bobdylanwinterlude.blogspot.com