Following up on Ellen’s long-lost Woody Guthrie cover “High Floods & Low Waters“, released earlier this month, we are pleased to share the entire recording of that 1959 session, Ballads Are News: Live On Camera Three. Originally taped for the CBS news program Camera Three, the hourlong show also features several of Ellen’s good friends in the folk scene, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, and The New Lost City Ramblers—all of whom are folk legends in their own right.
The album is available now via Bandcamp. Give it a listen below.
About the album
Here is Ellen’s commentary:
Early in the summer of 1959, a number of New York City singers involved in the growing urban “folksong revival” were asked to do a program for CBS network TV. I was one of them.
The program was part of an hour-long anthology CBS carried on Sunday mornings called Camera Three. It was a network program that ran from 1954-1980—the predecessor to the current Sunday Night news magazine. It highlighted matters of interest to “intellectuals,” and it often strayed from recognized genres to more arcane ones. As one reviewer put it:
"Camera Three did not discriminate... One week might be an examination of torch songs, and the next would be Shakespeare, and the week after that would be Japanese films. Examples were given, and experts were brought in. There were no ads. It was done as a service for people who felt ignored by the television industry. Remember, this was at a time when TV was acknowledged to be a cultural wasteland..."
The program we were being asked to do was a focus on folksongs as purveyors of news. It was scheduled to air on September 13, 1959. John Cohen, my friend from high school in Great Neck and my initial contact with the Greenwich Village folk music scene, had called and asked me to take part in the program. He had already rounded up Jean Ritchie, Dave Sears, and Oscar Brand, as well as his own new old-timey group, The New Lost City Ramblers. We were all from the New York City area, so there would be no problem with logistics.
John and Oscar had already mapped out the program with the director and the studio personnel. It was to be narrated by the well-known news broadcaster, Harry Reasoner, a favorite broadcaster of mine. In addition to the song we all sang together (“Wasn’t That a Mighty Time”), I was assigned a song with Jean Ritchie about the Santa Barbara earthquake as well as the solo verses of a song by Woody Guthrie, with the group singing the refrain. The song was called “High Floods & Low Waters”, and it was about the then-contemporary droughts that caused serious water shortages in New York City. The problem was that I had never heard the song.
So, a few weeks before the program, I met with John Cohen at Oscar Brand’s home on Long Island. John sang the song into Oscar’s tape machine and gave me the tape to listen to and learn the song. John’s style of singing was similar to Woody’s, and I was at first somewhat concerned since my singing presentation was closer to an understated urban pop singer than to either of them. I knew I could not become an old-timey singer in a few weeks. But I practiced, and when I now listen to my first attempts to sing the song, which I still have on the original tape that John made for me at Oscar’s, I don’t think I did a bad job learning it.
I recall the run-through that we did in the CBS studio. It was fun, and both the singers and the studio folks were happy with the production. At the end of the rehearsal, one of the producers came up to me, complimented my singing, and suggested I go to some auditions for a new Broadway musical that was being produced by a friend of his. It was going to star Theo Bikel, a singer I had recently met and liked, but I pointed out to the CBS producer that I was about to return to my graduate school studies in Bloomington, Indiana, and I couldn’t manage both my classes and a Broadway musical at the same time. The musical he was telling me about turned out to be The Sound of Music. I still wonder what would have happened had I gone to those auditions.
But to top that off, on the way down from the studio, in the elevator, I met two fellows who I later realized were part of the folksong group The Tarriers. They said that since the Weavers had just broken up, there was room for other groups. They were looking for a female singer and asked if I would be interested… and yet again, I had to beg off since I felt compelled to continue the course I was on. As I look back on these two opportunities I had to break into ‘show business’, I think I did not mind missing the opportunity since I always felt I had a better mind than voice. The idea of trying to be part of a New York-based singing group and also attend classes in Bloomington was more than anyone could handle. I would have had to give up my graduate work, and above all else, I loved learning, even though I loved singing almost as much.
The actual airing of the show was live, and it was a great success. My older brother, Jim, came along armed with a camera and an audiotape that I believe was recorded by CBS for us. He snapped some interesting photos of the original group that John Cohen had formed as The New Lost City Ramblers. Tom Paley was on banjo, and Mike Seeger was on fiddle. The grainy Tri-X black and white film captured all the members of our small production. When Jim changed to color film, the camera evidently jammed, hence the double, triple, and who knows how many–exposure picture of us singing that is the ‘cover’ of this streaming 1959 digitization. Art is created in many mysterious ways!
Credits
Released May 16, 2025
Artists: Ellen Stekert, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, The New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, John Cohen)
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn
