Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Ellen’s photography of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival out now!

Hi folks,

Ellen’s personal archives include hundreds of photographs of interest to fans of folk music and folklore. We are just starting to digitize, clean up, and organize this treasure trove of images, which includes material from Ellen’s folksong collecting trips, her childhood in 1940s and 1950s New York, and Ellen’s concerts and other public appearances. We will be posting many of these here on ellenstekert.com, and plan to offer some of the best of these for sale as prints and posters in the near future. (More details on that very soon!) 

We thought we’d start with images taken at the historic Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Most of these have never been publicly released before now. These photos include intimate and informal behind-the-scenes images of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow, Malvina Reynolds, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, and many more. Check it out on the Photography page!

More news from Down Under

Ellen and producer Ross Wylde got a very nice writeup recently from Nicola Heath of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public media service, talking about Ellen’s musical career from her early days up to the Go Round Songs album and our recent archival music project. Thank you to all the folks at ABC for your continuing interest in Ellen and her work!

The article hints at a few of our planned future releases, which includes a lot more treasures of Ellen’s music, but much more—we’re working on digitizing a wealth of material from her archives, including tapes, photos and film not only of Ellen but other noteworthy artists like Rev. Gary Davis and Malvina Reynolds. The article begins by mentioning that Ross and Ellen first met through Ellen’s photography, when Ross bought a print of Ellen’s candid photo of Bob Dylan behind the scenes at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which she captured in a casual backstage moment. We have some exciting news on that subject: In the very near future, we’re planning to launch a store where you can buy prints, posters, and digital images of Ellen’s photography from across the decades, which will include some great material from Newport and other concerts, as well as Ellen’s folksong collecting trips and much more. Keep an eye on this website for an upcoming announcement.

EDIT: In a previous version of this post, I wrote that Ellen had actually performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which is incorrect. Ellen reminded me of this: “That’s why I got so many good photos. I was accompanying Sarah Gunning to the festival and it was she who was performing there.  She had never been on a plane ride or to a big event like the Festival before, so she asked me to help her and go with her, which I did. It was far more interesting than actually performing!”

Sharing the bill

This handbill from Ellen’s archives advertises two fine folksingers in concert—but although they shared a page, they didn’t share a stage. In 1964, Ellen was a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she directed the college’s Folklore Archive. She also performed frequently in local concert halls, including weekend gigs at a venue called The Retort. Dylan’s 1964 tour brought him to Detroit’s Masonic Scottish Rite Cathedral on October 17.

While he was there, he stopped by to see Ellen play. And Ellen recalls, he even asked her out afterwards: “He came into my gig with all of his bodyguards,” she says. “He liked what I did. He said ‘I want you to come home with me.’ I said ‘No… I have to teach tomorrow.’”

A missed connection, alas.

(Here’s a non-informative page from Dylan’s official website which, at least, confirms the date of the concert.)