Woody Guthrie’s protegé and last
traveling companion
(at Baltimore Avenue)
Philadelphia, PA 19143
Ramblin’ Jack Elliot is the real thing. At fourteen, he ran away from his Brooklyn home to join the rodeo and learned to play guitar from cowboys. A few years later, he met Woody Guthrie, moved in with the Guthrie family, and then traveled with Woody on his last journeys to California and Florida, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters.
Along the way, and on subsequent journeys, he learned the blues first-hand from Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, the Reverend Gary Davis, Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie Mcghee and Sonny Terry, Jesse Fuller and Champion Jack Dupree.
In 1955. Jack married and moved to the UK, where he introduced a generation of budding British rockers, from Mick Jagger to Eric Clapton, to American roots music. When he returned to America in 1961, he met another young folksinger, Bob Dylan, at the ailing Woody Guthrie’s bedside.
Guthrie, who had then been unable to play for several years, had once joked, “Jack sounds more like me than I do,” and Elliott was the one to pass on his legacy to Dylan, Woody’s son Arlo, and, directly or indirectly, every American roots-inspired performer since.
Elliott has recorded forty albums; wrote one of the first trucking songs, Cup of Coffee, recorded by Johnny Cash; championed the works of new singer-songwriters, from Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson to Tim Hardin; became a founding member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue; and continued the life of the traveling troubadour influencing Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Tom Russell The Grateful Dead and countless others.
In 1995, Ramblin’ Jack received his first of four Grammy nominations and the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album, for South Coast (Red House Records). In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Jack the National Medal of the Arts, proclaiming, “In giving new life to our most valuable musical traditions, Ramblin’ Jack has himself become an American treasure.”
Saul Broudy has been performing for over 40 years all over North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the Mid-East. He accompanies his singing on guitar, but is perhaps best-known as a harmonica player, having worked and recorded with such artists as Steve Goodman, Loudon Wainwright, Jim Ringer, Utah Phillips, Mick Moloney, and numerous others. He has recorded on over 25 albums, including the solo album, “Travels with Broudy,” and appears on “In Country: Folk Songs of Americans in the Vietnam War” with six fellow Vietnam veterans. Saul’s music covers a wide range of grassroots American genres, from traditional ballads to bluegrass, country, blues, Cajun, and rockabilly. He holds a PhD in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania.
