The Buskers' Song: Down On The Corner
A new book by Cary Baker gives the artful history of street singing its due
Whatever musical tastes we may consider unique, whatever personal introductions we may have had to live music and record collecting, chances are that before those tastes took hold, we were exposed to music in public, via someone(s) standing in the street performing either for change or for the fun of it. Call it busking, call it street singing… the former publicist-turned-author Cary Baker calls it both in the subtitle of his debut book, Down On The Corner: Adventures in Busking & Street Singing, which collates just about a century’s worth of specific stories that range across the USA and Europe alike. The book was published late in 2024 by Jawbone Press, an indie British company whose catalogue includes memoirs by Steve Wynn, Kristin Hersh and Mike Scott, along with books about Elektra Records, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Drum & Bass music and so much more, and whose cover designs are always a cut above the rest, Down On The Corner being no exception.
Cary’s subject matter is one after my own heart, given that I wrote a book subtitled Music from the Streets Of New York, in which I wrote extensively about: the Rhythm & Blues groups on the streets of Harlem, the Bronx, down to Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge; the folk scene in Washington Square Park; the early glam rockers who assembled around the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park; and the young DJs and MCs who took electricity from street lamps to host the first hip-hop parties in the South Bronx. Every musical city has similar stories and Cary tries to track many of them.
Among the easier PR guys to work with from a music journalistic perspective, Baker’s passion for music has clearly not dissipated with retirement; he is also a prominent contributor to the Facebook group on Music Journalism History. I conducted a Q&A with Cary about his fascinating book via e-mail.
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-This project turns out to be personal for you. Can you offer the abridged version of how you were introduced to street music/busking and how it shaped your life?
I grew up in the upper-middle-class northern suburbs of Chicago. It was a somewhat sheltered life. But when I first heard Muddy Waters on progressive, free-form FM radio, my universe expanded, and I became fascinated with the music of my core city. Around the time I was 16, in 1970, my father took me to Maxwell Street Market – a carnivalesque flea market located south and west of the Loop – to show me where his Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents had taken him to shop when he was a young lad. That was back in the early ‘40s, but by the late ‘40s, it had morphed to a mainly Black clientele. And with that came live street musicians: Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Robert Nighthawk and so on.
So we parked the car and I heard the sound of steel on steel—a man playing a steel resonator guitar with a slide. Turned out to be Arvella Gray, a blind street singer from Texas whose eyes had been shot out in a gun battle over a woman. We listened for an hour before he took a break, during which I asked him for his phone number. I interviewed him extensively, and – thanks to a little experience as features editor of my high school newspaper – wrote a feature, and sent it unsolicited to the fledgling Chicago Reader. They actually published it. And two careers changed: It was the start of my own life of crime as a freelance music journalist. And I’d like to think he helped Arvella attract some better gigs.
I also connected him with Birch Records, a Barndance-era country label whose founder had seen him at a University of Chicago Folk Festival and readily agreed to record him. The resultant album was released on Birch in 1972 and reissued by me in 2005.
What was your reason for writing a book about “adventures in busking and street music,” given that it doesn’t scream “bestseller”?
I had freshly closed my music PR business in 2022 and moved from my 40-year home city of Los Angeles to the California desert near Palm Springs. As my therapist agrees, that’s a lot of change for one season! What kept me sane was my intention to write a book. At first, my idea was to write a book about the rich musical history of the California desert. But I found that a definitive and very academic book about Joshua Tree music (Gram Parsons, et al) existed, so I changed course and called managers of legacy acts, including busker Ted Hawkins’ estate manager, who was a college friend. She suggested Hawkins as a biography subject. When I in turn suggested Hawkins to my erstwhile publisher, he responded:
“Who’s that?”
A busker…a street singer, I replied.
There was a pause.
“Well,” he said, “how about a book about buskers and street singers, plural?”
Bingo!
Busking had a trifecta significance in my life. I’d seen Blind Arvella Gray on Chicago’s Maxwell Street. I later interviewed the neophyte Violent Femmes for Trouser Press on the streets of Milwaukee, where they’d been discovered by the Pretenders while busking, and they performed a little streetside set for me. And finally, moving to L.A. and seeing Ted Hawkins and Harry Perry on Venice Boardwalk sealed the deal. There hadn’t been a definitive book on busking published since one titled The Buskers in 1981 (that went waaay back). I ended up going with Jawbone Press, who saw the potential. I hope I’ve presented a balance of stars (Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello for instance) alongside obscurities (George “Bongo Joe” Coleman) so that cursory music fans alongside musicologists will come along for the ride.
-What is the essence of busking/street music, the thing that makes it worthy of our considered attention and study, as opposed to passing entertainment?
For centuries, street singing was considered the lowest form of musical career. Street musicians – buskers — were perceived as glorified beggars. But cities that once outlawed busking have embraced it — a way to renew waning foot traffic in the age of Amazon, and reclaim urban vibrance. While early street singers were at the mercy of spare change, busking today has grown more sophisticated: Street and subway performers promote schedules and locations on social media, accepting Venmo, Zelle and PayPal. Playing for passers-by has also resulted in many artists’ self-discovery and self-rediscovery. Some buskers evolved into artists who play nightclubs, theaters and festivals – or even get signed to a record deal right off the street. That’s what happened to Ted Hawkins when Michael Penn spotted him on Venice Boardwalk and urged his pal, Geffen A&R exec Tony Berg, to see Hawkins, resulting in Ted jumping from busking to being on the same label as Guns ‘n’ Roses, Cher and Nirvana. Others came to busking in mid-life: Fantastic Negrito redefined his sound from R&B funk to folk/blues during mid-life, and it became his success formula.
-What is the difference between busking and street music?
Although there is no formal distinction between street singers and buskers, I can say that The Moonglows or The Dells were singers of the street (prior to their record deals), not buskers. The busker appellation carries more of a troubadour connotation – Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Old Crow Medicine Show, Tim Easton, Sunny War…
-One example I might come up of the latter being different than the former is the vocal R&B groups of America’s big cities in the post-war years. I wrote about this extensively in my book All Hopped Up and Ready To Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 and especially loved Ben E. King’s explanation that the competition among local groups was considerable but generally amicable, and that the incentive was not cash but that “the winners got the girls.” Care to comment?
R&B historian Robert Pruter in his book Doowop: The Chicago Scene, quoted a member of the Five Buddies vocal group as saying: “Any boy who came into our territory couldn’t pass through unless they sang. From one territory to the next, there would be sing-outs. Instead of fighting, you had to sing to get through.” When I later spoke with Pruter, he told me: “To a certain extent, [the groups] romanticized it a little in their memories about their street battles.” I thusly rejoined that quote in the book: “Embellishment makes for a better story. But it usually comes from a kernel of truth.”
-New York City has an equally strong tradition based around the folk scene in Washington Square Park that also dates back to the immediate post-war years; can you comment on how certain shared public spaces can lead to influential, commercially successful musical movements?
Washington Square of course was site of the so-called Beatnik Riot in April 1961. I spoke with David Bennett Cohen, a survivor of the Washington Square/Greenwich Village folk scene who explained that the riot was “very spontaneous. There was no planning. We just showed up. They said we couldn’t. It was just, like everything else, an improvisation.” In 1970, the street performance ban was lifted under then-Mayor John V. Lindsey’s administration, but subway performance remained banned. In the book, I touch on two generations of Washington Square public performance: The early ‘60s folkies, and later the saga of David Peel, the singer whose first album was controversially titled Have a Marijuana. Peel was doing his thing in the park when Danny Fields, best known for his work with the MC5, Stooges and Ramones, happened to spot him in the park and suggested to Elektra Records’ Jac Holzman that he record him—outdoors. It was one of two mentions in my book about Holzman’s fast agreement to record the music of the streets. In 1966, as teens were swaying to “96 Tears” and “California Dreamin’” Elektra A&R man Peter K. Siegel happened to notice a blind white street singer a bit farther north in Manhattan. His name was Oliver Smith. Holzman quickly approved the signing, and Siegel recorded him same-day. The album received a Grammy nomination in which it lost to another blind street singer Nashville’s Cortelia Clark, who had the benefit of the RCA Nashville Grammy voting bloc.
-Who were some of the people you knew you wanted to write about that had never crossed over to the mainstream? And separately, who are some of the people we would know about who got their start on the busking or street music scene?
Although I interviewed and otherwise featured numerous artists who busked before they became stars (Elvis Costello and Grammy-, Oscar- and Tony-winning Once star Glen Hansard for instance), there are many who remained primarily outdoor performers. Harry Perry, who wears a Sikh outfit and turban, comes to mind. I first saw him (along with Ted Hawkins) when I moved to California and took my first Venice Boardwalk stroll in 1984, and I’m fairly sure you can still see him there today—although he also, wisely, plays amidst the carnival atmosphere of a Grateful Dead tour tailgate party or such where he performs for greater remuneration. I also enjoyed talking with New Orleans couple David & Roselyn, who raised a family while busking daily. They never broke through. But their legacy is felt, not only because they played great N’awlins-inflected folk-blues, but because they helped make busking legal and even considered a municipal asset in New Orleans. When you travel to New Orleans, it wouldn’t be the same without those buskers on Royal Street and in Jackson Square.
-After setting up the “origins,” you choose to break your book into regions – three of them in the States, and then Europe as a whole. Do you clearly define the musical differences between these different regions, and surely there were also differences between different areas of each region?
I wouldn’t say there was an American busking sound nor a European busking sound, per se—at least that I could discern. One could argue for a New Orleans sound in the mid-20th Century. But even New Orleans is a present-day polyglot with Dixieland bands, blues singers, Caribbean musicians and folkies converging from all parts of the world. And a few of the artists I feature in the Europe section were Americans who traveled there, and eventually returned to the U.S, namely Madeleine Peyroux, Mojo Nixon, and Tim Easton. So while I’m sure the accordion count is higher in Paris than in Boston, I did just the other day see an older man playing “Lady of Spain” on an accordion in my current home of Palm Springs, Calif. And of course Chicago was a blues hub, and doo-wop too. But Chicago, too, is very diverse and became home to the late busking advocate Destiny Quibble and the late, very troubled artist Wesley Willis. I didn’t get Willis into the book (perhaps Volume 2), but I do recommend viewing Carl W. Hart’s documentary titled Wesley Willis: Artist of the Street.
-Who did you most enjoy talking to for the book, and was there anyone alive you really wish you could have talked with that just would not co-operate or you could not find?
I interviewed nearly 100 artists, producers, label executives, descendants and eyewitnesses to busking. I especially enjoyed talking with Mojo Nixon, whose busking origins (in London tube stations, not San Diego not Virginia) I hadn’t been aware of. He was particularly animated. Weirdly, a few months later, I was at a restaurant where a guy at the next table started singing multiple Mojo Nixon songs. I turned to him and mentioned I knew Mojo, whereupon he informed me of the news Mojo had died on a music cruise. I’m glad I got him when I did.
I also enjoyed talking with Mary Lou Lord and Madeleine Peyroux—both of whom came of age playing on the streets, Mary Lou in Boston and at SXSW, and Madeleine in Paris where her mother had taken her as an adolescent. I also had a particularly good chat with Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show, who first discovered he could entertain passers-by as a child by tap-dancing—and I’ll allow tapdancing to be included in my busking definition in his case. Of course I wish I could have spoken with Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rev. Gary Davis, Bongo Joe, Wildman Fischer, and Ted Hawkins (whom along with Blind Arvella Gray inspired the book).
I should mention the detailed and erudite recollections of Adam Gussow, half of the Harlem duo Satan & Adam. Adam was a young white harmonics player who chanced by Sterling “Satan” Magee, an older, Black former R&B singer who’d recorded for Ray Charles’ Tangerine label. The two became unlikely musical partners and friends, until Magee’s decline into dementia. Gussow is now an academe at Ole Miss in Oxford, Miss. as well as an author (with a busking novel), and was very supportive of the book. I was delighted when the publisher (Jawbone Press) suggested that they grace the book’s cover—Black and white, young and old—with an amazing photo by Danny Clinch that pretty much distills the zeitgeist of the book.
And I haven’t even mentioned Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s tale about busking in the early ‘60s in the London Tube in front of a group of schoolchildren, one of whose name was Mick Jagger.
And yeah, there were those who either declined through their publicists or management, or directly. I’ll name names. Tracy Chapman, Jewel, and Charley Crockett, to name a few. Finally there were those whom I fully intended to interview until the book seemed otherwise complete. I’ve become aware of many buskers since I finished the book. Bobby Rush told me a great story about him and B.B. King busking on Maxwell Street, unfortunately too late for the book. Toronto’s Jeremie Albino, who has an album on Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound, was one whom I encountered and heard at AmericanaFest.
And I’ve gotten to know a Boston-based subway blues and Appalachian fiddler, singer, songwriter, novelist, screenwriter, essayist, watercolor painter and apparel artist named Ilana Katz Katz (sic). She’s turned street art and music into a very organized career, and her passion for busking is palpable.
-Finally, can you offer a Top 5 or Top 10 of your fave buskers, whether or not you ever saw them play (with a brief “where from/performed”)?
Favorites I’ve seen:
Blind Arvella Gray: Chicago
Blind Blake (NOT the pre-World War II blues legend but a Bahamian artist): Nassau, Bahamas
The Violent Femmes: Milwaukee (and saw them busk in Chicago)
Ted Hawkins: Venice Beach
Harry Perry: Venice Beach
Mary Lou Lord: Austin SXSW
Wish I’d seen:
George “Bongo Joe” Coleman: San Antonio
Rev. Pearly Brown: Macon, Ga
Cortelia Clark: Nashville
David Peel: Washington Square
Wildman Fischer: Hollywood
Down On The Corner: Adventures in Busking & Street Music by Cary Baker is published by Jawbone Press and available from all good bookshops and online. PLEASE - and this goes for all readily available books - purchase from an independent or reputable book store, or online via a publisher or Hive.co.uk or Bookshop.org or similar. Amazon has decimated author royalties and indie bookstores alike, to say nothing of its employment or environmental practices.
Adding a final personal perspective, my younger son picked up the acoustic guitar at a very young age, and quickly took to busking in the Catskills. He knew nothing of the rich history of busking, only the joy that came with performing music in public, on his own schedule. (It helped that he earned money, of course.) When we traveled in 2016, he took that Martin Junior on his back and busked on the streets in several continents. In 2013, I assembled this video of him busking “Blue Suede Shoes” across England. To this day, Toll Gavel in Beverley, my birthplace, is almost always alive to the sound of some form of street music, from acoustic-electric traditionalists to brass bands and jazz players.
This book sounds like a great read, I will explore that further.
But on the topic of street music, whilst living in Ipswich, England. I always used to enjoy hearing Ed Sheeran busking around the town!
Always impressed with Cary Baker's enthusiasm about music and proud to be included in this book. I still think like a busker, no matter where I go, and to this day I tip the first good busker I see in every town. I'm over on the substack making nearly weekly entries as well. Writing poems, essays, sometimes busking in my home studio!