Gil Turner

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Gil Turner
Birth nameGilbert Strunk
12-string guitar[2]
Years active1950s–1974
LabelsFolkways, Atlantic

Gil Turner (born Gilbert Strunk; May 6, 1933 – September 23, 1974) was an American

Baptist preacher.[3] Turner was a prominent figure in the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s, where he was master of ceremonies at New York City's leading folk music venue, Gerde's Folk City, as well as co-editor of the protest song magazine Broadside.[4][5] He also wrote for Sing Out!, the quarterly folk music journal.[6]

Turner was a founding member of The New World Singers in 1962 with Happy Traum and Bob Cohen.[7][8] His most notable musical credit, however, was his association with Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind". He was both the first person to perform the song – at Gerde's on April 16, 1962, the night Dylan completed it – and with The New World Singers, the first to record it.[2][9][10]

Turner wrote more than 100 songs. His best known include "

David Harris.[11][12]

Gil married Lori Singer in 1962 and they have a daughter, Melora Lou NuCeder (née Turner), born in 1965. Gil and Lori divorced in 1967.

Background

Turner was born in

church choir. Besides their musical talent, Turner inherited his parents' love of religion, and as a teen, he became a lay preacher.[2]

Turner attended the

autistic children. In papers he wrote, Turner explored how music might be used to treat children with autism as well as patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease he suffered from that in time would partially cripple him.[2]

After meeting folksinger Pete Seeger, Turner gave up the church to pursue, as his friend writer Robert Shelton described it, folk music's "larger pastorate". In the fall of 1961, Turner became emcee at Gerde's Folk City at Fourth and Mercer Streets near Greenwich Village's northeast corner.[5][13] His position at Gerde's, which featured both established artists and emerging talent, put Turner at the center of the Village's burgeoning folk music scene.[14]

Broadside and Bob Dylan

When Seeger,

protest songs, Turner became the key to the enterprise.[15] Through his role at Gerde's, Turner rounded up contributors of protest songs for Broadside during its first few years, many of them young songwriters like Phil Ochs, Bonnie Dobson, Len Chandler and Mark Spoelstra.[2][5]

One of the up-and-comers Turner brought around was Bob Dylan. Dylan, who had arrived in the Village in January 1961, signed with Columbia Records nine months later, around the time Turner was hired at Gerde's.[16] The two became close friends and frequently hung out at taverns after Gerde's closed for the night.[1] During one of their after-midnight sessions, Turner laid out the concept behind Broadside for Dylan, recruiting him as one of the magazine's first contributors.[5] Not long afterwards, Seeger took Dylan to meet Cunningham and Friesen at a get-together at their apartment. When the debut issue of Broadside came out the next month, February 1962, among the five songs featured were Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" and a protest song of Turner's, "Carlino".[17]

"Blowin' in the Wind"

A few months later, on April 16, 1962, Dylan showed up at Gerde's at a hootenanny Turner was hosting. He had just written a new song called "Blowin' in the Wind" and wanted Turner to hear it. After listening to Dylan play the song in the club's basement, Turner had Dylan show him the chords. When he went up upstairs for his next set, Turner sang the song from Dylan's rough manuscript. It was the first performance of what went on to become one of the most famous folk-protest songs of the 1960s.[9]

"Blowin' in the Wind" appeared on the cover of Broadside two issues later, the song's first publication. In July, Dylan recorded the song for his second album,

Peter, Paul & Mary.[18]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Gray 2006, pp. 672
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Lankford
  3. ^ a b Gray 2006, pp. 672–673
  4. ^ Woliver 1986, pp. 83
  5. ^ a b c d Shelton 1986, pp. 138
  6. ^ Heylin 2003, pp. 92
  7. ^ Billboard 1963
  8. ^ Gray 2006, pp. 668–670, 672–673
  9. ^ a b Woliver 1986, pp. 83–84
  10. ^ Gray 2006, pp. 63, 672
  11. ^ "Carry It On". IMDb. 1970. Retrieved February 5, 2011.
  12. ^ Unterberger, Richie. "Joan Baez: Carry It On". AllMusic. Retrieved February 5, 2011.
  13. ^ Woliver 1986, pp. 2–4
  14. ^ Shelton 1986, pp. 95
  15. ^ Shelton 1986, pp. 139
  16. ^ Sounes 2001, pp. 73, 101–102
  17. ^ a b Sounes 2001, pp. 111
  18. ^ Sounes 2001, pp. 135

References

External links

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