Club Passim Turns 50

The 60’s folk revival was centered around two locations, Greenwich Village in New York City and Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the heart of the Harvard Square scene was a small coffeehouse called Club 47, currently known as Club Passim.

On Friday, October 24 at 8 a.m., Noon, 8 p.m. and Midnight EDT (GMT -5) Folk Alley presents a “Club Passim Turns 50” – a radio special, produced by WGBH in Boston, celebrating this important folk music mecca. The special mixes interviews with performances by many of the singers and musicians who played an active role in the development of the Club 47 and the 60’s folk revival. Peter Rowan, Geoff Muldaur, Carolyn Hester, and Bob Jones are just a few of the many voices that tell the story of the Club 47’s humble beginnings, its legacy as a launching pad for artists like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, and Taj Mahal, and the birth of a new American bohemianism.

Recorded at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square on the 50th anniversary of the day the Club 47 opened in 1958, the program (in the best of folk traditions) is an oral history of a time that was indeed “a changin'”.