"Hootenanny" американдық музыкалық телешоуы

American musical variety television show

Hootenanny was an American musical variety television show broadcast on ABC from April 1963 to September 1964. The program was hosted by Jack Linkletter. It primarily featured pop oriented folk music acts, including The Journeymen, The Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, Ian & Sylvia, The Big 3, Hoyt Axton, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, The Tarriers, Bud & Travis, and the Smothers Brothers. Although both popular and influential, the program is primarily remembered today for the controversy created when the producers blacklisted certain folk music acts, which then led to a boycott by others. After two seasons, the shifting musical tastes of the era heavily influenced by the British Invasion starting in 1964 and a decline in the program's variety led to its effective replacement by Shindig!, a similar but more broadly based and pop music oriented variety program.

Hootenanny was created in 1962 by Dan Melnick, Vice President of ABC TV, and the Ashley Steiner Talent Agency. The pilot was conceived as a half hour special. The agency and network hired producer director Gil Cates to oversee the initial production. It was Cates’ idea to tape the program at a college campus, and to liberally include the student audience on camera, singing and clapping along with the music. Cates staged the show as theater in the round, with the students seated on the floor or in bleachers, surrounding the performers. With Cates at the helm, the pilot was video taped in the fall of 1962 at Syracuse University in New York. Fred Weintraub, owner of The Bitter End, a folk music club in New York's Greenwich Village, served as talent coordinator (and would continue to do so throughout the series’ run), ensuring that performers would not be limited to clients of the Ashley Steiner agency. New York radio personality Jean Shepherd was the original emcee, and four folk acts appeared in the pilot: The Limeliters, Mike Settle, Jo Mapes and Clara Ward’s Gospel Singers. Rather than showcase acts once per show, each performer/group would do a song, then yield the stage to another and return later in the program. Occasionally two otherwise unrelated acts would team up for a duet. The final result was so well received by network executives that the idea of airing the pilot as a stand alone special was jettisoned, and production on the series began. Producer Richard Lewine was put in charge and Garth Dietrick assumed the director’s chair. The first thing Lewine did was to replace Shepherd with Jack Linkletter. (When the original pilot aired in June 1963, Shepherd's scenes had been removed and Linkletter was spliced in.) As Shepherd had done, Linkletter would discreetly provide information about the performer(s) and/or the song(s) they would sing as each act took the stage. Linkletter described his role as "an interpreter. The people at home hear what I have to say, but not the ones at the performance. (The feeling is) that the Hootenanny would be going on whether we were there or not." On February 26, 1963, their first two Hootenanny programs were taped at George Washington University in the District of Columbia.

Between February 26 and April 30, 12 Hootenanny shows were taped at six colleges. The production team would arrive at a campus on Monday to begin rehearsal and camera blocking. Taping of both half hour programs would take place on Tuesday (later, when Hootenanny expanded to an hour, one program each would be taped on Tuesday and Wednesday). Students were permitted to attend the rehearsals, many of them volunteering to be runners for the various acts and production staff. The first Hootenanny to air had been taped at the University of Michigan in March, and starred The Limeliters, Bob Gibson, Bud & Travis and Bonnie Dobson. (Easily the best known folk group among those who appeared, The Limeliters would headline in seven of the first 13 episodes, literally appearing at least every other week.)