Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Please Remember Me

As we get older more and more people are dying. The people we knew or know and loved are leaving us. It becomes more and more apparent that we ourselves may have to leave.

-Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Woody's songs still feel so fresh to me. When you hear a new voice try out one of his songs it sorta makes you skip a little.

Ramblin' Jack with Bob Dylan :: Greenwich Village, early '60s

Boy, I haven't heard a lot of people doing Woody's songs lately, but I need to get out there more. I was invited out to a tribute in New York to Odetta, who passed recently. Odetta's mom is the one who supposedly named me Ramblin' Jack, and I had some very good moments with Odetta in the past few years and I knew I might not see her again because she was very sick. But I can't travel right now. I'm about to go into the hospital. I'm not sick or anything, just having a new hip put in. I had another hip put in about seven years ago and it made me feel about 20 years younger.

You're getting to be one of the last of the old guard that was there in Greenwich Village at the dawn of what we now call modern folk music.

My girlfriend was just showing me a book I have around here called Washington Square Memories – The Great Urban Folk Boom, which was published in 1970, and I'm right there on the cover, sitting there playing the ol' Gretsch guitar. That was a long time ago, and I really enjoyed looking at the pictures of all these people I'd almost forgotten about. Half of 'em I don't know if they're still alive or not. I don't know whatever happened to Bonnie Dobson. Joan Baez is around and everyone knows that. And there's Loudon Wainwright III, who looks so young. He wrote "Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)," and I think of him often. I had a wonderful time with him one evening. He showed up at a gig I played on Eel Pie Island in the Thames. We went to his hotel with a big bottle of scotch and the evening progressed. I don't remember how I found the way back to my hotel. Must have had a good driver with me.

Do you like to personalize a song, particularly traditional material, when you take it on to give it something of your own stamp?

I guess I do, but I haven't worked at it the active way others do. It just sort of happens gradually.

Who were some of your earliest inspirations that made you want to pick up a guitar and sing?

Ramblin' Jack with Miss John Hurt in 1964 by Jim Marshall

The very first guitar person I ever noticed – I'd been listening to New Orleans jazz, which I liked quite a bit – was a black man by the name of Lonnie Johnson. One of the songs that Lonnie sang, "New Stranger Blues," I do on the new album, that goes, "I wander into town and I wonder why everybody wants to dog me down." I met Lonnie three times. He came and played at Gerde's Folk City in New York [where Dylan played his first professional gig], and then I saw him in Philadelphia one time. Someone told me to go down to this subterranean bar where there was a bartender by the name of Bill Cosby who told jokes. Sure enough, there was this bartender behind the bar telling jokes. And he invited me to take my guitar and sing a few songs, which I was glad to do. I went behind the bar and he held the microphone up and I played into the microphone. But I didn't have any picks with me. I heard this music coming through the walls from a neighboring bar next door, and they had a door that went through. I immediately recognized Lonnie Johnson's guitar. I stopped playing whatever song I was singing and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, that is Lonnie Johnson! I do declare, what do you know about that! I have to go see him." I brought my little concert to an immediate halt and Lonnie loaned me a guitar pick, and I was proud to keep it. Then, I went back in and played some more.

I love when musicians are stalled by another musician they REALLY love. It's like, "I'm doing my thing but please make sure you pay attention to this guy!"

The last time I saw Lonnie Johnson he had an old nightclub in Toronto and we were doing a TV show in the nightclub. And my wife at the time was pregnant, and she was in the back of the room watching the soundcheck. We were up there playing a few notes, and Lonnie Johnson noticed my wife in the back of the room as she reached her arms up to the ceiling to stretch. And he immediately got very excited and said, "Don't do that! Put your hands down!" It seems a lot of old Southern black folks had a belief that if a pregnant woman raised her arms up over her head that the baby would strangle because the umbilical cord would get wrapped up inside.

Do you collect tidbits like that about local culture and language and customs from earlier time periods?

Ramblin' Jack Elliott

I sometimes think my house is getting to be like the storeroom of a museum, and I'm going to have to sell all this stuff just to get rid of it. I can't bear to throw it away. It's all junk but probably of value to somebody. I don't think of myself as a collector but I try to remember things mentally. I got a million stories about various adventures I've had and meeting odd people.

You have this hobo mythology that runs through your career.

I need a bigger house! I need to get a barn somewhere. I thought about renting a hanger at a little airport here in Marin. But I don't really recommend collecting stuff. I've got 50-feet of rusty anchor chain in my truck that somebody gave me for my boat. The next day I met an old pirate friend of mine who's moving away and he's got a boat. And he said he had some brand new anchor chain, which was much stronger. We have gale force winds in the Bay that have reached up to a 130 mph. So, I immediately bought 63-feet of new chain from my pirate friend since the other was a smaller gauge and a bit rusty. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. You put a lot of strain on a chain and it'll break [laughs].

What was it like to work with Joe Henry?

I did one song with Joe a few years ago for the Bob Dylan movie I'm Not There. We recorded a song called "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues." I'd heard it a million times but never learned it, so when he said, "This is the song we'd like you to do," once again it was the case that he's such an erudite person with such respect and good feeling that I didn't want to offend him by disagreeing or suggesting anything else. I thought, "Let's go. Let's do it." I didn't get to know that song well until I was in the studio. Loudon was there and played guitar and banjo behind me on that recording, along with two or three other musicians as well. We just blended really fine, and it was just a good selection.

You sound pretty comfortable with the setting he's created on the new recordings. There's a very full sound to this album, and even though they're Depression era tunes it feels quite modern.

Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Yeah, I liked all those guys we played with, even if I didn't know but two of them, the piano player [Keith Ciancia] and the guitar player [Greg Leisz]. I think the drums especially made it strange and beautiful. The drummer's name is Jay Bellerose and he flew out from Nashville just for this session, and he tours with Alison Krauss.

Just based on the tales you've told me today, it's clear you have a good memory, Jack. How many songs do you think you know?

It's very, very difficult to memorize songs now. In fact, I have not memorized ANY of the songs on the new album yet. I recorded them eight months ago and I think they're going to want me to play some of 'em when we get on the road to help sell records. I'm losing four brain cells a day.

When I heard "Death Don't Have No Mercy" and a few songs on the last record [2006's I Stand Alone], I was struck by the way you sing about mortality now. There's a real depth to these performances, and I wondered how you come at them, especially as a 78-year-old, when those issues tend to loom large for one?

I've always been very scared of death. It never bothered me when I was doing all these death defying sports and things, like bronc riding and driving semi-trailers and flying airplanes. And I never was close to anyone when they died. When my mother passed away I was on tour with Bob Dylan. When my dad died I was touring up in New England. And then finally to be with somebody when they died, my last wife Jan, it was a remarkable, wonderful but, of course, terribly sad adventure in my life. They say death is part of life, and most people know that, but I didn't really quite now that. I don't like to drive on I-5 because I've seen a lot of recently dead bodies on I-5 that fell asleep at the wheel because it's a boring road. I'd rather drive on 101 and take a few hours more through beautiful country.

As we get older more and more people are dying. The people we knew or know and loved are leaving us. It becomes more and more apparent that we ourselves may have to leave. I've just avoided thinking about it for a long time. But as each successive mortality happens you can't avoid or sweep it under the carpet for long. You gotta think about it. I'm still too horrified by the thought of it to get into the subject much [from my own songwriting perspective]. I love life. I love life so much.