Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Gentleman, Rebel, Joker & Folksinger

“I shook the hand that shook Woody Guthrie’s hand!” exclaimed the 20-something guitarist for the Drunken Catfish Ramblers outside the Stoughton Opera House on a warm Saturday evening. The San Diego-based musician, whose string trio is busking their way across America - traveling by thumb & freight car, no less - had good reason to be excited. It was September 11, 2010, a sad anniversary for the USA, but a fine night for music in southern Wisconsin. He was referring to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who was in town to entertain us with songs, stories & jokes honed over 6 decades of performing & recording.

The son of a Jewish doctor, Jack was born Elliott Adnopoz in Brooklyn (NY) in 1931. He ran away from home at age 15 to join a rodeo, but soon reluctantly returned home. In 1950 he met the legendary Woody Guthrie, who sealed Elliott’s fate as a roaming trickster-style folksinger. He established his reputation as a performer & recording artist in London (England) in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s, Ramblin’ Jack had matured from a Guthrie protegé to a mentor for Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs & other more obscure folkies around the New York scene. He still gets around, having played a Blues Festival in Oslo (Norway) just before his gig in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a town south of Madison settled mainly by Norwegian immigrants.

Stoughton also happens to be the birthplace of the show’s opening act, Miss Meaghan Owens. A talented young Americana singer-songwriter, Owens’s sweet girlish voice, percussive fingerpicking & enthusiastic stage persona provided a good contrast to Jack’s crotchety seated performance. Dressed in a fancy white-and-pink cupcake dress above cowboy boots, the petite redheaded Miss Meaghan played 5 songs, mostly from her new CD Gun Shy of a Kiss (available at her website, www.missmeaghanowens.com). Owens seemed nervous & a bit awed by the grand venue, but the crowd encouraged her with generous applause. She remarked on the contrast between the hushed, gilded Opera House & the loud, dirty honky-tonks where she usually plies her trade. The highlight of her set was its opener, “Saturday Girl” (co-written by Nashville veteran Bobby Hicks), a catchy melody with plaintive lyrics about a neglected lover’s yearning. Owens will open for Junior Brown at Shank Hall in Milwaukee on September 25th.

Ramblin’ Jack took the stage almost shyly, despite his rather flamboyant outfit: pink cowboy shirt, brown kerchief, blue jeans, boots & a broad-brimmed hat. Warming up with “San Francisco Bay Blues,” he played his guitar - which featured a longhorned steer painted below the sound hole - in his customary flatpicking style. He paused between numbers to tell funny stories about some of his famous pals (Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Townes van Zandt, Willie Nelson, et al.) as well as various roadies & broncobusters he has befriended. He interjected a tall tale or two, including a claim that his husky/sheepdog mix Caesar could drive a car. He embellished the story by noting that the unlicensed canine “was the best road manager I ever had.”

At age 79 Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s tenor may be shaky & strained, but his repertoire is deep & wide. The songs he performed in Stoughton ranged from cowboy ballads (“Buffalo Skinners”) to talking blues (“Talkin’ Sailor Blues”) to Carter Family classics (“Engine 143”), to Woody Guthrie protests (“1913 Massacre”) to cosmopolitan country (“Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain”) to old-timey tunes (“Rakin’ & Ramblin’” - made famous by North Carolina banjoist/folklorist & lawyer Bascom Lamar Lunsford) & even pop hits of the 1960s (Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter”).

A solid interpreter of others’ compositions as well as a purveyor of ever-evolving folk songs, Ramblin’ Jack is refreshingly modest & self-deprecating. He can also play the cagey put-on artist à la Dylan. “I’m not a music lover,” he told us with a deadpan expression. “I just do this for cat food and diesel fuel.” I only wish his LA record label hadn’t neglected to supply him with CDs to sell at his concerts. After apologizing about that & complaining that the label had “dropped the ball,” Jack took it in stride. “It’s only money,” he said stoically, “it’’ll show up soon.”

Polite, snow-haired Jack doffed his cowboy hat several times during the concert & thanked us all for coming. A rebel as well as a gentleman, Mr. Elliott may have disappointed his parents (who’d urged him to be a doctor), but he rarely disappoints an audience. In fact, he’s a kind of alternative healer, bringing the medicine of laughter & the wonder of music to stressed souls well into the 21st century. Long may he continue to ramble!