Remember when ...

1963: Carolyn Hester with Rory and Alex Mcewen

THE American folk singer Carolyn Hester was playing the Greenwich Village venue, Gerde’s Folk City, one night in 1961. She introduced a song, Lonesome Tears, by saying it had been taught to her by its author, Buddy Holly.

“Before you know it,” she recalls in an interview for the new edition of Uncut magazine, “somebody in this little hat pulled his chair up to almost beside me. He said, ‘Is that true about Buddy Holly? I just think the world of him. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Bob Dylan’.”

Six months later, Dylan hitchhiked to a club Boston where she was playing, and talked the manager into letting him open for her. Dylan went on to play harmonica on three of the songs on Hester’s next album.

“I’m so proud when I think that’s where Bob started,”

Hester tells Uncut, which is marking Dylan’s impending 80th birthday.

In August 1963, Hester found herself in Edinburgh for a latenight Fringe show, Straight from the Wood, at the Palladium Theatre.

The show featured the Mcewen brothers, Rory and Alex, with whom she had appeared the previous year. All three are pictured here with the other artists who were involved in Straight from the Wood.

The Glasgow Herald’s critic noted that the Mcewens “retain their ability to charm and amuse”, and and were supported by guests including the fiddler David Swarbrick [later with Fairport Convention], “whose artistry is staggering”, and the Manhattan Brothers, who performed African folk music and dancing.

Rory and Alex Mcewen were influential, well-known folk musicians, having played across America in 1956, recording Scottish Songs and Ballads for the Smithsonian’s prestigious Folkways label, and twice guesting on the Ed Sullivan Show.

From 1964 onwards, Rory devoted his attentions to his art, and he became one of the bestknown botanical artists of the century. He died in 1982. Alex, who, like Rory, was a highly esteemed guitarist, died in 2008.