I WONDER AS I WANDER [M, 8-18-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Folk—I WONDER AS I WANDER [M, 8-18-25]

 

I heard John Jacob Niles in person when he was 72. I was his reverse, 27.

I listen to him now not in person but on a CD, his high almost ghostly voice wandering along my ceiling, wandering as I wonder.

I wonder, as I wander, out under the sky, how Jesus, the savior, came for to die, for poor, onery sinners, like you and like I, I wonder as I wander…

His voice now is a gift from my daughter, Kathleen, who was only a year old when I sat in the auditorium at IN State U in Terre Haute, listening to John Jacob Niles in person.

The folk music revival was well started then, but only a few came to hear the man who had been singing folk music forever, who was probably the greatest folk singer of them all. Because John Jacob Niles was old.

The folk music revival was about young people, groups like The Chad Mitchell Trio and The Kingston Trio, and individuals like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Judy Collins. The Weavers were not young, but they were newly discovered after their McCarthy era blacklisting, and they were in their prime, not old, like John Jacob Niles.

Some years ago, I attended a folk concert at which I was introduced as a folk poet/lyricist. I mentioned John Jacob Niles to one of the young singers. He had never heard of him. That is like an American who has never heard of George Washington.

John Jacob Niles didn’t know he was old. He kept composing and singing for another 15 years. That night, though, in the INSU auditorium, the only light a bare spot on his white head, as he sat by himself on a folding chair in the middle of the stage, I was embarrassed. Not for him, but for all the empty seats that surrounded me, for all the people on that campus who thought he was irrelevant because he was old.

The Chad Mitchell Trio came to town a few months later. Their concert was too big for the INSU auditorium. Helen and I listened to them in the basketball arena, part of a sell-out crowd.

Strangely, and sadly, one of the widest gaps between generations is musical.

I put John Jacob Niles’ voice onto the CD player again now, and I know that music is neither young nor old. I worry about young people who don’t have the opportunity to wonder as they wander. John Jacob Niles will always wonder as he wanders, and so will I.

John Robert McFarland