[Magdalen] RIP Fred Hellerman, 89.

[Marion Thompson]

I cast my mind back a long, long way, to age perhaps + or minus 9 years 
old (was born in 1938) when I was at boarding school in the Eastern 
Townships of Quebec.  My best friend, Helen Weissman, and I used to sing 
Goodnight Irene.  What I can't figure out is how or where I ever could 
have heard it enough to learn it, likewise the Anniversary Song.

As I remember Helen's story, she was Polish and Jewish and somehow ended 
up in Stockholm after her parents had been killed. She was in the care 
of her uncle, Irving Kalb, who was a toy manufacturer and lived at 45 
Falmouth St. in Brooklyn, New York. How on earth he came to send her to 
St. Helen's, a little Anglican boarding school in rural Quebec, I can't 
imagine.

Marion, a pilgrim


   On 9/2/2016 9:54 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon wrote:
> Member of The Weavers.  God rest the soul of yet another Great One.
>
> *****
>
> Fred Hellerman, member of Weavers folk group, dies at 89
> >From Associated Press
> September 02, 2016 7:54 PM EST
>
> WESTON, Conn. (AP) — Fred Hellerman, a founding member of the influential folk music quartet the Weavers, has died. He was 89.
>
> Hellerman died Thursday at his home in Weston, Connecticut, after a lengthy illness, his son, Caleb Hellerman, said Friday.
>
> The Weavers were formed in the late 1940s by Hellerman along with Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Ronnie Gilbert. They helped to popularize folk music in the United States with recordings including "Goodnight Irene" and "On Top of Old Smoky." The group disbanded after they were black-listed by anti-Communists in the early 1950s, but performed again into the 1960s and then at a reunion concert at Carnegie Hall in 1980.
>
> Hellerman also produced Arlo Guthire's 1967 record, "Alice's Restaurant," and worked with several artists over his career as a composer, arranger and songwriter.
>
> Hellerman was born in Brooklyn, New York, and his first displayed his love for music by collaborating on stage plays in the Yiddish theater, his son said. He learned to play guitar while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard and teamed up with the other musicians while living in New York City's Greenwich Village.
>
> He moved to Weston in 1969, installing a recording studio in the home that would often be visited by Seeger and other artists.
> .
>