A Mighty Wind

Finally in the news tonight, the music world

mourns the death of folk music icon Irving Steinbloom

an instrumental figure in guiding folk music

from its humble beginnings in the 1950s

to its zenith in popularity in the 1960s.

Steinbloom managed and directed the careers

of such million-selling folk groups as

The Main Street Singers,

The Folksmen,

and the sweethearts of the folk music scene, Mitch and Mickey.

Their music was the voice of a generation.

It carried a message of peace and freedom

and young people got behind the message in a big way.

Steinbloom is survived by his wife and three children.

It's up to you. What do you say, Mitch?

Are you gonna be with us?

Yeah?

Yes, we do. We have all three Folksmen.

Of course, Alan, of course. He was the first to--

We can't imagine doing this without you.

It's as simple as that.

We cannot conceive of doing this--

One second. Your messages.

It really seemed that the only fitting tribute

to this fantastic human being--

And I have to tell you, my dad was really an amazing character.

And really the only fitting tribute we could come up with

was a memorial to my dad

that would be a concert that would be performed

by all of the fabulous groups

and people that he used to represent.

It's gonna be very fast. It's gonna be in two weeks.

And it had to be in Town Hall

because where else could we have such an event?

It had to be Town Hall.

And they had a hole in the schedule.

But it's a very sudden hole

and we've got two weeks to put together this

really very complicated event.

But, uh, I'm...

I'm pretty organized myself.

Really, I've always been a very organized person.

When I was 12, I formed the J.C.P.L.,

the Jewish Children's Polo League.

We rode Shetland ponies instead of horses.

It was funny, my mom used to say:

"Well, if he has to fall,

he shouldn't fall from so very high."

She was very protective. You could say overly protective.

I just like to think she cared about me. Which she did, a lot.

And I was a member of the chess team.

And whenever we had chess tournaments,

I had to wear a protective helmet.

I had to wear a football helmet.

Now, who knows what she was thinking?

Maybe she thought we might have fallen

and impaled our heads on a pointy bishop or something,

I don't know.

Hello, Mr. Stranger Man

- Who is that? - Who are any of us?

No!

I'll take some of that.

Mr. Palter has an altar, I see.

Yeah. The Palter Porch.

I knew you looked familiar.

Just a little.

I think I used to work with your kids.

A couple of young guys.

Mark and I met at the University of Vermont

in about '61?

Late '61.

We were both interested in folk music,

and there was a big folk music scene

as there were in many colleges.

And we formed a group called The Twobadours.

- Two. T-W-O. - Badours.

Because there were two of us.

That was the reasoning behind the name.

Mark was a bass, really, a bass singer.

I sang way down here.

And I was a tenor singer up there.

And so we had no lead.

No glue. No middle, no...

Vocalist. So when we went down to New York

to see what was happening in the biz.

We were playing at a place.

The Folk Place.

At The Folk Place,

which was a wonderful club at the time and we ran into--

It was the flash point. It really was.

Everyone-- It was like a big magnet, everyone went there.

He was singing, he was backing people up--

I thought I was a guitar player at the time.

If you have enough vibrato on those nice blue Fender guitars,

you can sound like a surf king, you know, but...

I was drawn to the folk music as well

and I wound up down at The Folk Place

and met these two guys.

I could play the guitar a little bit.

I could sing right in the middle there,

you know, mostly just sang for myself.

Not a bad-looking gent, to boot.

No, that's true. That didn't hurt.

We ended up getting together and it just kind of...

It clicked.

It clicked.

And Mr. Irving Steinbloom came down

and he signed us to Folk Town which was the label to be on.

Terrific label.

Later on we were kind of moved down the food chain a bit

to the Folk Tone label which was a subsidiary.

It was a decent label,

they just didn't have the distribution.

Well, they just didn't have any distribution.

No distribution at all.

And the covers were printed in two colors instead of four

which I noticed was a problem.

And they had no hole in the center of the record--

No, you'd have to provide it yourself.

So the people complained

that you'd get this vinyl,

of course in those days, and it's up to you to center it.

It would teeter crazily on the little spindle.

And that was, of course,

we had no control over that aspect of it.

- They were still good records. - Good product.

If you punched a hole in them, you'd have a good time.

I guess it was in about 1958 in Greenwich Village.

My partner Chuck Wiseman and myself had gotten together

with Fred Knox and Bill Weyburn.

We were lucky to be joined by one of the greatest talents

of our generation--

any generation, as a matter of fact,

Ramblin' Sandy Pitnik.

And we became the Village Folk Ensemble.

And we were a great group. Great.

We had a good sound but I always thought

we should have something bigger, a fuller sound.

And one night in 1960, I'll never forget this

we were at a hootenanny and we were jamming

with the Klapper Family.

And all of a sudden, I heard it.

The sound that I'd been thinking about.

The harmonics were amazing.

I thought, "Well, there's five of us, there's four of them.

It's a neuf-tet."

And it was there, just in a moment, it was all there.

The neuf-tet sound.

This thing clicked with The Klappers too,

so we joined forces and became The Main Street Singers.

Well, 10 years and 30 albums later,

we disbanded, but we'd had a good run.

My partner Chuck Wiseman and myself, we called it quits too.

I went my way and Chuck went his.

In 1971, after the breakup of The Main Street Singers

Chuck Wiseman moved up to San Francisco

where he started a retail business

with his brothers Howard and Dell.

Um, the Three Wiseman's Sex Emporium.

It was very successful for a year

until they were sued over something having to do

with a box of benwa balls.

No, I need you, Mitch.

I need Mitch and Mickey. Mitch and Mickey.

That's the thing. You go together.

I love Mickey, but without you it's not the same.

You got to think--

I'm gonna tell you something--

I'm gonna tell you something, Mitch,

and I've never told anybody this before.

You were Dad's favorite. Okay.

Just deal with it, okay? You were Dad's favorite.

I've never said this to a single soul.

Two weeks before he died he took me aside and he said to me:

"Of all those ferkakte people, I love Mitch, he's my favorite.

He's like a relative, he's like my nephew to me."

I'm only saying this because

I think you'd want to know this, Mitch,

before you make your mind up one way or the other.

Would you just think about it, okay?

Sounds cliché, but it's kind of a blur, you know?

They loved us.

I think, I guess we were, in a way, maybe easy to love

because we represented, you know, true love

and romance and sweetness, and...

And to be quite honest,

I bought the image as much as anyone else.

Maybe that's why I sold it so well.

Because it was sweet and happy

and everybody, everybody loved to hang around Mitch.

They tried to get close to him, but I was close to him.

He was very smart, very intense...

and distant, you know?

You'd get close to him and he'd just inch back

that much further, you know.

And you'd move in, you know, to get inside Mitch

and he'd just back off a little more.