Who Am I? November 2020

I was born in Coney Island and named after a character in a school book. My dad was a “sooner” who left for California during the Great Depression. Along the way he learned traditional and blues songs. Many of his songs were written about the “dust bowl” that he knew so well. During WWII he served in the Merchant Marine. My parents met at a communal apartment in Greenwich Village that was packed with folkies.

My maternal grandmother, Aliza, was a Russian immigrant. She was known  to be a Yiddish poet and a lifelong Zionist. Aliza was a successful fundraiser for the Jewish National Fund, a president of Pioneer Women and a Hadassah member. My mom, Marjorie Greenblatt (טאַגרינבל חנה) was born in Atlantic City, N.J. She was a professional dancer with Martha Graham and later worked as her assistant. Later on, she established her own dance school. After my dad’s death she became a medical activist and advocate.

I grew up in the Howard Beach section of Queens and attended the Woodward School in Brooklyn. Our family later moved to Beach Haven, New Jersey. I took my bar-mitzvah lessons from a rabbi who was subsequently gunned down at a hotel located at 525 Lexington Avenue in midtown Manhattan. I also attended the Stockbridge School a boarding school in MA.

I am a rough tenor and storyteller. I followed my dad’s lead singing protest songs usually about social injustice. I play acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, harmonica and keyboards. My finger picking progression and melody were inspired by Mississippi John Hurt, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Doc Watson and Pete Seeger. I’m known to fuse rock, country and folk music. You probably know me from a lengthy single I recorded that later became the title of a movie. The song tells the story of my arrest for littering which might have disqualified me from the draft

 I have been a lifelong political activist who worked my way up from coffee houses (remember them?) to Carnegie Hall, Woodstock and the Newport Folk Festival. I have appeared in 4 films and have had numerous TV appearances to include everything from Johnny Carson to the Muppets. My dad was incapacitated for the last 15 years of his life with a hereditary neuromuscular disorder that eventually killed him. I established an interfaith meeting place which provides free lunches in my current community and I do a series of summer concerts there to raise money to find a cure for that malady that fell my dad.

You can still find me on the concert circuit. In May 2018 I appeared at the Mayo PAC in Morristown and at the NJPAC in 2019. I think you know who I am by now. That’s me posing with the Muppets in the photo below.

(1a)Who Am I? (1b)My dad was named after a U.S. president. What was my dad’s name? (2)Who was the rabbi that prepared me for my bar-mitzvah? (3a)What lengthy single record and film am I primarily known for today? (3b)I was arrested for littering on the property of Nelson Foote Sr. on Prospect Street. What did I discard there? (4a)What disease did my dad suffer from? (4b)What was the name and address of the dance school my mom established? (4c)My prize possession is my dad’s fiddle. He carved sayings onto his fiddle with a wood burner. What is written on his fiddle? (5)What is the address of that communal apartment in the Village (“Almanac House”) where my folks met?