About the Show
Foolkiller Folk
The Foolkiller Folk collective explores the storytelling, cultural, and protest power of folk music from as far back as the Child Ballads through as current as released today.
"When one becomes enlightened one kills the fool within" -Jack Conroy
Yes – we lost so many greats last year that it’s taken Mark & Val two Foolkiller Folk shows to honor them. This is the final program, covering August 2022 through the end of the year. You’ll be hearing songs and tunes from Paul Sartin, Mary McCaslin, Loretta Lynn, Noel Duggan, and Ian Tyson. But we’re going to start off with a song from Mick Maloney, a carryover from last week’s program that we wanted you to hear. Maloney passed away July 27, 2022.
And now about today’s artists:
Paul Sartin, who died aged 51 of a heart attack shortly before going on stage, was a classically trained musician who devoted his talents to English folk music. A multi-instrumentalist best known for his oboe, fiddle, vocals, and humorous song introductions, Paul Sartin starred in multi-award-winning folk-rock band Bellowhead from their very first gig to their final show at Oxford Town Hall. His superb musicianship was also heard in the folk trio Faustus and in the duo Belshazzar’s Feast. He passed away on September 14, 2022
Folksinger and songwriter Mary McCaslin passed away from a rare neurological disease on October 2, 2022, at her home in Hemet, California. During the 1970s Ms. McCaslin recorded a series of acclaimed and influential albums for Philo Records, now a division of Concord Music Group that established her as both a distinctive songwriter and a unique re-interpreter of the popular canon. McCaslin met singer-songwriter Jim Ringer in 1972 and began performing with him. They married in 1978, and as a duo released the album The Bramble & the Rose and performed together until the late 80s, passing through Kansas City under the auspices of The Foolkiller, later Crosscurrents of Culture, which had a home right across the street from this station and which founded this show. A recording of their concert at Philadelphia’s Cherry Tree Folk Club where Valerie used to hang out when she was very young is now in the Library of Congress.
On October 4, 2022, we lost American country music singer and songwriter, Loretta Lynn. In a career spanning six decades, Loretta Lynn received many awards and accolades for her groundbreaking role in country music. She was nominated for a Grammy Award 18 times and won three of them. As of 2022, Lynn was the most awarded female country recording artist and the only female ACM Artist of the Decade (the 1970s). Lynn scored 24 No. 1 hit singles and 11 number-one albums. The 1980 musical film Coal Miner’s Daughter was based on her life.
Noel Duggan, a founding member of the Irish band Clannad, died on October 15 2022. Clannad became famous far beyond Irish folk music circles after they wrote the theme for Harry’s Game, a 1982 Yorkshire Television miniseries set in Belfast during the Troubles. The song had an immediate impact, and when it was first played on BBC Radio 1 the station was inundated with calls. It won Clannad an Ivor Novello award for songwriting and composing as well as chart success and a television appearance on Top of the Page where they the first band to sing in the Irish language on the show.
Before Canadian musicians like Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, or Leonard Cohen, there was Ian Tyson, who we lost on December 29, 2022. Ian Tyson, began his music career as half of the folk-era duo Ian and Sylvia – mainstays of the then-emergent American folk scene in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s – went on to become a revered figure in his home country, celebrated both for his music and for his commitment to the culture of Canada’s ranch country after reinventing himself less as a folk act and more of a Western one.
