Joan Baez Boycotts “Hootenanny” Over Blacklist
The entertainment industry newspaper Variety broke the story on this day that the popular folk singer Joan Baez, then at the peak of her popularity, boycotted the ABC TV musical-variety show Hootenanny, because the show was blacklisting singers due to their political views.
The famous folk singer Pete Seeger was invited to appear on Hootenanny later in the year but refused to sign a required loyalty oath (September 14, 1963). Joining Baez in the boycott were folk singers Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Tom Paxton, and Barbara Dane.
This episode of blacklisting in the early 1960s was a continuation of the blacklisting that had been imposed in Hollywood in 1947 and in radio and television in 1950 as a result of the infamous Red Channels report.
Watch Trini Lopez sing the song, If I Had a Hammer, on Hootenanny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3AjR-tXp8s
Learn more about Cold War blacklisting: David Everitt, A Shadow of Red: Communism and the Blacklist in Radio and Television (2007)
Watch Joan Baez sing We Shall Overcome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnFwR8G6u2g
Read: Ronald Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970 (2002)