The New Christy Minstrels Biography

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The New Christy Minstrels
Folk Music | 3 CD Set
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More than a hundred years separated the two groups with the Christy Minstrels name, the 19th century Christy Minstrels and the 1960’s New Christy Minstrels, but both helped the evolution of what we call folk music in their respective eras. The original Christy Minstrels were formed by Edwin P. Christy about 1842, although he was not the first to use the "minstrel" name or perform minstrel shows, which featured whites in blackface on stages or blacks (in added blackface) on the streets. Christy was an actor who apparently capitalized on the success of earlier groups. The first acknowledged act is one forged in 1828 by Thomas "Daddy" Rice, who did street comedy and copied from an old black slave named Jim Crow, a name that certainly outlived all the minstrels, black and white, until long-overdue civil rights laws put it and what it signified to rest. Dan Emmett and three friends formed the Virginia Minstrels about 1842, utilizing violin, banjo, tambourine and castanets or bones. Emmett later, in 1859, wrote the song "Dixie," its original message not an anthem for the Confederate South but a wistful tune denoting the difference in weather from North to South. Christy followed the Virginia Minstrels and became a major act in the pre-Civil War era, his act becoming one of songwriter Stephen Foster’s outlets with songs like "Oh, Susanna" and "Camptown Races." However, Christy had a habit of calling himself composer of songs others wrote, including Foster’s, and one of Foster’s greatest hits, "Swanee River," originally had Christy’s name on it. The Christy Minstrels were the epitome of minstrel shows. He retired in 1854 but the act continued for years. The New Christy Minstrels (NCM) began in 1961, the brainchild of Randy Sparks, who put the original 10-member singing group together. If the folk music boom of the late ‘50s and ‘60s became more politicized, it was the New Christy Minstrels who kept a more cleancut, fun-loving face on the music. Folk music of that era is now looked upon by some as the birthing of the ‘60s youth movement but some groups continued to have fun with it and the NCM were quite successful into 1965, although it continued through the ‘60s. The group had several albums in the Top 100 from 1962-65 and had three hit singles in 1963 and 1964 in the Top 40, the best one, "Green Green," reaching No. 14. The type of music they sang might include "That Big Rock Candy Mountain" or "Nine Hundred Miles." A 1996 Greatest Hits collection included a dozen NCM songs, either originals or folksongs like "Wimoweh," "This Land Is Your Land," and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." Joining Sparks in the original lineup was Barry McGuire, who later wrote the hit "Eve of Destruction," and members during its time included Barry Kane, the Byrds’ Gene Clark and Kenny Rogers.

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