Always a Song

November 1, 2020
Musician and teacher Harper looks back calmly and objectively on a full life in and out of the folk music scene. Born in 1947, Harper started out as a "red diaper baby" in Boston, one of four children of an "atheist father and secular Jewish mother." During the McCarthy era, her father lost his teaching job because of his earlier association with the Communist Party, and the family moved to Claremont, California. There, in 1958, her parents set up the Folk Music Center, where they sold and repaired musical instruments and sponsored concerts. The author worked at the center on and off throughout her life; now, she is the owner of what has become a nonprofit educational corporation. As she taught guitar classes and repaired instruments, Harper met a number of well-known musicians, many of whom, like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, she admired for their skill while recognizing their "entitled" attitudes and other bad behavior. Though a product of the counterculture, she's cleareyed about the damage caused by drugs and alcohol as well as some of its less predictable side effects--e.g., when she had to spend hours cleaning "sweat and patchouli" off guitars tried out and abandoned by shirtless musicians. While the center is a running theme, the author gives equal time to her life outside its reach. Her personal life included a marriage to a Black college administrator that produced three children and sadly ended when his alcoholism gained the upper hand and he began beating her. After a career in college teaching, Harper returned to Claremont, committed to "reinventing myself once again." Besides writing the book, she has been performing with her son, popular singer/songwriter Ben Harper (who provides the foreword), and has released albums of her own. Without either sugarcoating or overdramatizing her experiences, the author crafts a compelling story of an ordinary life taking surprising turns. A memoir that will interest even those who have never heard of either Harper.

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January 1, 2021
Ellen Harper may be known to music fans as the mother of the musician Ben Harper, but there is so much more to her story, as she reveals here in her gently humble memoir. Born in New England but raised in California, where the family moved after her paternal grandmother was accused of being a communist during the height of McCarthyism, she lived a life steeped in folk music. Her mother sang her to sleep with the folk songs of Eastern Europe, the British Isles, and the American South. In 1958, her parents founded the Folk Music Center in Claremont, California, (it remains open as a museum and store) and later the Golden Ring Coffee House. Some of the biggest names in folk walked through the center's doors or stayed in the family home, and part of the fun of the book is reading Harper's unvarnished observations of her musical heroes, including Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell. A very personal take on the folk music revival with an especially lovely foreword by the author's son.

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January 22, 2021

Musician Harper presents a heartfelt autobiography, told in present tense, focusing on her family's development of the Folk Music Center in Claremont, CA, which recently celebrated its 60th anniversary. In loving detail, she traces her parents' enthusiasm for traditional music of all cultures, their skill at playing and repairing instruments, and how they welcomed artists into the home they shared with their four little girls. From her childhood in Massachusetts witnessing the McCarthy blacklisting of Jewish family members to her experiences with racism as part of an interracial couple in southern California, Harper sharply delineates how the romantic ideals of young people caught up in the folk revival and excitement of rock and roll crashed against sobering realities. Appearances from greats such as Pete Seeger, whom Harper met at age five; her brief fling with Jimi Hendrix's manager; and a grandson's nonchalance on meeting Paul McCartney were amusing diversions on a journey as she discovered her own talents, became an advocate for the marginalized, and eventually received a PhD in education, all while performing. VERDICT Folk music aficionados will feel nostalgic at Harper's reminiscences, and those with an interest in the sociology of the times will appreciate her clear-eyed observations.--Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

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