Cisco Houston

Gilbert Vandine " Cisco " Houston ( born August 18, 1918 in Wilmington, Delaware, † April 29, 1961 in San Bernardino, California ) was an American folk musician.

Life

Gilbert Vandine Houston was the second of four children. His father, Adrian Moncure Houston, worked in sheet metal processing. When Houston was a child, the family moved to California, where he went to Eagle Rock, a suburb of Los Angeles, to school.

During his school years, Houston began playing guitar first folk songs he knew from his family. Although he suffered from nystagmus to the eyes, which restricted his vision, he was described as highly intelligent and well-read. Mostly he acquired his knowledge through memorization of what he heard in the classroom. He wanted to be an actor and got small roles in Hollywood, but was due to its very limited vision can not be used for many roles.

The 1929 ruling in the U.S. economic crisis ( Great Depression ), coupled with mass unemployment, overshadowed the start of years of travel by Cisco Houston, where he, in order to earn his livelihood, took a job at a time and also happen to be performed as a street musician. When in the thirties and forties in the U.S. labor movement began to take shape, to Houston participated significantly in the wake of his experiences at the building. As a musician, he supported her by singing " combative and militant folk songs with a protest against the social ills of the working men and women everywhere through the mountains and valleys of our country" ( Woody Guthrie ). In 1939, he learned about the fellow actors Will Geer the folk musician Woody Guthrie know, who at that time had a regular show at the radio station KFVD in Los Angeles and also occurred in the Communist party events supported the trade union organization, often together with Geer and its Herta. Soon also Houston played with them. In 1940 Houston to New York, worked as a bouncer a striptease premises in order to earn his livelihood, but played where it was found, especially with Guthrie and other folk musicians from the local scene. During the war he was in the merchant marine, and was several times with Guthrie on tour to Europe.

Career

From 1944 he accompanied Guthrie together with Sonny Terry and occasionally also other musicians whose recordings for which specialized in folk music in New York Klein label of Moses Asch in which they recorded over several days in informal sessions each often dozens of songs. These were published over several years. In 1948, Asch Folkways Records and founded Houston was the first musician to recording sessions for the new record label made ​​, in which a little later he released his first solo album "Lonesome Valley ". During the fifties Cisco Houston joined countless events in clubs and universities, played concerts with almost all sizes of the former folk scene and made in 1959 with Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Marilyn Child a tour of India. In 1960, Houston was already seriously ill with cancer. Nevertheless, he took part in this year's edition of the Newport Folk Festival in part, gave further concerts and writing new songs. Until February 1961, he could still occur; the last event was held in New York. On 29 April 1961 he died in San Bernardino (California ) to cancer.

The Importance of Cisco Houston has long been underestimated. It consisted on the one hand in its absolute credibility, as he had seen it all, which he wrote and sang, in his own body and also to the fact that he had influence on the quality of the songs Woody Guthrie by his extraordinary musicianship and his instrumental skills, although it as its partner always been somewhat in the background. Not least, he was indirectly one of the models of Bob Dylan, who early in his career very much oriented to Guthrie and him, inter alia, with his " Song To Woody" honored.