What a Hoot

I was just watching a replay of a recent, truly wonderful documentary about Pete Seeger.  At one point, they dealt with the folk music revival in the '60s and dealt with the TV series, Hootenanny, talking about how critical Seeger was to it getting on the air, yet he couldn't appear on it because the networks had banned him.

But it was something else that made me leap up.  Because in the sequence, they happened to show the sheet music for the theme song of Hootenanny, a song I remember enjoying.  It said the lyrics were by Alfred Uhry, and the music was by Robert Waldman.

So what, I hear most of you say.

Alfred Uhry later became known as an award-winning playwright and screenwriter.  Most notably, he won the Pulitzer Prize for writing the play (and screenplay, getting the Oscar) for...Driving Miss Daisy!!  He also won the Tony Award for Best Play with The Last Night of Ballyhoo.  And co-wrote the film, Mystic Pizza.

(I was always surprised to see that he wrong the book and lyrics for the musical The Robber Bridegroom, which has a very good, evocative score.  Little did I know he began his distinguished career as a lyricist.)

And here is the theme song for Hootenanny.  The video, sung by the Brothers Four, who also released it on the B-side of one of their singles, has very low audio quality, but it picks up later on.