Dave Fisher: an appreciation

Out of the couple hundred pages of showcase listings for the January, 2009 Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference at New York's Hilton Hotel, one name jumped out.

Did The Highwaymen, who were doing two 20-minute Saturday evening showcases in a small meeting room, have any relation to the original Highwaymen? Not the country superstar quartet from the mid-1980s made up of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, but the folk revival quintet from the late 1950s and early ‘60s, whose “Michael" (also known as "Michael Row the Boat Ashore”) was a No. 1 pop hit in 1961? Whose seminal repertoire also included such famous folk songs as “Cotton Fields,” “Marching to Pretoria,” "Sinner Man," "Big Rock Candy Mountain, " “Santiano” and the “Gypsy Rover”? Could they really all be alive?

It turned out that it was in fact, four-fifths of the hugely influential, original Highwaymen--guitarist Dave Fisher, mandolinist Steve Trott, guitarist Bob Burnett and banjo player Steve Butts, with upright bassist Johann Helton taking the spot of Chan Daniels, who died in 1975. And more incredibly, the band sounded better than memory, as Fisher himself attested in a phone conversation shortly after.

“We have a pretty good ear for material,” he added, responding to his interviewer's observation that so many baby boomer folk song favorites came from Highwaymen versions. He then recounted the Weavers-influenced group's heyday as house band at the famed Gaslight Café coffee house on MacDougal Street in the heart of Greenwich Village, where they led a “Who’s who” of the early 1960s New York folk music scene: Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Len Chandler, Mississippi John Hurt--and Odetta, from whom they learned “Cotton Fields” and “Santiano.”

"They were our friends, and whenever we weren’t working we’d hang out, sitting around singing songs,” he said.

The acknowledged musical leader of The Highwaymen, Fisher died Friday of a bone marrow disorder. He was 69.

"I knew him the last 10 years of his life and he was always ill, yet when he was on stage it was like he was 25 years-old," marvels Nick Noble, host of Thursday night's The Folk Revival program on Worcester, Mass. public radio station WICN, and author of the Highwaymen biography "Number #1." "He had the richest, sweetest, most melodic folk tenor, and made sure the integrity was there in the music."

Noble notes that while The Highwaymen were often "lumped in with the 'commercial' folk groups because of their incredible success with 'Michael' and 'Cotton Fields,' they were never a commercial folk group with pop hits, like Peter, Paul and Mary, who were created later to capitalize on the folk boom and had hits with Dylan and John Denver songs. Listen to their records and they were always interpreting music, singing in different languages, trying to be as authentic as possible. They weren't out to get pop success but to play beautiful music--and still had a No. 1 hit with a traditional folk song in the Elvis Presley era."

At the Hilton they performed "Number #1"--a wistful but humorous song Fisher wrote to catch everyone up with the group following their “Michael” heyday, when they appeared on The Tonight Show and twice on The Ed Sullivan Show. First verse: “We were No. 1 it seems like yesterday/Billboard said ‘These boys are on their way’/Our very first song we sang sold a million strong/Now we can’t figure out what the hell went wrong...It’s a long way down from No. 1.”

And Trott, who went on to become a federal appeals court judge, told of their suit against that “bunch of out-of-work, washed-up, over-the-hill Highwaymen wannabes [who] stole our name”--which was settled amicably after Waylon Jennings called and offered to stage a joint concert with both groups, where they’d all have fun and split the proceeds.

The original Highwaymen performed between 20 and 40 dates a year, Fisher said. He was asked whether they dreaded the 56 year-olds in their audiences, whose eyes welled up when they tried to croak along with the chorus of “Michael.”

“We have to be a little careful,” he said. “We’ve been together 50 years now. Steve Butts revels in telling that to the audience, but I’m saying, ‘They’re coming here to feel young again, not to feel old—and we’re all on or approaching 69 ourselves!”

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