Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Brooklyn’s Ultimate Maverick

December 26, 2022 Martin McQuade

Pete Seeger, left, is joined on stage by David Rawlings, center, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, right, at George Wein's Newport Folk Festival 50 in Newport, R.I. on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2009. Seeger played the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and is credited as a co-founder along with George Wein. AP Photo/Joe Giblin

Share this:

Brooklyn native Ramblin’ Jack Elliott is not only an icon of American guitarists. During a career spanning 75 years this trailblazing troubadour, the “Johnny Appleseed” of song, has been sowing the seeds of our roots music. Elliott has performed with artists ranging from his mentor Woody Guthrie to his protégé Bob Dylan, who called him “the King of the folksingers.” His versatility also encompasses cowboy, hillbilly, bluegrass, blues and rock. Accolades include two Grammys and The Presidential National Medal of Arts. Johnny Cash observed, “Nobody has covered more ground. He’s got a song and a friend for every mile behind him.” Elliott, born Elliot Charles Adnopoz in 1931, recently shared memories of his formative years in Flatbush and his experiences beyond. Indeed, these reminiscences have brought him some closure about leaving Brooklyn, terrifying his folks by running away, and leading his life by following his heart.

“Brooklyn made me want to be a cowboy. I didn’t groove well there. I wanted to be out west in wide-open spaces, riding horses and working cattle. My mother bought me my twelve-dollar Collegiate guitar when I was fourteen, before I showed interest, although I listened to Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch. At fourteen I became friends with an old Danish sailmaker who ran away from home and sailed around Cape Horn in square-rigged vessels. He owned Erickson Sails and Marine Canvas Work on Flatbush Avenue where he captivated me with his sea tales. He took me sailing with his wife on their yacht. I’ll never forget his first lesson on being a sailor. ‘Walk, don’t run. You’ll fall overboard.’” With that counsel, Elliott pursued his wanderlust.

Elliott enrolled as a freshman at Erasmus Hall High School in 1945. “In April, 1947 I ran away from home with two future beatnik poets, Don Finkel and Carl Margulies. We’d drink beer in a MacDougal Street rathskeller. I suggested we hitchhike to Chicago to hear Bunk Johnson’s band. We got a ride to New Jersey where the driver let us out. Suddenly a truck stopped. I ran to it. I was in tune with trucks by then. The driver said he was going to Wilmington, North Carolina with room for one passenger. I said to Don and Carl, ‘I’ll ride there and wait for you.’ I never saw or heard from them again.”

This crossroads opened new horizons. “While passing through Washington, DC I saw a billboard for Jim Eskew’s Ranch Rodeo and Wild West Show. I got off the truck, went to the arena, and got a job taking care of a string of six horses. I was inspired by rodeo clown Brahma Rogers playing hillbilly songs on guitar and banjo. I’ve played some banjo but not very well.

In the summer of 1947, after three months with the rodeo, my parents found me and invited me home. I got my Collegiate from the closet and started practicing four hours daily. In 1948, when I entered Midwood High School, I’d bring it to school and played and sang cowboy songs for the students on the front stoop.” During that time, Elliott developed friendships with several intriguing Brooklynites. “I met Todd Fletcher, a young cowboy and rodeo bull rider from Bay Ridge. I admired him. Going to rodeos together took my mind out of Brooklyn. Another acquaintance was Schuyler F. Quackenbush. His sons Hugo and Ned rode little scooters with gasoline motors around Martense Court. I spent afternoons in their basement helping to take them apart.”

During the summers of 1947 and 1948, Elliott played in Washington Square Park with budding folk artists Tom Paley, Eric Darling, Harry Smith, Roger Sprung, and Fred Gerlach. Another turning point occurred in 1951 when Elliott met his kindred spirit, Woody Guthrie. “ first heard of Woody from Mr. Erickson. Paley gave me his number. I called and Woody said, ‘Come over. Bring your guitar. We’ll knock off some tunes. Don’t come today. I got a bellyache.’ Actually, he had a ruptured appendix. He went right into Brooklyn State Hospital. The first time I met him he was in bed. I visited Woody two days running. I was now in possession of a real guitar, my big old Gretsch. Woody said, ‘Don’t make any noise. That guy over there just got off the operating table.’ So, I couldn’t serenade him. He said, ‘If you look out the window you could see my kids Arlo, Joady and Nora Lee playing on the back porch across the street in the apartment house’. It was the Beach Haven Apartments in Coney Island. I went over and introduced myself to his wife Marjorie who showed me their three rooms. Then I went on the Belt Parkway and hitchhiked to Connecticut to meet a school chum headed for California. I threw the guitar in the back of his 1937 Plymouth Coupe and we took off.”

In California Elliott met an aspiring actor.” My fiancé June was James Dean’s ex-girlfriend. He was friendly. We went riding around. I improvised a song inspired by my concerns about Woody’s hospital stay.”

“After three months traveling around California I hitchhiked back to New York. I called Woody who said, ‘Got a pencil? 120 University Place. Eight O’ Clock. Meet me there. Bring your guitar.’ When I arrived at the party, Woody was tuning his guitar and warming up. He played harmonica and a small size Gibson. He was proud owning that. He teased me about the piece of junk my Gretsch was. Woody was hard on guitars. He’d been through several guitars that were full of holes, wrecked, cracked, and bent. I performed with him professionally only once, as a guest at a Newark concert. I sang my favorite Woody song for then and forever, “Hard Travelin.” I had been unknown. Now I was Woody’s sidekick. I lived with him from 1951-1953. A few times I brought him to Washington Square Park by the fountain where we sang to hundreds of people. Woody had a beard. He wasn’t looking good. He was showing signs of Huntington’s Disease that killed him.”

In 1953, Elliott’s wanderlust resurfaced. “In 1953 I met Jack Kerouac, a friend of my girlfriend. He’d visit her apartment and we’d take turns reading his On the Road manuscript. That stirred my desire to hit the road myself. I joined two folklorists, Frank Hamilton and Guy Carawan, on a tour through The Smoky Mountains performing for farmers and hillbillies.” Woody, however, remained his lodestar to the point that he once remarked, “Jack sounds more like me than I do.” Although Elliott developed his own rugged strumming and picking style and plaintive approach to song, he became a champion for his mentor, nineteen years his elder. In 1961, Elliott met a fellow disciple, ten years his junior.

“After returning from a European tour, I visited Woody at Greystone Park Hospital in New Jersey. He was devastatingly sick and could barely speak. There was this strange 19-year-old kid from Minnesota visiting Woody. He introduced himself as Bob Dylan. He said he had all my records and mentioned his favorites. He was enamored of Woody’s recordings before he ever heard of me. Afterwards, Bob spent around six months at the Earle Hotel in Washington Square where he’d ask me questions about Woody and his playing. I realized he was a tremendous fan. I profoundly enjoyed sharing my favorite subject with someone who was so interested.”

“The first time I heard Bob perform, people said, ‘He’s doing your stuff. He sounds just like you.’ I didn’t think so. I appeared with Bob at Gerde’s Folk City in the Village. They put up a piece of cardboard stating, ‘Now Appearing: Son of Jack Elliott.’ I was a father figure to him. We played guitar and harmonica like Woody clones. I got used to his peculiar way of singing. He had a wonderful way of bringing forth the tragic truth behind the poetry..”

When Dylan made his controversial shift to electric in 1965, Elliott reacted with shock and fascination “My reaction wasn’t as strong as Pete Seeger’s. I can’t put it into words. It was so different from his previous music. I never had an electric guitar and never learned the art of playing one.” Nowadays Elliott is breaking in a D’Angelico guitar. “It was generously gifted by Bobby Weir. If I bang on it real hard for about five years, it will develop a voice of its own.”

In 2022 Arlo Guthrie’s daughter Sarah Lee performed with Elliott at the farewell annual gathering of the esteemed Kate Wolf Festival. ” There’s a lot of Woody in her. Once I was admiring the pond on Arlo’s farm. Little Sarah growled, “You shouldn’t swim in that pond. There’s catfish in there!” I thought it was Woody talking to me.” In fact, Woody has never ceased talking through Elliott to generations of music lovers around the world. Elliott’s prolific output is not, however, his only legacy. The free spirit that motivated a teenager to leave a bygone Brooklyn to hitchhike to the rodeo, become a cowboy and pursue unbridled horizons continues to thrive, amaze and inspire. This is an essential gift from the ultimate Maverick.

*In February Elliott will appear at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada and Hopmunk Tavern in Novato, California. In March it’s Eugene and Portland, Oregon. In April and May, it’s Seattle, Washington, as well as five concerts in Texas and two in Oklahoma.