If you are looking for just one documentary film that describes the history of what we’ve come to call ‘The American Folk Music Movement’ look no further. This is the one and Frank Hamilton is smack in the middle of all of it. From the early songs of protest and resistance of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, through the evolution of the folk medium as it morphed from campfires gatherings in rail yards to coffee house stages, concert halls, stadiums, to television, Frank Hamilton was there.  He was on stage singing and playing. He was backstage coaching. He was three blocks away teaching a small class of housewives, doctors and plumbers to play “Cripple Creek” on the five-string banjo. He was in an apartment in Greenwich Village with Guy Carawan singing a song called “We Shall Overcome” which he had co-written, and a month later he was walking hand in hand with marchers in the south singing about freedom. This video is the story of the American folk music revival through the lens of one of its most central figures. Was he a star? Maybe. Maybe not. Frank maintains that this ‘folk’ music is and was always meant to be sung by the folks who lived it, played it in their kitchens, living rooms, on their porches, and in family gatherings. These are the stories of the people, singing their joys and grievances.

Frank: “the folk movement of the sixties turned people into stars and removed the folks from the music.” Frank Hamilton devotes his life to teaching people how to make music themselves.

A first-rate chronicle of the early rise of the music of the people, their protests, defiance, and hopes – then on to the stars who emerged to give voice to our passions about life, labor, our country, our prejudices, our diversions. Frank’s life touched the lives of almost every folk singer at some point or another. Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie, Odetta, The Limeliters, Peter Paul and Mary, Roger McGuinn and the Byrds. Frank replaced Pete Seeger in the Weavers when Pete retired from the group.  The video is a truly informative one-hour journey into the phenomenon of “music of the people” with Frank Hamilton at the center – guiding, explaining, demonstrating, welcoming.

(Frank was one of the founders of the world-famous “Old Town School of Folk Music” in Chicago and he currently runs his own music school in Atlanta, the Frank Hamilton School, where people of all ages come to learn to make music for themselves.)

The Frank Hamilton Story