40 Fun Facts About Newport Folk Festival

Which Muppet surprised the 2019 Newport Folk Festival by duetting with My Morning Jacket's Jim James?

Kermit the Frog sat on a stool at the front of the stage and sang the first verse of Rainbow Connection alone before calling Jim James out to share the rest.

What disguise did Bob Dylan wear at the 2002 Newport Folk Festival, his first in 37 years?

A wig and fake beard, topped with a white cowboy hat, hid Dylan as he walked on. It read as a wry nod to the crowd of reporters who had come to document his return.

Which news announcement ended the 1969 Newport Folk Festival early, cutting short James Taylor's debut set?

The Moon landing was announced after James Taylor had played for only 15 minutes, and the festival's producer closed the night there instead of letting him finish.

In 2022 the Newport Folk Festival added a small stage powered partly by festivalgoers doing what?

Riding stationary bikes helps run the Bike Stage, with solar panels supplying the rest. The festival has also laid on a bike valet to coax people into cycling to the gates.

Which folk singer said he wanted to chop the microphone cable during Bob Dylan's amplified 1965 Newport set?

Pete Seeger later insisted the distorted sound was his complaint, not the amplifiers: he wanted the crowd to hear Dylan's words. The tale that he swung a real axe is a myth.

Which 18-year-old singer made a surprise debut at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959 as Bob Gibson's guest?

Joan Baez sang two duets with Gibson that night, and the unbilled spot made her name. Vanguard Records signed her the following year, though Columbia had tried to sign her first.

When Bob Dylan returned for an acoustic encore at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, what did he ask the crowd for?

A harmonica in the key of E was what Dylan found he was missing. Within moments a clatter of them hit the stage, thrown up by fans.

Which country star made an unannounced appearance in the all-female headline set at the 2019 Newport Folk Festival?

Dolly Parton was no last-minute guest. The country supergroup at the heart of the set said the plan had always been to debut its music at Newport alongside her.

Which ice cream brand sponsored the Newport Folk Festival from 1988 through 1999?

Ben & Jerry's teamed up with the festival's producers in 1988. The partnership helped the newly revived event thrive and sharpened its progressive, activist identity.

Which actor plays Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, the 2024 film that ends at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

Timothée Chalamet spent a pandemic delay learning guitar and visiting Dylan's old New York homes. The role won him the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor.

The Newport Folk Festival takes place each summer on Narragansett Bay in which New England state?

Rhode Island's seaside city of Newport has staged the event since 1959, which makes it one of the first modern music festivals in America.

The Newport Folk Festival began in 1959 as a counterpart to an older Newport festival devoted to which genre?

Jazz came to Newport first, in 1954. A folk afternoon was planned inside that festival's 1959 edition, but demand was so strong that folk got a weekend of its own.

Which singer made a surprise return at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival, her first full-length show since 2000?

Joni Mitchell, then 78, sang from a throne-like chair in a set billed only as Brandi Carlile and Friends. A recording of the night later won the Grammy for Best Folk Album.

Which Bob Dylan single, released five days earlier, got its live debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

Like a Rolling Stone was played by a band that had rehearsed for a single night in a borrowed mansion, and the organist from the record switched to bass for the occasion.

Which 18-minute Arlo Guthrie talking blues made him the hero of the 1967 Newport Folk Festival?

Alice's Restaurant went down so well in a small workshop on topical songs that Guthrie was called on to perform it again for the entire festival audience.

Which civil rights anthem did Bob Dylan and the Freedom Singers sing at Newport in 1963?

We Shall Overcome, reworked from an old Baptist hymn, closed the night. The performers stood in a single line facing the audience with their arms crossed and hands joined.

In 1969, Johnny Cash persuaded Newport Folk Festival organizers to let which unknown songwriter join him onstage?

Kris Kristofferson used the borrowed spot to sing Me and Bobby McGee, and the appearance launched his career as a performer.

Which harbourside military site has been home to the Newport Folk Festival since its 1985 revival?

Fort Adams was named for John Adams, the president in office when the Army post opened in 1799. It had fallen into neglect and vandalism before becoming a state park.

Bob Dylan made his 1963 Newport debut at the Newport Casino, home to which sport's international hall of fame?

Tennis has deep roots at the Casino: the first US lawn tennis championships were held there in 1881, long before folk singers took over its Horseshoe Court.

Which guitar model did Bob Dylan play at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, later auctioned for $965,000?

A Fender Stratocaster said to be the one Dylan left behind on a private plane in 1965 resurfaced decades later with the pilot's daughter, and Christie's sold it in 2013.

Which director's 2005 Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home shows footage of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

Martin Scorsese ends the film with another famous clash from the tours that followed Newport: a heckler in Manchester branding Dylan a traitor between songs.

The Newport Folk Festival has built a reputation for doing what before it announces any of its lineup?

Selling out of tickets comes first because the bill is rolled out name by name over the year, with no single lineup poster and a few unannounced stars held back.

Which Boston nightclub owner and pianist founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and revived it in 1985?

George Wein ran Storyville, a Boston club whose packed Sunday folk afternoons convinced him the music could carry a festival of its own.

Which chart-topping folk group, famous for Tom Dooley, played the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959?

The Kingston Trio had a larger following than most jazz acts of the day, and some in the jazz world accused the festival's promoter of crass commercialism for booking them at Newport.

In 1963, Newport Folk Festival crowds walked to Touro Park for speeches rallying support for which upcoming event?

The March on Washington was a month away when roughly 600 festivalgoers joined civil rights activists on a walk past the mansions of Newport's Bellevue Avenue.

Festival, Murray Lerner's 1967 documentary about the Newport Folk Festival, earned a nomination for which prize?

An Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature rewarded footage that Lerner shot across four summers at Newport, including Dylan's amplified 1965 set.

Which song opened Bob Dylan's electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, drawing both boos and cheers?

Maggie's Farm came out far faster and more aggressive than the album version, and the festival's production manager called its first note the loudest thing anybody had ever heard.

The owner of which NFL team bought Bob Dylan's 1965 Newport guitar at auction in 2013?

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay amassed a celebrated guitar collection. In 2015 Dylan's went back to Newport and was played in public for the first time in 50 years.

Which alternative rock band reversed Bob Dylan's famous move by playing an acoustic set at Newport in 2005?

Pixies unplugged on purpose, a concept that nodded to the night Dylan plugged in. The show was filmed and released as a concert feature.

Bob Dylan was partway through recording which album when he played the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

Highway 61 Revisited was on hold for a six-week break in the sessions, and two of the three amplified songs Dylan played at Newport came from it.

Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and two bandmates from which group backed Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

Paul Butterfield Blues Band players Mike Bloomfield, Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay had a single night to rehearse with Dylan, in a mansion the festival's organizers were using.

Which singer did the Newport Folk Festival's founder book for packed Sunday afternoons at his Boston club in 1958?

Odetta and other folk acts filled the club so reliably that its owner began planning a folk programme for Newport, and she sang at the first festival the next summer.

Which country supergroup featuring Brandi Carlile played its first full live set at Newport in 2019?

The Highwomen borrowed their name from the 1980s outlaw supergroup The Highwaymen, and formed to push back against how little airplay women were getting on country radio.

Which future Bob Dylan manager and Bearsville Records founder helped produce the first Newport Folk Festival?

Albert Grossman was recruited because the festival's founder knew his own limits in the folk scene. As a manager he went on to charge clients 25 percent, well above the usual 15.

Which gospel family, later famous for the hit I'll Take You There, sang at Newport Folk Festivals in the 1960s?

The Staple Singers carried the civil rights movement into their music: father Pops Staples wrote a protest song that became the title track of a live album taped in a church.

Which bluesman, tracked down through his 1928 record Avalon Blues, became a star at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival?

Mississippi John Hurt had gone back to farming when his 1928 records failed to sell. Fans found him 35 years later by locating Avalon on a map, and Newport made his name.

Which Newport Folk Festival co-founder also created the role of Captain von Trapp in Broadway's The Sound of Music?

Theodore Bikel did both in the same year, 1959. Alongside his stage acting he was a widely recorded folk singer and guitarist, which is how he came to help launch the festival.

Which folklorist's mocking introduction of a blues band reportedly led to a backstage fistfight at Newport in 1965?

Alan Lomax questioned whether a band needing so much hardware could play the blues at all. By one account the remark irritated Dylan, who decided to plug in himself the next night.

Which suspension span, the longest in New England, can be seen from the Newport Folk Festival's main stage?

The Claiborne Pell Bridge carries traffic across Narragansett Bay into Newport and is named for a US senator who lived in the city.

The first Newport Folk Festival in 1959 was staged at which downtown Newport venue, used until 1964?

Freebody Park, in downtown Newport, held the festival through 1964. The event then moved to Festival Field, where it stayed until 1969.