05-05-2025
From the archives: Recalling Austin folk singer Carolyn Hester and her ties to Bob Dylan
On Jan. 11, loyal reader Kathleen Bergeron dispatched this note: "When I was a youngster growing up in Austin — in the late '50s and early '60s — a local girl appeared several times on an afternoon TV show. Carolyn Hester was trying to become a folk singer.
"She would later move to Greenwich Village and make a bit of a name for herself. A few years ago, I recalled Carolyn's great voice, and located her in Los Angeles. I was later able to chat with her at a gathering of folk music people in Virginia. Today she's in her late eighties."
When the biographical movie about Bob Dylan, "A Complete Unknown," opened, Bergeron recalled Hester as a youth and later in life.
"Carolyn had an interesting connection with Dylan: She asked him to play harmonica on an album session," Bergeron wrote, "and apparently it was there that he met John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia Records."
News to me.
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Born in Waco on Jan. 28, 1937, Hester spent much of her youth in Austin. The folk music revival that populated coffee shops and college campuses across the country during the late 1950s and early 1960s, embraced her as the "Texas Songbird" or "Queen of the New York Folk Singers."
Norman Petty produced her first album in 1957. She helped launch Gerde's Folk City, a key West Village music venue, in 1960.
In 1961, Hester asked Dylan to appear on her third album for Columbia Records. It was his first on-the-record studio recording.
Hester turned down a chance to join Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, who instead drafted Mary Travers to form the super-folk group known as Peter, Paul and Mary.
It might have instead been Peter, Paul and Carolyn.
A quick check reveals that a couple of dozen Hester recordings, including reissues of her early work, are still available.
The American-Statesman archives show that Austin did not forget Hester — or Hester, Austin — after she moved on to folk glory in Greenwich Village and beyond in the mid-1950s.
Here are a few samples reports about her return visits:
June 18, 1966: "New Bag of Tricks: Carolyn Hester Back in Town" — "In the 11 years since she left her home town to become a full-time professional folk singer, Carolyn Hester has come home six times to perform in concert. In Austin for a four-night stint at the Eleventh Door where she opened Thursday night, Hester packed the house with a whole new bag of tricks. In answers to requests, there were some famous songs so well identified with the auburn-haired singer-guitarist composer, songs like 'Yarrow'' from Scotland and 'That's My Song,' but for the most part Miss Hester sang new songs. Somewhere, somehow, along the way, Hester has come across a blues influence which is the most subtle and yet most exciting new development. The new blues nuances in her oft-performed 'Summertime' were enough to make your hair stand on end."
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Sept. 14, 1969: "Folk Concert Lineup Adds Carolyn Hester Coalition" — Sporting a new electric look, former Austinite Carolyn Hester will return to her home town as one of the headliners of a folk-oriented concert at Municipal Auditorium. Internationally known for the past decade as a performer of traditional and contemporary folk songs, Miss Hester has swung recently into the folk-rock column. Her backup in this vein comes from a band led by her husband, Dave Blume, an accomplished instrumentalist who plays bass, piano, organ and vibes. The Carolyn Hester Coalition has recently released an album on the Metromedia label, making it the eighth nationally circulated LP for Miss Hester."
Aug. 24, 1973: "Carolyn Hester Returning to Austin for Folk Concert" — In her first hometown concert appearance in a number of years, Carolyn Hester will come back to Austin to appear in concert with Peter Yarrow, Allen Damron, the Royal Light Singers and the Bluegrass Ramblers in 'An Evening from the Kerrville Folk Festival.' During the 1960s, Miss Hester also returned to Austin to appear in concert with Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, Godfrey Cambridge, several of Rod Kennedy's KHFI-FM Summer Music Festivals, and for three appearances at the old Chequered Flag folk club on Lavaca."
For more insight into Hester's career and personal links to Austin, see the late Margaret Moser's profile, "Double-Barreled Beautiful," which was published in the Austin Chronicle on Dec. 19, 2008.
Please send your tips and questions about Austin past to mbarnes@
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin loved Carolyn Hester, but what happened to the folk singer?
