Club Passim
Varsity Folk
Stephen Ide celebrates 40 years of Cambridge's premiere folk venue

Since 1981, Fred Small has performed in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, folk club known today as Club Passim. Tucked beneath a bookstore in a dark alley, where passersby peek down through the windows to see who is performing, the club has taken its place in the lore and legend of folk music.

For Fred Small, getting to play there was like making a giant career leap. "Passim was the apex of a whole sort of farm system," said Small. "In Cambridge, you would play the Nameless (coffeehouse) and then you'd play the Back Room at the Idler. That was the junior varsity. Passim was the varsity. Passim was very tough to break into and it was the club everybody wanted to play at."

"It was kind of like making it to the big show," said Patty Larkin, another veteran singer-songwriter. "It was considered a real honor to be able to play there, that you really had your thing together in terms of your repertoire and your reputation."

Most people who follow folk music know about Club Passim. In the late 50s and early 60s, when it was known as Club 47, it blossomed into notoriety by bringing in the legends of folk music, like Sleepy John Estes, Mother Maybelle Carter, Jackie Washington, Bill Monroe, Maria Muldaur, Phil Ochs, Doc Watson and Jesse Fuller. It became the launchpad for the careers of Joan Baez. Bob Dylan played there between sets. The non-profit club has been celebrating its 40th anniversary with a series of events and concerts.

Folk singer Tom Rush, who played the club while attending Harvard University in the early 60s, noted that the club has changed a lot from when he sang there at hootenannies (open mikes) and later for $20 a night. "That place was pretty funky. There were always people fixing motorcycles in the basement," said Rush by phone from his Wyoming office. "It wasn't anywhere near as slick as the current location. The original club wasn't a dive by any stretch, but it was homey.

Patty Larkin

"The Club 47 was the flagship of the fleet," said Rush, who today runs his own Club 47 concert series featuring a mixture of well-known and new artists. "It was the one club that hosted a lot of out-of-town talent. Most of the coffeehouses just dealt with the locals. Club 47 actually brought in some of the legends of folk music in all kinds of different flavors. Cowboy singers, Irish-Scottish balladeers as well as hosting the local people."

For Larkin, playing at Passim is like a homecoming. Larkin, who lives in Massachusetts, began playing for Passim's radio show (now every Sunday afternoon on WERS-FM) around 1977. She was hired to play the club itself around 1981. "It took me a long time to get the gig," she laughed.

But before ever performing there, she was a member of the audience, soaking in the music that eventually would influence her own style. The club provided a spotlight on folk music during the 70s, she said. "In the terrible times of punk rock music and disco, this kind of music was really falling by the wayside," Larkin said, speaking by telephone from her Cape Cod home. "I think that one reason Boston is such a hotbed of singer/songwriter activity today is that places like Passim stuck it out and they kept that music alive. It was the professional club you could go to and see new acts."

The acts that Passim and Club 47 brought to the fore were influential indeed. Larkin said performers like Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell were early role models. "I grew up learning how to play guitar in the 60s, and she (Joan Baez) was instrumental in popularizing traditional folk music. I had a Joan Baez songbook and, basically, any female who played guitar was a huge influence on me...she was extremely influential in exposing certain songwriters and continuing to popularize the more traditional ballads and songs and give them a political punch."

The nonprofit club started in 1958 as a jazz club at 47 Mt. Auburn Street, its original location. It later became known as Club 47 and moved to its current location on Palmer Street, where the Postal Service renumbered the site for the club. It closed briefly and was reopened in 1968 under the management of Bob and Rae Ann Donlin. They renamed it Passim, Latin for "everywhere in a book."

In 1995, after again suffering financial troubles, it was renamed Club Passim, its operation transferred to a board of directors, its scope expanded to include more programs, and efforts were made to give it more community support. Though always offering an eclectic mix of music, from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band to ethnic programs, today it features a poets' theater, a skills workshop and its popular benefit celebrity series.

Betsy Siggins, Club Passim's executive director, said for years the 130-seat club was run on a shoestring budget, yet it still managed to produce musicians of national and local importance. Siggins, one of the founding board members of the club, returned in 1996 after doing anti-hunger work in New York, to continue its mission of providing great music and helping the community.

A three-person full time staff manages the club's $400,000 budget. There is also a person to book acts, an advisory board and many volunteers, who allow the club to function, Siggins said.

In the next five years, Siggins said, the club is looking at creating programs to make it more of a community resource than ever before. One would be to serve as a resource and research center for folk music, drawing on the club's rich archives and history. The club also is looking at providing music lessons for adults and children and creating a Saturday morning children's traditional music program.

For many artists who have benefitted from the club's prestige over the years, much of the character of the club came from Bob Donlin, who booked the acts. Though Donlin recently died, his decisions over some 25 years helped launch careers, from Ellis Paul to Shawn Colvin and Suzanne Vega, and were responsible for the club's international reputation for quality.

Larkin described Bob Donlin as being like a caring school headmaster. "You waited until he gave you the nod. You waited until he said you could do the opening slot or you could do the main act. I even would wait until he gave you the encore cue. If he gave you two encores, this gleeful smile would creep across his face, like that was his joke on you. As if to say, I'm going to give you two now because you deserve it."

"For me, Bob and Rae Ann were the heart and soul of this place," said Small. "And I still feel their presence. I still expect Bob to introduce me, to throw up that one finger sign, that index finger, indicating you've got time for one more song. So their dedication and love for the music for me has everything to do with what Passim is about."