2024 is the 55th Anniversary of OFCRI at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival

Saul Ahola, OFCRI Historian

Following the May 2023 OFCRI concert at Smith Castle, Marilyn Asselin, from Hope RI, came up to Missy and me, and introduced herself as a former member of the Club who had played piano during her teenage years. She felt our fiddling that afternoon was the best she had ever heard and that her father Albert Asselin and uncle Frank Moon would have been proud that the club had done so well. Marilyn’s connection with OFCRI go back to its beginnings. Her father Albert Asselin Joined the OFCRI in 1930 and it was he who encouraged Frank Moon to join in 1933. Frank would later marry Albert’s sister Doris Asselin. Both were fantastic fiddlers and also important leaders in the club with Asselin serving as president for three different terms and Moon as secretary and “communicator” (via post card, not email) for 70 years, from 1936 until his passing in 2007. In a follow-upemail to me, Marilyn commented that she thought our website should make mention of what she felt was likely the club’s most famous gig: performing at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival and she included a newspaper clipping, program schedule and her recollections of the event. It was the famous producer George Wein who had invited the OFCRI to play. Wein, folk musician Pete Seeger and the Broadway actor and folk singer Theodore Bikel, were the founders of the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. Following Bob Dylan’s “plugged-in” performance four years earlier, the festival by 1969 featured not only folk music but also country, bluegrass, rock and blues. It ran for five days in July with daily major and “subsidiary” concerts. The roster of musicians at the main concert venue in 1969 included Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash (who introduced newcomer Kris Kristofferson), Joni Mitchell, and the Everly Brothers to name just a few. The ticketed subsidiary concerts also included well known musicians like Mike Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Taj Mahal, Oscar Brand, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys and Sleepy John Estes. The OFCRI performed at two of these concerts on Wednesday and Friday nights. Marilyn Asselin had these recollections:

“I accompanied my father on piano as he played a solo. It was an exciting evening and I recall I really didn’t want to play with my father on stage. I was too nervous but both parents insisted and so I did. I was 15. I remember that Matt Quigley was there and played the washboard which was a big hit with the audience. Also, another hit was Phil Paul on the fiddle. When he would solo, he would sit in a chair on stage and then during the reel he was playing he would lift his bow, pick up his leg and cross it over the fiddle and continue playing with his leg wrapped over the fiddle. The reel would never be interrupted. That brought a huge applause from the audience. Anne Marie Cournoyer was also there and I recall she did a solo with her father and grandfather- 3 generations of fiddlers. After the performance, we gathered with the host for the evening, Theodore Bikel, who was very complimentary. That was a big thrill for me as I had recently seen him on TV.”