Betty Montmartre–nicknamed for a long-ago nightclub she worked–offered perspective in front of the Vic at midnight.
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Gibson was back in town from Oregon because the Old Town School of Folk Music and WFMT radio, home of The Midnight Special, had organized a benefit for the 12-string guitar and banjo strummer. Half a lifetime ago, he and actor Hamilton Camp were the hippest act at the Gate of Horn, the hippest night spot in town. Tonight the lineup at the Vic was stocked with “the old Gate of Horn crowd,” as they called themselves–Peter, Paul and Mary, who had worked the Gate on their quick rise to stardom; Gibson and Camp, the Gate’s crown princes; John Brown, a folkie who ran the Centaur, an early Old Town coffeehouse; Roger McGuinn, an early “graduate” of the Old Town School of Folk Music and founder of the Byrds; Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane of Spanky & Our Gang, but best known to Gate of Horn folks for her work with the New Wine Singers; and folksinger Josh White Jr., son of a blues and gospel musician who picked guitar with all five fingers of his right hand and so smoothly captivated the mostly white “cafe society” crowds, including the Gate of Horn’s, that other black bluesmen angrily ostracized him. In 1962 you could easily have filled the Auditorium Theatre for this crew, and in ’94 they still sold out the thousand-seat Vic at a stiff ticket price.
Nowadays they really are old, the Gate of Horn crowd, parading into the restored vaudeville house at Belmont and Sheffield in their suburban finery. Some of the balding men wear gray ponytails as well as beards to compensate–the women are much more willing to look their age. Some suited graybeards have come straight from the office. The surprise, however, is the guys in the slacks and synthetic sweater uniform of the retired. “Gibson & Camp’s Retirement Village Hootenanny” is not what the old Gate crowd wants–they want the wild old nights at the Gate to return.
As Camp and Mary flitted around out front, Josh Jr. updated me on his life. “I’m still in Detroit,” he told me. “I have ten grandchildren there now, so I can’t imagine moving anywhere else.” He has gravitated to doing more children’s shows, and of all the performers seemed the least timeworn–bald and bearded, as he has been for the 30 years we’ve been acquainted, fit and slim–a dark, handsome man resembling his dad and his son, who was with him.
“Does anybody play music anymore?” the Quiet Knight’s Richard Harding had bitched earlier. He caught himself and added, “Ah, I’m just sayin’ that because I’m an old fart.”
