Blues and folk singer Spider John Koerner won praise from the Doors and the Beatles (if not from the general public), and after teaching his friend Bobby Zimmerman traditional American music in 1960, he watched the young man transform. Bob Dylan died Saturday at his home in Minneapolis. He was 85 years old.
His son, Chris Kalmbach, said the cause was cancer.
Mr. Koerner (pronounced KER-ner), who plays a self-made seven-string guitar and a 12-string guitar like his idol Lead Belly, howled and stomped his way through songs about gold miners and frogs. -coat'. He played in bars and coffeehouses in college towns across the country, performing both standards and his own originals, which one critic described as “old-fashioned.”
Musically, he is best known as a member of Koerner, Ray & Glover, along with guitarist and vocalist Dave “Snaker” Ray and Tony “Little Sun” Glover, who played harmonica. Their debut album, “Blues, Rags & Hollers,” released in 1963, was an early attempt to emulate black blues musicians whose hard-to-find recordings were obsessively collected by young, middle-class white men.
David Bowie wrote in a 2003 article for Vanity Fair that “breaking down the puny vocalizations of 'folk' trios like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, Whatsit, Koerner and company showed how it should be done.” & Hollers” on his list of his top 25 favorite albums.
The Doors decided to sign with Elektra Records in part because Elektra Records issued that album. Jac Holzman, founder and CEO of Elektra, has often said that John Lennon authorized the Beatles to issue an album of baroque interpretations of their works after he said, “Anyone who records Koerner, Ray & Glover is fine” .
Koerner's other Elektra releases include “Running, Jumping, Standing Still” (1969), recorded with pianist Willie Murphy. In 1997, The International Herald Tribune called the album “one of the most important early folk rock albums.” In 2016, Billboard wrote that it was “a slice of ragtime psychedelia and the pinnacle of artistic freedom that characterized the era.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Koerner has gone down in history more for his contribution to the musical development of others than for his own music.
In 1959, Bobby Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis from Hibbing, a small northern Minnesota city where he had grown up. He entered the University of Minnesota as a freshman, and his new home was Dinkytown, the area surrounding the university and the center of American counterculture. His new neighbors were Beatniks, tweedy anarchists, and assorted young people on vacation from their families and careers. It was fashionable to quote Allen Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce.
In this environment, rock and roll was pop. Worse, it was square. Authenticity has been at the root of American music and was first cataloged by folklorists such as Alan Lomax and Chris Strachwitz. Flannel-clad hipsters belted out newly discovered classical music on harmonicas in places like Ten O'Clock Scholar, a narrow room with uncomfortable chairs and a small stage.
“The first person I met in Minneapolis like me was sitting there,” Dylan wrote in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume 1 (2004). That man was John Connor.
The two men knew some of the same standards, such as “Wabash Cannonball,” but Mr. Koerner was older (he entered the University of Minnesota in 1956) and had been studying folk music longer. He owned old 78s of Delta blues and spirituals and knew about mythological figures like Robert Johnson.
“True folk records were as rare as hen’s teeth,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “Koerner and others had it, but the group was very small.”
Mr. Dylan wrote that he was drawn to Mr. Koerner in part because of “the always joyful look on his face.” “When he spoke, he was soft-spoken, but when he sang, he became a loudmouth on the field.”
The two young men lived together for a while and began performing as a duo at Ten O'Clock Scholar and elsewhere. Bobby Zimmerman began using the last name Dylan and used the surname Mr. Like Koerner, he dropped out of college. He sang harmony with Mr. Koerner and learned new material.
“I began to feel and even think like a character in these songs,” Mr. Dylan wrote.
Mr. Koerner got a glimpse into his friend's artistic ambitions. Another local resident, Dave Matheny, once took a break during a concert. Mr. Dylan took out his guitar and harmonica and began playing in the audience. On stage Mr. Matheny begged him to stop. Mr. Dillon refused, holding the audience's rapt attention for about an hour and literally stealing the show.
“Dylan wanted an audience, and he took that away from Dave,” Mr. Koerner said in Bob Spitz’s biography “Dylan” (1991). “That was his way in the early days. He took what he wanted.”
Mr. Dylan's voice at that time was soft and sweet. Mr. Koerner told Mr. Spitz: “He always knew you would fall in love with that shyness, but he knew how to rattle people’s cages.”
Mr. Dylan wrote that he experienced “an epiphany” when he listened to Woody Guthrie's music and read Guthrie's memoir, “Bound for Glory.” He soon hitchhiked east, found Guthrie, and made a name for himself in Greenwich Village, the national center of the folk revival.
Koerner met him again in 1965. This was when Koerner, Ray & Glover were on the bill at the Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan infamously “went electric.” At the same time, musicians whom Koerner admired, such as the once obscure black blues musician, toured and gained wider recognition.
“It made us a little obsolete,” Tony Glover told The Star Tribune in 2012.
Mr. Koerner, a former aeronautical engineering student, briefly retired from music in the 1970s and spent his time tinkering with inventions and building telescopes.
“I don't want the success of Bob Dylan. He made people take out their trash,” he told The Star Tribune in 2005.
John Allan Koerner was born on August 31, 1938 in Rochester, New York. His father, Allan, was an executive at Kodak, and his mother, Marion (Fenske) Koerner, ran the household.
John earned the nickname Spider when he climbed under a bridge one night during an outing with friends. Friends noticed his long-limbed physique.
His marriages to Jeanie Buranen, Lisbet Gerlach Madsen, and Laura Cavanaugh ended in divorce. His son Chris Kalmbach was raised primarily by his mother, Bonnie Kalmbach, and uses her last name. In addition to Mr. Kalmbach, Mr. Koerner has a son, Matt Koerner, from his first marriage. a daughter from his second marriage, Mia Koerner; and five grandchildren.
In 2011, the Boston Globe reported that Mr. Koerner “finally seems like he always speaks well.” He was said to be “a grizzled wise man who lived through the difficult times he sings about.” He told The Globe that he played in bars where “otherwise people would fall asleep because of you.” In 2012, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival for the first time in decades. Now he was an oddball whose celebrated but forgotten career was dug up for folk fans.
He was often asked about his youthful friendship with Mr. Dillon.
“People said I influenced Dylan.” He said this in an interview with Billboard in 2016: “I wouldn't say that. What is the quote? 'A good artist doesn't copy… he steals.' If you take something and make it your own, that’s enough.”