Profiling: John Jacob Niles

It is now, when certain elements of the near-past are being continually strip-mined for inspiration, when our greatest fear is the wave of unnecessary nostalgia for the early 1990s that is in it's beginning stages (see the most atrocious example of it thus far, "The Wackness" ), that we salute John Jacob Niles.


Niles was an American folk singer and songwriter active in the first decades of the 20th century, known as "The Dean of American Balladeers", and a student and compiler of traditional Appalachian folk music . Hearing him for the first time one's mind immediately begins working backwards, scanning it's music memory, straining to recall latter day folk musicians whom he is reminiscent of (Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, for one, though he was not familiar with Niles until recently). Then you must catch yourself and remember that none of the others would exist if not for Niles. Bob Dylan admits as much, as does Joan Baez, as should any other folk musician worth anything at all. In fact, we're willing to propose that all folk musicians of every stripe active from the 1950s on ought to be calling him Papa. Papa with the best falsetto we've ever heard.