Early Times in the Fresno Folk Scene: Virgil Byxbe, part 1
by Evo Bluestein
Here is the beginning of an interview with the late Virgil Byxbe (1917 – 1992), long-time Fresno Folk Society member and owner and originator of an early and influential folk music and dance camp, known as Sweet’s Mill.
Gypsy Gyppo Stringband and guests, Sweet’s Mill ca. 1974. photo: EZ Smith (front row l-r: Harry Liedstrand, Jimmy Borsdorf, Jerry Mitchell, Sandy Bradley).
By way of introduction, I include an excerpt from the beloved folk musician Jimmy Borsdorf (1949 – 2005). He and his wife and music partner, Nancy, performed as Hawks & Eagles. At one of their last Fresno concerts, he told the audience this tale:
The first time I met Virgil Byxbe was the very first day I went to Sweet’s Mill; it was also the day I was supposed to go into the Army, and go to Vietnam. I decided not to. When they said ‘Take a step forward,’ I turned around and walked out. I hitchhiked and had this kind of a mythical adventure, and ended up in the back seat of some people’s car with no idea where I was going. I ended up some ten or eleven hours later in the middle this incredible jam session with Kenny Hall. I was forever hooked on oldtime music–and over the years on lots of kinds of music. I met Nancy and took her there and it did a lot to change her music. She was a classical violinist working at a restaurant, playing violin music and Hungarian gypsy music. For years, when people asked how she got into this kind of music, she’d say that I accidentally slammed her fingers in the car door. The truth was I took her to Sweet’s Mill.
Virgil Byxbe (photo: EZ Smith)
Virgil: When I was a boy, Mainer’s Mountaineers was on the radio and they were a very popular band. My dad was a square dancer. This was in Long Beach, California. So I heard lot of that music because it was the pop music of that time. I liked black music a lot and used to tune into The Gospel Train, here in Fresno, to hear the real thing. They’d broadcast from L.A. So here I was, in my thirties, and this was oldtime music coming back–the stuff I grew up with.
Sweet’s Mill ca. 1964
Sweet’s Mill was a 240-acre logging camp in the Sierra Nevada foothills above Auberry, east of Fresno. It closed in 1921. The Sweet Family owned it and it was a sawmill until then, so we just kept their name when we bought it in 1951.
I started building on the main house in 1951, and it took quite a while to get it finished. Originally, there was just the kitchen and the fireplace room. That was all. I built all the additional buildings myself. I liked to build. You know that big roof that was on that big room? I cut every one of those boards with a handsaw. I had a lot of energy and that was my hobby. We went up there every weekend. During the week, I taught mentally retarded students for 12 years and then junior high English. I quit at fifty-five, the earliest I could retire, in 1972.
I was a member of the Fresno Folk Club (before the current folklore society) and the club had campouts there for four or five years. Rich Calderwood and a bunch of other guys were active in the club. I don’t think we used the Sweet’s Mill name for these events at that time. I had a children’s camp there for about three years, from 1951-’54
We probably started with weekends–about forty or fifty people from around Fresno. While there was a lot of party, there were workshops–banjo, fiddle, guitar. The emphasis was on musicians learning and doing, instead of an audience coming to listen. The folk club sponsored folk revivalists from the Bay area and a few originals, but not many. So the folk club kept doing campouts up there each summer until all the members who had been doing all the work burned out and quit, and the club folded up. I think there were several years where there was no folk club. Then we organized the new folklore society. The present folk society is getting replacements. That is why we’ve lasted so long–because new people come in and start to work.
When the club folded, I continued to hold camps (at the Mill) and began gradually enlarging it so there was more than oldtime music.We added Irish, immediately, and blues and, a few years later, we added Balkan. That’s when we started using the Sweet’s Mill name and I think that’s when we went to a week-long camp.
Ed. Note: When the Bluesteins moved to Fresno, in 1963, that was the first official Sweet’s Mill with workshops and concerts–when professors Gene Bluestein and Peter Everwine were on staff.
Brochure page from early Sweet’s Mill camp. (top to bottom: Gene Bluestein, Mark Spoelstra, Roger Perkins & Larry Hanks, Peter Everwine)