How Izzy Young Helped Launch Musical Careers of Reb Shlomo & Bob Dylan:
On March 16, 1958, a week
after Purim, T.S.G.G., Shlomo’s outreach program, organized a concert in
Manhattan at Hotel Diplomat on West 43rd
Street, a hotel known for its musical events. The event was labeled “Purim Song
Festival” and featured Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach as
“Folk Singer and Guitarist”. Tickets were available from the Folklore Center
110 MacDougal St. in Greenwich Village, a store for books and records that
served as a focal point for the American folk music scene. It had been founded
the year before by Izzy G. Young whose birth name was Israel Goodman
Young and whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland who spoke to
Izzy in Yiddish. His father Philip started his own bakery, the Borough Park
Shomer Shabbos Bakery. By opening up Folklore Center, Young became a noted
figure in the world of folk music. This was “ground zero” for the West Village
folk scene, and it was here that the young Bob Dylan spent much time playing
instruments, listening to albums, meeting other musicians, and writing songs on
Young's typewriter. It was Young who produced Dylan's first concert at
Carnegie Chapter Hall in 1961. So it would seem that Izzy Young was one of the original people who helped launch
Shlomo’s musical career.[1]
Robert Shelton notes that Shlomo tried to influence
Dylan "to consider his obligations as a Jew". See Robert Shelton, No
Direction Home: The Life And Music Of Bob Dylan (New York: 1986), 413.
