The ash grove, how graceful, how plainly ’tis speaking
The harp through it playing has language for me.
When over its branches the sunlight is breaking,
A host of kind faces is smiling on me.
The friends of my childhood again are before me
Each step wakes a memory as freely I roam.
With soft whispers laden the leaves rustle o’er me
The ash grove, the ash grove alone is my home.
–“The Ash Grove” (traditional Welsh folk song)
When Ed Pearl established his legendary music club in Los Angeles in 1958, he took its name from this plaintive Welsh tune about a sailor mourning his lost love, who “sleeps ‘neath the green turf down by the ash grove.”
Ed may be the last of the true political idealists. His dream for the club was to create a kind of artistic vortex where musicians of all styles—folk, blues, country, bluegrass, gospel, a little pop and rock, and international (before it was “world music”)—would come together to present audiences with a kind of live mix-tape of the best every genre had to offer. He loved to pair “legacy” artists with young talent, reinforcing the generational continuity of the form.
Ed also wanted his club to be a hub of activity around progressive politics, advocating for civil and human rights, opposing discrimination in all at its forms, promoting peace and universal brotherhood.
Folkie Ross Altman called it the “West Coast University of Folk Music.” Linda Ronstadt hung out there as a teenager; Ry Cooder first performed publicly there as a 16-year-old, backing a young unknown singer-songwriter named Jackie De Shannon a year before she was tapped to open for The Beatles on their first U.S. tour. The Rolling Stones regularly stopped by on their periodic visits to LA, looking to cop some licks from the old bluesmen. Bob Dylan would gaze wistfully at posters for Ash Grove folk concerts, and dream of playing there.
Ed ran the club for 15 years, featuring a staggering array of the A-list talent including blues legends Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Lightnin’ Hopkins; country figures like Johnny Cash, June Carter, and Doc Watson; up-and-comers like the Byrds, the folk-gospel Chambers Brothers (before they were psychedelicized), and the Rising Sons (featuring a young Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal); folkies like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Pete Seeger; international artists like Ravi Shankar, Jose Feliciano, and Mongo Santamaria; spoken-word performers like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Charles Bukowski, and hundreds of others.
I’ve been a fan of live music since I first saw Arlo Guthrie at a local college gymnasium when I was only 15, and it’s one of my regrets that I was too young to experience the Ash Grove at its original Melrose Avenue location (today, The Improv comedy club). Due to Ed’s unflinching political stance—particularly on Cuba—his club was fire-bombed three times in four years, and in 1973 the site closed for good.
A few years ago, some mutual friends introduced me to Ed, and we’ve become regular lunch buddies at Masa, a local favorite near his Echo Park home. Every meal is an adventure—I’ve never met anyone who casually dropped more famous musical names, most of them having passed through the doors of The Ash Grove at one time or another, without the slightest hint of braggadocio. Last time we met, he mentioned in passing that Arlo Guthrie made his West Coast debut at The Ash Grove, just a couple of years before I saw him.
Ed still hangs on to that dream of music as the universal language, inspiring and empowering us to be a better version of ourselves. The Grammy Museum recently devoted an evening program to celebrating Ed and The Ash Grove; headliner Jackson Browne fondly recalled being taken there by his father in the early ‘60s. There’s a documentary film underway, looking to spread the gospel of music and activism to the next generations. And Ed continues to shop for venues and put together programs whenever and wherever he can, proudly flying the Ash Grove banner.
There’s more than a little Topanga in all this, of course. The 57th Annual Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival (topangabanjofiddle.org/) is coming up in May, and any of the performers would have been right at home at The Ash Grove during its heyday. I hope I’ll run into Ed there. But even if I don’t, I know he’ll be there in spirit.
In these troubled times, I can imagine Ed taking the stage between the acts and, like Joe Hill, the fabled labor hero, he’d be telling us, “Don’t mourn—organize!”
