The singer-songwriter Len Chandler, who has died aged 88, played a key role in both the New York folk scene of the late 1950s and early 60s and the US civil rights movement. In 1963 he updated the lyrics to the traditional Keep Your Eyes on the Prize (Hold On), which he sang, backed by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, at the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech.
In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote: “One thing about Chandler was that he was fearless. He didn’t suffer fools and no one could get in his way. He was powerfully built … brilliant and full of good will, one of those guys who believed that all of society could be affected by one solitary life.”
Chandler was unusual for a folk singer in that he was a trained classical musician, an oboe player from Ohio who had moved to New York to study at Columbia University. He became fascinated by the musical upheavals taking place in Washington Square Park, and noted: “Every Sunday it was filled with folk singers. I learned to play on borrowed guitars until someone said ‘buy your own’, which I did for 40 bucks.”
His early mentor was Dave Van Ronk, one of the founding figures of the folk revival, whose life story inspired the Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis (which includes a song co-written by Chandler). In his autobiography, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, Van Ronk described how Chandler began playing at the now legendary but then “pretty horrible” Gaslight coffee house in Greenwich Village.
“Along with the prehistoric grime there were cockroaches, rats,” he said. And there were other dangers. “Len was one of the few young black musicians on the folk scene, and one time he got jumped right outside the Gaslight by a gang of Italian kids who were trying to ‘clean up the neighbourhood’.”
But Chandler succeeded, Van Ronk explained, because he was “a hell of a performer and he remained the big weekend draw for several years … he was the highest paid of the regular acts, though that was because he was more than usually argumentative and drove a harder bargain.”
In 1959 he left New York for a few months after he had been seen by an executive from the Detroit station WXYZ, and hired as the featured musician on a late-night variety show. Back at the Gaslight he was now performing alongside such future celebrities as Tom Paxton and Dylan, and taking part in the backstage poker games played between musicians waiting to perform. In Chronicles, Dylan described how Chandler once told him: ‘‘You gotta learn how to bluff. You’ll never make it in this game if you don’t.”
Chandler had started out playing folk songs and blues, many learned from the repertoires of Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy or Woody Guthrie, but then began writing his own songs, and from 1962 on he began specialising in writing protest and topical songs. The young Dylan was clearly impressed and influenced by his approach. His song about a brutal racial killing, The Death of Emmett Till, was based around a melody learned from Chandler.
Chandler’s own recording career had started modestly with a 1960 set recorded with Hugh Romney and John Brent, two poets who performed at the Gaslight. According to Van Ronk, it appeared on “a one-shot label called Gaslight Records. It was titled The Beat Generation and is now an extremely rare collector’s item.”
In 1964 his song Beans in My Ears became a Top 30 hit for the Serendipity Singers. It was a song about people not listening to others, but was banned by several radio stations after doctors expressed concern that children might start putting beans in their ears.
As Chandler’s reputation grew, he came to the attention of CBS, the label that released Dylan’s recordings. His album To Be a Man (1966) was promoted as “a recording debut” and was produced by John Hammond, who had worked with Dylan.
A live-sounding solo album of self-composed songs, on which Chandler demonstrated his powerful voice and guitar work, it included the story of a Bowery wino, the witty, spoken Missionary Stew #2, and the thoughtful, gently powerful Keep on Keepin’ On.
In the album sleeve notes, Chandler says he “felt very proud when the Rev Martin Luther King used the phrase in one of his speeches”. King’s secretary had seen the song in Broadside magazine, which was highly influential during the folk revival.
A second album, The Lovin’ People, was released by CBS the following year. Neither proved to be a commercial success, and Chandler became better known for live performances and activism than recordings. He was increasingly involved in the civil rights movement after attending a Freedom Singers conference in Atlanta in 1964, and sang regularly at demonstrations and rallies.
He took part in protest marches, was arrested many times, and accompanied King on voter registration campaigns in the south.
In 1964 he toured with Dick Gregory, the comedian and civil rights activist, and in 1969 he accompanied Pete Seeger on the maiden voyage of the Clearwater, the sloop that Seeger used to draw attention to river pollution and other environmental causes. It sailed from Maine to New York, with concerts staged along the route. In 1970-71 Chandler was part of the travelling antiwar revue FTA, organised by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, which toured military towns and bases at the height of the Vietnam war.
He continued to write topical songs, often at astonishing speed. In 1968 he was invited to California, to work at KRLA Radio in Pasadena, where he wrote three songs a day, based on news stories, for a current events show, The Credibility Gap.
New songs had to be performed at 9am, noon and 3pm, with Chandler writing “half an hour or 20 minutes before a show – I would run upstairs and sing it without having tried it out first”. It was estimated he wrote 1,000 songs between 1968 and 1970. Some of them appeared on An Album of Political Pornography (1968).
He decided to settle in Los Angeles, and in 1971 he co-founded LA Songwriters Showcase, which staged shows promoting new talent in front of music publishers and record company executives. It ran for 25 years and helped promote artists including the then unknown Stevie Nicks.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Chandler was the son of Len Sr, a musician who had served in the army, and Eva Wright. Len Jr started learning the piano at the age of eight, but switched to the oboe when told this was the only instrument available if he wanted to join his high school band. In his senior year he joined the Akron Symphony Orchestra, and he went on to gain a music degree at the University of Akron.
He had shown no interest in folk music until a college professor introduced him to Bukka White and Lead Belly. A $500 scholarship helped take him to New York, where he earned a master’s at Columbia before turning his attention to musical activism.
He is survived by his wife, Olga, who acted under her maiden name Olga James, and was the widow of the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, and by a son, Michael.
• Len Chandler, singer and activist, born 27 May 1935; died 28 August 2023
