“The
musical mayor of MacDougal Street"
Van Ronk, a tall, garrulous hairy
man of three quarters, or, more accurately, three fifths Irish descent. Topped
by light brownish hair and a leonine beard, which he smoothed down several
times a minute, he resembled an unmade bed strewn with books, record jackets,
pipes, empty whiskey bottles, lines from obscure poets, finger picks, and
broken guitar strings. He was [Dylan]'s first New York guru. Van Ronk was a
walking museum of the blues. Through an early interest in jazz, he had
gravitated toward black music—its jazz pole, its jug-band and ragtime center,
its blues bedrock... his manner was rough and testy, disguising a warm,
sensitive core. Van Ronk retold the blues intimately... for a time, his most
dedicated follower was Dylan. Critic Robert Shelton
