Journal of American Folklore (105) 1992 pp.208-210
OBITUARIES
John Greenway (1919-1991)
TRISTRAM POTTER COFFIN
University of Pennsylvania
John Greenway was born John Groenweg in Liverpool, England, in 1919. He became a United States citizen by derivation and served in the army during World War II. For several years he worked as a carpenter-contractor before enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania. His major was English, and he was 28 when he graduated. He continued on to an M.A. and a Ph.D., also in English, completing his studies in 1951, after a short stint teaching English at Rutgers and the University of Denver, he took an M.A. in anthropology at the University of Colorado where he taught for the remainder of his career. He also taught courses at UCLA and Yale. An authority on the Australian aborigines, he showed his versatility with such works as a handbook to James Joyce's Ulysses and a treasury of American western lore. All in all, he authored or edited 19 books, wrote hundreds of articles and reviews, and served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore, Southwestern Lore and Western Folklore (acting). A biography appears in Contemporary Authors, Vol. IX (First Revision), p. 366. He was twice married and twice divorced, the second time to fellow anthropologist Joan Disher. He and his first wife, Ruth, had a son, John Leonard (whom he often called the Wild Colonial Boy), and he remained good friends with Ruth throughout his life. In 1979, after his second divorce, he retired to Port Charlotte, Florida, where Ruth's parents lived, to continue his writing and editing and to travel. As his health failed, Ruth took him back to Colorado where he died of pneumonia in Rifle in October 1991.
A Reminiscence
John Greenway was a man of strong opinions. He was brilliant and he preferred others to he rite same [?]. I think mediocrity and stupidity bored him more than they annoyed him.
I first knew John as a fellow graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania where he was a sort of a golden boy, former collegiate hurdling star, a chess champion, a prizewinning playwright, a pretty good guitar player, a Phi Beta, and a holder of a top fellowship. In those days he was strongly leftist in his politics and perfectly capable of statements such as "The Grapes of Wrath is the greatest novel ever written" or "Woody Guthrie is America's best poet" remarks sure to elicit debate in any English department, much less one as conservative as Penn's. Ultimately, he joined "Mac's Pennsy Gang" (the quizzical name Dick Dorson hung on MacEdward Leach's graduate students) and wrote a brilliant thesis on songs of protest (1951). Against Leach's advice he entitled it "American Folksongs of Social and Economic Protest" even though there was little truly traditional in it. It subsequently became a very successful book, getting few negative comments except the one that it contained few real folksongs.
He made a couple of records in those days: both produced by Riverside in 1955. John didn't have a top-flight singing voice, but it had a lot of presence and was excellent in a concert where he could frame his songs with his knowledge and humor. He liked to end with Aunt Molly Jackson's "Dreadful Memories," which suited his unadorned style. I recall asking him to speak and sing at Denison University where I then taught. He took such assignments very seriously. Afterward, some of us gathered at Anne Grimes's house, where a sort of song exchange began. A Denison undergraduate, whose performances were the local vogue and who made a specialty of singing labor songs somewhat tongue-in-cheek, did his version of Guthrie's "Jesus Christ." When he finished, John was so disturbed he tried to punch the boy, and I recall physically restraining him. He was prominent in the "folk music" world of the late '50s and '60s, acting as master of ceremonies at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival.
John began his teaching career in English literature at Rutgers. but while an assistant professor at the University of Denver he decided to switch to anthropology. The reason he gave me was that "he couldn't stand listening to the undergraduates trying to discuss the books he'd assigned." Whatever, the combination of literature and cultural anthropology proved to be a fruitful one.
John wrote steadily, and he was a truly first-rate stylist. Unlike most scholars writing anthropological studies, his books and articles are pure pleasure, full of grace and humor, revealing his wide reading and receptive mind. MacEdward Leach once said; "John has never forgotten a thing he has read or heard." His writings show it. Besides American Folksongs of Protest (1953), which has been a standard for nearly 40 years, his most popular works are The Inevitable Americans (1964a) and Literature Among the Primitives (1964b). Published in 1964, they are still exciting, as John's remarkable mind ranges over what other remarkable minds, from Australian natives to Shakespeare to Thomas Edison, have contributed at varying levels of culture. Here is just a glimpse of John Greenway, the author the final paragraph of the introduction to Literature Among the Primitives.
As for catching errors, my wife read only the first two paragraphs of the section entitled "Goetterdammerung" in Chapter Seven, and discovered I had confused John the Baptist with John the Divine. At that point I took the manuscript away from her.
This man capably edited JAF front 1964-68. His tenure was marked with the same strong opinions and humor-tinged testiness toward mediocrity that characterized all he undertook. I recall he dismissed a manuscript from two well-known colleagues, stating to one "you can't write" and to the other "you write off the top of your head." I once sent him a manuscript that he edited so completely that almost no sentence I had written remained intact. It was typical of John that when I protested and said "who's writing this article anyhow?" he restored everything to the original.
But if John was at times rough on people, he was totally on the level and could laugh at himself and see himself honestly. He needed that ability, for in 1956 he got a Fulbright to go to Australia to study labor songs. There he became so disgusted with the abuses and power of the Australian labor movement that when he came back (much to the amazement of his friends and colleagues) he became a rightist, John Birch fellow traveler. But as Archie Green, a labor scholar himself, pointed out: politics is a circle, not a straight line, and the left part of the circle and the right are very close to each other. It was an easy step over for John. From this time forth, he wrote for conservative journals, worked as a law-enforcement officer, got to know William Buckley, and never looked back.
I really liked John, and I know those who bothered to know him, do things with him and laugh with him or at him, were equally fond of this remarkable man. Every time his name is mentioned, I remember the night when, as young folklorists, we set forth from a New York hotel to go to the annual AFS meeting at Columbia. We took the wrong subway and ended up deep in Harlem, coming out on a street where were the only whites. A kind soul, seeing us lost, told us we weren't safe where we were and even called a cab for us. We told the driver where we wanted to go. John asked the fare, said it was too much, and told him to drive us to Morningside Park: we'd walk up. The cabbie said we were crazy, we'd get mugged. But walk up we did, seeing no one. We came to a huge iron fence. John pushed me up, and I climbed over. John hauled himself up, and we went to the meeting, a bit late, a bit tousled, and more than a bit relieved. I think that's when John and I really became friends. And if we didn't see each other in recent years, we shared a lot of past, and he was one of those people I could always "just pick up with."
John Greenway was a Renaissance man in an age where there are few. But more than that, "He'd a hand and a heart and a brain!"
References Cited:
John Greenway. 1951. American Folksongs of Social and Economic Protest. Ph.D.). dissertation. Folklore and Folklife Department, University of Pennsylvania.
---. 1953. America, Folksongs of Protest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
---. 1964a. the Inevitable Americans. New York: Knopf.
---. 1964b. Literature Among the Primitives. Hatboro, Penn.: Folklore Associates.
Greenway's scathing review of reviewers who wrote about the Australian film "Walkabout"
Biographical information about Dr. John Greenway from the dust jacket of DATWM
After you've read Dr. Greenway's article on plagiarism, take a look at this next link
Also, Manfred Helfert says a folk music recording by Dr. Greenway was the inspiration for a Bob Dylan song!
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