Derroll Adams 

eyewitness

Elliott Murphy:

Recently, I played at a benefit concert in Belgium for an aging American banjo player named Derroll Adams. You've probably never heard of him. He came to Europe in the late 50's with Rambling Jack Elliott, a disciple of Woody Guthrie, and he stayed here for better or worse all those years since. He's not rich or famous, in fact he's fairly old and quite ill and can barely play the banjo any more. When we were first introduced he was sitting in a wheel chair and had to turn away and have a coughing fit before he could continue. But the small concert hall was sold out that night, full of people who knew who Derroll Adams was and whose lives had been touched by anonymous folk musicians such as him and so many others and who gathered that evening to show support for something they once believed in and maybe still do.

As a final encore we all got on stage and sang Portland Town, the best known of Derroll Adams' not very well known repertoire. It's one man's story told in plain speak, how he was married in Portland Town and had three sons - Frank, Jimmy and Johnny - who were all sent to war and killed. The six verses were told in the simplest language possible - no poetic rhymes, no acrobatic symbolism - and yet when the narrator sings at the end, "I won't have no kids no more. No I won't." it was devastating to hear. He had lost everything he loved to something he neither understood nor had any control over. The war that took his sons could have been any war, Portland Town could be any town, anywhere in the world but it was that sense of place, that one detail that gave the song its truth and it power. I had never heard "Portland Town" until that night in Belgium. I could probably not find it in any music store in Paris and I'm sure it will never be played on the radio anywhere if I listened all year long. And when I heard it that night I cried. I hadn't shed a tear at a concert in a long, long time.

They call it Folk Music. Elliott Murphy's web site

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Allan Taylor: (token from "Banjoman" Henry's Songbook) .

I first met Derroll in Belgium around 1971, where we were playing a gig together in a holiday resort called, I think, Zon and Zee (the Belgian equivalent of Butlins Holiday Camp). We played in the middle of a grassed area in the camp without a P.A. system and it was hoped that the holiday crowd would come and watch. Only about ten or so did - it was a short gig and we took the money and left. The next time we met was three or four years later in Bonn, Germany, in a huge concert hall which was being used for a folk festival. I was due to follow Derroll, and as I stood and watched his set from backstage I got the urge to play guitar with him. At the end of the set he came to the side of the stage and waited to see if there would be an encore. It was obvious the audience wanted one, and impulsively I asked him if we could play "Trouble in mind" together. "Sure", he said, "Come out on stage with me" and we went out together and played the song. After the concert we went to a bar and I noticed that the few people who joined us were completely focussed on Derroll - he had this magnetism which demanded people's attention. Though more than twice the age of some of the women in the company, somehow they seemed to be transfixed by him. Since those times we've seen more of each other and become friends. His wonderful wife, Danny has helped him through some real bad times of alcoholism and provides him with the stability, care and love he needs. She's a great woman. It was really a joy to present this song to him, as a measure of my affection for him. We have since worked together on concerts and one memorable radio programme, recorded for Radio Scotland in 1994. Though now over 70 years old, his opinions, his ideas and his street-learned philosophy is as fresh and to a certain extent idealistic as a young man of twenty. He never lost sight of the dream that we all shared when we started out "on the road". Not for him fame or glory or money, just the joy of playing music and getting by.
(Taylor, 1997)

This bio was posted on the Jerry Jeff Walker list mail-archive folksingers

Derroll Adams, folk singer, was born in Portland, Oregon, on November 27, 1925. He died in Antwerp on February 6 aged 74 ONE of the last links with the era of Woody Guthrie and the first great American folk revival, Derroll Adams was a larger-than-life figure whose influence on a range of famous musicians was enormous. A compelling live performer and accomplished songwriter, he was able to count Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Donovan among his many fans. After he left the US and moved to London he became something of a hero to many of the British pop acts of the Sixties who were fascinated with American folk-blues forms. Derroll Adams's father was a vaudeville juggler and the boy spent his childhood moving from town to town, picking up songs from migrant fruit-pickers and teaching himself to play the harmonica, mandolin and guitar. He lied about his age in order to join the US Army in 1942, but he was discharged after five months. He then joined the San Francisco Coast Guard. After the war he studied art, and it was at this time that he met Pete Seeger, an encounter which persuaded him to take up the five-string banjo as his main instrument. He joined Henry Wallace's Progressive Party and campaigned on its behalf at political rallies across America. Moving to Los Angeles, he then took a variety of jobs - from dishwasher to truck driver - and on the West Coast folk music circuit he met the likes of Woody Guthrie, Odetta and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who was to become a lifelong friend. James Dean was another acquaintance and Adams played banjo in the 1957 western film Durango. Shortly afterwards he travelled by boat to Britain to join his friend Elliott, who was already building a successful career in Europe. He intended to stay six months but never returned to America. The skiffle boom, with its repertoire of American folk and blues songs, was in full swing and as the genuine article Adams found himself lionised by British musicians and fans. He recorded two albums for Topic Records and also travelled widely in Europe, recording another album with Elliott in Rome. When his friend returned to America in 1961, he settled in Brussels, although he continued to spend a lot of time in Britain. By the mid-Sixties his best known song, Portland Town, had become a standard, recorded by Joan Baez, the Kingston Trio and several British groups. Adams was befriended by members of the Animals, Them and the Small Faces, and Rod Stewart became a lifelong fan. Adams also makes an appearance in Don't Look Back, the documentary film of Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour, where he is seen partying in the star's hotel room. But the lifestyle of a travelling musician took its toll. He suffered a serious bout of alcoholism and in 1969 he was treated in hospital. He recovered and with the support of Danny, his fifth wife, stayed sober for the rest of his life. He made a return to live performance in the Seventies, recorded the album Feelin' Fine for the Bristol-based Village Thing label and was a great favourite on the European folk festival circuit throughout the Eighties. Living in Antwerp with his family, in recent years he was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to give up performing, but he kept himself creatively active by painting. He is survived by his wife Danny and their daughter Rebecca as well as children from all of his previous four marriages.

Another fine point of view on Allen J.Redman's website 

Another bio can be found here (from a good source I know he never smashed his banjo)