Dave van Ronk
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"David Kenneth Ritz "Dave" Van Ronk" was an United States/American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York City/New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street".

He was an important figure in the Steel-string guitar/acoustic American folk music revival/folk revival of the 1960s. His work ranged from old English ballads to blues, gospel music/gospel, Rock music/rock, Dixieland/New Orleans jazz, and swing (genre)/swing. He was also known for performing instrumental ragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of "St. Louis Tickle" and Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag".

Van Ronk was a widely admired avuncular figure in "the Village", presiding over the coffeehouse folk culture and acting as a friend to many up-and-coming artists by inspiring, assisting, and promoting them. Folk performers whom he befriended include Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Guthrie Thomas, and Joni Mitchell.

Bob Dylan recorded Van Ronk's arrangement of the traditional song "House of the Rising Sun" on Dylan's first album. A few years later the Animals had a No. 1 hit single with a rock version of the Van-Ronk arrangement of the song, a hit which helped to inaugurate the folk-rock movement.

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And then adds with a laugh, ''but in retrospect I think he may have been more sophisticated than we were.

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After he recorded it, I had to stop singing it.

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We thought he was hopelessly politically naive. In retrospect, he may have been more sophisticated than we were.

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It's almost enough to make you believe in Jung's notion of collective unconscious, ... If there is an American collective unconscious, Bobby had somehow tapped into it.

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