Izzy Young, Founder NYC’S Folklore Center, Dead at 90
- by Susan Halas
Izzy Young on the stoop of the Folklore Center, April 1962 (S. Halas photo).
Israel G. (“Izzy”) Young, noted bookstore owner and iconic figure in the folk music scene, died at his home in Stockholm on Feb. 4, 2019. He was 90. Izzy opened the Folklore Center at 110 MacDougal Street in New York City in the mid 1950s and within a few years it became a mecca for the folk scene. Personally, he was one of the book world’s most original, influential and at times irritating characters. Born in Manhattan in 1928 and raised in the Bronx, he was a little older than the youthful crowd that flocked to his shop, which by the early 1960s was a hangout and message central for all the greats, near greats and wanna-be’s in the emerging world of American folk music.
Izzy became a fan of folk music, especially folk dance as a student at the Bronx High School of Science. He attended Brooklyn College but did not finish. Before opening the Folklore Center he was a dealer in rare folk music books and, according to his New York Times obituary, his private clients included Harry Belafonte and Burl Ives.
When an Antioch college job in NYC fell through I chanced to become a clerk at the Folklore Center because my parents were in the book business and had an uncommon specialty called “Customs and Beliefs” (folklore by another name.) Izzy knew them and so I, by extension, was deemed a worthy employee.
Izzy (or IGY as he called himself) was the hub for all of it. He was my boss for that winter and spring of 1961-62 when the young Bob Dylan wandered through our doors. It was a brief and sunny moment when Izzy discovered the then unknown performer and introduced him to a world populated by luminaries like Peter, Paul and Mary, the Clancy Brothers, Odetta, Theodore Bikel, Dave Van Ronk, and Jack Elliott. All of those talented folk artists and many more flowed in and out of the Folklore Center swapping gossip, fingering the merchandise, buying a book here and there and endlessly accompanied by the sounds of banjos and guitars being tuned and played in the background.
It wasn’t so long ago I read that Bob Dylan had turned 70, but that cold New York winter Izzy was 34, Jack Ballard (aka Jack Prelutzky), Izzy’s assistant was 20, Bob Dylan was 20 and I was a barely legal 18.
Physically the Folklore Center was not much. It was a long narrow shop, walls lined with books, records and instruments, and a backroom with a fireplace where everyone hung out. I vividly remember sitting there with Dylan who was a frequent visitor. He was pleasant, talented, low key and earnest. The moment I remember best is when we were paid to distribute leaflets for some Highland dance event. Instead, we fed the flyers to the fire and talked about our respective ambitions. His ambition was to get to know Woody Guthrie better. My ambition was to move out of the vast but freezing loft I rented on the Lower East Side into something smaller with electricity.
America in 1961-62 had yet to hear the Beatles and the prevailing ideas of cool were Beatnik inspired. Gerdes Folk City, where Dylan spent a lot of his time, was just gaining steam and folk music was considered to be a short lived hybrid, rather than a part of mainstream popular music. Dylan would change all that and soon, but none of us knew that yet.
The people on MacDougal Street who were considered the real comers were Dave Van Ronk, and “Ramblin’" Jack Elliott, who was first an influence on Dylan and soon rapidly eclipsed by him.
That was the winter Izzy, who was always ready to back new talent, decided the young performer should make his Carnegie Hall debut under the sponsorship of the Folklore Center. As I recall we sold very few tickets ($2 each) and it was probably the only time that a Bob Dylan solo appearance did not put money in the pockets of a promoter.
I wish I’d saved some of the memorabilia from that period like the “Talking Folklore Center Blues” that Dylan wrote to commemorate the store:
Ketterer, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
Ketterer, May 26:Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
Ketterer, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
Ketterer, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
Ketterer, May 26:PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
Ketterer, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
Ketterer, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. First edition in first issue jacket. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
Ketterer Rare Books Auction May 26th
Ketterer, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
Ketterer, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
Ketterer, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.
Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.
Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.
Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.
Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.
Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.
Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.
Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.
Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.
Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.
Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.
Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.
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Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
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Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
Gonnelli Auction 59 Antique prints, paintings and maps May 20th 2025
Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 10: Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology, with a tipped-in A.L.S. to Karl Marx's niece, 1934. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 14: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845. First edition. $4,000 to $6,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 17: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, inscribed first edition, 1959. $2,000 to $3,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 28: Margaret Hill Morris, Private Journal Kept during a Portion of the Revolutionary War, for the Amusement of a Sister, 1836. First edition. $3,000 to $4,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 38: Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, 1877. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 43: Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, signed presentation copy with photograph of Stein, 1912. First edition. $8,000 to $12,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 48: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, first edition in the scarce dust jacket, 1927. $6,000 to $8,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 54: Katherine Dunham, large archive of material from her attorney, 1951-53. $20,000 to $30,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 55: Margaret Fuller Signed Autograph Letter, New York City, 1846. $3,000 to $5,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 92: Sonia Delaunay, illus. & Tristan Tzara, Juste Present, deluxe edition with original gouache, 1961. $20,000 to $25,000.
Swann, May 15: Lot 93: Flor Garduño, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, 2006. Limited edition. $6,000 to $8,000.