Jim Kweskin, The Jug Band

At the peak of the American folk revival, Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band reintroduced an essential component into folk music: fun. While thousands attended the March on Washington in 1963 and others traveled to the South to participate in voting drives, Kweskin and his partners in crime played kazoos and washboards in Boston coffeehouses. For every time Joan Baez sang "We Shall Overcome," the Jug Band sang "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me." While conservative commentators of the time may have seen such irreverence as the beginning of the folk revival's end, others clapped the...