Allan Block, Whose Sandal Shop Was Folk Music Hub, Dies at 90
By BRUCE WEBER
Allan Block, a leather craftsman and fiddler who made sandals and music
in his Greenwich Village shop — which became a bubbling hub of folk
music during the 1950s and ’60s; a showcase for talented pickers and
singers like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Doc Watson and Maria Muldaur; and a
destination for aspiring musicians like John Sebastian and Bob Dylan — died on Oct. 23 at his home in Francestown, N.H. He was 90.
The death was confirmed by his family.
Mr. Block, who studied classical violin growing up in Oshkosh, Wis., was
a self-taught sandal maker who helped popularize open-toed footwear.
But he was prone to setting aside his leather samples and his awl to
pick up a fiddle and jam with the folkies, mountain music makers and
acoustic blues players who were wont to drop in with their banjos,
guitars, mandolins and other instruments.
The store, the Allan Block Sandal Shop at 171 West Fourth Street, was
just a few minutes’ walk from Washington Square Park and from the
Folklore Center on Macdougal Street, where perpetual musical
performances, both impromptu and planned, made Greenwich Village the
red-hot center of the so-called folk revival.
Many evenings and weekend afternoons, the jams migrated to Mr. Block’s
store, where the crowds often spilled out the door and onto the
sidewalk. According to Mr. Block’s daughter Rory,
a blues singer who worked with her father and ran the store after he
decamped for New Hampshire in the late 1960s, Bob Dylan dropped by more
than once just to chat with her father.
“He’d be sitting in a chair and my dad would be working and they’d be
talking,” Ms. Block said about Mr. Dylan in an interview. “And my dad
said to me: ‘You see that young man? He’s a poet first and foremost. He
values his art above all else. He’s been signed by a label, but he
really doesn’t care about the business side of things.’ ”
Mr. Sebastian recalled in an interview on Wednesday that in 1960, when
he was 16 and living with his parents on the perimeter of Washington
Square Park, soaking up what he called “the folk scene, the doo-wop
scene, the beatnik scene, the blues scene,” that he often found himself
at the sandal shop.
“This was a place that was an energy power point for the folk music
movement,” he said, adding that many of those who played there were his
heroes, old-time musicians who were featured on the influential 1952 set
of recordings known as the “Anthology of American Folk Music.”
“That particular album was very important for folk singers and people
learning guitar in that era,” Mr. Sebastian recalled. “And here were
living examples, the people who had been on that anthology, and you
could sit in a small wooden kind of room and be with them. It was
unbelievable. I saw Son House, Bukka White, John Hurt, and those were
just the guys in my part of the bag. I saw Doc Watson. Every guitar
player should be discouraged after seeing Doc Watson.”
Allan Forrest Block was born in Oshkosh on Oct. 6, 1923. His father,
Isadore, ran a scrap metal business that later expanded into building
supplies. After high school, he studied journalism at the University of
Wisconsin but never graduated, leaving during World War II to join the
American Field Service, which he served as an ambulance driver in India.
Afterward, he moved to New York City — where, his brother Daniel said,
he first became interested in folk music — and then, for a while, to the
woods of New Jersey, near Princeton, where, his brother said, he began
making sandals.
Back in New York, his first shop was a tiny hole in the wall on
Macdougal Street. According to “Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and
Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña,” by
David Hajdu, the West Fourth Street store opened in 1950.
There, Mr. Block’s daughter Mona Young said, he perfected his method of
making custom-tailored sandals, complete with arch supports. Customers
would choose a style from one of 20 drawings posted on the wall, stand
on a piece of cardboard to have their feet traced and then return two or
three weeks later for a fitting.
“Whatever weird shape the person’s foot was, that’s the shape the sandal would be,” she said.
Mr. Block’s sandals, famous in their day — the actress Faye Dunaway and
musicians including Ms. Baez, Ms. Fariña and members of the band Sha Na
Na bought them, Mr. Block’s daughters said, and Suze Rotolo, Mr. Dylan’s
onetime girlfriend, lionized them in her memoir of the era, “A
Freewheelin’ Time” — were groundbreaking footwear, fashionwise.
“In the beginning, most people saw sandals as something very European or
feminine,” Mr. Block told Mr. Hajdu. “White men wouldn’t buy them at
all — only black men. Then, I think, people started relating the idea of
exposed feet and natural leather and something handmade with folk music
and crafts.”
In New Hampshire, Mr. Block continued his leather work; in addition to
sandals, he made belts, handbags, guitar straps and other items. He also
performed on the fiddle at folk festivals and dances.
In addition to his daughters, Mr. Block, who was married several times,
is survived by a son, Paul; a brother, Daniel; three grandchildren; and
three great-grandchildren.
By some measures, from the mid-1950s through the early ’60s, the frenzy
of the folk music revival, an important factor in the emergence of a
fervid counterculture, was symbolized by the Allan Block Sandal Shop,
where music often trumped capitalism. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons,
the store was so crowded with musicians and listeners that business was
impossible.
“God help you,” the singer Dave Van Ronk told Mr. Hajdu, “if you wanted to buy a pair of sandals.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/allan-block-whose-sandal-shop-was-folk-music-hub-dies-at-90.html?_r=0
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