This 90-year-old Jewish performer and promoter is the Zelig of folk music
Harry Tuft was in a taxi with Judy Collins, who had her guitar with her. The cab driver looked back and asked if the two of them were folk singers. They replied in the affirmative.…
Assessment
Harry Tuft's 90-year career as a performer and promoter places him at the center of folk music's living history. The anecdote about Judy Collins and a dismissive cab driver captures how insiders have long heard predictions of the genre's death while continuing to sustain it. The piece invites readers to consider what it means to be a keeper of a tradition that keeps being declared over.