Van Ronk moved from Brooklyn to Queens in 1951 and began attending Richmond Hill High School. He had been performing in a barbershop quartet since 1949, but left before finishing high school, and spent the next few years bumming around lower Manhattan, except for shipping out twice with the Merchant Marine. His first professional gigs were with various trad jazz bands around the New York area, of which he later observed: "We wanted to play traditional jazz in the worst way.
..and we did!
" The jazz revival didn't take off though, and Van Ronk turned to performing blues music he'd stumbled across and enjoyed years earlier, by artists like Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt. Van Ronk was not the first white musician to perform African-American blues, but became noted for his interpretation of it in its original context. By about 1958 he was firmly committed to the folk-blues style, accompanying himself with his own acoustic guitar.
He performed blues, jazz and folk music, occasionally writing his own songs but generally arranging the work of earlier artists and his folk revival peers. He became noted both for his large physical stature and his expansive charisma, which belied an intellectual, cultured gentleman of many talents. Among his many interests: cooking, science fiction (he was active for some time in science fiction fandom and contributed to fanzines), world history, and politics.
During the 1960s he supported radical left-wing political causes and was a member of the Libertarian League. Somewhat by accident, he took part in the famous Stonewall Riots during which he was arrested, abused and briefly jailed. In 1974 he appeared at a concert with his old friend Bob Dylan, to aid refugees from the military coup by Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
In 2000 he performed at Blind Willie's in Atlanta, clothed in garish Hawaiian garb, speaking fondly of his impending return to Greenwich Village. Van Ronk moved from Brooklyn to Queens in 1951 and began attending Richmond Hill High School.
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