Carolyn Dutton
~ by Boris Ladwig
When Carolyn Dutton grew up in Martinsville during the 1950s, she dreamed of a career as a journalist or actress.
“ Something exciting and wild and wonderful,” she said.
Her plans represented a bit of a rebellion against her mother, Nina, who worked as a concert pianist, church organist, and piano teacher.
Her mother taught her how to play piano at age four or five, and the daughter began playing violin at age ten.
A life playing in an orchestra or teaching music did not appeal to her.
Dutton planned to study English at Western College for Women, in Oxford, Ohio. However, when college officials heard her play violin in a music course, they persuaded her— though it took a long time— to major in music.
After college, she worked for a bit as a journalist in Indianapolis and New York City. But majoring in music turned out to be the right decision, because it steered Dutton toward a decades-long“ exciting and wild and wonderful” career that ranged from immersing herself in the arts and theater communities in New York City to working on a show with Meryl Streep and playing violin in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris.
For years as she worked as a journalist in New York, she didn’ t touch her violin,
photo by Tom Preston
until one evening, sometime in the late 1960s, when she attended a party in Greenwich Village where people were playing fiddle, and people were dancing and having a great time.
She thought to herself,“ I could do that. That would be fun. Why don’ t I do that?”
“ So, after like eight years, I dragged my fiddle out,” she said.
She had turned up her nose at that kind of“ hillbilly music,” but in the mid-1960s, folk music blossomed all over New York City, in part because Bob Dylan had performed at the famous Folklore Center there and was starting to get national attention.
“ In New York, that kind of music was vast, it was fascinating,” Dutton said.“ The kids, they loved it. They gathered around New York University and they all played, sat around all weekend, strumming in the streets.”
Dutton made connections through the Folklore Center and played with a string band,“ The Delaware Water Gap,” through which she met other musicians and played with the country rock band“ Olduvai Gorge.”
46 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2024