A University of Folk Music
Folk singer Ross Altman likened the Ash Grove to a "West Coast University of Folk Music." Ry Cooder first played back-up guitar at the Ash Grove when he was sixteen years old. Linda Ronstadt got her start hanging out at the Ash Grove. "My goal in those days was just to play the Ash Grove in Los Angeles because that was the center of folk music at the time", she remembered. "The first place I went in Los Angeles was the Ash Grove. That is where I met Kenny Edwards. Kenny liked Mexican music and we started the Stone Ponys." Future Byrds Chris Hillman and Clarence White met at the Ash Grove while both were in high school.
While the club was best known for "folk" or "roots" music, such as bluegrass and blues, Ed Pearl also featured socially committed jazz and rock artists, such as Oscar Brown, Jr., Chuck Berry, James Booker and Jackson Browne. And, long before there was a recognized "world" genre in the music industry, the Ash Grove provided a venue in Los Angeles for such diverse performers as Ravi Shankar, Mongo Santamaría, Miriam Makeba and the Virgin Islands Steel Band.
The Ash Grove also became associated with the cultural and political ferment of the 1960s. In the coffee house tradition, Pearl encouraged an occasional mix of music with poetry, lecture, film or comedy. Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Rowan & Martin and Steve Allen brought their comedy and commentary to the Ash Grove. Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino performed, as did Dr. Demento, poet Charles Bukowski and artists campaigning against the Vietnam War, such as Jane Fonda.
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