Phil Huffman Tapes

The Phil Huffman Tapes feature informal house party performances by several icons of the 1960s folk/blues revival, including Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry, Lightning Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mance Lipscomb, and the Clancy Brothers. 

A social worker based in Berkeley, California, Phil Huffman was actively involved in the local folk revival scene. In the late 1950s, after meeting the concert promoter Mary Ann Pollar of the Rainbow Sign, a hub of Black culture in Berkeley, Huffman and his wife Midge began hosting visiting musicians at their home. After concerts at local venues like the Cabale and Jabberwock, musicians and friends would gather at the Huffman house for parties that frequently lasted through the night. 

Midge Huffman describes a typical party in Hear Me Howling: Blues, Ballads, and Beyond (Adam Machado, 2010):

Sonny [Terry] and Brownie [McGhee] would stay two or three weeks at a time, and there would be a party every night. Brownie would stay up all night. Sonny would go to bed early. About four in the afternoon they would drift together and start to play. They'd play a very deep, soft blues. Then around seven or eight, people would arrive, and it would become a blues party. Every night we'd have ten to one hundred people.

Recorded by Phil Huffman on 1/4" reel-to-reel, the tapes capture the way that music, stories, and conversation flow when musicians gather in their homes. They document a lesser-known side of the folk revival, one that was happening behind the scenes of the coffee shops and festival stages. 

The Huffman Tapes were donated to the Arhoolie Foundation by Jeff Inglis, a friend of the Huffman family, in 2025.   

Photo: (l-r) Jesse Fuller, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee at the Huffman house, 1960. The microphone is likely part of Phil Huffman's recording rig. Photo by Chris Strachwitz.