Rosalie Sorrels, Idaho’s ‘Travelin’ Lady,’ gets her due

Rosalie Sorrels’ voice is unmistakable. It vacillates between raw and revealing, silky smooth and heartbreaking. Her songs tell tales of love, loneliness and loss, social injustice, political strife and poverty.

An Idaho icon, Sorrels became a folk music legend over her six-decade career of recording and living a larger-than-life, hard-scrabble adventure as she performed across the country with her five children in tow.

Sorrels knew Jimi Hendrix. She jammed with Jerry Garcia at Woodstock and played regularly at the legendary folk-music hot spot Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She became a regular at the top folk festivals, wrote a book and received two Grammy nominations, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the University of Idaho.

Sorrels mingled in the world of major music and literary figures of her day, including merry prankster Ken Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), Pulitzer Prize-winner William Kennedy (“Ironweed”) and folk music legends Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and Sorrels were friends and sometimes more than that. (The “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” author wrote the liner notes for Sorrels’ “Travelin’ Lady.”)

“Rosalie’s songs are so close to the bone, I get nervous listening to them,” he wrote.

Sorrels’ friends and musical family are coming together to honor Sorrels’ music and career as the singer, now 82, battles dementia.

Boise’s rockin’ diva Rocci Johnson is heading the project to produce the three-CD set “Tribute to the Travelin’ Lady: Rosalie Sorrels.” The projected 40 tracks will include a mix of songs written by Sorrels, some written by others that she loved and wove into her repertoire, and originals by Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark and Tom Russell that were inspired by her.

Her songs are interpreted by musicians who know and adore Sorrels, others who count her among their influences and a few who discovered her through this process. So far, the lineup includes seven Grammy winners.

“There are people who see Rosalie as a folky, but that’s only part of who she is musically,” Johnson says. “She’s got 44 original tunes that literally cover every musical genre. She sounds like Billie Holiday on one tune, Janis Joplin on another, and they’re all written by her from the heart. They’re about the difficulties of being a mother, and being on the road with five children, and her political views at the time.”

A little luck and an ‘Occasional Man’

On the eve of Mardi Gras, one of the biggest nights at Humpin’ Hannah’s bar where she fronts the house band, Johnson and her guys took the time to spend several hours at Audio Lab Recording Studio in Garden City, laying down tracks for their contribution to the Sorrels tribute album.

With a four count, the Rocci Johnson Band kicks in to “Occasional Man,” Sorrels’ hard-edged ballad from her 1972 album “Travelin’ Lady.”

By that time, Sorrels was done with marriage and with relationships in general, Johnson says.

“That didn’t mean she wanted to be alone.”

Sorrels’ original recording is a snappy rocker on which she sings with a Joplin- esque swagger. Johnson slowed her version down with a down-and-dirty bass line, solid beats and old-school rocking guitar.

“She’s the essence of the female energy of the folk movement. She stood toe-to-toe with all those guys and could drink them all under the table. The tales of her are legendary,” Johnson says.

Producing this album is more than a passion project for Johnson. It’s been an obsession for the past two years. She’s poured her time, money and resources into paying for musicians’ studio time, tracking down artists such as Griffith and Clark, Muzzie Braun and Eilen Jewell to contribute or record. She worked with Sorrels as much as possible to choose the songs and musicians.

Johnson launched an IndieGoGo.com campaign that didn’t reach its $25,000 goal. A new campaign, this time using GoFundMe.com/RosalieSorrels, launched recently with a goal of $10,000.

Sorrels and Johnson first met long enough ago that Johnson can’t recall the details.

“I just remember we immediately formed a bond,” she says. “It seems like we were performing together somewhere. Like me, she would perform whenever there was a cause that was important to her. We’ve shared stages and time together for about 30 years.”

Rosalie’s table

Many of the musicians on the album have a story about Sorrels’ hospitality and stamina.

“She had appetites, and she was well-known for them,” says Loudon Wainwright III, who met Sorrels in 1969 at Caffè Lena. The folk-music venue was a haven for musicians on the road thanks to proprietress Lena Spencer, who was a friend of Sorrels’. Sorrels lived there from time to time with her kids, and a rotating pack of musicians who would also crash there. Wainwright was there pursuing Kate McGarrigle, whom he would eventually marry.

“In my mind, Rosalie acted as a kind of twisted den mother to a group of us back then,” Wainwright says. “The Sunday dinners Rosalie whipped up for our scruffy bunch are the stuff of legend.”

Wainwright contributed his recording of Sorrels’ and Bruce “Utah” Phillips’ “I’ve Got a Home Out in Utah” to the project.

“It’s a song I have a clear memory of her singing,” he says.

Like many of her friends, Johnson spent many an “epic night” at Sorrels’ Grimes Creek cabin, drinking, talking about life, listening — and learning — about music.

“She would go, ‘Have you heard so-and-so’ ... and pull out some random artist that I hadn’t been familiar with, that I should be,” Johnson says. “Someone like Guy Clark, I only knew his hits, like ‘L.A. Freeway.’ Then I really got into his music and his writing. The same with Loudon Wainw-right.”

Sorrels always was willing to share the scope and depth of her experience. For the tribute project, Tom Russell wrote the song “Pork Roast & Poetry,” inspired by one such night.

He wrote: “And the sun went down, through my glass of Tempranillo; And the candlelight drew shadows on her cheek; Oh, holy night, of pork roast and poetry; With Rosalie Sorrels, up on Grimes Creek.”

From way out in Idaho

Sorrels grew up in Boise, learning to love music and literature from her mom, Nancy Stringfellow, who ran The Book Shop in Downtown Boise, and music from her dad, Walter, an engineer with the Idaho Transportation Department, who played piano and loved musicals. Rosalie read intently and absorbed the words of Thomas Wolfe, William Butler Yeats and other great writers, and dreamed of being an opera singer.

Walter built a cozy cabin at Grimes Creek, where Sorrels often retreated when she needed to ground herself and to heal. In 1988, she suffered an aneurysm; 10 years later, she battled breast cancer.

Both times, her community, friends and colleagues came together to help her spiritually and financially.

Sorrels remained in the Grimes Creek cabin until last year, when she moved to Reno to live with her daughter, Holly Marizu, the second youngest of her five children, who works at the University of Nevada.

“It was difficult to get her to move,” Marizu says. “That cabin is part of her soul.”

Sorrels is helping with the album project when she can, Marizu says, “but she’s having a hard time remembering. She does not want to be forgotten. I’m just so impressed with the work Rocci has done. I’ve played some of the rough cuts, and they’re just great.”

Independent spirit

Rosalie met Jim Sorrels doing shows at Boise Little Theater. He played guitar, and they connected through music. She was 19 when they married in 1951. Five years later, they moved to Salt Lake City with their growing family. There, Rosalie planted the seeds for what would become her remarkable career.

Sorrels helped produce influential concerts in the early 1960s with performers such as Peggy Seeger, Joan Baez, Mitch Greenhill, Phillips and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, making Utah a hotbed that helped spark the American folk revival.

She left Jim and Salt Lake City in 1966, packed the kids in her car and headed home to Idaho. She turned to music to support her family, and that year she made her debut on the national stage at the Newport Folk Festival.

She often was on the road with her children. Her songs and stories reveal it was a difficult and adventurous life, one that Marizu now views with perspective.

“There are some really cool benefits of being her daughter. I remember when we were living with Lena (Spencer), we went to hear Pete Seeger sing in Albany (N.Y),” she says. “Pete was so nice. He ignored everyone else and told me what a national treasure my mother was.”

Sorrels often incorporated family life into her songs, from the ironic “Baby Rocking Melody” to the plaintive “Hitchhiker in the Rain,” a heartbreaking tribute to her son David, who committed suicide in the summer of 1976.

“There are some songs I can’t listen to,” Marizu says. “I can’t listen to ‘Hitchhiker in the Rain.’ His suicide completely changed family life. It was hard on Mom.”

Storytelling magic

“She’s the kind of artist who doesn’t need the machine,” he says. “She’s not selling pop music, she’s selling tried-and-true music that’s a piece of the American stew. And for me, it all boils down to the songs. The material is a testament to her talent, and it’s cool that it’s coming back around. She’s stood the test of time.”

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Rosalie Sorrels, Idaho’s ‘Travelin’ Lady,’ gets her due."