hootenanny

The word 'hootenanny" seems to have become part of the national vocabulary (pete seeger writing in 1956 and updated in 1963) (In 1974 a member of the People's Songs, helping to compile Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language put the word in as a "gathering of folksingers." He was premature, but history caught up with him.)
For the record, and to settle some arguments, Granpa would like here and now to give the plain, true, real, unvarnished and uninteresting facts of the case. No, it has nothing to do with a girl nicknamed "hootin' Annie," famed among the lumber camps" according to Woody Guthrie's facetious report. Nor, I doubt, has the term anything to do with a French custom of shooing a bride and groom out into the fields the night before the wedding. (Two French students at Cornell were once shocked to hear that a hootenanny was to be held on campus) It is true that "hootenanny" can mean "whatyoumaycallit" A mechanic might call to his assistant, "fetch me that hootenanny in the corner, quick!" It is also a euphemism. "I have to visit the hootenanny (back yard privy) But the folk song lover's meaning is not derived from these. It is derived from another meaning of the word: a rip roaring party, a wingding, a blowout.
In the summer of 1941 Woody Guthrie and myself, calling ourselves the Almanac Singers, toured into Seattle Washington, and met some of the good people of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, the New Deal political club headed by Hugh DeLacy. They arranged for us to sing for trade unions in the Puget Sound area, and then proudly invited us to their next "hootenanny." It was the first time we had heard the term. It seems they had a vote to decide what they would call their monthly fund raising parties. "Hootenanny" won out by a nose over "wingding." The Seattle hootenannies were real community affairs. One family would bring a huge pot of some dish like crab gumbo. Others would bring cakes, salads. A drama group performed topical skits, a good 16 mm film might be shown, and there would be dancing, swing and folk, for those of sound limb. And, of course, there would be singing.
Woody and I returned to New York, where we rejoined the other Almanac Singers, and lived in a big house, pooling all our income. We ran Sunday Afternoon rent parties, and without a second thought started calling them hootenannies, after the example of our west coast friends.........
the best hoot, in my opinion, would have an audience of several hundred, jammed tight into a small hall, and seated semicircularwise so that they face each other democratically. The singers and musicians would vary from amateur to professional, from young to old, and the music from square to hip, cool to hot, long hair to short. Some songs might be quiet, like a pin drop. Others would shake the floor and rafters till the nails loosen. Something old something new, something borrowed, something blue, as at a wedding. The best hoots have had all this. Further, the hoots may rightly challenge all other music performances in the nation to present such variety as they have. (pete seeger, from the incompleat folk singer.