MELANIE’s Newly Discovered Teenaged Folk Recordings Rewrite Her Early History

January 2nd saw the release of There Should Have Been A Rainbow – the NY Folk Sessions 1963-1965, 19 tracks (11 on the vinyl edition) spotlighting the repertoire that Melanie would take into the New York and New Jersey folk clubs at the height of the early 1960s folk revival.

Lost until now, and forgotten about even by Melanie herself, the tracks here were recorded over a period of two years by her high school drama teacher Larry Kassab, using a domestic reel to reel machine. They then lay all-but undisturbed for 60 years before Kassab’s nephew, author Michael J Moore, passed them along to Melanie’s family.

“I can’t count how many times I listened to that 3” reel-to-reel tape over the next few years,” Moore says, although he admits, “After I moved on to better equipment and other music, I forgot about that tape, but I never forget about Melanie.”

Already spotlighted by Mojo magazine among the essential archive releases of 2026, There Should Have Been A Rainbow captures Melanie at an age (she was just 16 when the first session took place) when many performers are said to be still trying to find their voice.

That is not an issue here. Already her tone, her delivery and her guitar playing are instantly recognizable, while her songwriting, too, was developing fast. Five Melanie originals are included here, including a title track that she once described as the first song she ever wrote.

Her talent as an arranger and interpreter, too, was already coming to the fore. Although her core repertoire of traditional folk was certainly influenced by such contemporaries as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Hedy West and Caroline Hester, Melanie’s musical vision owed little to their blueprints.

Seven of the songs here are taken from 19th century scholar Francis J Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, aka The Child Ballads, and Melanie is already toying with both lyric and arrangement – the energy, emotion and most of all, defiance with which she concludes that epic tale of betrayal and murder, “Matty Groves,” surely ranks among her most powerful performances ever. Contrarily, her take on “Barbara Allen” – released as a single last month – captures her at her most vulnerable.

Other traditional songs here include a unique version of “I Never Will Marry,” its extemporized spoken word passage illustrating the humor that was already essential to her performing style; and it is illuminating, too, to compare Melanie’s version of “All My Trials” to Baez’s own, possibly definitive reading. Even at 16, Melanie had no intention of being labeled a copyist.

Several of these songs wiould reappear in Melanie’s later repertoire, among them the 1959 country ballad “Long Black Veil,” revisited during studio sessions in 1979; Ritchie Valens’ rock’n’roll hit “La Bamba,” rerecorded for a 1975 single; and Malvina Reynolds’ protest song “What Have They Done To The Rain,” to which Melanie returned in 1988, on her Cowabonga album.

The most powerful takeaway from this collection, however, is the realization that a full three, even four years before Melanie was finally permitted to record her debut album (1968’s Born To Be), she was already in a position to do so.

Would such a release have resembled this? We cannot say.

But it is patently clear that – even if we regard these as simple demos – much of the attention and acclaim that awaited Melanie in her 20s might easily have been granted her in her teens. In fact, the vinyl edition of this album has been designed to replicate what that album might have sounded like, focusing on the folk songs but opening, as does the CD, with that self-penned title track.

History has already confirmed that Melanie was destined to be ranked among the most visionary songwriters and performers of her era. This collection proves that history was late to the party.

CD – VINYL – DIGITAL

Track listing