By Gabriela Forte (A27) | November 7, 2025

When the Johnnies are back in Annapolis and the warm breeze has yet to be chased away by the winter chill, you’ll be hard-pressed to walk through campus and not hear music. And whether it’s a student strumming a guitar on the front lawn or a speaker brought out on the quad, folk songs are a staple. The rousing chorus of “Barrett’s Privateers” by the Canadian musician Stan Rogers echoes out over the back lawn every Wednesday before midnight, and banjos, fiddles, and acoustic guitars are not uncommon sights at student performances. 

But be not mistaken; this love of old-style music goes much deeper than the contemporary desire to emulate days gone by. Folk music holds a special connection to the student body as a polity-centered movement that seeks to uplift through shared art, song, and conversation. It is an essential piece of Johnnie life in Annapolis that has existed at least since the start of the folk revival of the 1940s and 1950s, when a young Glenn Yarbrough (Class of 1953) shared a dorm room with one Jac Holzman (Class of 1952).

These men are better known by their post-college professions: Holzman is the former CEO of Elektra Records (named after the tragic character by Euripides), and Yarbrough went on to sing with American folk music group The Limeliters. And while such a musical coincidence could be brushed off as merely that, one begins to wonder if St. John’s itself could have played any part in the tandem rise of these two great talents. Luckily, the Greenfield Library Digital Archives is diligently curated, so the venture of finding little hints about the pair’s lives in Annapolis was less daunting than anticipated.

Old yearbooks at St. John’s note that Yarbrough played lacrosse and badminton (even winning the singles competition his freshman year) and was a soloist for the St. John’s Chorus. Theatrical programs show that he sang tenor in a production of the poetic play Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury in which Holzman also took part—as an actor, no less! While this was the only documentation of Yarbrough’s participation in the King William Players, Holzman is credited with providing the sound effects for a production of Aristophanes’ Clouds, a reflection of his future prowess as a producer and pioneer in music technology.

Over the years, Yarbrough and Holzman both mentioned a particular event from their time at St. John’s that changed the course of their lives. And believe it or not, it took place in the Great Hall. On April 14, 1951, McDowell must have filled up much like it does today: students and tutors alike walking in rosy-cheeked from the brisk spring evening, a buzz about the room as they waited for the lights to dim. But this event was not like any other—not that year, not since. On that day, folk legend Woody Guthrie played one of his last public concerts to an audience of Johnnies and the greater Annapolis public.

Holzman, who had already launched Elektra from his dorm room, shared with Upstart Magazine that he had wanted to record Guthrie when he came to play at St. John’s but was intimidated. (In a funny twist of fate, Holzman ended up editing and restoring Guthrie’s Library of Congress Recordings in 1964.)

Yarbrough, meanwhile, reminisced about the concert with the Los Angeles Times in 1996, saying, “I never liked the pop songs of the day, I always thought it was real stupid stuff … So I went to this Woody Guthrie concert, and I was just overwhelmed—everything he sang was real.” The performance left an indelible impact on Yarbrough, opening him up to a whole world of music made in the folk tradition. “I was just a shy kid, but I walked up to him afterward with tears in my eyes and told him how much I loved what he had done. The very next day I went out and bought a guitar, and that was that.”

After the show in McDowell, Yarbough invited Guthrie to play some more in the dorm he shared with Holzman, where he sang for a small group of Johnnies until about 5 o’clock in the morning. Of course, like any nosy Johnnie, I was dying to try to figure out where this could have taken place. This required a bit more digging, and while no exact building could be pinpointed without a doubt, a small comment made in the 1951-53 St. John’s College Yearbook suggested that Pinkney Hall was a prime spot for the folkie types on campus, mentioning “the guitar pickers and folksong singers outside of Pinkney.” But this wasn’t very strong evidence.

Just when I was about to give up, I came across a plaque outside a room on the second floor of Pinkney Hall memorializing the foundation of Elektra Records on October 10, 1950. Holzman and Yarbrough were roommates for the 1950-51 school year, meaning that this is not only the space where Elektra Records was founded, but also where Guthrie sat and sang with a small group of students.

So, beyond the fact that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity took place for two musically inclined roommates on our humble campus, what relationship does St. John’s College really have with folk music? As briefly mentioned before, the folk tradition and the Johnnie approach are both intensely community-focused; nothing can be achieved, nor learned, if not through the collective work of like-minded individuals. They also share a unique love for tradition: folk artists and Johnnies alike use the canon and instruments of prior generations to create something new. Such a process recognizes the progress and beauty of the past, working alongside it and producing a reminder of our shared humanity.

Yarbrough left St. John’s early and was drafted into the army, serving in Korea in 1952. In 1959, he started The Limeliters, a group in which he sang tenor until 1963. He reflected on his relationship with folk music, telling Vail Daily, “As a folk singer, as a singer of lyrics that mean something, you suppress your ego and bring your lyrics to what can be open. Some of the old pop songs, the lyrics never meant too much.” The depth of meaning that Johnnies seek at the college goes beyond the classroom; it permeates music, art, and relationships. For Yarbrough, it seems to be intrinsically tied to his career as a folk artist.

Following a period in the music industry, Yarbrough left The Limeliters to pursue a solo career. In 1968, he started work to found an international Great Books school for orphans, even selling a lot of his property to do so. He ended up establishing a school for disadvantaged students in Los Angeles, and while it closed in the 1970s, his passionate efforts in education are echoes of his Johnnie background. He died in 2016 at 86 years old after spending the remainder of his life sailing, touring, and making music.

Holzman sold Elektra and stepped down as CEO in the 1970s, but he continued working in music production and technology. In honor of his achievements in the music industry, he received the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Ahmet Ertegun Award in 2011. (Fun fact—Ahmet Ertegun, a graduate of the Class of 1944, is also a Johnnie alum and the founder of Atlantic Records.) Shortly before Holzman’s 94th birthday in September, Elektra Records commemorated its 75th anniversary.

In a short article he contributed to a 2015 issue of The Gadfly, Holzman framed the impact of St. John’s particularly well. “Though I left St. John’s with a sense of the incomplete, my exposure to the college guides my every step. It was the liberal arts, with its respect for truth, the felicitous use of language, and an appreciation for precision and logic in ‘process.’ These seeped into who I was ‘becoming’ and would become. Happily, there was no escape.”

While he technically didn’t complete the Program, Holzman kept St. John’s in his heart, joining the Board of Visitors and Governors and even funding the construction of the Sternberger-Weis Music and Fine Arts Center on St. John's Santa Fe campus. To him, his choice to pursue an unconventional career was not separate from his liberal education but was rather deeply influenced by it, integrating it into his business and daily life.

In apt Johnnie fashion, Holzman uses a metaphor to describe the beauty of the liberal arts, saying, “The liberal arts are not unlike a carom shot in billiards—touching your head and your heart. The ball bounces off the cushion in your line of sight and then careens around the table, coming at you from odd angles. You instinctively integrate the multi-disciplines of the liberal arts, build upon them, and then bequeath those benefits to the generations that follow.”

In the current generation, Johnnies continue this tradition in and out of the classroom. The liberal arts fill the student body with a desire for meaning that is only achieved through close reading, deep discussion, and resonant art. The study groups keep forming, the fiddles keep playing, the poets keep writing. The folk life—the life of art and the mind—is alive and well at St. John’s College.