Folk music is “the most honest medium,” said Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary as he inducted Tom Paxton into the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame (FARHOF) Tuesday night.
It was that same sense of musical honesty that connected the Boston hall’s “class of 2025,” which also included Jackson Browne, Judy Collins, Tom Rush, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Mississippi John Hurt, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Muddy Waters, John Hammond, and Alan Lomax.
Tuesday’s ceremony was a glitzy dinner affair for several hundred donors and music community members that took place at the Boch Center Wang Theatre, which houses FARHOF and its rotating exhibits. It was the kind of all-star night usually more likely to be found in New York or Nashville than Boston.
The first FARHOF ceremony, which inducted figures like Johnny Cash, Lead Belly, and Joan Baez in 2024, was taped for a Daytime Emmy-nominated public television special. The subsequent elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting means that there won’t be another such program, but the evening was recorded for the hall’s archives.
Tuesday’s event featured a house band that was led by Little Feat guitarist Scott Sharrard and included such A-team session players as steel guitar great Greg Leisz. Various configurations of other performers – nonagenarian blues man Bobby Rush, New Bedford guitarist prodigy Quinn Sullivan, guitarist Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, and powerful vocalists Lizz Wright and Maggie Rose – helped propel blues, rock, and gospel soul jams in honor of Young, Muddy Waters, and Aretha Franklin.
Three of the living honorees performed: Paxton, Judy Collins, and Tom Rush. Paxton sang a countrified version of his oft-recorded song “The Last Thing on My Mind.”
Collins remained one of folk’s most beautiful voices and most gracious collaborators. After opening with “Both Sides Now,” the Joni Mitchell song she popularized, Collins brought out singer-songwriter Ari Hest for their 2015 duet “Strangers Again” before yielding the stage to Norwegian twin duo Oakland Rain. The segment concluded with Tom Rush and Stookey joining in on a classic folk singalong of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”
Speaking before the ceremony, Collins said that, “This is a museum, and that means a lot to me because that means it’ll be here [indefinitely] whatever we do.” Collins, whose upcoming July shows with Richard Thompson at the South Shore Music Circus and Cape Cod Melody Tent are part of her farewell tour, said she values offering listeners a chance to be reflective about the state of the world.
”I think contemplation is as valuable as anything on the planet,” she said.
Tom Rush, who was a presenter and performer at the first FARHOF induction ceremony, sang his tune “No Regrets” before paying tribute to fellow inductee Jackson Browne with a rendition of “Jamaica Say You Will.”
“I think actually what I’m most pleased with myself in my career is that I have helped a bunch of other artists make a career out of it,” said Rush, who recorded early songs by Browne, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor.
John Oates, of Hall & Oates, performed Browne’s “These Days,” and also inducted Mississippi John Hurt.
“My true roots are roots in folk music, because that’s how I started out as a kid, way before I met Daryl Hall,” Oates told the Globe. Oates’s guitar mentor, “Philadelphia” Jerry Ricks, was friends with Hurt, and the first two Hall & Oates albums feature the same guitar that Hurt played at the Newport Folk Festival (which is now on display at FARHOF).
Also on hand was Hurt’s granddaughter Mary, who is featured in the documentary “A Man Called Hurt,” which had its local premiere at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Monday.
Another prominent figure in the film is Dom Flemons, the self-proclaimed “American Songster,” whose mastery of many traditional styles proved invaluable at Tuesday’s induction ceremony. He played guitar on Hurt’s “Pay Day,” harmonica on Sonny Terry’s “Fox Chase” (to honor producer John Hammond) and led a pair of a cappella songs from field recordings taped by inductee Alan Lomax. Hammond was inducted by New England concert promoter Don Law Jr., whose father recorded blues icon Robert Johnson.
Gospel guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose influence on rock has been justly recognized in recent years, was jubilantly celebrated in words by Boston artist Shea Rose, and in music by Crys Matthews and Joy Clark.
Inducting Muddy Waters, Peter Wolf recalled serving as the blues giant’s “unofficial valet” whenever he played Boston. Bobby Rush, whose energy at 92 is nothing short of astounding, talked before the ceremony about befriending Waters in the 1950s.
“He was the father of Chicago blues, and everybody followed him,” said Rush.
Two of the most captivating tributes came towards the end of the evening, when Wright performed Neil Young’s “Old Man” and Paula Cole put her own stamp on inductee Leonard Cohen’s familiar “Hallelujah.”
For the finale, Flemons and Bobby Rush led a singalong of the country gospel chestnut “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” providing an apt reminder of how American musical styles have always intermingled.
Victoria Wasylak also contributed to this report.
Noah Schaffer can be reached at noahschaffer@yahoo.com