The Folkways Collection

The Folkways Collection
A podcast series from Smithsonian Folkways and CKUA Radio

This series of 24 one-hour programs explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings). The music of modern day giants like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Ani Difranco is interwoven with original Folkways recordings to demonstrate the lasting legacy that Folkways Records has on popular music. Recent and archival interviews with Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Mickey Hart, Studs Terkel, and others help reveal the remarkable human stories behind this equally remarkable collection. The series was produced by CKUA Radio in Alberta, Canada and originally aired in 1999.

To subscribe to the series, copy and paste this URL into your podcasting program.

Or download each episode as an MP3 file directly to your computer from the following list.

Episode 1: A Folkways Overture

The opening program in the series paints a broad canvas, presenting outstanding musical samples that reflect the strength and diversity of the Folkways collection. Included is a sampling of original and archival interviews with the many personalities featured throughout the series, including Pete Seeger, Mickey Hart, and more. This program also introduces the key themes explored over the 24 programs, such as the role of music in social activism.

Episode 2: Moses Asch: Man and Myth

This program examines Moses Asch, the founder of Folkways Records, and the influences which guided his choices in building the Folkways Collection. Among those interviewed for this program are Asch's son, Michael Asch Professor Emeritus of the University of Alberta; Asch's biographer, Peter Goldsmith of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; and renowned folk singer Peter Seeger. Musical selections for this episode reflect works which Asch himself considered particularly significant or which had a profound bearing on his work.

Episode 3: Folkways: An American Canon

The third program in the series explores the Folkways collection in terms of its remarkable breadth and the fascinating way in which it was catalogued by Moses Asch. The program incorporates many and varied examples of the material Asch recorded over the years, ranging from field recordings of rural blues and folk music, to ethnic recordings from around the world, to 'soundscapes', to oral history, to recordings of the poets of the Beat era, to the studio recordings of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, The Lost City Ramblers and Lead Belly.

Episode 4: The Anthology of American Folk Music Part I

This is the first of three programs which take an in-depth look at the Anthology of American Folk Music, an award-winning collection edited by Harry Smith as a commissioned project by Folkways, and recently re-released on Smithsonian Folkways. This episode focuses on the original material in the anthology and the process by which it was collected and published.

Episode 5: The Anthology of American Folk Music Part II

This is the second of three programs which take an in-depth look at the Anthology of American Folk Music. This episode tells the fascinating story of the life of film-maker, record producer and entrepreneur Harry Smith and his life-long musical odyssey, which took him across the United States and beyond.

Episode 6: The Anthology of American Folk Music Part III

This is the third of three programs which take an in-depth look at this award-winning collection compiled by eccentric record collector and folk historian Harry Smith. This episode examines the enduring legacy of the Anthology of American Folk Music, and features 'cover' versions of works found in the original Harry Smith collection.

Episode 7: Huddie Leadbetter (Lead Belly)

Huddie William Leadbetter was a convicted murderer who overcame adversity to establish himself as a music legend.In addition to his own compositions, Lead Belly was a living library of old European ballads, black work songs, southern ballads, blues and even cowboy songs. His own work included such popular favorites as "Goodnight Irene" and "Rock Island Line". In this program, we learn about the life and music of the man known as 'Lead Belly,' through Folkways recordings of his performances and both archival and contemporary interviews.

Episode 8: Woody Guthrie

An original folk hero, Woody Guthrie transformed the folk ballad into a vehicle for social protest. Guthrie wrote literally hundreds of songs, many of them now revered classics, including the unofficial anthem "This Land Is Your Land." He was also a major influence on music superstars such as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Moses Asch, who recorded much of Guthrie's material, thought of Woody as nothing less than a full-blown genius. Program eight is devoted to a portrait of this giant in American folk music.

Episode 9: Blues

Among its other accomplishments, the Folkways collection captures significant developments in the evolution of the Blues as a dominant genre in American roots music. This program looks at key blues artists in the collection, including Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Lightnin' Hopkins, and reviews musical examples from a variety of blues styles: tradition rural blues, piano blues and urban blues. Among the works incorporated in this program are selections from a Folkways blues anthology entitled Asch Recordings 1939-47, Volume 1: Blues, Gospel and Jazz.

Episode 10: Jazz

The Folkways collection is primarily regarded as a repository of folk music, but Moses Asch's appetite was eclectic if nothing else, and he was an early recorder of jazz music. A number of notable jazz recordings found their way into the collection. This Program explores the connections of a number of jazz greats, such as James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams, to the Folkways collection.

Episode 11: Country and Bluegrass

The Folkways collection captures the evolution of modern day country and bluegrass music through its field recordings of rural American music earlier in this century. The focus of this program is on the music and artists of the southern country and bluegrass genres; music from Tennessee, Kentucky and the Appalachians. Artists such as the New Lost City Ramblers, the Carter Family and Doc Watson are featured.

Episode 12: Pete Seeger

Born of a renowned musical family, Pete Seeger's name is synonymous with the post-War American folk music revival. A contemporary of and collaborator with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger casts his own long shadow over the folk music genre. This program overviews Seeger's life and music, including his work with Guthrie, and features recent interviews with Seeger and those who have known him well.

Episode 13: Music and the Winds of Change: The Labor Movement

This episode is the first of three programs which look at how Folkways artists have used music as an instrument for social activism. This particular program focuses on musicians whose songs inspired those struggling for improved working conditions and wages. The works of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Cisco Houston, have all played a vital role in the labor movement, and we celebrate that history in this episode.

Episode 14: Music and the Winds of Change: The Civil Rights Movement

The second of three programs on music as an instrument of social activism, this episode pays particular attention to material in the Folkways collection which documents and reflects the civil rights struggle, especially through the ten year period between 1955 and 1965. The program draws on such Folkways albums as "Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966) and an audio-verite recording of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington entitled "We Shall Overcome." Original interviews with Bernice Johnson Reagon of the SNCC Freedom Singers and one-time Black Panther activist Angela Davis blend with archival interviews from Smithsonian Folkways to recapture the spirit of the struggle and to provide contemporary context to its meaning.

Episode 15: Music and the Winds of Change: The Women's Movement

Moses Asch was committed to supporting and reflecting the struggle for equality by American women through a number of the artists featured on Folkways, among them Peggy Seeger. This Program reviews the material on this subject and features interviews with prominent contemporary female artists, reflecting on the contribution of Folkways to the women's movement.

Episode 16: Children's Music

One of the great treasures stored within the Folkways collection is the body of children's music recorded by such artists as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Ella Jenkins. The Program takes us on a voyage of joyful rediscovery, aided by the perspectives of Seeger, Jenkins and others.

Episode 17: Voices of History

A significant section of the Folkways collection is devoted to documentaries and oral history. This program gives the listener a sense of the remarkable material contained within these recordings and a sense of the foresight which Moses Asch demonstrated in preserving this material for future generations.

Episode 18: Music of the World

The phenomenal diversity of the Folkways collection becomes immediately apparent when one examines the field recordings of ethnic music which Moses Asch collected from around the world. In many respects, this body of work set the stage for the explosion of so-called 'world beat' and 'world fusion' music in the 1990's. This is the first of two programs dedicated to this subject, incorporating both original recordings from Folkways and modern examples of world music hybrids.

Episode 19: Music of the World II

This is the second of two programs dedicated to exploring Moses Asch's field recordings of ethnic music from around the world, incorporating both original recordings from the Folkways collection and more contemporary examples. This episode also includes interviews with some of the notable artists who have led the parade toward a truly global sound in music, such as Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead.

Episode 20: The Poets

Poetry held a special place in Moses Asch's heart, and the Folkways collection includes original recordings of some of the most influential poets of our time, such as Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes and Leonard Cohen. This program reviews these unique artists--and many others--as captured on vinyl.

Episode 21: Subterranean Homesick Blues I

It seems almost everybody who was destined to become a somebody to the Beat Generation turned up in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s, and, of course, Moses Asch and Folkways were right in the thick of it. This is the first of two programs in the series dedicated to this fascinating era, revealing the personalities, rivalries and creations of some of the most influential people of the time: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs, to name a few.

Episode 22: Subterranean Homesick Blues II

Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and early 1960s--the time and place has taken on the flavor of legend. This second of two programs focusing on the era looks at Folkways Records' documentation of the burgeoning folk music revival and the New York coffee house scene which led to the birth of the singer-songwriter genre.

Episode 23: Phil Ochs

For a time, Phil Ochs was considered Bob Dylan's greatest rival for the crown atop the politicized folk music movement of the 1960s. His life ended in tragedy; his downward spiral as an individual and as an artist coinciding with the increasingly confused and cynical mood of America in the late 60s and early 70s. This program examines the legacy of this great singer-songwriter.

Episode 24: Epilogue

This final program in the series revisits some of the great music and oral tradition of the Folkways collection and incorporates interviews with a variety of artists, biographers and music historians to place the Folkways collection in its proper historical context--at least as clearly as can be determined just fifty years after the Folkways label was born.

Power Of Just Plain Folk ~ Tom Paxton Humbly Garners Life Grammy

I became aware of the Washington Post article yesterday through Tom Paxton's Myspace bulletin but had an appointment in Cambridge with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and 1165 other fans at Sanders Theatre. Having not enough time to post here, just a quick link in NEFolknRoots was made.

Read the bulletin (note: this is a copy and paste, we all know what MySpace does with links, so they probably do not work - that doesn't matter anyway because the links are given elsewhere in this post. Why MySpace does this is beyond me, and subject for further research and publication, but I digress) and full article below.

An aside. During the drive to Cambridge I listened to Brad Paul's "Folk on WGBH" (Saturdays, 3pm–6pm, WGBH 89.7, streaming at http://www.wgbh.org/). Brad was playing selections of the folk, roots and world musicians nominated for Grammys, including Tom and Ladysmith. Wish he had this news at that time, but, knowing Brad, I am sure he will mention it over the course of his next show. He made a comment that hit home. There is something like 115 Grammy categories, not enough time to TV broadcast all, so just the most popular are televised at night. All others are awarded in a three hour ceremony during the afternoon. All are equally deserving (and the folk, roots and world more talented, in my biased mind), guess this is another manifestation of our popular culture, I suppose.

Read about Grammy nominations related to folk and roots (NEFOLKnRoots, 12/4/08).

Read about all nominations at the Grammy website

From:	Tom Paxton
Date:	Feb 7, 2009 4:45 PM
Subject:	Article in Washington Post (Grammy Honor)
Body:	link Power Of Just Plain Folk Tom Paxton Humbly Garners Life Grammy By J. Freedom du Lac Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, February 7, 2009; Page C01 brief snippet: "Paxton, 71, will receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award today in Los Angeles as part of the Recording Academy's Grammy Week festivities. The award, which honors artistic contributions to the field of recording, will be announced on tomorrow night's live Grammy telecast and will place Paxton in pretty fine company. Previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipients include some of the most famous of all folkies: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. " read more here. Tom Paxton still riffs and writes often at his Alexandria home, where he keeps a framed copy of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land. " (Photo by Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post) read more here. Note: the Grammy telecast starts tomorrow night (Sunday, February 8, 2009) at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time on the CBS television network (and on ITV2 on Monday 9th February at 9PM in the UK).

The Washington Post article

Power Of Just Plain Folk
Tom Paxton Humbly Garners Life Grammy

By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 7, 2009; C01

Tom Paxton, an icon of the 1960s folk music movement, is riffing in a coffeehouse. Perfect!

Of course, it's a Starbucks near Paxton's townhouse in Old Town Alexandria -- nothing like the small, homey cafe in New York's Greenwich Village where he landed his first singing job nearly 50 years ago after crash-landing in the creative center of the American folk scene.

"It was happening right as I got there," Paxton says of the folk revival that was underway when he moved to the Village from New Jersey's Fort Dix, where he'd been posted with the Army. "On weekends, you couldn't move on the sidewalk, and all the coffeehouses would be crammed. It was the tail end of the Beat generation, and the Gaslight actually featured some of the Beat poets; the folk singers were kind of interspersed between them. But that didn't last long. Pretty soon, it was folk singers, period. It was exciting to be part of that."

Paxton never really moved on: The "small-town yokel from Oklahoma" who as a kid favored Woody Guthrie and the Weavers over the pop stars of the day has been almost singularly focused on folk music for the entirety of his adult life. For his efforts -- for five decades of writing, recording, performing, straw-stirring, self-editing, influencing, hamming, mentoring, teaching and rewriting -- Paxton, 71, will receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award today in Los Angeles as part of the Recording Academy's Grammy Week festivities.

The award, which honors artistic contributions to the field of recording, will be announced on tomorrow night's live Grammy telecast and will place Paxton in pretty fine company. Previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipients include some of the most famous of all folkies: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.

"One of the things with Tom Paxton is that while he might not be as much of a household name as some of the people we've honored, his music has been really influential," says Bill Freimuth, vice president of awards for the Recording Academy, which gives out the Grammys. "He's very much considered a mentor to many, many musicians; he's been an inspiration to so many other folks who've continued the tradition of making great music.

". . . And Tom always stuck to his heart, sometimes perhaps at the cost of his wallet. He did not go the commercial route. People really respect that about Tom."

Paxton's take? "The English have a word for it: gob-smacked. It's recognition I never thought I'd get. You think of the Grammys as billion-selling artists. I've never had a hit record myself; other people have had hits with some of my songs, but I haven't. Not even close. I'm stunned."

For the uninitiated (basically, anybody who doesn't have a subscription to Sing Out! magazine), Paxton's catalogue is filled with both satirical songs and serious songs, almost all of which have choruses constructed for sing-alongs. They're songs about adult relationships, children's songs and pointedly topical songs. Lots and lots of those, including "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation," "The Ballad of Spiro Agnew" and "I Don't Want a Bunny Wunny," about Jimmy Carter and the "killer" swamp rabbit that the president said attacked his fishing boat in 1979. (That one still gets requested in concert, though Paxton is down to about 40 dates per year. Loves the interchange; hates the travel.)

There was also "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler," about the controversial 1979 federal bailout, and the recent update/sequel, "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae." Also: "The Bravest," a poignant song about the heroic efforts of the 9/11 firefighters, and "Sarah Palin," a silly song about, well . . . you know.

Over the past half-century, other artists have recorded plenty of Paxton's songs -- none more frequently than the regretful lover's farewell, "The Last Thing on My Mind," which has been recorded by something like 200 artists, from Baez and Judy Collins to Neil Diamond and Charley Pride. It's been performed so many times, by so many artists around the world, that some people apparently think it's a traditional folk song of unknown origin, as Paxton's youngest daughter, Kate, discovered at a pub in Scotland.

"True story," he says. "A musician at the pub sang 'The Last Thing on My Mind,' and during the break, Kate went over to him and said, 'Thank you for singing that song; my dad wrote it.' He said: 'No, he didn't. . . . He couldn't possibly have written it. That's an old Scottish folk song that I learned from my dad.'

"And she said: 'I'm telling you, it was my dad!' 'Who's your dad?' 'Tom Paxton.' He thought for the longest time and then said, 'Well, he might have written it.' "

He laughs. "I've decided to settle for that: I might have written it."

Paxton still sits down to write several times each week at home in Alexandria, where there's a framed manuscript of "This Land Is Your Land" -- in Woody Guthrie's own handwriting! -- on a living-room table. (It was an anniversary gift from Midge, Paxton's wife of 45 years. They moved here in 1996, from East Hampton, to be closer to their brood: Kate lives a few doors away in Old Town, oldest daughter Jennifer is in Bethesda with her husband and three children.)

So how many Tom Paxton songs might there be?

"It's a meaningless statistic," he protests. "I could say a couple thousand. But it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is how many songs you'll admit to having written. That could be 500."

The first one worth owning up to was "The Marvelous Toy," a whimsical, oft-covered children's song written during his stint as Pfc. Paxton. "I wrote it on an Army typewriter," he says. "I was in the clerk typist school at Fort Dix, New Jersey. But I was bored out of my mind because I could already type!"

Paxton became a folk artist because, he says, "I couldn't not."

Explain, please.

"I was always a sensitive child and young man, and I was very passionate about the things I was passionate about. One of those things was music in general and folk music in particular. There was something about folk music that spoke to me very personally, even when the songs were nothing about a life I knew. They seemed to be a window into a broader soul. They made me feel connected somehow."

He'd been born in Chicago and raised mostly in Bristow, Okla., and enrolled in the drama program at the University of Oklahoma because he'd always been in school plays and always loved to perform. But he became increasingly interested in folk music, eventually forming a group with two like-minded classmates. "We had our own little imitation Kingston Trio/Weavers trio, singing in a coffeehouse off-campus for no money," he recalls.

Listening to "The Weavers at Carnegie Hall" changed his life. "By the last track, I had undergone a chromosomal change. I had gone from somebody who loved this music to somebody who had to try to do it."

When he came to New York, courtesy of the Army, he'd found his spiritual home. "I began making friends right away: Dave Van Ronk, Noel Stookey from Peter, Paul and Mary. I stayed in the Village and slept on a lot of sofas and somehow began to make my way."

Pete Seeger took Paxton under his wing and sang "Ramblin' Boy," the young, still-unsigned artist's elegy to a lost friend, at a Weavers reunion concert at Carnegie Hall in 1963. Nice introduction. (It became the title track of Paxton's 1964 debut recording for Elektra and remains one of Paxton's best-known songs.)

More stories?

The owner of the soon-to-be-legendary Gaslight Cafe, where Paxton often performed, was convinced that the singer-songwriter with the Army haircut was an undercover cop. "But nobody really thought of me as an Army guy; I was one of them."

Paxton ran with Van Ronk and Stookey and Phil Ochs, and he talked shop with Dylan. "One night, in the Kettle of Fish, which was the bar above the Gaslight, a bunch of us were sitting around a table, as we usually did between shows. Bob was sitting next to me and said, 'Listen to this.' And I leaned over, and into my ear alone, he sang a new song called 'Gates of Eden.' I said: 'Bob, I really like that song. I really like that song.' He was really exploding creatively then."

Did the positive feedback flow both ways? "Oh, yeah," Paxton says. "We had a drink one night . . . and Bob told me that he loved my song 'Annie's Gonna Sing Her Song' and that he'd actually recorded it, though he didn't know if it was going to come out. He told me several times over the years how much he liked that song."

Funny thing about the scene, Paxton says: "We were all competitive and supportive at the same time, and there was no apparent dichotomy. We were supportive, but of course you wanted to do better."

Some did better than others, of course. Dylan took off like a rocket before plugging in to play rock-and-roll. Others became marquee stars, too: Baez, Richie Havens, Peter, Paul and Mary. That gave everybody hope. "Looking back, the thing that one is apt to forget is the insecurity of it," he says. "Nobody knew if they were going to be able to actually sustain a living doing this. "

Paxton, though, couldn't land a record deal during his first four years in the Village. "And it wasn't like now, where you can put out your own record; you had to wait until you got a contract," he says. He wondered if he'd ever make it.

But he had steady employment, performing at the Gaslight and elsewhere. And the songwriting was really working for Paxton, who had received his first big break in fall 1960. He'd auditioned for the Chad Mitchell Trio and was picked provisionally as the group's newest member, but it turned out that the voices didn't blend quite right. But he'd sung "The Marvelous Toy" for the group, which ultimately had its one hit with the song. More important, Milt Okun, the founder of Cherry Lane Music and the Chad Mitchell Trio's producer, wanted to publish Paxton's work. "That was the only good song I had at that point; I thought I had more, but I didn't," Paxton says. "But it was enough to let Milt know that I was already a songwriter. . . . And we're still together, damn near 50 years later."

At the time, Okun was producing for multiple artists, including Peter, Paul and Mary, and he wound up getting several of them to record Paxton's songs, such as "I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound." As a result, Paxton had a modest, steady income even before he was signed to Elektra in 1964. "And it was tremendously supportive morally," he says. "I knew that I was not kidding myself if other people liked the songs well enough to do them.

"It was exciting to think that, my God, I can actually do this."

Still can. Still is.

"I wouldn't be able to define success in folk music; it's almost an oxymoron," Paxton says. "It really doesn't fit. But I suppose one measure of success is that I'm still doing it nearly 50 years later."

William Zantzinger

Man Bob Dylan Made Infamous With “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” Dies

video, Steve Allen Show, 1964

1/8/09, 2:55 pm EST

William Zantzinger, the subject of Bob Dylan’s 1963 protest song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” has died at age 69 according to a local paper in Maryland. In 1963, a 24-year-old Zantzinger was at a Baltimore hotel when he struck Hattie Carroll — a 51-year-old black barmaid — in the head and shoulders with a toy cane. Details of the attack vary, but most claim he was enraged she wasn’t serving him quickly enough. A distraught Carroll, who suffered from high blood pressure and an enlarged heart, returned to the kitchen where she complained to a co-worker about Zantzinger — and quickly collapsed and died. An autopsy stated she died of a brain hemorrhage and there was no mark on her head from the cane. Zantzinger was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter due to the “tremendous emotional upsurge” caused by his attack. He paid a $25,000 fine and served a six-month prison sentence.

Bob Dylan, at the height of his protest period, read about the incident and turned it into one of early masterpieces (click above for footage of the singer performing the tune on the Steve Allen Show). The facts of the song have been disputed over the years, largely due to the fact that it implies Carroll was beaten to death or “slain by a cane.” After getting out of jail, Zantzinger got involved in real estate. In 1986 the government took possession of some of his low-income houses due to unpaid taxes. Zantzinger continued to charge rent on property he no longer owned — even suing people who fell behind in payments. The con caught up to him, and by 1991 he was arrested, fined $62,000 and served 2,400 hours of community service.

The Dylan song followed him around his whole life, though he steadfastly refused to talk about it with reporters. In 2001 Bob Dylan biographical Howard Sounes actually got a quote out of him. “[Dylan] is a no-account son a bitch,” Zantzinger said. “He’s just like a scum bag of the earth. I should have sued him and put him in jail. [The song is] a total lie.” Clinton Heylin – perhaps the world’s authority on all things Dylan – seems to agree. “Dylan’s concern was not the fact themselves but how they might fit with his preconceived notions of injustice and corruption,” he wrote in Behind The Shades. “That the song itself is a masterpiece of drama and wordplay does not excuse Dylan’s distortions, and 36 years on he continues to misrepresent poor William Zantzinger in concert.”

Andy Greene ~ Source

Here is a recounting of the details of the incident and his subsequent life, from the New York Times.