A Basic Folk Library - General Books
"The Collected Reprints from Sing Out!"
Volumes 1-6, 1959-1964 and Volumes 7-12, 1964-1973. From Sing Out! Publications
BLOOD, PETER and PATTERSON, ANNIE "Rise Up Singing" (Sing Out! Publications, 19??)
Lyrics only for a variety of more than 1,200 great songs --- pop, hymns, gospel, rounds, sea shanties, folk songs, blues. Sing Out! Publications Page here.
BONI, MARGARET BRADFORD "The Fireside Book of Folk Songs" (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1947)
Folk songs from many (mostly Western) nations, selected and compiled by MBB. Out of print.
CHAPPELL, WILLIAM "Popular Music of the Olden Time" (2 vols) (London, 1855-8)
Subtitled: A Collection of ancient songs, ballads and dance tunes, illustrative of the National Music of England. With short introductions to the different reigns, and notices of the airs from writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Also a short account of the minstrels.
Reprinted 1965 by Dover Publications (New York) as "The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time" (2 vols) with a new introduction by Frederick Sternfeld.
CHILD, FRANCIS JAMES (ed.) "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" (Houghton Mifflin, 1882 to 1898, Dover, 1965)
Regarded by many as the definitive work on traditional ballads. Good review here. There is a list of the "Child Ballads" with many of them online at Lesley's Contemplator site and a Concordance here. There's also an article on "Early Child Ballads" here.
Reprinted (hard-cover) by Cooper Square, 1962.
About to be reprinted, with corrections, by Loomis House Press September 2001. Announcement here.
COHEN, JOHN and SEEGER, MIKE "The New Lost City Ramblers Song Book" (Oak Publications, 1964)
Full of old string band standards from the twenties through the forties. Most, if not all, have been recorded at one time or another by the New Lost City Ramblers.
Reprinted by Music Sales Corp, 1997. as "The Old-Time String Band Song book". ISBN: 0825601797
FRANK, LYNN "Songs for Swingin' Housemothers" (San Francisco CA, Fearon Publishers, 1963)
This is a great resource if you can find a used copy, but it's long out of print. It's a collection of a lot of strange songs (folk and otherwise) designed for college sing-a-longs.
GOTTLIEB, ROBERT and KIMBALL, ROBERT "Reading Lyrics" (Pantheon Books, 2000)
Well, I suppose it isn't folk, but I think it's appropriate for folk musicians to know the songs of Tin Pan Alley. I just came across this book. The dust jacket blurb says the book has "more than a thousand of the finest lyrics from 1900 to 1975. A celebration of our greatest songwriters, a rediscovery of forgotten masters, and an appreciation of an extraordinary, popular art form." The lyrics appear to be strictly from American songwriters, the so-called "standards." I don't see any folk or blues, or rock 'n' roll. There are songs I love to sing. I know the tunes, but the lyrics help my fading memory. I'm sure I'll spend hours singing my way through this gem of a book. "Reading Lyrics" doesn't have photos and has only biographical information about the songwriters - but the selection of songs is terrific.
KIDSON, FRANK "Traditional Tunes: A Collection of Ballad Airs" (Oxford, Chas. Taphouse & Sons, 1891)
83 English folk Songs from Yorkshire and South Scotland.
Reprinted 1970 by Scolar Press (Menston, Yorkshire, UK) with a new foreword by A.E. Green.
Also availble in an appendix to the reprint of William Chappell's "Old English Popular Music" (New York: Jack Brussel, 1961).
KINSLEY, JAMES (ed) "The New Oxford Book of Ballads" (Oxford University Press, 1969)
This edition by Kinsley is often regarded as a better source than the Quiller-Couch version below.
LANG, ANDREW "A Collection of Ballads" (London, Chapman and Hall, 1910)
Poetry collection of popular ballads presented by novelist and poet Andrew Lang. Available as a Project Gutenberg e-text here, or (slightly better formatted) here.
LAWRENCE, VERA BRODSKY "Music for Patriots, Politicians and Presidents" (New York, MacMillan, 1975)
Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents: Harmonies and Discords of the First Hundred Years.
LEACH MacEDWARD (ed) "The Ballad Book" New York, A. S. Barnes & Co, 1955
A great source for ballad lyrics.
Reprinted in 1977 by Oak Tree Publications.
QUILLER-COUCH, ARTHUR (ed) "The Oxford Book of Ballads" (Oxford, Clarendon, 1910)
These 176 selections by the master anthologist exhibit such lyrics familiar to this day as "I Saw Three Ships" and long epical ballads like the 3334-line Robin Hood Ballads. The 1969 edition by Kinsley (above) is, however, regarded as a better source.
AVAILABLE ONLINE (* may not display correctly in some versions of Netscape *) New York, Bartleby.Com, 2001.
SILVERMAN, JERRY "Folk Song Encyclopedia" (2 vols) (Mel Bay, 19??)
Contents - Vol 1, Vol 2.
SIMPSON, CLAUDE M. "The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music" (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966)
For tunes.
SPAETH, SIGMUND "Read 'Em and Weep" (New York, Halcyon House, 1926 & 1945)
SPAETH, SIGMUND "Weep Some More, My Lady" (New York, Halcyon House, 1927)
Very interesting and entertaining studies of the old, sappy classics. Spaeth (1885-1965) also wrote an handy book called "Barber Shop Ballads and How to Sing Them", and a number of other books on old popular music and on classical music.
WRIGHT, F. E. "Songs That Never Grow Old" (New York, Syndicate Publishing, 1909)
This is a nice collection of familiar songs. There are some interesting photos of singers in the first several pages. Not an "essential" book, but it's nice.
A good online bibliography for ballads is The Traditional Ballad Index. Bruce Olson's site here is also invaluable.
BOYES, GEORGINA "The Imagined Village" (Univ. Manchester Press, 1993)
The subtitle for Georgina Boyes's excellent study, "Culture, Ideology, and the English Folk Revival", may lead readers to think that names such as Martin Carthy, Ashley Hutchings, or June Tabor will figure heavily in her book. They do not. For the most part, the book is about not what we think of today as the "revival," but the original revival, dating to about the turn of the century, during which such crucial concepts as "folklore," "folksong" and "the folk" first came to be tested. It is a fascinating and detailed look at the very origins of the idea of English folk culture, doled out with large portions of scholarly gravity and a small side of biting wit.
BRONSON, BERTRAND HARRIS "The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads" (Princeton University Press, 1976)
An abridged one-volume collection of the "The Traditional Tunes ..." below.
BRONSON, BERTRAND HARRIS "The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads" (4 vols) (Princeton University Press , 1959 to 1972)
The Bertrand Bronson volumes of the Child ballads are essential to a folksong library, but they are painfully expensive these days.
BRUNNINGS, FLORENCE E. "Folk Song Index" (New York, Garland, 1981)
Subtitled "A Comprehensive Guide to the Florence E. Brunnings Collection". A labor of love indexing a personal collection of more than 49,000 songs in books and magazines and on recordings. Indexed by title, variant title, and tune.
COHEN, NORM "Traditional Anglo-American Folk Music" (New York, Garland, 1994)
Subtitled "An Annotated Discography of Published Recordings". A reference source for finding recordings (mostly LPs, with some cassettes and CDs) of British and American traditional music. The first two sections are primarily noncommercial field recordings (artists and groups, anthologies) the third and fourth sections are primarily commercial 78-rpm recordings. Includes album title, artist, producer/editor, where/when recorded, publication date, nature and author of annotations, and the selections included on the recording, followed by a summary of the album's contents, context, the background of the performers, unusual songs or tunes, musical styles, etc.
FOWLER, DAVID "A Literary History of the Popular Ballad" (Duke University Press, 1968)
Provides "...a chronology of ballad origin in development, and a description of the evolution of ballad style from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries in England and Scotland".
FULD, JAMES J. "The Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk" (New York, Crown, 1966)
This is not a songbook, and properly not even a folk music book (the subhead is "Classical, Popular, and Folk"). It is, however, a useful and portable reference for copyright and first appearance information. Good review here and another one here. Currently in its 5th Edition (New York, Dover, 1999).
HARKER, DAVE "Fakesong" (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1985)
Subtitled "the manufacture of British 'folksong' 1700 to the present day".
HART, MARY L. et al "The Blues: A Bibliographic Guide" (New York, Garland, 1989)
By Mary L. Hart, Brenda M. Eagles, and Lisa N. Howorth. An exhaustive compilation of blues-related citations including such subjects as blues and society, blues instruction and blues research. Contains author and title indexes.
HENDRICKSON, ROBERT "Mountain Range:A Dictionary of Expressions from Appalachia to the Ozarks" (Checkmark, 1997)
Here's one which has proven useful at times. Mebbee this'n ain't sumpin' ya holt with tho, but it's morrin a mite fair...........It's pretty good really!!! Review here.
HICKERSON, JOE "The Archive of Folk Song: A Bibliography" (Washington D.C., Library of Congress, 1988)
If someone wants a truly thorough folksong bibliography, take a look at the superb one compiled by Joe Hickerson (recently retired from the Archive of Folk Culture) and included as a fat appendix to Duncan Emrich's American Folk Poetry. Your library ought to have the book.
HUSTVEDT, SIGURD, BERNHARD "Ballad Books and Ballad Men" (Harvard Univ. Press, 1930)
Subtitled "Raids and Rescues in Britain, America, and the Scandinavian North Since 1800". This is a sequel to the author's Ballad criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain during the eighteenth century, published in 1916. It contains a great deal of detailed information about the editors of important ballad collections, especially Child. Appendices include The Grundtvig Child correspondence (from the Danish Folklore Collection, Royal Library, Copenhagen, and the Child Memorial Library, Harvard University) and The Grundtvig-Child index of English and Scottish ballads.
Reprinted, 1970, by Johnson Reprint Corp., New York
LEACH, MacEDWARD and COFFIN, TRISTRAM P. (eds) "The Critics and the Ballad" (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1961)
Essays on the ballad.
MILLER, TERRY E. "Folk Music in America: A Reference Guide" (New York, Garland, 1986)
1927 annotated entries, encompassing bibliographies and discographies as well as monographs and articles. Primarily valuable as a guide to research in "Anglo-American" folk musics (folksongs, instrumental music, hymns), although the selection and annotations are useful throughout. Miller's chapter introductions also serve as lucid overviews of the research trends in the various kinds of American folk music.
PORTER, JAMES "The Traditional Music of Britain and Ireland: A Research and Information Guide" (New York, Garland, 1989)
An extensive bibliography, the subject of which is traditional music rather than song as such.
RICHMOND, W. EDSON "Ballad Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography" (New York, Garland, 1989)
An impressive, annotated guide to international ballad research.
ROSENBERG, NEIL (ed) "Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined" (Univ. Illinois Press, 1993)
The book provides a great range of ways to think about revivalism, and it is an excellent historical study of folk music from the 1950s and 60s. Amazon Review here.
Last Updated : 14-03-02 18:00