Important US Song & Ballad Collectors

Subject: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Richie
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 10:56 PM

Hi,

A couple of weeks ago I started adding a list of collectors and their publications to my website. Here's the list so far:

Francis James Child (1825-1896)   
William Wells Newell (1839-1907)   
George Lyman Kittredge (1860-1941)   
Henry Marvin Belden (1865-1954)   
John A. Lomax (1867-1948)   
Louise Pound (1872–1958)
E. C. Perrow (1880-1968)
Howard Washington Odum (1884-1954)   
Cecil Sharp (1859-1924)   
Dorothy Scarborough (1878- 1935)   
Phillips Barry (1880-1937)   
Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1882-1973)   
Josiah H. Combs (1886-1960)   
Mellinger E. Henry (1873-1946)   
Vance Randolph (1892-1980)   
John Jacob Niles (1892- 1980)
Maurice Matteson (1893-1964)   
Alan Lomax (1915-2002)
Frank Warner and Anne Warner

Here's a link to the page: http://bluegrassmessengers.com.temp.realssl.com/song-collectors-ballad-baggers-and-such.aspx

Tonight put on three articles by Phillips Barry: http://bluegrassmessengers.com.temp.realssl.com/traditional-ballads-in-new-england--i.aspx

That's the first- I think I have about 30 articles by Barry now- some are not finished (edited with music added.

I want suggestions of other US collectors that should be added. Also important articles that are missing. I plan on putting the Child ballads/books on here at a later date.

Any suggestions,

TY

Richie

BTW my grandfather, Maurice Matteson, is on the list just because he's my grandfather- he wasn't a major collector.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 11:05 PM

Robert W. Gordon (1888-1961) is one person whose work I'm very interested in.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: katlaughing
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 11:29 PM

Good for you, Richie!

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Richie
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 11:31 PM

Unfortunately I don't have access to his collection- and very little of it has been made available as far as I know.

I have two or three articles he wrote- that's all.

There's a few recordings on-line, and they're gr8.

Anyone have more info?

R-

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 05:12 AM

What an excellent resource! Many thanks. On a purely pedantic note, Child was an anthologist rather than a collector. Also, I don't know that Bascom Lunsford was a collector in the normal use of the term. Rather a performer who would note down a song if he liked the sound of it. But what the hell. It all helped to bring this magnificent heritage of ours to a wider public.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 06:16 AM

Is this for North American collectors, or for people who collected in North America?

James Madison Carpenter (1888 - 1983) a Harvard professor like Child, made a wonderful collection - soon to be published - in Great Britain, and it includes some North American songs as well.

Mark Wilson? Mike Yates (English but did great work in the Appalachians)?

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 07:01 AM

... and of course, Max Hunter. What a great site, Richie! I'll never get anything done today, now!

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 07:18 AM

Peter Bellamy learned quite a lot while touring there, I believe ~~ from some who would, I think, pass as 'traditional' carriers as well as from his revival friends. Would he count?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Lighter
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 07:52 AM

Gordon was among the two or three greatest American collectors of all, and the founder of the Archive of American Folklore at the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, most of what he published was in the columns of _Adventure_ magazine in the 1920s. It deserves to be reprinted.

Most of Gordon's collection is available on microfilm, through Interlibrary Loan.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: DebC
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 08:44 AM

Helen Hartness Flanders (May 19, 1890 – May 23, 1972) Wikipedia Site

She did most of her collecting in New England.

Debra Cowan

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 09:03 AM

A big yes to Max Hunter. Check out the collection:

Max Hunter's Folk Song Collection

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Stringsinger
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 09:42 AM

Archie Green ( June 29, 1917 – March 22, 2009) "Only A Miner", an important book on American folk music.

John Jacob Niles who wrote "Singing Soldiers" with the story that was the basis for John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches".

Norm Cohen, an alumnus of my high school, Fairfax H.S. who wrote "Long Steel Rail".
Oddly I never knew him although he was there about the time I was.

Bess Lomax Hawes with Bessie jones wrote an important folklore classic, "Step It Down",
ring games and chants from the Georgia Sea Islands. Bess was as equally important in my view, since I knew her and she was a mentor for me, as her brother Alan as her work at
the Library of Congress attests and her teaching the first folk guitar classes in the country, Boston, 1949 or so, and then at her home in Santa Monica, California and subsequently as U.C.L.A. Extension.

Kenny Goldstein from the University of Pennsylvania should be remembered for his work on coal mining lore.


Harry Smith for the definitive Folkways 6 record anthology which became a folksinger's must study.

Pete Seeger and Sam Hinton did a lot of scholarly work in this field as well.

Some of the early scholars, Jean Thomas, "The Traipsin' Woman" and Dorothy Scarborough, "Songcatcher in the Southern Mountains" and even Bascom Lamar Lunsford for his pioneering of the Ashville Folk Festival which Dick Greenhaus can tell you quite a bit about.

I would give a nod to Irwin Silber for his folk song anthologies of political import along with the Australian, John Greenway's "Songs of Social Protest".

There are many today who are doing great work due to technological advances in recording and collecting that should be remembered.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Mark Ross
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 10:55 AM

Sam Eskin, who made that wonderful recording of Haywire Mac in the '50's. And of course, George Korson;
from Wikipedia
George Korson is often cited as a pioneer collector of industrial folklore, and according to Michael Taft of the Library of Congress, he "may very well be considered the father of occupational folklore studies in the United States." He is also known for work in folk music studies, Pennsylvania folklore studies, Pennsylvania-German and ethnic studies, his leadership in the Pennsylvania Folklore Society, and induction as an original member of the prestigious Fellows of the American Folklore Society. In addition to writing and editing a number of influential books, he also issued his field recordings of coal miners on two LP records for the Library of Congress.
The first of six children, George Korson was brought by his parents Joseph and Rose to the United States in 1906 when he was seven years old. After a brief time in Brooklyn, New York, the family relocated to the coal-mining city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, when George was thirteen years old. Involved with his high school newspaper, he landed a job after high school as a reporter for the Wilkes-Barre Record. He briefly attended Columbia University to pursue studies in English and history in 1921-1922, but was forced to return home by his family's financial difficulties. Upon his return he joined the staff of the Pottsville Republican. Assigned to cover miners and their families in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, he began collecting songs and stories from them for special features and educated himself in folklore and folk song studies of the period and region. The collection was unprecedented because folklorists previously had concentrated mostly on rural Anglo-American balladry of mountaineers, cowboys, and lumbermen. His collection drew attention for showing emergent folklore of industrial life, labor movements, and immigrant traditions in a mixed-ethnic social context. In 1927, he issued his collections in book form as Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner, followed by publications that included narrative and customary traditions of coal miners, such as Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch (1960, winner of the Chicago Folklore Prize in that year), Coal Dust on the Fiddle: Songs and Stories of the Bituminous Industry (1943), and his essay on "coal miners' for Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (1949), which he edited. In 1936, he became director of the Pennsylvania Folk Festival, and he served three terms as president of the Pennsylvania Folklore Society. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957 to work on Black Rock, and garnered more national recognition for his folklore work with induction in 1960 into the American Folklore Society's honorary circle of Fellows. During the 1950s, Korson worked for the UMWA and the Red Cross in Washington, D.C. and travelled to Pennsylvania to add to his field collections in song and story. In 1965 he donated his collection of papers and recordings to the D. Leonard Corgan Library at King's College in Wilkes-Barre. In 2004, the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress announced the transfer of the collection to the Library. Korson's often strenuous field trips into the coal region were undertaken despite his battles with heart disease for much of his later life; he finally succumbed after his seventh heart attack on May 23, 1967.


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 12:45 PM

Louis Watson Chappell
Patrick Ward Gainer
Both were on the faculty at West Virginia Univerity.
Both have archives in WVU Library.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,SteveG
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 04:10 PM

Mary Eddie
Hudson
Gardner and Chickering.
Wolfe
Cox
Brown
A K Davies

I think having Niles on the list is an insult to the rest of the people on it. Just a personal opinion.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 09:04 PM

Wow,

I have alot of names here.

The Brown collection I am putting (and have put) on my site- it's awesome- it's going to take time to put all the music and coordinate vol- 2 & 4 and 3 & 5.

Brown also helped found the NC Folklore Society, which is a resource too.

Thanks for the Gordon info. I've been trying to get a hold of Adventure magazine but haven't yet- maybe they are on Amazon- but they'd be pricy if they were.

I'm familiar with both Louis Watson Chappell (John Henry) and Patrick Ward Gainer who was there when Josiah Combs was there.

There was some controversy with Gainer and Carey Woofter when that were student collectors at WV. Anyone know more about that?

I knew Archie Green- at least from some phone calls.

TY everyone-

In my view a collector can be a performer- Lunsford was a performer but his role documenting music through recordings was significant.

Mike Seeger and Jean Ritchie preserved tradtional music through their recordings, although Mike was more of a collector.

Richie

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: open mike
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 11:47 PM

There were several folks who collected and archived cowboy songs and ballads...

Jack Thorp--"Jack" Thorp (N. Howard Thorp, 1867-1940) collected cowboy songs and poems across the west for nearly 20 years, starting in the late 1800s.

Guy Logsdon--
http://guylogsdon.com/Guy Logsdon spent a year in Washington as a Smithsonian Fellow doing work on Woody Guthrie's music. 1990-91. He is
the author of The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing and Other Songs Cowboys Sing

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: open mike
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 12:00 AM

John Hartford also did a lot to collect and archive fiddle tunes...he had a large collection on his web site before he died...esp. fiddlers from Appalachia, as I recall. (these are tunes not necessarily songs and ballads...)

I believe some of the tune he collected came from
Kentucky fiddlers Ed Haley and JP Fraley.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Richie
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 01:07 AM

Here's some info on The Gordon Collections:

Manuscript and Recorded Collections Acquired and/or Indexed by Robert Winslow Gordon in the Archive of Folk Culture

Robert Winslow Gordon was the first head of the Archive of American Folk-Song, Library of Congress, 1928-1932.

Compiled by Joseph C. Hickerson and Gregory Jenkins

Arthur Mss.
See Odum-Arthur Mss.

Boyd Mss.
Ca. 125 songs contributed by T. B. Boyd, Alliance, North Carolina, 1926-27. Indexed. Original typescript in Archive.

Davids Mss.
Thirty-three songs contributed by Joanna Colcord, New York, New York, December 1929, obtained from R. M. Davids, Woodmere, Florida, ca. 1924. Indexed. Original manuscript and two typescript copies in Archive.

Frothingham Mss.
One hundred thirty-seven letters containing queries and songs contributed to Robert Frothingham, editor of the "Old Songs That Men Have Sung" column of Adventure Magazine, 1922-23. Indexed. Original letters and two typescript copies of texts in Archive.

Galt Mss.
Ca. 115 songs, presumably obtained from Nellie Galt, Louisville, Kentucky, ca. 1928, and corresponding recordings numbered D3 through D9 and E4. Indexed. Some of these recordings presumably in Archive, but no transcriptions.

Gordon Collection: California.
Ca. four hundred songs and groups of texts acquired by Robert Winslow Gordon while he lived in California, ca. 1920-23. The first part corresponds with cylinder recordings numbered 1-131. Indexed. Recordings and original manuscripts numbered ca. 240-400 in Archive.

Gordon Collection: Georgia.
Five hundred fifty-five songs acquired by Robert Winslow Gordon while he resided at a "field station" in Darien, Georgia, primarily during the years 1926-28. The first half corresponds with cylinder recordings numbered A203 through ca. A562. Indexed. Recordings only in Archive.

Gordon Collection: N.C.
Three hundred seventy-four songs acquired by Robert Winslow Gordon during a. field trip in North Carolina, October-December 1925. Texts 1-298 correspond with cylinder recordings A1-A202. Indexed. Recordings, one typescript of the whole, and two typescripts of 1-298 in Archive.

Gordon Mss.
Three thousand eight hundred fifty-eight letters containing songs and queries contributed to Robert Winslow Gordon, editor of the "Old Songs That Men Have Sung" column of Adventure Magazine/ 1923-29, plus additional letters and texts dating from 1911-32. Indexed. Original letters and two typescript copies of texts (one bound: M1629.G65) in Archive.

Hanford Mss.
Eight songs contributed by J. H. Hanford, Cleveland, Ohio, obtained from Esther Stover, Cleveland, January 12, 1930, who learned them from her father in Iowa City, Iowa. Indexed. Original typescript and two typescript copies in Archive.

Henry Mss.
Sixty-one southern Appalachian songs contributed by Mellinger Edward Henry, Ridgewood, New Jersey, 1928-29. Most texts and headnotes were subsequently published by Henry in the Journal of American Folklore and in Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938). Indexed. Original typescript and two typescript copies in Archive.

"Inferno" Collection.
Bawdy and related songs taken from the following collections: 128 from the Gordon Mss collection; 32 from the Gordon Collection: California; 13 from the Davids Mss.; and 1 from the Gordon Collection: Georgia. Not indexed. Original manuscripts and two typescript copies in Archive.

Johnson Mss.
Fifteen songs contributed by Guy B. Johnson, University of North Carolina, ca. 1929, written down by Walter Jordon of New York City, as he learned them in the South twenty years before. Not indexed. Original manuscript and two typescript copies in Archive.

McAdams thesis.
"The Folk-Songs of the American Negro -- A Collection of Unprinted Texts Preceded by a General Survey of the Traits of Negro Song," collected and annotated by Nettie F. McAdams (Master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1923). Ca. 140 songs. Indexed. Bound typescript in Archive (ML3556.M112).

McGinnis Mss.
Ca. 130 sea chanties and songs with music contributed by Joseph F. McGinnis, Brooklyn, New York, 1928-29. Indexed. Original manuscript returned in 1929.

McIlhenny Mss.
Three hundred twenty-five page manuscript entitled "Louisiana Negro Spirituals," containing 125 texts and tunes compiled by E. A. McIlhenny, Avery Island, Louisiana. Indexed. Microfilm copy in Music Division {Music 0025). See McIlhenny's Befo' de War Spirituals (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1933 [M1670.M15B4]).

Neal-Brown Co. Songs.
"Brown County Songs and Ballads," collected and annotated by Mabel Evangaline Neal (Master's thesis, Indiana University, 1926). One hundred eighty-three pages containing one hundred songs. Indexed. Bound photostat copy in Archive (M1629.N48B8).

Newcomb Mss.
Four hundred three-page photostat manuscript entitled "Songs My Mother Sang," containing 210 texts and 101 tunes from New Hope, Kentucky, contributed by Mary Newcomb, Louisville, Kentucky, 1929-30. Indexed. Not in Archive.

Newcomb Mss. (Additional).
One hundred two songs from Kentucky contributed by Mary Newcomb, Louisville, Kentucky, 1930-31. Indexed. One typescript copy in Archive.

Odum-Arhur Mss.
Eighty-three songs contributed by Howard W. Odum, University of North Carolina, July 10, 1929, obtained from J. D. Arthur of Tennessee. Indexed. Original typescript and two typescript copies in Archive.

Phillips Mss.
Twenty-two songs contributed by R. W. Phillips, Akeley, Minnesota, March 22, 1924. Indexed. Original manuscript and two typescript copies in Archive.

Purcell Mss.
One hundred eight songs with music contributed by Margaret Purcell, Greenwood, Virginia, ca. 1929. Indexed. Not in Archive.

Winger Mss.
Two collections of ca. 125 songs obtained from Betty Bush Winger, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, including black songs from Miss Winger's home in the Ozark region of Missouri. Manuscript II corresponds with ca. twenty-five recordings made by Gordon at Point Pleasant, 1931-32. Indexed, Typescripts in Archive; recordings presumably in Archive.

Additional R. W. Gordon manuscript collections may be located at the Randal V. Mills Memorial Archive of Northwest Folklore, University of Oregon.

For detailed biographical information on R. W. Gordon, see Debora Kodish's unbound Master's thesis entitled "Good Friends and Bad Enemies: Robert Winslow Gordon and American Folksong Scholarship," located in the Archive, and her book entitled Good Friends, Bad Enemies: Robert Winslow Gordon and the Study of American Folksong (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966 [ML423.G69K6 1986]}.

To obtain copies of the manuscripts and recordings in the Gordon collection and other collections in the Archive of Folk Culture, please request a copy of the "Photoduplication Service Price List" and the Guide to the Collections of Recorded Folk Music and Folklore in the Library of Congress.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,John
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 03:06 AM

Arthur Kyle Davis- collector and author of BALLADS OF VIRGINIA, volumes 1 & 2. Exceptionally good and exceptionally useful for the singer.

Chuck Perdu- UVA folklore demigod, successor to Davis.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,Richie
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 12:50 PM

Here's an except on Gordon from one or teh article on my site by Norm Cohen:

ROBERT WINSLOW GORDON came closer than most of his peers in gathering a national folksong garland. [1] "His collecting activities during the 1920s were prodigious. From 1923 to 1927, he edited a column in Adenture and accumulated a file of nearly four thousand letters, almost everyone with one or more song texts, from some two thousand correspondents across the country, Between 1922 and 1929, his field expeditions, the most ambitious up to that time, netted over one thousand cylinder recordings of traditional singers and a large quantity of additional unrecorded texts. A single three-month field trip in 1926 yieldedn early seven hundred items. His sea chantey collection held some 1300 songs, almost four hundred of which were from oral sources.[2]

As first archivist of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song, Gordon began building that repository with his own private collection as a nucleus. While archivist he acquired and indexed several major manuscript collections totalling some two thousand additional songs, and he enriched the Archive with an impressive collection of pulp publications, such as songsters, songbooks, and broadsides, that most other folksongs cholars of the day would have regarded as next to valueless.

Strange to say, Gordon never published a collection of his materials as did many of his contemporaries during the 1920s. Strangely, he never contributed a single article to any of the established folklore journals. Students of American folksong interested in his work have only his columns in Adventure, a series of articles in the New York Times, and an essay on Negro spirituals as the complete corpus of his publications.[3]

BTW one of Gordon's collections is available online. I'm thinking about getting the book on him.

Richie

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 06:48 PM

Dick & Susan & Max - and for a ribald tale captured in the raw John M.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 06:52 PM

Garg. ty, but not deserved. Promulgators, yes, collectors, no.
Of the relatively recent ones, don't forget John Cohen.

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Tradsinger
Date: 29 Sep 11 - 04:11 AM

How about Sandy Paton and Kennethe Goldstein?

Subject: RE: Important US Song & Ballad Collectors
From: Richie
Date: 01 Oct 11 - 12:35 AM

Hi,

I've included Robert Gordon and put several articles and one collection on my site:

http://bluegrassmessengers.com.temp.realssl.com/folk-songs-of-america-recording-and-liner-notes.aspx

The above link has a good bio by Kodish and you can listen to some songs from the collection. I haven't put all the MP3's on yet.

http://bluegrassmessengers.com.temp.realssl.com/robert-w-gordon--second-wreck-of-old-97.aspx

This is an article by Cohen to which I've added a couple MP3's,

Richie