Thanks for the suggestions. I am in the US, for those who were concerned. I know about half of the songs already mentioned, but I have a bad memory so sometimes I only know the 1st verse or so.

I collect public domain mp3s of all musical styles and that is how I usually hear older stuff. There is an awesome folk shop in town, and there's also a folk festival every year that I want to check out. And of course the library is a good source for folk/traditional music information.

Catlin said: Folk songs and music are "the peoples music".
-of course they are. I meant "folk" as a broad sense of the term (blues, spirituals, Stephen Foster songs, other countries songs, etc), not just the folk-style singer-songwriter genre.