https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/arts/music/joe-hickerson-dead.html

Joe Hickerson, 89, Dies; Helped Preserve America’s Folk Song Tradition

He was both the longtime archivist of folk music at the Library of Congress and a widely respected singer and songwriter.
by Clay Risen

Joe Hickerson, a singer and songwriter who as the lead archivist for folk music at the Library of Congress for more than 25 years helped expand and preserve America’s trove of field songs, sea shanties and other traditional tunes, died on Aug. 17 in Portland, Ore. He was 89. His partner, Ruth Bolliger, confirmed the death, at a care facility.

Mr. Hickerson arrived at the Library of Congress in 1963, fresh from Indiana University’s renowned folklore studies program. It was the height of the folk revival, and the library, which already had a massive collection of recordings and documents, became the go-to resource for thousands of performers, songwriters and historians.

He quickly became their guide through the ages, making sense of the thicket of oral histories and competing genealogies that populated the archive. If someone wanted to know the real story behind the evolution of a centuries-old Irish dirge, he was the one to call on.

Mr. Hickerson himself embodied an archive, having memorized hundreds of traditional songs from around the world. He knew the lyrics and the melodies, the history of each song and the specific folkways from which the songs emerged.

As a performer, he played guitar and sang in a stripped-down style. Calling himself “vintage pre-plugged paleo-acoustic” he preferred to sing before small groups; his concerts became conversations with the audience.
“I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to do it from both ends,” he told The Seattle Times in 2007, referring to his dual role as archivist and singer. “One scholar said to be able to do that, you must have a split personality. I think they’re both fun.”
Like many folk singers of his generation, Mr. Hickerson idolized Pete Seeger. After hearing Mr. Seeger perform his “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” in 1955, he wrote two more verses, which Mr. Seeger later incorporated into the song. The verses are:

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

and

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Joseph Charles Hickerson was born on Oct. 20, 1935, in Lake Forest, Ill. When he was 3, his family moved to New Haven, Conn., where his father, J. Allen Hickerson, was the chairman of the education department of New Haven State Teachers College (today Southern Connecticut State University). His mother, Elizabeth (Hogg) Hickerson, worked in the student records office at Yale.

A guitar player since he was a child, Joe first discovered folk music after hearing Mr. Seeger play at a rally for the Progressive Party during the 1948 presidential campaign. He studied physics at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he immersed himself in the school’s budding folk-music scene. He was the first president of the Oberlin Folk Song Club, helped organize the college’s first folk festival and had his own group, the Folksmiths. He graduated in 1957; a year later, the group released an album, “We’ve Got Some Singing to Do,” which contained the first known commercial recording of “Kumbaya” (listed as “Kum Ba Yah” on the album).

Mr. Hickerson’s two marriages ended in divorce. Along with Ms. Bolliger, he is survived by his son, Michael, and a grandson.

He enrolled at Indiana University in 1957, intent on receiving a doctorate in folklore and ethnomusicology. While there, he wrote a 1,300-item annotated bibliography of North American Indian music. But the pull of archival work led him to leave with a master’s degree in 1963, the same year he joined the Library of Congress. While working at the library, he recorded the albums “Folk Songs and Ballads Sung by Joe Hickerson With a Gathering of Friends” (1970) and a two-volume collection of traditional songs, “Drive Dull Care Away” (1976). He also helped found the Folklore Society of Greater Washington.

Mr. Hickerson retired from the library in 1998 but remained active as a performer and lecturer in the Washington area until 2013, when he moved to Portland to be near Ms. Bolliger.

Whether sitting with his guitar or standing behind a podium, Mr. Hickerson liked to make the same point: Folk music was music in its purest form, meant to communicate, entertain and lift up.
“In the beginning there were the folk, and they sang songs,” he said in an interview for “Singing Out: An Oral History of America’s Folk Music Revivals” (2010), by David King Dunaway and Molly Beer. “They did not sing folk songs; they did not know that term. They sang songs. Along comes the collector, who collects the songs and calls them folk songs.”

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