"St. James Infirmary" is an American blues and jazz standard that emerged, like many others, from folk traditions. Louis Armstrong brought the song to lasting fame through his 1928 recording, on which Don Redman is named as composer; later releases credit "Joe Primrose," a pseudonym used by musician manager, music promoter and publisher Irving Mills. The melody is eight bars long, unlike songs in the classic blues genre, where there are 12 bars. It is in a minor key, and has a 4
4 time signature, but has also been played in 3
4.
Anthology of American Folk Music is a three-album compilation, released in 1952 by Folkways Records, of eighty-four recordings of American folk, blues and country music made and issued from 1926 to 1933 by a variety of performers. The album was compiled from experimental film maker Harry Smith's own personal collection of 78 rpm records.
David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street".
Paul Clayton was an American folksinger and folklorist who was prominent in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
Dust Bowl Ballads is an album by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. It was released by Victor Records, in 1940. All the songs on the album deal with the Dust Bowl and its effects on the country and its people. It is considered to be one of the first concept albums. It was Guthrie's first commercial recording and the most successful album of his career.
"He Was a Friend of Mine" is a traditional folk song in which the singer laments the death of a friend. Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax was the first to collect the song, in 1939, describing it as a "blues" that was "a dirge for a dead comrade."
Samuel Barclay Charters IV was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He was a widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz. He also wrote fiction.
Family Tree is a 2007 compilation album of home and demo recordings by English singer/songwriter Nick Drake. The album is notable for the appearance of Nick's sister Gabrielle on one track and the contribution of two original songs performed by Nick's mother, Molly Drake. Recorded before the release of his first album, Five Leaves Left, most of the tracks on the album circulated on bootlegs in the years before the official release from the Drake family. The album reached #35 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart, making it Drake's first album to chart in America. The recordings are all from the 1960s, consisting of home recordings by Nick and his father Rodney in Tanworth-in-Arden, England; demos recorded by Nick in Aix en Provence, France; and 1968 demos recorded at Cambridge University by Nick's later frequent collaborator Robert Kirby.
"Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee" and other variants, is a popular American folk song about the murder of Billy Lyons by "Stag" Lee Shelton, in St. Louis, Missouri, at Christmas 1895. The song was first published in 1911 and first recorded in 1923, by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, titled "Stack O' Lee Blues". A version by Lloyd Price reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959.
"Dink's Song" is an American folk song played by many folk revival musicians such as Pete Seeger, Fred Neil, Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and Cisco Houston as well as more recent musicians like Jeff Buckley. The song tells the story of a woman deserted by her lover when she needs him the most.
Just Dave Van Ronk is a 1964 album by folk/blues singer Dave Van Ronk. It has not been released on CD.
Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger is a studio album by American folksinger Dave Van Ronk, released in November 1962 on the Prestige International label.
The Folkways Years, 1959–1961 is a compilation album of songs by Dave Van Ronk released in 1991.
Van Ronk Sings is an album by American folksinger Dave Van Ronk, released in July 1961.
"The House of the Rising Sun" is a traditional folk song, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues". It tells of a person's life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans. Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid the same fate. The most successful commercial version, recorded in 1964 by the British rock band The Animals, was a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart and in the US and Canada. As a traditional folk song recorded by an electric rock band, it has been described as the "first folk rock hit".
The Unfortunate Rake is an album released by Folkways Records in 1960, containing 20 different variations from what is sometimes called the 'Rake' cycle of ballads. The album repeats a claim made by Phillips Barry in 1911 that the song is Irish in origin, a claim made on the basis of a fragment called "My Jewel My Joy" collected in Ireland in 1848. The song is incorrectly said to have been heard in Dublin, when the cited source states it was collected and had been heard in Cork. However, the notes to the album make no mention of what is now thought to be the oldest written version of the song, one called "The Buck's Elegy".
Elijah Wald is an American folk blues guitarist, music journalist, and a blues, pop, and cultural music historian. He is a 2002 Grammy Award winner for his liner notes to The Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box: The Journey of Chris Strachwitz.
Ronald Clyne (1925–2006) was an American designer and graphic artist. He is best known for creating over 500 covers for Folkways Records between 1948 and 1986.
Moses Asch was an American recording engineer and record executive. He founded Asch Records, which then changed its name to Folkways Records when the label transitioned from 78 RPM recordings to LP records. Asch ran the Folkways label from 1948 until his death in 1986. Folkways was very influential in bringing folk music into the American cultural mainstream. Some of America's greatest folk songs were originally recorded for Asch, including "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie and "Goodnight Irene" by Lead Belly. Asch sold many commercial recordings to Verve Records; after his death, Asch's archive of ethnic recordings was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, and released as Smithsonian Folkways Records.
Jeff Place is the Grammy Award-winning writer and producer and a curator and senior archivist with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He has won three Grammy Awards and six Indie Awards.
