Ellen Stekert (b. 1935) is an American academic, folklorist and musician. [1] [2] [3] [4] Stekert is a Professor Emerita of English at the University of Minnesota and a former president of the American Folklore Society. [5]
Stekert was born in New York City in 1935 and grew up in Great Neck on Long Island. [6] She survived polio as a child. [2] Stekert began performing folk music in high school and has recorded several albums. [1] [7] [8] [9]
Stekert attended Cornell University, where she took classes taught by the folklorist Harold Thompson, whom she also assisted in teaching. [10] As her interest in folklore grew, Stekert began doing fieldwork, collecting folksongs from traditional singers in upstate New York. [1] The songs Stekert collected from Ezra "Fuzzy" Barhight, a retired lumberjack from Cohocton, New York, she recorded and released as Songs of a New York Lumberjack in 1958. [11]
After graduating in philosophy at Cornell, Stekert began a Masters degree in folklore at Indiana University. [12] There she continued her fieldwork, collecting folk songs in Kentucky and Southern Indiana. On completion of her M.A., Stekert began research for a Ph.D. in folklore at Indiana. She completed her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia due to the attitude towards her work of her supervisor at Indiana, Richard Dorson. [10] Stekert completed her Ph.D. in 1965. [10]
Stekert's first teaching position was at Wayne State University in Detroit. There, Stekert built upon the pioneering work of Thelma G. James in the collection of urban folklore traditions. [13]
From there, she moved to the University of Minnesota where she was based for the rest of her academic career. [1]
Stekert served as president of the American Folklore Society for the year 1977. [14] [15] She was also appointed Minnesota's state folklorist. [1]
Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry. In 1876 he was named Harvard's first Professor of English, a position which allowed him to focus on academic research. It was during this time that he began work on the Child Ballads.
Paul Clayton was an American folksinger and folklorist who was prominent in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
Stith Thompson was an American folklorist: he has been described as "America's most important folklorist".
Edward Dawson (Sandy) Ives was an American folklorist. His work concentrated on the oral traditions of Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, particularly, as he said, "on local songs and their makers but also on cycles of tales about local heroes." He founded the Maine Folklore Center in 1992 and was its director until his retirement in 1998.
"Good Old Mountain Dew", sometimes called simply "Mountain Dew" or "Real Old Mountain Dew", is an Appalachian folk song composed by Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Scotty Wiseman. There are two versions of the lyrics, a 1928 version written by Lunsford and a 1935 adaptation by Wiseman. Both versions of the song are about moonshine. The 1935 version has been widely covered and has entered into the folk tradition becoming a standard.
"On the Trail of the Buffalo", also known as "The Buffalo Skinners" or "The Hills of Mexico", is a traditional American folk song in the western music genre. It tells the story of an 1873 buffalo hunt on the southern plains. According to Fannie Eckstorm, 1873 is correct, as the year that professional buffalo hunters from Dodge City first entered the northern part of the Texas panhandle. It is thought to be based on the song Canaday-I-O.
Martha Warren Beckwith was an American folklorist and ethnographer who was the first chair in folklore at any university or college in the U.S.
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".
Oscar Brand was a Canadian-born American folk singer-songwriter, radio host, and author. He released nearly 100 albums and composed hundreds of songs, among them Canadian patriotic songs, songs of the U.S. Armed Forces, sea shanties, presidential campaign songs over the years, and songs of protest. His discography is extensive.
John Greenway was born Johannes Groeneweg in Liverpool, England. He was a noted author, singer and scholar who focused on American folk songs of protest.
Kenneth S. Goldstein was an American folklorist, educator and record producer and a "prime mover" in the American Folk Music Revival.
Donald Knight Wilgus was an American folk song scholar and academic, most recognized for chronicling 'Hillbilly', blues music and Irish-American song and his contribution to ballad scholarship.
Prof Harold William ("Tommy") Thompson FRSE FSA DLitt (1891–1964) was an American folklorist and historian. He was also a competent musician, specialising in playing the organ.
Ruth Rubin was a Canadian-American folklorist, singer, poet, and scholar of Yiddish culture and music.
Janie Hunter was an American singer and storyteller who worked to preserve Gullah culture and folkways in her home of Johns Island, South Carolina. She received a 1984 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to folk art and traditions.
Thelma Gray James (1899–1988) was a folklorist and lecturer. She was a pioneer of the collection and study of urban folk traditions and was elected president of the American Folklore Society in 1949.
MacEdward Leach (1892-1967) was an American folklorist, whose work "greatly influenced the development of folklore as an academic discipline".
Eleanor Hague was an American folklorist and musicologist, who specialized in the traditional music of Latin America.
Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner was an American folklorist, educator, and English professor. Gardner was co-founder with Thelma G. James of the Wayne State University Folklore Archive, one of the oldest and largest collections of urban folklore in the United States. Gardner's 1937 book Folklore from the Schoharie Hills is considered to have been groundbreaking.
Grace Otis Partridge Smith was an American folklorist and educator. She studied American regional folk cultures, especially that of "Egypt", a local nickname of Southern Illinois.
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