Kossoy Sisters | |
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Born | New York City, New York, U.S. | May 11, 1938
Origin | Greenwich Village, New York City |
Genres | Folk |
Instrument(s) | Vocal |
Years active | 1956–1960s, 1981, 2002–2003 |
Members | Irene Saletan, Ellen Christenson (born Irene and Ellen Kossoy) |
Website | KossoySisters.com |
The Kossoy Sisters are identical twin [1] sisters (Irene Saletan and Ellen Christenson) who performed American folk and old-time music. Irene sang mezzo-soprano vocal, and Ellen supplied soprano harmony, with Irene on guitar and Ellen playing the five-string banjo in a traditional up-picking technique. Their performances were notable examples of close harmony singing. They began performing professionally in their mid-teens and are esteemed as a significant part of the popular folk music movement that started in the mid-1950s.
When they were 17, the Kossoy Sisters recorded the album Bowling Green , which features close harmonies, with instrumental accompaniment by Erik Darling. [2] The two were introduced to a new audience when their version of "I'll Fly Away" from this album was used in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? . [3] Another song from the same album, the Kossoys' version of "Single Girl, Married Girl", is heard on the soundtrack of the 2014 film release Obvious Child . [4]
The sisters performed at the first Newport Folk Festival in July 1959 [5] [6] and returned to Newport to perform again in 2012, over 50 years later. Producer Harold Leventhal included them in the March 17, 1956 Bound for Glory tribute/benefit concert at New York's Pythian Hall [7] [8] for the hospitalized Woody Guthrie and his children. [9] For an overflow audience of more than a thousand, [10] they sang three of Guthrie's songs, [11] exhibiting "sweet harmonizing," as Pete Seeger later recounted. [12] In 1971 and other occasions they performed at the Fox Hollow Folk Festival in Petersburgh, New York. [13]
Irene and her former husband Tony Saletan performed together, during their marriage, as Tony and Irene Saletan. In 1964, the couple also joined with Jackie Washington Landrón to form the Boston Folk Trio, [14] to present school concerts through the non-profit Young Audiences Arts for Learning. The Saletans released an album together, Folk Songs and Ballads, in 1970 on Folk-Legacy Records. Irene and Tony also released a seven-inch vinyl recording of four songs for the Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company, titled The Ballad of Boston and Other New England Folk Tunes, [15] and Revolutionary Tea (with Irene listed as one of the Yankee Tunesmiths), on Old North Bridge Records, 1975. [16]
A second Kossoy Sisters CD, Hop on Pretty Girls, appeared in 2002 on the Living Folk label. [17] A noncommercial CD, Kossoy Sisters, is available from Public Radio Station WBUR in Boston. It is a recording of an interview with the twins on February 23, 2003, during their promotional tour for "Hop on Pretty Girls." [2] Over the years, the sisters also made live appearances together from time to time. They toured California in 1981 and have appeared in the Boston area, Washington DC, New York, Pinewoods Camp, various venues in the St. Louis area, and numerous other locations.[ citation needed ]
Irene and Ellen Kossoy were born on May 11, 1938, in New York City. The twins began singing together at about the age of six, in imitation of harmonies created in the home by their mother and aunt. At 15, they attended a summer camp at which Pete Seeger and other well-known folk singers often performed, and they developed a life-long attachment to the genre. They quickly discovered the bustling folk music scene in the Greenwich Village section of New York City and mingled with the people who congregated in Washington Square Park. [6]
The Kossoys attended local schools in New York City and went on to graduate from Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois. Soon after completion of their formal studies, each of the sisters married. Ellen moved to St. Louis and Irene settled in the Boston area. Ellen has a son and a daughter, and Irene has a son and a daughter. Each of the sisters later divorced, after which they again became housemates. As of 2022, they were retired and living together in Guatemala. [18]
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter and composer who was one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He inspired several generations both politically and musically with songs such as "This Land Is Your Land".
Peter Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes.
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City originally consisting of Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Founded in 1948, the group sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads. The group sold millions of records at the height of their popularity, including the first folk song to reach No. 1 on popular music charts, their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene." Despite their popularity, the Weavers were blacklisted during much of the 1950s.
"This Land Is Your Land" is one of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940 in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Its melody is based on a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it "This Land Is Your Land".
Erik Darling was an American singer-songwriter and a folk music artist. He was an important influence on the folk scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.
Harold Leventhal was an American music manager. He died in 2005 at the age of 86. Leventhal's career began as a song plugger for Irving Berlin and then Benny Goodman. While working for Goodman, he connected with a new artist, Frank Sinatra, booking him as a singer for a Benny Goodman event. Leventhal later managed The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Alan Arkin, Judy Collins, Theodore Bikel, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Mary Travers, Tom Paxton, Don McLean and many others, and promoted major concert events in the genre, thus playing a significant role in the popularization and influence of American folk music in the 1950s and 1960s.
"I'll Fly Away" is a hymn written in 1929 by Albert E. Brumley and published in 1932 by the Hartford Music company in a collection titled Wonderful Message. Brumley's writing was influenced by the 1924 secular ballad, "The Prisoner's Song".
The Clearwater Festival is a music and environmental summer festival and America's oldest and largest annual festival of its kind. This unique event has hosted over 15,000 people on a weekend in June for more than three decades. All proceeds benefit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit environmental organization.
"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" is a traditional African-American spiritual first noted during the American Civil War at St. Helena Island, one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. The best-known recording was released in 1960 by the U.S. folk band The Highwaymen; that version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single.
Precious Friend is a double album by Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger with Shenandoah. The album, Guthrie's final record on Warner Bros., is a compilation of songs from when Guthrie and Seeger toured together. John Pilla produced the recording.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Contemporary folk music refers to a wide variety of genres that emerged in the mid 20th century and afterwards which were associated with traditional folk music. Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. The transition was somewhat centered in the US and is also called the American folk music revival. Fusion genres such as folk rock and others also evolved within this phenomenon. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.
Folkways: A Vision Shared – A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly is a 1988 album featuring songs by Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly interpreted by leading folk, rock, and country recording artists. It won a Grammy Award the same year.
Best of the Vanguard Years is an album by American folk musician Ramblin' Jack Elliott, released in 2000.
Roger Sprung was an American banjo player and teacher best known for introducing authentic bluegrass banjo picking styles to the folk music community in the north and for the eclectic manner in which he adapted bluegrass banjo techniques to music of other genres. His 1963 album Progressive Bluegrass may have been the first use of that title, later applied to a subgenre of bluegrass music by him and others.
Anthony D. "Tony" Saletan is an American folk singer, children's instructional television pioneer, and music educator, who is responsible for the modern rediscovery, in the mid-1950s, of two of the genre's best-known songs, "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" and "Kumbaya". In 1955, he was the first performer to appear on Boston's educational television station, WGBH. In 1969, Saletan was the first musical guest to appear on Sesame Street.
Bowling Green is a 1956 album by the Kossoy Sisters. The album consists of traditional folk songs. It features arrangements in a tight, two-part vocal harmony, with additional instrumental accompaniment by Erik Darling. In 2000, the third cut, "I'll Fly Away", was featured in the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, although the movie's best-selling, Grammy-winning soundtrack album used a different version. Another song from the Bowling Green album, the Kossoys' version of the Carter Family's "Single Girl, Married Girl", is heard on the soundtrack of the 2014 film Obvious Child. Originally released on Tradition Records, the album was re-released as a CD by Rykodisc in 1996.
Margot Mayo was an American dance instructor, educator, and collector of folk music.