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After researching, learning, and polishing songs found on early recordings of country music, multi-instrumentalist Mike Seeger laid down these rousing tracks in 1962 at his home in New Jersey. His... more

Recorded during the height of anti-war protests in America, this 14-track collection focuses on the issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War. Contributing songs and performances are Frederick... more

Mike, Peggy, Barbara, and Penny Seeger join forces on this album of folk songs, which includes ballads, lullabies, and ring games. Particularly interesting is the accompanying essay by musicologist... more

In the mid-1940s, Elizabeth Cotten (1895-1987) chanced to meet composer Ruth Crawford Seeger at a department store. They began to talk, and Seeger soon hired Cotten to work in the Seeger household.... more

Cisco Houston's smooth, spirited voice croons songs from the railways, mines, and the open range on this collection of his favorite ballads. In the tradition of composing songs to tell stories,... more

Their 1958 eponymous LP includes Dallas Rag; East Virginia; Take a Drink on Me; Brown's Ferry Blues; Roving Gambler; Davy, Davy; Tom Cat Blues; Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, and more great old songs... more

Another classic recording from Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon finds the powerhouse blues duo playing a collection of fine songs. Pete Seeger joins the guys for two tracks on the album: "Stew ball" and... more

Born in Brooklyn in 1936, Dave Van Ronk was Bob Dylan's "first New York guru," writes Dylan's biographer Robert Shelton. "Dave Van Ronk was the musical mayor of MacDougal Street," Shelton continues,... more

The Youngbloods and Holy Modal Rounders covered songs from this 1964 Folkways LP, the debut by this Pennsylvania-born singer-songwriter (whose unconventional singing and songs made him a hero in '60s... more

Released in 1966, two years after the "Freedom Summer" of 1964, when civil rights activists concentrated their energy on registering black voters in the South, this album explicitly addresses the... more

Icon of the American folk music revival Pete Seeger teaches folk guitar through a detailed written instruction guide (included in the liner notes) which accompanies in-depth teaching and classic folk... more

Von Schmidt and Cahn's musical friendship grew out of ill-fated road trips, rebelliousness, and of course, a shared love for the blues. As Cahn writes, "What we had in common was a feeling about... more

The story is basically this: A soldier is dying, evidently of venereal disease he contracted from a young woman, and he requests a funeral. Hear how this story has been spun over centuries into a... more

Blacklisted actor and tireless social activist Will Geer toured government work camps with Guthrie and Burl Ives long before Geer and Guthrie released this 1956 LP. They tell it like it is the songs... more

The McIntosh County Shouters, 1993 recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, are known for their compelling fusion of dance, call-and-response singing, and... more

Singer, activist, and founder of Paredon Records (now also under the stewardship of Smithsonian Folkways), Barbara Dane was born in 1929 and was still going strong last time we spoke with her. This... more

Dubbed a "trio of insidious crusaders for 'old-timey' music" by Sing Out!'s Pete Welding, The New Lost City Ramblers helped bring old-time music to wider audiences through their performances as a... more

Buell Kazee (1900-1976) grew up playing the five-string banjo in the traditional flailing style ("thrashing" style, as he called it). As a teenager, he began to study religion and ended up spending... more

On a hot August day in 1958 in Delaney, Arkansas, a group of local musicians joined David Mangurian and Don Hill for an impromptu recording session in a bare-walled room at the back of the local... more

Archibald Camp had been playing the banjo for 70 years when he wrote to Folkways Records in January 1961, offering a tape of his banjo playing for their consideration. Camp was one of the few... more

Malvina Reynolds writes, "Story telling and making rhymes have always been the thing with me.... Some years ago I got a guitar and was up to my neck in the folk songs rediscovered by the great... more

The fieldwork for this album sought to explore sources that would lead listeners back to the decades between the emancipation of the slaves in 1863 and 1900. The collector, Frederick Ramsey, Jr..,... more

If you're looking for U.S. presidential campaign songs and political ditties dating from 1800 to 1950, you'll find them on this collection, which includes a "Yankee Doodle" spin-off urging "Fair and... more