Folkways Records

Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.

The Folkways Records & Service Co., and its music publishing subsidiary Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., were founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Harold Courlander was editor of the Folkways Ethnic Library at the time and is credited with coming up with the name "Folkways" for the label. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in the world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In December 1950, Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. was acquired by Howard S. Richmond. In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records. The Folkways catalog includes traditional and contemporary music from around the world as well as poetry, spoken word, language instruction, and field recordings of people and nature. Folkways was an early supporter of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly, who formed the center of the American folk music revival.

Folkways influenced a generation of folk singers by releasing old-time music from the 1920s and 1930s, such as Dock Boggs, Clarence Ashley, and contemporary performers like the New Lost City Ramblers. The Anthology of American Folk Music appeared on Folkways, as did the accompanying album to The Country Blues by Samuel Charters. Folkways was one of the earliest companies to release albums of world music, including the Music of the World's Peoples collection edited by Henry Cowell. It also released many spoken word albums, and other unusual repertoire. The albums came with a pull-out leaflet containing extensive liner notes.

(Read more at Wikipedia.)

Links To Peel[]

John Peel began his record collection in the 1950s, and as it developed he became more interested in jazz, blues and folk music. In those days LP releases were relatively rare, and to obtain albums which interested him he had to rely on specialist record shops which sold imported records or limited edition releases. Folkways was one of the labels stocked by these shops, and it is quite possible that some of the records he mentioned buying in his youth (in Margrave Of The Marshes and in various interviews later in his career) were Folkways releases by artists like Lightnin' Hopkins, Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee - which may explain why a few tracks by Guthrie and "Sonny and Brownie" appeared in his playlists of the 1980s and '90s, even if he had pointed out that they weren't among his very favourite artists.

Folkways albums began to feature in Peel's playlists during the run of his Night Ride show (1968-69). Writing in International Times in April 1968, he wrote: "While in Americky I lost track of country blues things and I'm doing my best to get back into it again. Bearing in mind the huge influence that this music has had on just about all of the worthwhile sounds being made to-day it would be well to listen to these rare old records"[1]. And although Peel's remarks didn't just apply to Folkways releases - Night Ride included blues reissues on other labels such as Yazoo Records and Saydisc's subsidiary labels Roots and Matchbox - the label did issue a number of anthologies supervised by blues scholar Samuel Charters, as well as LPs by two artists who were played on Night Ride; his all-time favourite Lightnin' Hopkins and "songster" Elizabeth Cotten, whose song "Freight Train"[2] had been a UK chart hit in 1962 in a skiffle version by Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey.

But Peel's interest in Folkways recordings wasn't limited to its blues catalogue. One of his favourite poets was Kenneth Patchen, a pioneer of poetry with jazz accompaniment who made several LPs for the label. Peel seemed to prefer him to the Beat Generation poets. Peel played tracks by Patchen on Night Ride and praised him in International Times. As late as 1994, one of his shows included a poem by Patchen. In issue 37 of International Times he wrote:

It seems that Folkways, through Transatlantic, are repackaging much of their early and indispensible material. I have heard and enjoyed such things as "Hell-bound and heaven-sent" by Big Joe Williams; "Shake Sugaree" by Elizabeth Cotton[sic]; "Poor Boy" - Woody Guthrie and "The High Lonesome Sound" of Roscoe Holcomb - a favourite of Andy Roberts too.[3]

In 1964 Folkways came to an agreement with Verve Records, the label founded by jazz impresario Norman Granz, and the Verve Folkways label[4] came into being, with the aim of reflecting the popularity of folk music in the US at that time. It issued albums by folk stalwarts such as Dave Van Ronk and Odetta, but the arrival of the Beatles on the music scene brought the American folk boom to an end, and Verve began to sign more contemporary artists with a folk background, like Tim Hardin and Richie Havens, as well as some acts who had no connection with folk, like the Velvet Underground, the Mothers of Invention and the Blues Project. To reflect this, the label dropped the Folkways tag for the subsidiary imprint and changed its name in 1967 to the more forward-looking Verve Forecast, although some dicographies still list records from this period as being on Verve Folkways. Peel liked many of the label's new releases, and played many tracks from Verve LPs on his shows, but they bore little relation to the Folkways LPs he had acquired in earlier times.

After Folkways was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, its albums became easier to obtain. One of the reasons Peel lost touch with the label while in the US was because its records were so hard to find there. Most were never released in the UK, the exceptions being a few albums issued in the UK on the Topic label in the late 1950s, and a number of folk and blues LPs reissued on Transatlantic's budget label Xtra some years later (otherwise Transatlantic were the label's UK distributors). From the 1980s on, Peel began to play selections from its back catalogue, concentrating mainly on blues and early white country music.

Despite turning down Bob Dylan (who recorded a couple of tracks for a compilation album of topical songs, under the name of Blind Boy Grunt), Folkways did record some contemporary artists, like Peel favourite Michael Hurley who made his first LP for the label. Folkways also issued an album by Bahamian guitarist and Andy Kershaw favourite Joseph Spence, which was a major influence on Ry Cooder. In later years, however, it bcame best known for its anthologies, notably Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, issued in 1952 and still available. The collection was rounded off by a fourth volume which was eventually issued on John Fahey's Revenant label.^[1]

From the Peel record collection, Joe Boyd and Brian Eno both chose the compilation The Rural Blues, assembled by Samuel Charters, originally released in 1960 on RBF Records and re-released on Smithsonian Folkways many years later, for their personal Record Boxes.

Plays[]

(Plays on Peel shows of records on the Folkways label by individual artists.)

1960s

29 May 1968: Kenneth Patchen: 23rd Street Runs Into Heaven (album - Kenneth Patchen Reads His Love Poems)
29 May 1968: Langston Hughes: Pres. John F. Kennedy - FH 5802 (7" - Panorama Of Negro History (From 1492 To Today))
05 June 1968: Kenneth Patchen: The Sea Is Awash With Roses (album - Kenneth Patchen Reads His Love Poems)
31 July 1968: Elizabeth Cotten: Till We Meet Again (album - Vol. 2: Shake Sugaree)
14 August 1968: Elizabeth Cotten: Look And Live, My Brother (album - Vol. 2: Shake Sugaree
09 April 1969: Elizabeth Cotten: Till We Meet Again (album - Vol. 2: Shake Sugaree)
17 September 1969: Lightnin' Hopkins: Fan It (LP - Lightnin' Hopkins)

1970s

04 April 1972: Mike Hurley: You Get Down By The Pool Hall Clickety Clack (LP – First Songs)
18 April 1972: Michael Hurley: Raven Rock (LP – First Songs) (his debut album, issued in 1964 when he was known as Mike Hurley)
25 April 1972: Mike Hurley: I Like My Wine (LP – First Songs)
06 June 1972: Michael Hurley: Just A Bum (LP – First Songs)
12 September 1972: Six and Seven-Eighths String Band Of New Orleans: Original Dixieland Rag (LP - The Six and Seven-Eighths String Band of New Orleans)

1980s

05 February 1985: Lightnin' Hopkins: Fan It (LP – Fan It)
07 September 1987: 6 & 7/8s String Band Of New Orleans: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band One Step (LP) Folkways
15 September 1987: Six And Seven-Eighths String Band Of New Orleans: Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (LP - Volume One Of Music U.S.A.)
18 April 1988: George Britton: Unser Saiwi (10" - Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Songs)

1990s

25 July 1990: Woody Guthrie: Lost John (album - Struggle) Smithsonian Folkways
04 August 1990 (BFBS): Woody Guthrie: Lost John (LP-Struggle) (Smithsonian Folkways)
20 August 1990: Woody Guthrie: The Ludlow Massacre (Album: Struggle) Smithsonian Folkways
26 May 1991: The Country Gentlemen: Little Bessie (LP - Sing And Play Folk Songs And Bluegrass)
18 February 1994: Kenneth Patchen: Poem (may well be from his Folkways recordings)
02 March 1996 (BFBS): Brownie McGhee And Sonny Terry: 'If You Lose Your Money (LP-Brownie McGhee And Sonny Terry Sing)'
22 September 1996: Lightnin' Hopkins: Come And Go Home With Me (LP - Lightnin' Hopkins)

2000s

29 June 2000: Country Gentlemen: The Fields Have Turned Brown (LP - Sing & Play Folk Songs & Bluegrass)
02 October 2002: Roscoe Holcomb - Combs Hotel Burned Down (LP - The High Lonesome Sound)
03 June 2004: Roscoe Holcomb: Coney Isle (LP-The High Lonesome Sound)