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FOLK LINKS (AUDIO) Talking Blues All Things Considered, Friday, March 23, 2001: Talking Blues is a song form that can trace its surface roots to a recording by the Greenville Trio in April of 1926. Its lineage goes much deeper -- to spirituals -- and an odd combination of the religious and the profane. The talking blues have served as a vehicle for social commentary for Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and hundreds of others. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade -- creator of the stage show, Banjo Dancing, and a contributor to numerous folklore journals -- traces the history of the talking blues. (6:00) The Best of Broadside All Things Considered Tuesday, September 12, 2000: Meredith Ochs reviews The Best of Broadside, a collection of five compact discs filled with 89 songs from folk music legends like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Janis Ian and Phil Ochs. The CD's are contained in a spiral-bound book based on the bi-weekly folk music journal of the 1960's, Broadside magazine. (8:00) The Best of Broadside five CD set is from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, catalog number SFW CD 40130. NPR 100: The 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century: Throughout the year 2000, NPR presented the stories behind 100 of the most important American musical works of the 20th century. These special features cover music from a wide variety of genres -- classical, jazz, rock'n'roll, country, R&B, musical theatre and film scores. NPR 100 stories aired on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and NPR's weekend news magazine programs. Dave Van Ronk Interview 45-minutes of conversation and music from Dave Van Ronk, recorded in 1985 for Conneticut Public Radio on Dave Van Ronk Unauthorized Pete Seeger Talk of the Nation Thursday, October 03, 1996 Tune in to Talk of the Nation for a conversation with singer, songwriter, folklorist and activist Pete Seeger. Since the 1940s when he helped form the Almanac Singers to the present day, he's been an institution in American folk music. Pete Seeger Weekend All Things Considered Sunday, May 03, 1998 Daniel speaks with folk singer Pete Seeger and producer, Jim Musselman about the long history of Seeger's music and about the importance of music for social change. The new CD Where have all the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger" (Appleseed Records) features Seeger songs performed by a wide range of musicians, including Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen. (12:15) Voices from the Dustbowl Lost and Found Sound Produced by Barrett Golding Edited by Jeff Rogers In 1940 two sound recordists, Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin, traveled to the California central valley-- the flat, agricultural land that Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. There, hundreds of refugees from Arkansas and Oklahoma had gathered- an exodus from their drought ridden and Depression ravaged homelands. Dispatched by the Library of Congress, Todd and Sonkin set off to create an audio oral history of the lives of these Dust Bowl refugees. Many of the refugee farmers made their new homes in Migratory Labor Camps, created for them by the Farm Security Administration. There, despite great poverty and displacement, they created a vibrant community. The sounds of their new lives-- the storytelling, love ballads, debates and square dance calls of a people in transit-- were captured in these evocative recordings by Todd, Sonkin and a fifty pound "Presto" disc recorder. The Pan American Blues All Things Considered Friday, November 24, 2000 Lost and Found Sound honors the 75th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry with a story about WSM radio in Nashville, where the Opry got its start, and the Pan American passenger train. The regular passing of the Pan American was broadcast on WSM. And the train inspired singer/songwriter Deford Bailey, who performed on the night the Opry got its name. (12:30) LYRICS LINKS Roger McGuinn's Folk Den Lyrics and soundfiles Digital Tradition Folksong Database at Mudcat Cafe DOWNLOAD LATEST EDITION (Fall 1999) The Max Hunter Collection is an archive of almost 1600 Ozark Mountain folk songs, recorded between 1956 and 1976. Townes Van Zandt lyrics This page contains links to lyrics to some of Townes Van Zandt's songs. Phil Ochs Lyric Index Steve Earle Lyrics Dick Gaughan's Website African-American sheet music: 1850 - 1920 This collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period. Folk Music of Britain, Ireland & America Airs, Anthems, Ballads, Canons, Ditties, Folksongs, Hymns and War Songs Australian Folk Songs Sixteenth Century Ballads: A work in progress... Order available recordings by Bob Dylan or other artists right from this site: You are Visitor No. according to Web Counter

FOLK, BLUES & COUNTRY ROOTS AND INFLUENCES
Table of Contents

• Bob Dylan on performing in Greenwich Village coffehouses...
  

  Bert Kleinman Interview, 1984
  (RealAudio, 924 KB)

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QUESTION: So then you heard of Guthrie and he changed your life?
BOB DYLAN: I heard of Odetta first...
QUESTION: Then you heard of Guthrie and he changed your life?
BOB DYLAN: Then I heard of Josh White...
QUESTION: Then you heard of Guthrie...
BOB DYLAN: Then I heard about those riots in San Francisco... an' I missed out on meeting James Dean so I decided to go meet Woody Guthrie.

J. R. Goddard Interview, Village Voice, Mar 1965

FELLOW FOLKS AND THE FOLK REVIVAL
OF THE 1950s AND '60s

BOB DYLAN: The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen to records there in the store. That was in '58 or something like that. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson...

Malibu, 1978

BOB DYLAN: Then later I got to Woody Guthrie, which opened up a whole new world at that time... so after learning about 200 of Woody's songs, I went to see him... in a hospital in Morristown, NJ. I took a bus from New York, sat with him and sang his songs...

Malibu, 1978

• Bob Dylan on Woody Guthrie's songs
  (RealAudio, 712 KB)

COUNTRY INFLUENCES

BLUES INFLUENCES

ASSORTED LYRICS

TRANSCRIPTS OF TAPES

THEY'RE PLANTING STORIES IN THE PRESS...

INTERVIEWS

ARTICLES © Manfred Helfert
(including two interviews)

VENUES --
SOME PLACES BOB DYLAN PLAYED (OR STAYED) AT...

DYLAN PERFORMANCES 1959-'61
(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

GENERAL FOLK LINKS

• John Cohen: Photographs of American Musicians

• Anthology of American Folk Music
  Edited by Harry Smith, Smithsonian Folkways 40090.

• Best of Broadside
  It was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment. Underground--yet Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, and dozens of others first published songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Little Boxes," and "Society's Child," in Broadside. The Best of Broadside features 89 songs from the Folkways collection, tapes from the Broadside magazine office, and some tracks released on other labels. The set contains a variety of performers, topics, and musical styles that tell tales spanning the 25 years of the Broadside era (1962-1988), but many of them address contemporary issues as well, since the new millennium has not see the end of warfare, nuclear threat, ethnic conflict, immigrants' suffering, women's unequal rights, ecological devastation, and social injustice. This is the underground music that fueled the innocent-sounding Folk Revival on the one hand and the explosions of angry rock and rap on the other. The Best of Broadside brings an era, its musicians, and its many stories to a new audience.

• Broadside: The Struggle Continues
  by Jim Capaldi on his Pete Seeger Appreciation Page.

• Official Joan Baez webpage

• Songs For Political Action Bear Family Records BCD 15720 JL
  Released April 16, 1996, Songs For Political Action may well be
  the most important collection of political folk music ever assembled. The 10 compact disc box set, assembled by folk song authorities Ron Cohen and Dave Samuelson, contains nearly 300 songs recorded from 1926 to 1953.
  The complete works of the Almanac Singers, and many rare and unissued tracks of Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Earl Robinson and other legendary Peoples Songsters are among the many highlights of this comprehensive set.
  From the only known recordings of Charles and Ruth Seeger to soundtruck recordings made for the 1948 Henry Wallace presidential campaign, this collection is the definitive reference for this era in folk music history. A beautifully done hard bound book, with photos and lyrics for all the songs accompanies the 10 disc set.

• Appalachian Protest Songwriters

• Guy & Candie Carawan: Sing for Freedom
  (contains several RealAudio interview segments)
  Frank Beacham's conversation with Pete Seeger,
  April 21, 1998 (17:54)

• The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American Folk Music. The Center and its collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklore and folklife from this country and around the world.
  • The John and Ruby Lomax
    1939 Southern States Recording Trip
    is a multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States. Beginning in Port Aransas, Texas, on March 31, 1939, and ending at the Library of Congress on June 14, 1939, John Avery Lomax, Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center), and his wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax, recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers.
    These recordings represent a broad spectrum of traditional musical styles, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs. Photographic prints from the Lomaxes' other Southern states expeditions, as well as their other recording trips made under the auspices of the Library of Congress, illustrate the collection, since no photographs from the 1939 Southern States Recording Trip have been identified.
    
  • "Now What a Time":
    Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia.
    The documentation was created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943. Also included are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama (including six Sacred Harp songs) by John Work between September 1938 and 1941.
    
  • Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier:
    The Henry Reed Collection is a multi-format ethnographic field collection of traditional fiddle tunes performed by Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia.
    Recorded by folklorist Alan Jabbour in 1966-67, when Reed was over eighty years old, the tunes represent the music and evoke the history and spirit of Virginia's Appalachian frontier. Many of the tunes have passed back into circulation during the fiddling revival of the later twentieth century.
    
  • Voices from the Dust Bowl:
    The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection is an online presentation of a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941.
    This collection consists of audio recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, publications, and ephemera generated during two separate documentation trips supported by the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center).
    
  • The WPA California Folk Music Project
    is a multi-format ethnographic field collection that includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California. The collection comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in twelve languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians.
  • Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections
    is a multiformat ethnographic field collection documenting African-American, Arabic, Bahamian, British-American, Cuban, Greek, Italian, Minorcan, Seminole, and Slavic cultures throughout Florida.
    Recorded by Robert Cook, Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Stetson Kennedy, Alton Morris, and others in conjunction with the Florida Federal Writers' Project, the Florida Music Project, and the Joint Committee on Folk Arts of the Work Projects Administration, it features folksongs and folktales in many languages, including blues and work songs,children's songs, dance music, and religious music of many cultures.
    
  • Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande:
    The Juan B. Rael Collection is an online presentation of a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.
    In 1940, Juan Bautista Rael of Stanford University, a native of Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, used disc recording equipment supplied by the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center) to document alabados (hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes.

• The Piedmont Guitarists Tour
  The Piedmont Guitarists Tour, which took place in 1992 - 93, was a touring concert and multimedia presentation that combined onstage performances by traditional musicians with brief videodocumentaries projected onto a widescreen.
  
  • The Piedmont Guitar Tradition
    
  • The Piedmont Guitar Style: Characteristics and History
    
  • The Piedmont Tradition in Social Context
    
  • Piedmont Guitar Repertoire
    
  • Piedmont Guitarists on Record
    
  • Bibliography
    
  • Discography

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