Wednesday, September 22, 2004  

For free you can download the entire Folk-Songs of America LP from the Library of Congress' Robert Winslow Gordon Collection in the American Folklife Center.

The LP cover and liner notes
The recordings (made between 1922 and 1932)

"The notes to the LP give an excellent account of Gordon's role in the history of folksong collecting and archiving. In the context of the present reissue, it is worth pointing out that Gordon's interests extended beyond the folksongs themselves to include the means of capturing them. From childhood he was a tinkerer, fascinated by technology, and it is no surprise that he was a pioneer of the use of sound-recording equipment in folklore fieldwork.

Gordon's cylinders and discs are of inestimable value and form part of his legacy. But they present a challenge given by Gordon to future archivists. Gordon's intent was not only to collect folksongs but to present them to the public, and his song columns in Adventure and the New York Times Magazine were an early form of applied or public folklore. Gordon's challenge to us is to make sure that these folksongs remain accessible to the public, that they not be hidden away in an archive. With each evolutionary step in sound recording technology, Gordon's challenge is renewed."

Posted by CP | Link |

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