In 1975, Alan Lazar compiled the anthology for Folkways Records. In the last year, Smithsonian Folkways staff found and ...

Some commentators trace American political traditions not only to particular historical figures, but to the regional cultures of the original colonies, prior to the War for Independence or the ...

The song is obviously old. The acoustic guitar fades in, its strings bleating and chugging like a train against the sounds of vinyl pops. Then the harmonica adds some wah-wah-ing like a steam whistle.

FOR forty years—from its founding, in 1947, to its acquisition by the Smithsonian Institution, in 1987— Folkways Records was, in all its faintly shabby grandeur, a kind of folk-expression museum ...