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

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

Malvina Reynolds, the well-known songwriter and activist for social justice and the environment, performs some of her most famous songs in the compilation of studio and live recordings fro mthe 1960s... more

Reissue of the stunning introduction to the musical world of the unique guitarist from the Bahamas, Joseph Spence. Recorded in 1958 on the porch of a shack in Fresh Creek Settlement, it captures... 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

Folksinger and Kentucky mountain midwife Aunt Molly Jackson caught the attention of Alan Lomax and Woody Guthrie with her stories and songs about the struggles of working-class life. Here presented... more

Ochs was one of the most enthusiastic contributors to Broadside, the original folk-music zine. This posthumous 1976 LP has live performances he gave for Broadside benefit concerts and demos he made... more

Today, it's hard to imagine songs like "Rosewood Casket" or "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" as new-fangled pop songs, "hillbilly music" adored by the young and controversial to everyone else. Famed... more

This album features classic sea shanties from the 19th century, "sung in the traditional manner, accompanied on historic 19th-century instruments, and recorded aboard historic sailing ships" at the... more

Song for Patty is folk singer Sammy Walker's first album. Recorded when he was just twenty two, the album concentrates on characters at odds with the world around them, from (famous heiress 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

Reagon writes, "My history was wrapped carefully for me by my fore-parents in the songs of the church, the work fields, and the blues. Ever since this discovery I've been trying to find myself, using... more

Jean Ritchie is a national treasure, one of America's finest and best known traditional singers. She grew up in Viper, Kentucky, and is part of a large family, the famous "Singing Ritchies of... more

Cisco Houston's first solo album on Folkways Records represents a small portion of the artist's repertoire of American folk music. Extensive liner notes (complete with a glossary of cowboy slang such... more

Moran "Dock" Boggs, miner and musician, was first recognized for his "unorthodox" playing style. His popularity only grew after he was featured on the Anthology of American Folk Music (SFW40090) in... more

Recorded in 1940, and later reissued by Folkways Recordings in 1950, Guthrie's first album chronicles the American Dust Bowl through his prosaic style of talking blues. Using only guitar and vocals,... more

Banjo player and singer Ola Belle Reed created this album and it's accompanying notes as an autobiography, a document that describes her childhood in the mountains, her experiences, and her opinions... more

Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard's first two albums for Folkways on one CD! These 1965 and 1973 releases broke through the bluegrass gender barrier with their harmonies, knowledgeable repertoire and... more

Legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg explores the fusion of poetry and music in this rare 1970s recording. Called a "venerated bard of resistance" Ginsberg sought "how the raw mind actually works"... more