Folk
This section gathers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries from folk artists and songwriters, along with vinyl reissue news as titles return to print. Folk has a long history of careful preservation on record: archival labels such as Smithsonian Folkways have spent decades documenting traditional and singer-songwriter recordings specifically for release on LP, treating the format as a way to keep field recordings and acoustic albums in circulation rather than letting them disappear. Expect stories about the people behind specific songs and albums, and why a reissue of an older folk record still matters to listeners.
124 STORIES
When a Gospel Voice Cued the Dream
Mahalia Jackson stood at the Lincoln Memorial podium, the August heat pressing through her dress, and looked out at a quarter-million faces. She did not launch …
· 5 min read
LeAnn Rimes: How an 11-year-old cut 'Blue'
Bill Mack wrote a torch song for Patsy Cline, waited three decades, then gave it to an 11-year-old LeAnn Rimes. Her 1996 single 'Blue' ignited a war between skeptics and believers.
· 4 min read
Two Voices, No Suits, and a Quarter-Million Witnesses
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performed at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, before a quarter-million people. Their informal clothes contrasted with the suited organizers.
· 5 min read
Classical Gas: The Accidental Crossover Hit
A comedy writer who won an Emmy for television satire also penned one of the most enduring instrumental guitar pieces of the rock era. Mason Williams, born in A…
· 4 min read
Stephen Stills' Manassas: The Supergroup Album of 1972
A double album that fused rock, Latin rhythms, country, folk, and blues across four themed sides — yet it came together in a matter of weeks. Manassas was Steph…
· 5 min read
How a Revolt in Tattered Overalls Took Down The Police
A fiddle scrapes through the silence of a Kennington backstreet. Kevin Rowland, draped in a worn denim bib overall that looks like he’s slept in it for a week, …
· 5 min read
When a Jazz Cat Wrote a Country Gambler's Anthem
A man who sold over 100 million records worldwide started his career in a jazz trio, not a honky-tonk. Kenny Rogers, born on August 21, 1938, would become the f…
· 4 min read
Phoebe Bridgers and the Binaural Confessional
Phoebe Bridgers turns 32 today. From open mic nights in Los Angeles to a stadium tour with Taylor Swift and a Grammy-winning supergroup, her confessional songwriting reshaped alternative music.
· 5 min read
The Farm Was 600 Acres. 400,000 People Showed Up Anyway.
On August 15, 1969, a dairy farmer named Max Yasgur hosted an estimated 400,000 people on his 600-acre farm in Bethel, New York. The festival was billed as Three Days of Peace and Music.
· 4 min read
A Forest, a Piano, and 24 Hours That Broke Spotify
At midnight on July 24, 2020, the digital silence of a locked-down world cracked open with a single black-and-white image: Taylor Swift, standing alone among to…
· 5 min read
Ted Dwane: The Kay Bass and the Clot That Stopped a Headliner
Ted Dwane joined Mumford & Sons in 2007 and anchored their sound with a Kay double bass, surviving a brain clot that nearly stopped the band at its peak.
· 4 min read
A Bob Dylan Song Spawned Sonny & Cher’s 7-Inch Juggernaut
Bob Dylan put out a song, and suddenly everyone was saying “babe.” Not the word itself — that had been around forever — but the way it lingered in the air after…
· 5 min read
Bob Johnston: the producer who pushed Dylan into the red
Bob Johnston, who died in 2015 at 83, was the producer who turned Bob Dylan's mid-sixties electric pivot into a permanent scar on American song.
· 4 min read
Tanita Tikaram: The Voice That Shook European Pop-Folk
A deep, androgynous contralto that seemed to carry the weight of a thousand folk tales — that was the sound that stopped listeners cold in the late 1980s. The v…
· 4 min read
Buck Owens and the Telecaster That Killed Nashville Gloss
A Fender Telecaster, sharp as a broken beer bottle, sliced through the polite string sections that had swallowed country music whole. That guitar belonged to Do…
· 5 min read
Before the Mud: How Woodstock's Infrastructure Became Myth
A man in a tie-dyed shirt stands at the edge of a stage, speaking gently to half a million people. 'Please don't do that,' he says into the microphone, and the …
· 6 min read
Elliott Smith: The White Suit and the Four-Track
A white suit, stark against the polished spectacle of the 1998 Academy Awards stage, once held a whisper. The man inside it, Elliott Smith, strummed an acoustic…
· 5 min read
Lucinda Williams: Americana Before the Label Existed
From a Folkways debut in 1979 to a Grammy-winning masterpiece in 1998, Lucinda Williams built the sound of Americana long before the genre had a name.
· 5 min read
Moya Brennan: The Voice Behind Gaelic's UK Top 5 Hit
Moya Brennan’s crystalline voice carried Clannad’s ‘Theme from Harry’s Game’ to number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in 1982. The song made Irish the first Gaelic language to crack the top 5.
· 5 min read
The Day Madison Square Garden Became a Charity Box Set
On August 1, 1971, George Harrison turned Madison Square Garden into a sold-out double concert for Bangladesh. He invented the modern charity event in a single frantic afternoon.
· 4 min read
The Forgotten Festival Before Woodstock
The August sun hammered down on the Atlantic City Race Track as the first chords rang out across the grandstand. It was August 1, 1969, and the Atlantic City Po…
· 5 min read
Jerry Garcia and the Infinite Live Archive
In a darkened concert hall, a forest of microphone stands rises from a designated taper's section, each one capturing a unique slice of a Grateful Dead performa…
· 5 min read
Cass Elliot: The London Night the Sunshine Faded
Cass Elliot died of a heart attack at thirty-two in Harry Nilsson's London flat. Hours earlier, she had finished a sold-out Palladium run that marked her triumphant solo return.
· 6 min read
The Quiet Master Clapton Turned Into a Roar
J.J. Cale, who died in 2013, wrote 'After Midnight' and 'Cocaine' but spent his life avoiding the spotlight that Eric Clapton's covers brought him.
· 4 min read