cover image Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records

Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records

Peter D. Goldsmith. Smithsonian Books, $34.95 (468pp) ISBN 978-1-56098-812-0

Folkways Records founder Moe Asch's significance as a curator of America's folk music can hardly be overstated. As this thoroughly researched biography reveals, Asch initially saw himself as a businessman, not a folklorist. It just so happened his success as the latter is what made him a name long before he saw any real reward for his efforts. That Asch, a would-be inventor, ranks among archivists Sam Charters (who initially worked for Asch) and John and Alan Lomax in importance is a consequence of two folk giants who recorded for his Folkways label early on; the volumes of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly recordings preserved by Folkways remains Asch's legacy. If Guthrie and Asch were to wrangle on occasion, Goldsmith points out, their mutual respect was as foreign to the music business of that period as it would be today. The same can be said of the relationship between the loud Asch and the quiet eccentric Harry Smith, compiler of the labels' six-volume Anthology of American Folk Music, recently reissued to much ado. Music fans in search of the next big thing will have little use for Asch. But folkies, young and old alike, who waited for Smith's set on CD, or were thankful for a reissue of Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence or Southern Child ballads, owe much to the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch's son. His legacy may often have been born of another's art, but it was no less a piece with his own aesthetic vision. (May)