Folkways Records: Moses Asch and His Encyclopedia of Sound

In 1949, recording engineer Moses Asch embarked on what would turn out to be a lifetime's project: documenting the world of sound produced by mankind through a small record label called Folkways Records. Asch had a unique vision of how to record music and how to market it. He made his studio available to all types of musicians at all hours of the day and night. He recorded quickly, without bothering to make multiple takes. And he vowed to keep everything in print that he issued -- no matter how poorly it sold. By 1986, when Moses Asch died, he had amassed an amazing archive of over 2,200 LPs and thousands of hours of tapes; so valuable was this collection that it was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, along with the documentary records of Asch's career. Working with the cooperation of the Smithsonian and the Asch family, anthropologist Tony Olmsted shows how Asch managed to break all the rules of business -- and yet remain in business for nearly four decades. By consciously avoiding a "hit" record, Asch was nonetheless able to record a wide variety of artists, including Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and hundreds more. Many of these albums sold steadily for decades -- again belying the normal model of the recording industry that issued albums for a brief period of time, and then let them fall out of print. Asch's unique personality -- at once both difficult and endearing -- made him a legendary figure in American music -- and his philosophy of business and art made him a landmark figure in the history of the recording industry. Book jacket.

Tony Olmsted has spent most of his academic career researching issues surrounding the production of music as a social and economic practice. His work on Folkways Records evolved out of his doctoral studies in anthropology with Michael Asch. Olmsted continues to write on theory and musical production, teach anthropology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and work as a Policy and Research Officer with the United Nurses of Alberta