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FOLKWAYS RECORDS This page intentionally left bank FOLKWAYS RECORDS Moses Asch and His Encyclopedia of Sound Tony Olmsted First published 2003 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olmsted, Tony Folkways records : Moses Asch and his encyclopedia of sound / Tony Olmsted. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-93708-6 ISBN 0-415-93709-4 1. Folkways Records—History. 2. Sound recording industry—United States—History. 3. Asch, Moses. 4. Sound recording executives and producers—United States—Biography. I. Title. ML3792.F65 065 2003 781.62'13'0092—dc21 2002155714 ISBN 978 0 4159 3709 2 To my dearest Julie For everything . This page intentionally left bank Contents Foreword Michael Asch xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1 Early Influences 7 1870s to 1930s The Phonograph and Sound Recording 7 Youth and Family Influences 10 2 Beginnings 17 Asch Records The Deal with Stinson 19 First Recordings by Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie 35 3 Broadening the Mandate 41 DISC Records of America New Products and Directions 46 Bankruptcy 47 Lessons Learned and New Strategies 57 4 The Birth of Folkways Records 61 The Business Model 64 Overview of Asch’s Businesses 66 Building the Catalog 68 vii viii • Contents 5 The Business of Making Records 77 Manufacturing 79 Domestic Distribution 82 Foreign Distribution 93 Marketing and Sales 102 Exploiting the Catalog: Licensing and Contracts 118 6 Finances 125 Folkways 126 Pioneer Record Sales 148 Moe’s Money 154 7 Easing the Burden 159 Folkways in the 1960s Reaching the Educational Market 159 Reaching the Popular Market 166 Return to Normal Operations 174 8 The Sale of Folkways 177 Conclusion 183 Appendices 195 Notes 215 Bibliography 229 Index 231 FOLKWAYS RECORDS was created to document contemporary sounds, be they music, speech or natural phenomena. Like an encyclopedia, there are over 2,000 record albums that reflect the sounds of the earth and its peoples. Folkways continues to issue recordings that are bought by governments, anthropologists, musicians, educators, etc. Folkways is also like an encyclopedia in that sales criteria are not used. The music of Afghanistan is as important as the music of the Cajun people, even though one may sell more copies than the other. Both are found in the Folkways catalog because they depict the unique music of a culture. Folkways is also a living archive in that we deem it essential that all record- ings be kept “in print.”Although Growing Up with Ella Jenkins is requested more often than Sounds & Ultra-Sounds of The Bottle-Nose Dolphin makes it no more or less valuable. Both give Folkways its reputation and define its unique role. As Director, I have tried to create an atmosphere where all recordings are treated equally regardless of the sales statistics. My obligation is to see that Folkways remains a depository of the sounds and musics of the world and that these remain available to all. The real owners of Folkways Records are the people that perform and create what we have recorded and not the people that issue and sell the product. The obligation of the company is to maintain the office, the warehouse, the billing and collections of funds, to pay the rent and telephone, etc. Folkways succeeds when it becomes the in- visible conduit from the world to the ears of human beings. Moses Asch, excerpt of “Folkways Records— Declaration of Purpose,”c. 1980s This page intentionally left bank Foreword In his book Folkways Records, Tony Olmsted explores and substantially ex- plains one of the great mysteries surrounding my father’s company. That mystery is: how did his company stay in business for over forty years? This mystery differs from the one that is inevitably asked about a small business that manages to last for a long time. Folkways was hardly typical of a small business. It is true that the company was small in that it generally em- ployed no more than four or five people, and had a yearly gross typical of a small operation. However, in its scope and reach it was not a small com- pany at all. It developed a catalog that rivaled and, most likely, surpassed that of the largest record companies. In fact, by the time of his death in 1986, Moe Asch had produced roughly 2,200 records or roughly one a week for the 40 years of Folkways’ existence. At its heart, Folkways was driven by a mission that required a catalog that encompassed the literary, political, historical, scientific, and musical life of the world’s peoples. To succeed in this mission meant that every record must remain in print re- gardless of sales. No one ever questioned that the idea of Folkways made sense. It was, at one level, a dictionary or encyclopedia of sounds. And, as my father often said: “You don’t take the letter ‘J’ out of the dictionary because it is used less than the letter ‘S’.”It is the economics that does not seem to make sense. Ac- cording to standard business practice, to survive, a company must delete those items that do not sell and replace them with others that do. Otherwise they fail. But Folkways did not fail. So what was the secret of its success, de- spite violating a fundamental rule of rational business practice? That is the mystery that this book, Folkways Records, addresses and resolves. xi xii • Foreword To do this, Tony Olmsted could hardly rely on the words of my father. When asked the central question: “How can you afford to keep everything in print?” He would evade, turning the answer itself into a mystery. For ex- ample, often he would say: “That is the secret. By keeping everything in print, it is like I have one record that is a best seller.”Instead, Tony Olmsted relied on hard data, including business records, company correspondence, and interviews with key individuals. Through a careful analysis of this in- formation, he brings forward for the first time the actual choices my father made in order to keep the business afloat. In so doing, the book explodes a number of myths about how Moe Asch succeeded. There was no secret fund of money derived through family money or through the exploitation of artists or through his ownership of a publishing company. Nor did he rely on the kindness of others to keep the wolves from the door. Instead, we discover that the answer lies in the skill with which my father conducted his business. In this book, Tony Olmsted teaches us about the real economic prob- lems my father faced and how his abilities as an entrepreneur helped him to overcome them. In so doing, he explains how all manner of business de- cisions, from the details of his everyday business practices to innovations in marketing, helped to secure the conditions that would best enable a company, whose mission contradicted basic principles of market econom- ics, to endure. Michael Asch Acknowledgments One of the great benefits of working on a project like this is the opportu- nity to meet and share information with a variety of wonderful people. The generosity of those who contributed to this work in a multitude of dif- ferent ways is deeply felt and for which I am eternally grateful. The path from idea to publication of this tale of Folkways Records has been a long and roundabout one. What started out as an idea to study “something involved with music” for a master’s degree led to a meeting with Dr. Michael Asch, now professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alberta, Canada. As I later found out, he is also the son of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records—a connection that I credit for my academic introduction to Folkways. From those early discussions, Michael directed me to Dr. Regula Qureshi, professor of music at the Uni- versity of Alberta, and close ally with Michael in fostering the interdiscipli- nary work in ethnomusicology that continues to grow at the University. Through a decade of classes, projects, odd jobs, and two graduate degrees, I am forever in debt (intellectually and otherwise) to Michael and Regula. Both have offered support and encouragement that has been instrumental in guiding me along the many steps that have led to this manuscript. More than just supervisors, they have been mentors and friends that have led by example and shared generously of their talents. More specifically to Folkways, the research for this project could not have been completed without the generous support of a 1996 predoctoral research fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The fellowship allowed me to live and work in Washington for the fall of xiii xiv • Acknowledgments 1996, and provided me with access to the Moses and Frances Asch Collec- tion at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. More importantly, however, were all of the staff of the Center, who were both welcoming and very helpful, especially Jeff Place (Archivist), Stephanie Smith (Assis- tant Archivist), Mary Monseur (Production Coordinator, Smithsonian Folkways Records), and, more recently, Harris Wray (music publicist, researcher, and past employee of Smithsonian Folkways Records).

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