The Collectors

These links lead to detailed background information about some of our collectors and how they came to meet and record many of our artists.

Ray Alden

I heard a Weavers record the summer of 1959 at Hartley Farm, a summer camp where I was working as a junior counselor. Hearing that high banjo intro to "Darling Corey" played by Pete Seeger excited me as nothing else had. more>>

Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music

The Brandywine Valley Friends of Old Time Music ("BFOTM") was founded in 1972 by a small group of traditional American music devotees. Carl Goldstein and Shel Sandler, two young Delaware lawyers and budding musicians, had begun playing informally with a local autoharp player, Mike Hudak, who was a protege of Kilby Snow, a brilliant autoharpist from Fries, VA who was then residing in nearby Landenberg, PA. more>>

Jeff Goehring (observations from his notebook upon visiting Jimmy Wheeler)

Found Jimmy and two of three sisters sitting under awning between house and shop/garage, smoking cigarettes and drinking old milwaukee in red and white cans, a welcoming wave. Jimmy didn't remember my name though I'm positive he remembered me. His sisters Dottie and Merle were friendly. Dot remembered me, Merle didn't. more>>

Peter Hoover

It was the summer of 1959 and a young Peter Hoover, having flunked out of Harvard the summer before, was volunteering at the Library of Congress, transcribing inventory information of aluminum disc recordings made in 1937 of Crockett Ward's Bog Trotters, from Ballard Branch, Virginia (the original Bog Trotters, consisting of Davey Crockett Ward and his neighbor Alec Dunford on fiddles, Fields Ward, Crockett's son, playing guitar and singing, and Crockett's brother Wade Ward often playing the banjo). more>>