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Folkways Records display at an educational convention, ca. mid-1970sMoses and Frances Asch Collection, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural HeritageGallery installation of Seeing the World of Sound exhibition, 2005Photo by Louise Asselstine, University of AlbertaGallery installation of Seeing the World of Sound exhibition, 2005Photo by Louise Asselstine, University of AlbertaSounds of the Office, 1964 (FW06142)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Unknown A manual typewriter dominates the cover, conjuring up the mechanically generated soundscape of a New York office. The shadowy, negative photographic image also uncannily suggests the impending transformation of this "epitome of everyday life" into an artifact of the past.Sounds of the Office, 1964 (FW06142)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Unknown A manual typewriter dominates the cover, conjuring up the mechanically generated soundscape of a New York office. The shadowy, negative photographic image also uncannily suggests the impending transformation of this "epitome of everyday life" into an artifact of the past.The Pit and the Pendulum, 1967 (FW09705)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne Animation of the typographic pendulum is created by gradually decreasing the height of the repeated titles and tapering the top of each one. Visual weight is suggested by the white "M" hanging at the bottom. The dark background and stark design reinforce the macabre and mysterious quality of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story.This Land is My Land, 1951 (FW07027)
Cover Design: Unknown; Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse This rough, organic, stamped image reinforces the notion of hands-on labour involved in farm work, further epitomized by the silhouetted worker, hoe in hand. Overprinting of various tints of pink and blue makes effective use of two-colour printing, creating a rich third colour, dark purple. The hand-generated Rosenhouse letterforms across the top animate the whole.Niloh Service, 1973 (FW08925)
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse; Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse The sketchy quality of the image and hand-rendered letterforms give currency and immediacy to this traditional Jewish service. The first recordings made by Moe Asch were popular Yiddish songs, Jewish commentaries, and educational programming for radio station WEVD. Jewish cantorials and liturgical material from other faiths became an important part of the Folkways catalogue.Folk Songs and Instrumentals with Guitar, 1958 (FW03526)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: David Gahr Elizabeth Cotten wrote the classic song "Freight Train" when she was a child. As the photograph shows and Mike Seeger’s liner notes explain, "Elizabeth Cotten picks the regular guitar and banjo upside down, or left-handed, using country ragtime style...and a banjo strum" on both instruments and "the first string as thumb string."Old Love Songs & Ballads, 1964 (FW02309)
Cover Design: John Cohen; Photograph: John Cohen John Cohen’s remarkable cover photograph of Berzilla Wallin and Dillard Chandler places the viewer right next to the couple without intruding on their privacy. Well known as a musician and member of the New Lost City Ramblers, Cohen is also a noted documentary filmmaker and photographer.Selk’nam Chants of Tierra del Fuego, 1972 (FW04176)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Anne Chapman The cover presents a memorable close-up photograph of Lola Kiepja taken by the album’s producer, ethnologist Anne Chapman. According to Chapman, Lola Kiepja was the last person to speak the language of her people.Folk Music of Hungary, 1950, 1961 (FW04000)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Bela BartokStories and Poems of New Guinea, 1979 (FW09786)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Ronald Clyne Clyne illustrates this album cover with carved New Guinea houseposts from his own collection to dramatic effect. Each part of the title, set along the top edge, is anchored to one of the heads. The strong layout structure, which divides the square format into three equal parts, exhibits the modernist aesthetic so prominent in his work.Gazette, Volume 1, 1958 (FW02501)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Illustration: Leona Pierce Iconic Folkways recording artist Pete Seeger sees American folk music as "a living, vital, creative force in our lives...as much a reflection of the present as the past." The cover design plays on the layout of a newspaper front page to create a tone that is popular, accessible, and reflective of the album’s topical songs. The expressive woodcut captures Seeger’s stage presence perfectly. Attributed to Antonio Frasconi, the woodcut is, in fact, the work of Leona Pierce, Frasconi’s wife.The World Music Theatre of Jon Appleton, 1974 (FW33437)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Lufti Ozkok Linear forms of the typeface relate to the modulated sound of the electronic music on this album. Appleton’s "hip," tinted sunglasses are rendered in a tone derived from the red "o’s," a subtle play on the "apple" in his name and a visual device that commands the viewer’s attention.Folksongs of Saskatchewan, 1963 (FW04312)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Unknown The stark expanse of prairie sky dominates and serves as a backdrop for worn, degraded "typewriter" letterforms. The low horizontal format of the photograph superimposed on a taupe ground evokes the isolation of a prairie town. This photograph, taken in 1913, is of Vanguard, Saskatchewan.Plutonium, 1979 (FW05354)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Sarah Cohen Collage is used to combine newspaper headlines, images, and articles with a photograph of singer Mark Cohen. The newspaper snippets reinforce the topicality of the subject and the fragmentary nature of available information concerning accidents in the nuclear industry.Watergate, Vol. 1, 1973 (FW05551)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Photograph: Unknown Through the use of a broken faceting of the building’s facade, this series of album covers vividly and literally illustrates the public’s "shattered" faith in the White House in the wake of the Watergate hearings. Colour and typography provide variation within the otherwise consistent layout of the series.Struggle, 1976 (FW02485)
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne; Illustration: David Stone Martin David Stone Martin’s lithograph, a reference to Guthrie’s "Union Burying Ground," exemplifies two related themes in the Folkways catalogue: the struggle of the working people and the history of the American labour movement. The simplified form and raw expressive power of the print, framed by the red border with black letters, typifies a colour combination and style used in Folkways albums dealing with themes of people’s struggles.The Pete Seeger Sampler, 1955 (FW02043)
Cover Design: Carlis; Illustration: Augusta Seeger This unique cover takes the form of an embroidered sampler, signed "Augusta Seeger aged 10, 1823." Through the image of the old-fashioned hand-stitched sampler, the cover at once plays off the album title and the recorded material, connecting Pete Seeger to his family’s history and to songs rooted in the American past.Songs of Struggle and Protest, 1964 (FW05233)
Cover Design: Ronal Clyne; Illustration: Lucienne Bloch The family in the foreground provides a stark contrast to the rich crop of corn from which they are separated by a barbed-wire fence. High-tension power lines signify the electrification of rural America, begun in the 1930s but of little use to the poor who could not afford it. The cover visually echoes the injustices outlined in the songs.Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1965 (FW5485)
Cover Design: Designers Collaborative; Illustration: Antonio Frasconi The songs on this album commemorate the Italian immigrants and anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who, in what was to become a notorious miscarriage of justice, were tried and executed in Boston during the 1920s.Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1965 (FW5485)
Cover Design: Designers Collaborative; Illustration: Antonio Frasconi Frasconi’s woodcuts were undoubtedly informed by Ben Shahn’s social realist paintings from the early 1930s, which deal with the controversial trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.COVER STORYThe Look of the ListenThe Cover Art of Folkways Records
The Look of the Listen is a website that explores the breadth and diversity of Folkways Records cover art. Produced by the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways, this virtual presentation grows out of a gallery exhibition, Seeing the World of Sound: The Cover Art of Folkways Records, presented at the university’s Fine Arts Building Gallery (FAB) in 2005.1
Since the birth of Folkways Records in 1948, the label’s cover art has been a signature of its mission and message—an invitation to discover the fascinating beauty of recordings by and for people everywhere, and to explore the subtleties of the auditory environment that surrounds us. For nearly four decades, a number of talented artists contributed to crafting a visual identity for Folkways Records that was as distinctive and eclectic as the sounds and extensive documentation packaged in the cardboard album jackets. Working within parameters dictated as much by economics as by founder Moses Asch’s straightforward and direct vision, these designers generated a visually powerful series of album cover artworks that made striking use of two-color printing, field photography, matte paper, and expressionistic illustrations. Among the many graphic artists who designed for Folkways during these years were Ronald Clyne, Craig Mierop, Irwin Rosenhouse, and David Stone Martin.
The original exhibition was co-curated by Margaret Asch, who had long understood that the cover art was an integral part of the label and deserving of focused attention, and Joan Greer, University of Alberta associate professor of the history of art, design, and visual culture. The curators, along with the exhibition and catalog designer Susan Colberg, worked closely with a small team of colleagues that included Regula Qureshi, Jon McCollum, and Blair Brennan from the University of Alberta; and Atesh Sonneborn from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The curators began their exploration of the collection through their personal attractions to certain covers; but this process soon expanded, developing into broader consideration of the history of American visual culture. In the exhibition catalog, the curators note, “This resource is far vaster and more culturally significant than we first supposed. The historical value of the graphic design and artwork, for example, both on the covers and to a smaller extent in the liner notes, is enormous. We are just beginning to understand the position the early work holds vis-à-vis the wider framework of post-World War II American Modernism.”
Joan Greer elaborates,
I was struck by the incredible diversity of the album covers. I especially liked the raw, expressionist idiom found in some of the covers as well as the seemingly unschooled, even whimsical playfulness found in others. I liked the fact that there was an edge to the design and visuals that matched the radical content of some of the records. I was also struck by the methods employed by Moses Asch in producing the records, the wonderfully contradictory utopian-pragmatism that got things done; done quickly, done inexpensively, and done with integrity.
Margaret Asch, too, notes the importance of the particular relationships and understandings that undergirded the label’s design and production processes,
Through researching the cover art and artists and designers, and from reading many of the liner notes and correspondence, it is clear that deep connections existed—intellectually, artistically, culturally and politically—between Moses Asch and some of Folkways’ recording artists and the visual artists whose works appear on the covers. Just as Folkways was a label for progressive musicians, Folkways cover art was a significant venue for progressive artists (for example, Ben Shahn, Lucienne Bloch and Antonio Frasconi). Asch trusted and respected the people who worked for Folkways and this was reciprocated. Both David Gahr and Ronald Clyne emphasized their appreciation and affection for him and for the freedom he gave them as artists and the respect he held for their work.
Greer and Asch, along with their interdisciplinary team, eventually selected 209 from more than 2,000 covers for the exhibition, organizing them by production methods, stylistic approach, album genres and categories as defined by the wide-ranging Folkways catalog, and the individual artists and designers who created the work.
Margaret Asch reflects,
The process of viewing and re-viewing the entire Folkways cover collection helped bring forward not only some stunning individual covers, but patterns started to emerge. I started to see what a designer like Ronald Clyne was trying to achieve (clarity and simplicity) and to appreciate his aesthetic (minimalist)… given the production challenges that existed for the Folkways designers (limited to two colours), some of the covers created by Irwin Rosenhouse are unbelievable. This Land is My Land is a good example of this and his freehand work on albums like Niloh Service is unparalleled. I also find the many photographic covers particularly moving. They show musicians so honestly and respectfully, whether it’s the work of professional photographers such as David Gahr or John Cohen or others not known for their photography, such as Béla Bartók and ethnologist Anne Chapman. It occurred to me at some point in the curatorial process that without these covers we might have no visual record of who many of these extraordinary people were.
The 2005 exhibition coincided with the centenary of Moses Asch’s birth. It was a milestone that illuminated, in the words of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings Director Daniel Sheehy, the “look” that invites the “listen.” It evoked the breadth and diversity of audible and especially musical creation, and celebrated Folkways contributions to visual design. What’s more, in the context of the exhibition, the “look” also invited more active responses. While gallery visitors admired the formal beauty of the art work, they were also engaged through the often personal and aural memories that these album covers triggered—an experience that inspired some people to spontaneously break into song while onsite.
The exhibition was the inaugural research project of folkwaysAlive!, a partnership between Smithsonian Folkways Recording and the University of Alberta. folkwaysAlive! showcased the complete set of Folkways recordings donated by Moses and Frances Asch to the University of Alberta in 1985 and uses them as a basis for exploring and supporting Canada’s diverse musical-cultural heritage and living musical traditions. Through this partnership, the University shares in the legacy of respecting and celebrating people’s voices and connects directly to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and its stewardship of the Folkways mission worldwide. This partnership has produced a Smithsonian Folklife Festival program, Alberta at the Smithsonian, in 2006; two Smithsonian Folkways albums—Alberta: Wild Roses, Northern Lights and Classic Canadian Songs from Smithsonian Folkways (2006); and internships for University of Alberta students. It also created album and exhibition design classes and a preservation program with Smithsonian conservators and archivists, which contributed to the conservation of the original artwork of Folkways album covers.