Video
"Walking Boss" by Mike Seeger at Folkways Studio in 2007
For over fifty years, Mike Seeger has been a musician, documenter, and tireless advocate of American folk and traditional music. As a musician he recorded as a solo artist and member of folk revival ensemble the New Lost City Ramblers. As a collector he has captured and produced sounds by iconic artists such as Elizabeth Cotten and Dock Boggs. And finally, as a historian and preservationist of the music he calls "old time," Mike Seeger gives us the stories behind the music that is such an essential part of American culture. Here he performs and gives the history of "Walking Boss," a tune Thomas Clarence Ashley learned from African American railroad workers at the turn of the 19th century.
More about Mike Seeger, American Folk Revivalist and Historian