Bluegrass Music from Smithsonian Folkways
Featuring definitive moments in bluegrass music

When one thinks of bluegrass record labels, Folkways is not one that comes to mind first.  But among its 2,200 titles, Folkways released many of bluegrass music, including some of the most influential early American bluegrass LPs.

Moses Asch made a lot of American old-time music available to the public through Folkways records, releasing important albums such as The Anthology of American Folk Music. It was no stretch then that Asch would release the high energy banjos, mandolins, fiddles, guitars, and gospel-tinged vocals of bluegrass music.

In the mid-1950s, Earl Scruggs's innovative style of three-finger banjo playing had caught on among urban banjo players during the folk song revival.  In 1956, at the suggestion of Pete Seeger, Asch wrote Seeger's brother Mike, in Baltimore with an offer: "Pete suggested that you might be able to get recordings of people in your area who play banjo in the Scruggs style. I would be interested and have $100.00 for expenses for such a project. Let me know if anything turns up" (Moses Asch to Mike Seeger, letter in Ralph Rinzler Archives, 9/13/56).  The result was American Banjo: Three-Finger and Scruggs Style (Folkways 2314, 1956), the first full-length bluegrass LP.

Seeger would go on to work on Folkways recordings with the Lilly Brothers, The Country Gentlemen, the Stoneman Family, Dock Boggs, Elizabeth Cotten, New Lost City Ramblers, and others.  Smithsonian Folklife Festival founder Ralph Rinzler and folk music producer John Cohen, were also instrumental in helping Asch put out bluegrass albums for Folkways

Asch went on to release albums by urban bluegrass banjo player Roger Sprung, the first album by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, two of the first women to front a popular bluegrass band, and the legendary Bluegrass album by Red Allen and Frank Wakefield.  The 1970s and 80s brought more albums from Red Allen and his sons, as well as titles from Curly Secklar and the Nashville Grass and Tom Morgan.

When the Folkways collection came to the Smithsonian in 1987, Smithsonian Folkways set out to reissue material from its vast archives with expanded liner notes and updated sound.  Smithsonian Folkways has reissued most of the Country Gentlemen recordings, many of Mike Seeger's bluegrass compilations, the Doc Watson Folkways recordings, the classic Allen-Wakefield material, and an anthology of Hazel and Alice.  We will continue to mine the vaults for new reissues and collections and remain committed to preserving and celebrating this thriving American musical form.