Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Roger Welsch - Postcards From Nebraska- March 8, 1976



















I am assuming that the interview I transferred is called Postcards From Nebraska. I became interested in him when my buddy Drew who does the Democracy for the Cartoons blog did a radio show and included one of his songs in it. Below is the Wikipedia post on him. below that is a biographical page link. As with the Utah Phillips Interview, this is not music, but an interview. I thought it was interesting, so I decided to post it. You can download his album "Sweet Nebraska Land" at the Smithsonian Folkways website.

Roger Welsch (born November 6, 1936) is a senior correspondent on the CBS News Sunday morning program, and was featured in a segment called "Postcards from Nebraska". An author, humorist and folklorist, Welsch was born in Lincoln Nebraska, and today lives outside of Dannebrog, Nebraska. Welsch was the 2005 winner of the Henry Fonda Award, from the State of Nebraska Travel and Tourism Division.


Sunday, September 6, 2009

Folk and Country Songs of the FDR Years









This album consists of performers Roy Berkeley and Tim Woodbridge.

I'm not trying to plagiarize, but I do not know the original source of this bio Berkeley, but felt I should include it:

Roy Berkeley was involved in the 50's and 60's New York folk scene along with the likes of performers such as Dave Van Ronk and the NewLost City Ramblers (NLCR). Roy Berkeley was a mainstay in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s New York City folk scene along with Dave Van Ronk, The New Lost City Ramblers and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and played flatpick country/folk guitar and sounded like a cross between

Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Guthrie. During these years, along with Van Ronk and others, he wrote a parody of the well known leftist songbook The People’s Songbook that he called The Bosses’ Songbook and Roy was also a political activist who moved from the Trotskyist movement (like Van Ronk he was anti-Stalinist) and later became deputy sheriff in his town of Shaftsbury, Vermont. Unfortunately, Berkeley passed away this last May, but left an indelible mark in the history of the folk movement of the world.


As far as i could tell, he recorded two albums with Woodbridge for two different labels; Longview and Green Linnet. Both seem to be out of print.


In addition to recording this album, Berkeley combined efforts with Artie Rose and NLCR's Tom Paley in the formation of the Old Reliable String Band (Available on Smithsonian Folkways). A side note to this being that Tom Paley left NLCR because he did not wish to perform as frequently as John Cohen and Mike Seeger intended to. The liner notes are free on the Folkways website and are worth looking into.

I couldn't find any images of the album cover or liner notes. I transferred this sometime last spring and neglected to do so then when i had the album. If anyone can help with this, it would be greatly appreciated. Anyways, here is a download link: