(CelebrityAccess) — Smithsonian Folkways Recordings announced that it has acquired the historic traditional music repository of Folk-Legacy Records
The Connecticut-based Folk Legacy Records was founded 1961 by Sandy Paton, Caroline Paton, and Lee Haggerty as a family-run record label aimed at collecting traditional American music and providing a platform for emerging artists in the genre.
Folk Legacy’s catalog includes more than 140 albums covering a variety of folk traditions from ballads and sea shanties of the British Isles to gospel and hymns of Appalachia and the Ozarks; from dance tunes of New Brunswick, Brittany, and New England to Southwestern American folktales, story-songs, and children’s music.
The label’s catalog also includes songs by old-time banjo player Frank Proffitt, singer-songwriter Gordon Bok, folk revivalist Hedy West, and more.
“It isn’t that the songs are good because they’re traditional; they are traditional because they are good. They were preserved by generations of traditional singers because they reflected real feelings,” Folk Legacy’s Sandy Paton said in a 1991 Sing Out! interview.
As well, the label’s albums feature extensive liner notes full of historical material, first person accounts from artists and insights into the recording process that has proven invaluable to researchers and historians.
