In the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s, song collector and performer Frank Warner spent considerable time with traditional singer “Yankee John” Galusha of Minerva, and also interviewed and collected songs from Lena Bourne Fish of Black Brook. In 1948, Warner recorded his own versions of a handful of their songs on a record entitled Hudson Valley Songs on the DISC Company of America label.

Frank Warner was a true pioneer in the interpretation of traditional songs on at least two levels: he knew the people from whom the songs were collected and something of their lives and personality, and he was keenly interested in singing the songs as they were sung to him.  Carl Carmer stated, “He has the ability to reproduce the quality, manner and characteristics of the singers who gave (the songs) to him.”  This is something that was simply not done by interpreters of the folksong tradition at this time.  The New Lost City Ramblers would come along some ten years later and do the same thing for Southern string band and traditional music, igniting an old-time music revival that continues to this day.

(See the section on Frank and Anne Warner as pioneering collectors of Traditional Adirondack Music)

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