Moses Asch, 81, Founder of Folkways Records, Dies

Moses Asch, whose Folkways Records grew from a series of children’s songs sung by a convicted murderer named Leadbelly, died Sunday in a New York City hospital. He was 81 and at his death had produced more than 2,000 albums of folk music--a source of inspiration and musicology for musicians and their fans for nearly 40 years.

Asch, who died of a heart attack, started the Folkways label in 1947 with recordings of Leadbelly and such folk artists and blues singers as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Champion Jack Dupree, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

By documenting traditional music and sounds from around the world, Folkways became an influential resource during the folk music resurgence of the 1950s and the protest songs that became the hallmark of the Vietnam War era.

Asch maintained what is considered the most significant library of reference works in the nation. In addition to the work of internationally known folk singers, the label features jazz, Appalachian music, gospel, spoken words, children’s songs, electronic music, ragtime, environmental sounds and traditional music from around the world.

He never permitted any of his recordings to go out of print and his 12-page catalogue continues among the most requested of any in the recording industry.

Bob Dylan’s first album included versions of songs he had learned from the Folkways “Anthology of American Folk Music.”

“Mo was an explorer, but an eminently practical explorer, and vox humana was his terrain,” said Alan Lomax, co-founder of the Library of Congress folk song archive. “As an engineer and a very canny businessman, he used the record business to keep his rather isolationist countrymen sensitive to the wide range of the world.

“He’s been extremely important in keeping America humane and urbane.”

It was Lomax’s father, John, who found Leadbelly languishing in a Louisiana prison, arranged for his release and took him to Asch.

Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell heard of the alliance and wrote bitterly about a murderer entertaining children. The resulting furor made Asch’s new label known throughout the country.

Asch was the son of novelist Sholem Asch and was born in Warsaw but grew up in New York City. His father sent him to Germany to study and many years later he recalled that it was there he grew weary of hearing from his fellow students that Americans had no true folk music tradition. That initial pique was to produce a lifelong fascination with the folk genre.