Our American society has always, until recent times, been a singing society. Back in the days before radio and TV, you satisfied your need for music by making it yourself. Singing was not a spectator sport for the few "gifted" singers - - it was for EVERYONE, regardless of musical "ability".

Traditional songs, or traditional folk songs as they are sometimes called, are the songs that ordinary people learned from others in their communities through oral tradition. In the pre-media days, these songs were passed along and sung daily, by average Americans, for a wide variety of reasons: to pass the time, to comment on recent events, to make the work go a little faster, to pass along valuable lessons, to offer a light moment, or simply because the tune itself was satisfying to the ear.

The songs were passed along through oral transmission; sometimes for hundreds of years and across oceans, other times from just across the neighbor’s fence or on the work site. Old English and Scottish ballads have been found in the repertoires of many rural singers on this side of the ocean, often right alongside songs of American origin created out of unique situations in this "new" land. We probably have lost more of these songs than we have retained, however, there is no shortage of these gems that have been documented for us to discover and sing once again.

I owe a big debt to Buffalo NY musician, singer, bandmate and friend Jerry Raven for first making me aware of this enormous cache of traditional song out there, with all of it's various categories and sub-divisions (not to mention educational possibilities!). Growing up on rock & roll, jazz and bluegrass music, I never stopped to wonder about what songs New England's Yankee settlers sang, or songs of the cowboys, the sailors on the Great Lakes, the canallers, the slaves, New York State farmers.....songs that tell the story of our country and it’s people far more effectively and eloquently than anything that could be written today to comment on those times. I was hooked, and I still am.

photo by E.LoPresto

If you are interested in these songs too, I’d love to hear from you Click here to e-mail me.

Much of my free time over the past several years has been devoted to researching traditional songs of various regions of New York State. There are lots of them! I spend a lot of time in folklore archives, on the internet, in university library basements, in major regional libraries, at used bookstores and the like, following the trail and searching for more documentation of our regional singing tradition.

Generally what we have available today are recordings and/or written documentation of songs collected from various people around the state who were said to "know lots of the old songs". Folklorists began collecting this sort of information in the early part of the twentieth century, interviewing elders whose memories went back to the middle of the 1800’s. Songs learned in youth from elders in their communities can easily go back to the late 1700’s, and often can be traced back much further than that.

Other sources for songs that "Yorkers" used to sing include personal manuscripts, diary entries, logbooks from Great Lakes sailing ships and published songsters from the 1800’s.

Following is a list of several collections that have been published in book form; some of these are now out-of-print, others are still commercially available (see Store page), and many can be found at used bookstores or at your public library. This is a great starting point if you are interested in songs our foreparents used to sing in New York State:

Body Boots and Britches - Harold W Thompson - The mother lode of NY State folklore: ballads, songs and tales collected all across NY State in the 1930’s by this Cornell University professor & his graduate folklore students from Albany Teachers’ College. Lots of song lyrics, no tunes.
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Folk Songs of the Catskills - Cazden, Haufrecht & Studer - Great collection of songs from rural residents of the Catskill region collected 1939-1960 or so by the Camp Woodland summer campers and their folklorist counselors. A companion volume of Notes and Sources was also published.

A Pioneer Songster - Harold W. Thompson with Edith Cutting - A rare collection of song lyrics written down in manuscript form in the 1840’s & 1850’s by the children of Artemas Stevens, a singer and Wyoming County settler who brought his family and his songs to Western New York from New England in 1836.

Low Bridge! Folklore and the Erie Canal - Lionel D Wyld - A great read, with one whole chapter devoted to Erie Canal songs and ballads. 
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Traditional American Folksongs: From the Anne and Frank Warner Collection - Anne Warner - A great collection of songs from rural singers all over the eastern seaboard, and featuring a large selection of songs collected in the Adirondack Mountains from "Yankee" John Galusha of Minerva NY. Yankee John’s memories went back to the day his older brother came home from the Civil War.

Adirondack Voices - Woodsmen and Woods Lore - Robert D Bethke - This folklorist collected songs and stories from St Lawrence County lumbermen, tavern keepers and others in the 1970’s - lots of oral tradition material still existed, including many localized tales and ballads.

Songs and Tunes from Wolf Run - Mark Hamilton - Mark Hamilton was a rural Allegany County fiddler, dance caller & singer - - a tradition bearer - - who was recorded by Mitzie Collins and Jim Kimball in the 1980’s. This is the companion book to the recording, with excellent notes on the songs and information on the social contexts in which they were passed down, played and sung.
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Folklore from the Schoharie Hills - Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner - Gardner collected customs, tales & songs for six summers in the 1910’s in this area, and the book contains texts for many of the songs she found.

Folk Songs of Upstate New York - Lynn Arthur Koch - A 1990 collection put together by this dedicated music educator in the Cortland County area, compiled out of the need for such a resource in elementary school classrooms and music rooms.
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Windjammers - Songs of the Great Lakes Region - Ivan Walton & Joe Grimm - A major collection of song texts and tunes collected by Walton on his 1930’s & 40’s trips around the lakes. Walton interviewed old-timers whose memories went back to the great age of sail, and many of his "informants" were from NYS ports such as Buffalo and Oswego.
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As mentioned above, there are also dozens and dozens of unpublished songs & recordings I have discovered from a great variety of sources. If these also interest you, give me a jingle dave@daveruch.com and I’ll be glad to chat about them.

If you know of any other published - or unpublished - songs traditionally sung in New York State, I’d love to hear from you dave@daveruch.com.

Recordings - For some great commercially-available recordings of New York State singers and songs, see the Store page.