Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads (Dover Books On Music: Folk Songs)

This is a classic collection, and deserves a place in the library of anyone with any interest in American folksong. Unfortunately, the binding is very bad and all the pages have fallen out of my copy. Will have to return for another copy.

So thankful for this music resources! Nice compilation of songs with lyrics. Just what I needed for more musical journey. Good investment!

This book is just great. Great bits of history and lots of fun tunes. Highly recommend.

Good book for finding old tunes!

I like the different sections and the back stories for the songs.

it's a great album to have... only the real afficionado would know the songs though.

This is a reprint of a book first published by John Lomax in 1941. It has lyrics, fakebook tune notation and some prose describing some of the songs. I was surprised to learn just how upbeat and ‘pop’ were some of the original tunes. Since most of the old lyrical music we hear nowadays is ether terribly dry ‘classical’ work, whining bluegrass or children's tunes we’ve grown up coming to expect this of old music. And since most of the more famous folk musicians have mixed their music with marxism we assume the old folk singers did so too. Well the Lomax collection proves the lie to both those assumptions.

Excellent class introduction to American folk music.