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Category: Jukebox

A view looking past a digital display screen towards the doors of an indoor theater, with

The Old 97

Posted by: Bryan Cornell

Folklorist Norm Cohen has astutely observed that “[f]olklore thrives where danger threatens” (The Long Steel Rail, cited below, p. 169). The annals of commercially recorded traditional and popular song provide abundant support for this conclusion. In fact, by the early twentieth century — especially the decades of the teens and twenties — nearly every imaginable disaster or mishap was memorialized in song.  Natural disasters are …

A view looking past a digital display screen towards the doors of an indoor theater, with

Where the River Shannon Flows

Posted by: Karen Fishman

This blog post was co-written with Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress It wouldn’t be St. Patrick’s Day without some sentimental Irish ballads to listen to with our green beer, and the name that is most synonymous with Irish ballads is John McCormack. John McCormack (1884-1945) was an Irish born American …