In 100 Books Every Folk Music Fan Should Own, Dick Weissman provides an expansive collection, in list form, of scholarly books on various folk musics and their subgenres. This book serves as a kind of CliffsNotes for seminal works that explore the performance, documentation, and development of folk music. Weissman is thoughtful about his critiques of each work and frequently offers suggestions on how one might improve upon these works. Weissman separates his chosen 100 works into seventeen categories.

Weissman begins his book with a helpful overview of historically-minded works with “Historical Surveys” (7-17). He considers them not to be “standard history texts” (7) but rather academic pieces in which scholars attempt to chronicle vast portions of time in both popular and lesser-known folk music camps. In this section, he includes works that draw on an extensive palette of topics—namely gender, nostalgia, traditional folk ballads, and bluegrass.

Next comes “Biographies and Autobiographies” (17-52). In this section, Weissman has carefully chosen a wide variety of artists—a list that I consider to be substantial, including the biographies of foundational artists. It is also a refreshing list, as he includes works about lesser-known figures in folk music who have, no doubt, left an impression on the genre despite being underrepresented in the literature. Throughout the summaries in this section, Weissman highlights the political nature of the music business, particularly with artists or groups with commercial appeal, and the complex history of race and musical performance. Discussing biographies and autobiographies from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith to Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Weissman curates a list that is arguably the strongest in the book.

Then we have “Songbooks and Folk Song Collections” (52-75). Weissman defines the “songbook” as a “collection of songs intended for people to sing and play,” whereas “Folk song collections are more scholarly works, many of which contain detailed analyses of the music and lyrics of the song” (52). Here, he privileges the analyses of the songbooks over the song collections. While discussing the history and importance of the musics incorporated in each collection, he shows a reverence for the compositions, the performers, and, when applicable, the collectors of these songs. This section speaks to the participatory element of folk music history and performance. The inclusion of these sections helps to continue fostering that spirit and further disseminating knowledge of these songs.

Weissman continues with six consecutive sections that explore race and creed during the early- and mid-twentieth century. The section entitled “American Indians” (75-78), although short, highlights two important works and the importance of the prolific author and researcher, Frances Densmore. In “The Immigrants” (78-82) and “Spanish-Language Music in the United States” (83-88), he outlines a dozen works that elaborate on displaced musics and music-in-migration, created by immigrants that have settled around the U.S.

Continuing with “African American Music” (88-103), “Anglo American Songs” (104-107), and “Black and White” (107-111), Weissman distills this extensive body of work into a handful of far-reaching seminal works. In later sections of the book, he identifies those works that examine more recent incarnations of these styles, so Weissman’s grouping of works here focuses mostly on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century performers.

Many books summarized in the sections entitled “Politics, Protest and Workers’ Songs, and the Folk Song Revival” (111-122) and “Miscellaneous” (123-132) contain titles that evoke the popular figures of protest songs and the American folk revival, like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie. While those artists’ contribution and influence is of notable importance, Weissman’s list incorporates books that acknowledge and elaborate on lesser-known yet influential figures in the protest and revival camps. With Archie Greene’s work on coal miners’ songs included here, as well as Patrick Huber’s book on cotton-mill workers in the Piedmont South, for example, we are given a broader survey of the types of musics and musicians involved in these political efforts than we might expect. Weismann almost certainly includes such a wide variety of lesser-known works in order to further uncover those artists’ work—those that might have been left out of the popular canon.

With “Folk Rock and Freak Rock” (132-136), we learn of two lesser-known books about 1960s “experimental folk” music and the prevalence of drugs among its creators and enthusiasts. “The Business of Folk” (136-138) summarizes only Richard Carlin’s book on Smithsonian Folkways. The section, “Folk Instruments and Instructional Materials” (138-154), is helpful for those interested in learning a folk instrument using traditional melodies and techniques. Lastly, the author tacks on “Appendix: A Baker’s Dozen of the Next to the Best,” because no music fan, especially an author with Weissman’s level of knowledge on the subject, would know where to draw the line. Here, Weissman adds several more runners-up to his top 100 list. These entries, which we could easily file across all sections previously outlined in the book, are proof of Weissman’s excitement to spread the word about these important pieces of work—and suggest that perhaps another “best of” book could be underway.

This book would be helpful for scholars, musicians, and music fans new to the American folk music genre. Especially for those with an interest in the history of American folk music, Weissman’s collection of books here serves as a solid springboard for researchers casting a wide net with the hopes of finding a list of carefully vetted works. This book might also prove useful in undergraduate courses intended to be an introduction to American folk music or American music history.

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[Review length: 906 words • Review posted on December 1, 2015]