Founded in the 1970s and specializing in vernacular music, Rounder Records is the largest independent record company in the U.S. The product of the passion of its three founders, Rounder grew from the folk revival of the 1960s. Nearly two decades later, in 1989, other passionate people associated with the folk revival created the Folk Alliance. Their goal was essentially to create a trade group, or trade association, for what the membership broadly characterizes as “folk music.” Michael Scully, who holds a PhD in American Studies and is a practicing lawyer, writes about both organizations here, giving a portrait of two influential entities that stand at the intersection of popular notions of folk music, on the one hand, and commerce, on the other.

A product of the revival himself, Scully tends to write about dichotomies or tensions. The book opens with a broad chapter, “Folklore, Fakelore, and Poplore,” in which he provides an overview of folklore studies. Focusing on what he sees as a tension between notions of authenticity and revival, Scully writes about how those academic issues found voice in the 1960s “folk boom.” That, in turn, leads to discussion of notions of purity in music, held by revivalists, in tension with the impulse to commercialize or professionalize. Most folklorists will find the discussion of folklore studies familiar ground.

Two chapters on Rounder follow. Here, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that I’ve co-produced a Rounder release and interviewed two of the founders about their company’s history. Scully draws portraits of the three young Rounder Founders, as they call themselves. He traces their coming to music, especially old-time Southern music, their evolving politics, their early fortuitous encounter with the proprietor of a small record label specializing in old-time music, and their move into producing albums. Those early albums, and, in fact, the early days of the company, had a “making it up as we go along” quality, coupled with the founders’ work habits, which bordered on complete exhaustion. Scully keeps the theme of tension going throughout, as he chronicles the Rounders’ sense of mission in contrast to the necessity of understanding the commercial world in which record companies operate.

He also discusses some influential early releases, concentrating largely on the young old-time bands--the Fuzzy Mountain String Band and the Highwoods String Band--who helped kindle a broader interest in older fiddle and banjo-based music. That leads to a fairly detailed look at a public controversy about revival versus traditional musicians exemplified by a strongly worded set of published pieces by Mac Benford, a member of the Highwoods band, and Joe Wilson, of the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Rounder’s eventual success, one could argue, came from their ability to navigate their way through those thickets. A very important moment for the company, and a fairly well-known story, comes when the founders decided to record the gritty rock band, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, which brought their first large-scale commercial success while forcing them to broaden their notion of what their catalog should contain.

The Folk Alliance is the subject of two chapters. Scully chronicles the sometimes turbulent history of this organization, and here he tends to write about two kinds of tensions. First, there’s the difficulty of creating an organization that attempts to embrace the wide range of musics called “folk,” and this is especially evident in the uneasiness traditionalists and singer-songwriters have with each other. Second, as in the case of Rounder, there’s the pull between folk music as ideology--progressive politics, localism, small scale--and folk music as commerce, with the professional apparatuses of promotion, publicity, music law, and other complications. Scully gives us a history that links personalities and these tensions. As in his examination of Rounder, he uses a wide range of interviews as sources.

A last chapter returns to Rounder, and this is the one I found most interesting. It’s largely an examination of Rounder as a business, although it, too, is personality--and, to some extent, ideology--driven. Over time, this is a company that moved from its principals’ selling LPs from boxes at bluegrass festivals to being a significant force in a number of musical genres. Along the way, it had to contend with major issues in unionization and corporatization. And the Rounders’ contribution to bluegrass, old-time, Cajun, Zydeco, New Orleans music, and many other forms of vernacular music has been huge.

In recent years, we have seen a number of excellent books on the American folk revival. Many of them tell a story that includes familiar names--Lomax, Seeger, Guthrie, Asch, Dylan, and others. Many of them imply a kind of golden age of the revival, locating it in the 1960s. The Never-Ending Revival makes its contribution by moving a few decades forward from that moment. For what it’s worth, the Rounder catalog is almost certainly larger than the (Smithsonian) Folkways catalog. The Folk Alliance is an entirely different kind of entity from, say, People’s Songs. The folk boom days may be over, but some of its best impulses continue.

--------

[Review length: 838 words • Review posted on October 1, 2008]