Christopher Bahn
https://christopherbahn.com

Christopher Bahn is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, and a former student of Ellen's. Visit his site at www.christopherbahn.com for more about his books and other work.

Interviews & Press Music

Talking with Paul Metsa on Wall of Power Radio Hour

By on Saturday, July 26, 2025

Ellen and I had a great conversation with musician and author Paul Metsa on Thursday for his radio shows in Duluth and the Twin Cities, talking about Ellen’s music and her life in the world of folksingers and folklorists, and particularly her meetings with Woody Guthrie, Reverend Gary Davis, and Alan Lomax.

Ellen’s interview will broadcast on Duluth’s Stars Over the Prairie show 10 a.m. to noon at 610AM-103.9FM or worldwide on streaming at www.kdal610.com. Then she’ll be on Paul’s Wall of Power Radio Hour in the Twin Cities on AM 950 KNTF today at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m.

The streaming audio of the interview can be heard at AM 950’s Wall of Power website, or for your greatest convenience, just play the file below:

Please have a listen and let us know what you think in the comments. We’d love to come back sometime—the time passed very quickly and there are so many more stories to tell.

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From the Archives Music

Earliest known home recording of Reverend Gary Davis unearthed in Ellen Stekert’s archive

By on Friday, July 18, 2025

A remarkable and historic discovery has just been made in the world of American roots music: a lost 1951 tape of legendary blues and gospel guitarist Reverend Gary Davis has surfaced, believed to be the earliest known home recording of the artist. The tape was uncovered by renowned folklorist Ellen Stekert while sifting through her personal archive of field recordings and photographs — a collection spanning more than seven decades.

The earliest previously known home recordings of Reverend Davis dated to 1953 and were released by Folkways Recordings in the mid-2000s. This newly rediscovered tape predates those by two years and captures Davis at a vital moment: still a street performer in New York City, just beginning to draw the attention of young folk enthusiasts who would soon help propel him to legendary status.

“How did this tape get into my ‘archive’ of tapes that I’ve dragged through a long life of folksongs? I am not certain,” Stekert reflects, “but I think it was recorded that day in 1951… when a group of us insinuated ourselves into a sedan meant for about four fewer of us, along with Dick Hatch’s treasured recording machine. Crowded it was, and a foreshadowing of how the day would go.”

Reverend Gary Davis — then a blind street musician working the sidewalks of New York — had just returned from a day of playing when the group encountered him in the Bronx. He invited the teenagers up to his small apartment. “It was almost as small as Dick’s car,” Stekert recalls. “We piled into the living room space, moving the one large table in the middle to one wall, giving anyone coming into the room only space to crawl under or squeeze past it.

“Gary played, and played. Even though he sang mostly church songs, it made little difference to us — his playing, the ‘music,’ was right out of the traditions of street singers and blues players. He had been working all day, but he loved playing, and he was amazing. How in the world, I wondered, could one person do all that on a single guitar? How could he get that running base and also the melodies (in harmony, to boot) on the upper strings?

“To me, he was a phenomenon. His music offered glimpses of other places I realized I had to visit and understand.”

The tape, recorded by fellow student Dick Hatch, was given to Stekert a few weeks later. “He knew I wanted to listen to that day again,” she says. “I never imagined that the next time I would see Reverend Gary Davis in person would be in 1962 at the Swarthmore Folk Festival, when he and I would share a two-part concert.”

Reverend Davis would go on to be a towering influence in the folk and blues revival movements of the 1960s, inspiring artists such as Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, and Ry Cooder. But in 1951, his music was still largely unknown outside the neighborhoods he played in.

“I saw Davis mesmerize other musicians; he became a much-respected player in the early days of the Folksong Revival in NYC, but he might have been just a bit too early for the time major black musicians took to the Revival Stage. It was a very white world, those early days.

“I kept this tape with others I treasured, and escaped to another world of ‘entertainment’, complete with egos, stars, rumors, and a jargon all its own. The years of education I received in that other world, the world of academia, were hardly more profound than the education I received living through, and re-listening to, Reverend Gary Davis’ music  from that one crowded day in the Bronx.”

The recording, which has been remastered by Ellen’s producer, Ross Wylde, can be heard in its entirety on the Swingin’ Pig YouTube channel. To support Ellen and her team’s work digitizing and releasing her archives, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to her Patreon, where the Davis recordings are uploaded in lossless quality.

Press Contact:
Ross Wylde
(650) 867-5830
RossWyldeMusic@gmail.com

Ellen Stekert links:
• Spotify
• Bandcamp

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Interviews & Press Music Photography

More news from Down Under

By on Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Ellen and producer Ross Wylde got a very nice writeup recently from Nicola Heath of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public media service, talking about Ellen’s musical career from her early days up to the Go Round Songs album and our recent archival music project. Thank you to all the folks at ABC for your continuing interest in Ellen and her work!

The article hints at a few of our planned future releases, which includes a lot more treasures of Ellen’s music, but much more—we’re working on digitizing a wealth of material from her archives, including tapes, photos and film not only of Ellen but other noteworthy artists like Rev. Gary Davis and Malvina Reynolds. The article begins by mentioning that Ross and Ellen first met through Ellen’s photography, when Ross bought a print of Ellen’s candid photo of Bob Dylan behind the scenes at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which she captured in a casual backstage moment. We have some exciting news on that subject: In the very near future, we’re planning to launch a store where you can buy prints, posters, and digital images of Ellen’s photography from across the decades, which will include some great material from Newport and other concerts, as well as Ellen’s folksong collecting trips and much more. Keep an eye on this website for an upcoming announcement.

EDIT: In a previous version of this post, I wrote that Ellen had actually performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which is incorrect. Ellen reminded me of this: “That’s why I got so many good photos. I was accompanying Sarah Gunning to the festival and it was she who was performing there.  She had never been on a plane ride or to a big event like the Festival before, so she asked me to help her and go with her, which I did. It was far more interesting than actually performing!”

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Academia Interviews & Press Music

Ellen profiled on University of Minnesota website

By on Friday, June 27, 2025

We’re pleased to share this delightful profile of Ellen and our recent archival-music project, “Ellen Stekert: The New Old Sound,” written by Terri Sutton for the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts website. The article does a great job of exploring Ellen’s history both as a musician and a university professor, and how the two sides of her career influenced each other. It was a difficult balance to maintain, which ultimately led her to choose academia full-time—although music has always stayed in her heart, which is a big reason we’re all here at ellenstekert.com.

Thank you to Terri and everyone at the U of M!

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Music

“We were the song”: Ellen releases new single, “Four Strong Winds”

By on Thursday, June 26, 2025

In celebration of Pride Month, we decided to release this haunting version of the Ian Tyson classic “Four Strong Winds”. This song was recorded in the mid-1960s. Accompanying Ellen is Marge Doherty, a fellow educator and friend of Ellen’s, who also happened to be a talented singer. This recording is an artifact of LGBTQ+ history.

“Four Strong Winds” is available now on BandCamp.

About the album

Here is Ellen’s amazing essay about Marge and this recording session:

“Marge was in her early 20s when we met, blonde, fresh-looking, about 5’6”, and clearly very bright. I was in my early 30s, living in Detroit, teaching folklore at Wayne State University. She was in college in a nearby town, finishing her Master’s degree in Physical Education.

It was in the mid-1960s, and I don’t remember exactly how I met her, but I do recall she was part of a group of women physical education teachers who worked at some of the small colleges in the Detroit area. Most members of the group, including Marge, were queer. I’m sure that they knew I was hardly adverse to such relationships, but although both Marge and I knew each other’s ‘proclivities,’ we also knew that our singing somehow transcended any such relationship. As far as I was concerned, the best of our relationship was what we had in our singing… and I wouldn’t have disturbed that for the world.

I had never felt as inspired by anyone’s harmonies or musical interaction with my singing as I did with Marge. She was immensely talented and had an innate ability to predict when and where I would start and stop, syncopate, or accelerate. I never analyzed her harmonies, and I don’t think I want to. In many ways, it is like trying to explain why you love someone, and I did love Marge in our singing, although we never had the physical involvement that it seemed she was keenly afraid of.

In the social environment in which I knew her, such a relationship would have been assumed. Looking back on it, I believe that both of us were determined not to bend to ‘social pressure’ any more than we were determined not to bend to our own inclinations, which I believe we both had.

When Ross and I decided to put ‘Four Strong Winds’ onto streaming platforms, Ross suggested I contact Marge so she could hear it. I found her, or rather, I found her obituary. She had died years ago, quite young, having had what seems a generous and good life as a physical education instructor. But the most poignant thing I read was that she was remembered as being fond of singing and playing her guitar. She never played the guitar when I knew her, and I wondered whether she had found someone else to sing with.

In their advanced years, couples often point to songs that marked their developing relationship. Marge and I could never have done that; Marge and I were the song.”

—Ellen Stekert

The album art is a photograph that Ellen took of her classmates while on a school trip to Europe in the early 1950s. The man on the right is Jean-Claude van Itallie, a friend of Ellen’s who would later write the acclaimed play America Hurrah. The man on the left is unknown.

Lyrics

Four strong winds that blow lonely, seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change come what may
For our good times are all gone, and I’m bound for movin’ on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way

Think I’ll go out to Alberta
Weather’s good there in the fall
Got some friends that I could go to working for
Still, I wish you’d change your mind
If I ask you one more time
But we’ve been through that a hundred times or more

Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change, come what may
But our good times are all gone
Then I’m bound for movin’ on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way

If I get there before the snow flies
And if things are going good
You could meet me if I send you down the fare
But by then it would be winter
There ain’t much for you to do
And the winds sure can blow lonely way out there

Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change, come what may
But our good times are all gone
And I’m bound for moving on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way

Credits

released June 20, 2025
Guitar, Vocals: Ellen Stekert
Vocals: Marge Doherty
Composer: Ian Tyson
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn

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Interviews & Press Music

Of parsley, sage, and other spices

By on Thursday, June 26, 2025

Andrew Ford, who recently hosted Ellen and her producer Ross on Australian public radio’s The Music Show, has written a terrific article for the independent magazine Inside Story about “Scarborough Fair,” the folk song most famous for its interpretation by Simon & Garfunkel. He discusses many versions of the song, including the one sung by Ellen on Go Round Songs.

As Ford mentions, the song has a long, long history going back to the 17th century or even earlier. It is one of the 305 collected in Francis James Child’s groundbreaking work of folklore scholarship English and Scottish Popular Ballads, better known as The Child Ballads, where it is called “The Cambric Shirt.” Ellen also recorded a version of “Cambric Shirt” with Milt Okun in the 1950s on the album Traditional American Love Songs.

(Incidentally, while researching this post, I found two separate reviews of the album that suggest that Simon’s arrangement might have been influenced not just by Martin Carthy, which is well known, but Milt and Ellen’s version of the song as well. I don’t know how true that really is, but I’d like to think so—it’s certainly likely that he heard both of the previous versions before recording his.)

Here’s audio of both of Ellen’s versions of the song:

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Interviews & Press Music

Barking Dog, singing Stekert

By on Thursday, June 19, 2025

The fine folks at the folk-music radio show Barking Dog on CKUW in Winnipeg, Manitoba, have been longtime supporters of Ellen’s music and our work here on ellenstekert.com. In fact, they were the very first people to email us, barely a week after we first went online. It’s a terrific show with a wonderfully eclectic and encyclopedic sensibility. Barking Dog has been playing lots of music from Ellen’s Go Around Songs recently on the show, and even wrote about her recently in their blog’s June roundup of links. (And it’s never a bad thing to be on the same page as a great performance by Skip James.)

Thank you to host Juliana Young, producer Dylan Bodner, and everyone at CKUW and Barking Dog! We hope you’re staying safe from the forest fires up there in Manitoba.

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Music

New album: “Ballads Are News: Live On Camera Three”

By on Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Following up on Ellen’s long-lost Woody Guthrie cover “High Floods & Low Waters“, released earlier this month, we are pleased to share the entire recording of that 1959 session, Ballads Are News: Live On Camera Three. Originally taped for the CBS news program Camera Three, the hourlong show also features several of Ellen’s good friends in the folk scene, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, and The New Lost City Ramblers—all of whom are folk legends in their own right.

The album is available now via Bandcamp. Give it a listen below.

About the album

A group shot from the rehearsal for the recording, taken by Ellen’s brother Jim Stekert.

Here is Ellen’s commentary:

Early in the summer of 1959, a number of New York City singers involved in the growing urban “folksong revival” were asked to do a program for CBS network TV. I was one of them.

The program was part of an hour-long anthology CBS carried on Sunday mornings called Camera Three. It was a network program that ran from 1954-1980—the predecessor to the current Sunday Night news magazine. It highlighted matters of interest to “intellectuals,” and it often strayed from recognized genres to more arcane ones. As one reviewer put it:

"Camera Three did not discriminate... One week might be an examination of torch songs, and the next would be Shakespeare, and the week after that would be Japanese films. Examples were given, and experts were brought in. There were no ads. It was done as a service for people who felt ignored by the television industry. Remember, this was at a time when TV was acknowledged to be a cultural wasteland..."

The program we were being asked to do was a focus on folksongs as purveyors of news. It was scheduled to air on September 13, 1959. John Cohen, my friend from high school in Great Neck and my initial contact with the Greenwich Village folk music scene, had called and asked me to take part in the program. He had already rounded up Jean Ritchie, Dave Sears, and Oscar Brand, as well as his own new old-timey group, The New Lost City Ramblers. We were all from the New York City area, so there would be no problem with logistics.

John and Oscar had already mapped out the program with the director and the studio personnel. It was to be narrated by the well-known news broadcaster, Harry Reasoner, a favorite broadcaster of mine. In addition to the song we all sang together (“Wasn’t That a Mighty Time”), I was assigned a song with Jean Ritchie about the Santa Barbara earthquake as well as the solo verses of a song by Woody Guthrie, with the group singing the refrain. The song was called “High Floods & Low Waters”, and it was about the then-contemporary droughts that caused serious water shortages in New York City. The problem was that I had never heard the song.

So, a few weeks before the program, I met with John Cohen at Oscar Brand’s home on Long Island. John sang the song into Oscar’s tape machine and gave me the tape to listen to and learn the song. John’s style of singing was similar to Woody’s, and I was at first somewhat concerned since my singing presentation was closer to an understated urban pop singer than to either of them. I knew I could not become an old-timey singer in a few weeks. But I practiced, and when I now listen to my first attempts to sing the song, which I still have on the original tape that John made for me at Oscar’s, I don’t think I did a bad job learning it.

I recall the run-through that we did in the CBS studio. It was fun, and both the singers and the studio folks were happy with the production. At the end of the rehearsal, one of the producers came up to me, complimented my singing, and suggested I go to some auditions for a new Broadway musical that was being produced by a friend of his. It was going to star Theo Bikel, a singer I had recently met and liked, but I pointed out to the CBS producer that I was about to return to my graduate school studies in Bloomington, Indiana, and I couldn’t manage both my classes and a Broadway musical at the same time. The musical he was telling me about turned out to be The Sound of Music. I still wonder what would have happened had I gone to those auditions.

But to top that off, on the way down from the studio, in the elevator, I met two fellows who I later realized were part of the folksong group The Tarriers. They said that since the Weavers had just broken up, there was room for other groups. They were looking for a female singer and asked if I would be interested… and yet again, I had to beg off since I felt compelled to continue the course I was on. As I look back on these two opportunities I had to break into ‘show business’, I think I did not mind missing the opportunity since I always felt I had a better mind than voice. The idea of trying to be part of a New York-based singing group and also attend classes in Bloomington was more than anyone could handle. I would have had to give up my graduate work, and above all else, I loved learning, even though I loved singing almost as much.

The actual airing of the show was live, and it was a great success. My older brother, Jim, came along armed with a camera and an audiotape that I believe was recorded by CBS for us. He snapped some interesting photos of the original group that John Cohen had formed as The New Lost City Ramblers. Tom Paley was on banjo, and Mike Seeger was on fiddle. The grainy Tri-X black and white film captured all the members of our small production. When Jim changed to color film, the camera evidently jammed, hence the double, triple, and who knows how many–exposure picture of us singing that is the ‘cover’ of this streaming 1959 digitization. Art is created in many mysterious ways!

Credits

Released May 16, 2025

Artists: Ellen Stekert, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, The New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, John Cohen)
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn

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Interviews & Press Music

Ellen on Australian radio’s “The Music Show”!

By on Thursday, May 15, 2025

We are very happy to let you know that Australian public broadcaster ABC Radio National’s The Music Show interviewed Ellen along with her producer, singer-songwriter Ross Wylde, about her career and her recent archival releases, including Go Around Songs, Vol. 1. It’s a full hour of conversation with lots of music.

You can listen to the episode, Ellen Stekert: A Full Life in Folk Music, online at The Music Show’s website.

Thank you to the folks at the Music Show!

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Music

Ellen Stekert releases historic new single: “High Floods & Low Waters” — a lost Woody Guthrie song unearthed after 65 years

By on Saturday, May 10, 2025

Folklorist and singer Ellen Stekert has released a new single, “High Floods & Low Waters”, a long-lost Woody Guthrie song that has remained unheard and undocumented for more than six decades. Originally recorded in 1959 on the CBS television program Camera Three, this release marks the first time the song has ever been made publicly available. 

Performed alongside American folk luminaries Jean Ritchie, Dave Sear, Oscar Brand, and The New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, and John Cohen), “High Floods & Low Waters” was part of a special Camera Three episode exploring folksongs as a form of news, titled “Ballads Are News”. Narrated by legendary broadcaster Harry Reasoner, the episode aired on September 13, 1959.

The song, written by Woody Guthrie in the 1940s, addresses the devastating droughts and water shortages affecting New York City at the time. “I was assigned the solo verses, with the group singing the refrain,” recalls Stekert. “The problem was that I had never heard the song before. John Cohen sang it for me and recorded it on Oscar Brand’s tape machine so I could learn it.” That recording—and the performance it inspired—survived only on private tapes and in the memories of those involved. Until now.

Remarkably, “High Floods & Low Waters” was never published, and to the knowledge of Stekert’s team, no other lyrics or recordings of it have surfaced publicly. Aside from a mention of its title in the catalog of the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the song has remained completely unknown. This release is a cultural excavation—an essential rediscovery of Guthrie’s lesser-known work.

“When Ellen told me it was a Guthrie song, I didn’t believe it at first,” says Ross Wylde, Stekert’s producer. “I had looked up every line in the song and couldn’t find any record of it. The fact that any Woody Guthrie song would have zero digital footprint was baffling to me.”

The single is now available on all major streaming platforms. The complete Camera Three recording will be released May 16th on Bandcamp. To purchase a download of this song or any of Ellen’s other recent music releases, visit Ellen’s BandCamp page at ellenstekert.bandcamp.com. For updates about further new releases, please follow Ellen’s Spotify or Apple Music profiles, or check back on the Music & Performing page here at her website. Also, follow @ellenstekert on Instagram and Facebook for updates and interesting stories about Ellen’s life.

About the song

Here is Ellen’s commentary on the recording:

Early in the summer of 1959, a number of New York City singers involved in the growing urban “folksong Revival” were asked to do a program for CBS network TV. I was one of them.

The program was part of an hour-long anthology CBS carried on Sunday mornings called Camera Three. It was a network program that ran from 1954-1980—the predecessor to the current Sunday Night news magazine. It highlighted matters of interest to “intellectuals,” and it often strayed from recognized genres to more arcane ones. As one reviewer put it:

Camera Three did not discriminate… One week might be an examination of torch songs, and the next would be Shakespeare, and the week after that would be Japanese films. Examples were given, and experts were brought in. There were no ads. It was done as a service for people who felt ignored by the television industry. Remember, this was at a time when TV was acknowledged to be a cultural wasteland…

The program we were being asked to do was a focus on folksongs as purveyors of news. It was scheduled to air on September 13, 1959. John Cohen, my friend from high school in Great Neck and my initial contact with the Greenwich Village folk music scene, had called and asked me to take part in the program. He had already rounded up Jean Ritchie, Dave Sears, and Oscar Brand, as well as his own new old-timey group, The New Lost City Ramblers. We were all from the New York City area, so there would be no problem with logistics.

John and Oscar had already mapped out the program with the director and the studio personnel. It was to be narrated by the well-known news broadcaster, Harry Reasoner, a favorite broadcaster of mine. In addition to the song we all sang together (‘Wasn’t That a Mighty Day’), I was assigned a song with Jean Ritchie about the Santa Barbara earthquake as well as the solo verses of a song by Woody Guthrie, with the group singing the refrain. The song was called “High Floods & Low Waters”, and it was about the then-contemporary droughts that caused serious water shortages in New York City. The problem was that I had never heard the song.

So, a few weeks before the program, I met with John Cohen at Oscar Brand’s home on Long Island. John sang the song into Oscar’s tape machine and gave me the tape to listen to and learn the song. John’s style of singing was similar to Woody’s, and I was at first somewhat concerned since my singing presentation was closer to an understated urban pop singer than to either of them. I knew I could not become an old-timey singer in a few weeks. But I practiced, and when I now listen to my first attempts to sing the song, which I still have on the original tape that John made for me at Oscar’s, I don’t think I did a bad job learning it.”

Lyrics

I stand on a high marble place and look down
See the wild rushing waters flood city and town
High floods and low waters all around, all around
High floods and low waters all around

Now New York City is stony-bone dry
While down in Georgia, it pours from the sky
High floods and low waters all around, all around
High floods and low waters all around

At the hospital blaze, well, the fireman said, “Yes, sir”
“I’d save more people if I had the pressure”
High floods and low waters all around, all around
High floods and low waters all around

Now, New York City is a devil of a place, sir
Drinking hot, burning whisky without any chaser
High floods and low waters all around, all around
High floods and low waters all around

Bow down with your neighbor and ask yourselves why
Some cities are flooded while others bone-dry
High floods and low waters all around, all around
High floods and low waters all around

Credits

Released May 9, 2025
Performers: Ellen Stekert, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, The New Lost City Ramblers, Dave Sear
Composer: Woody Guthrie
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn
Cover art: Multiple-exposure photograph from Camera Three by Ellen’s brother, Jim Stekert

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