Ellen Stekert – Page 2 – Academic, folklorist and musician

More new music! “Free Goodwill”

By Christopher Bahn on Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Hot on the heels of the debut of Ellen’s first archival release, “Went To the Sea,” we are happy to share another new tune—well, not new, but vintage and never-before-heard, newly remastered for your listening pleasure. “Free Goodwill” was recorded at a rehearsal in 1968. As far as Ellen and her team are aware, this is the only known recording of this arrangement.

Ellen writes about the history of the song and her performance of it below, but please give a listen to the Bandcamp link first:

<a href="https://ellenstekert.bandcamp.com/track/free-goodwill">Free Goodwill by Ellen Stekert</a>

“Free Goodwill” is available on streaming platforms including YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and iHeart Radio by following this link to Ellen’s DistroKid page. To purchase a download of “Went To the Sea,” 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 for updates and interesting stories about Ellen’s life.

About the song

Ellen writes: “I first ran across this lyric in Cecil Sharp’s 1918 collection of Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (Volume II, p. 269). Sharp titled it ‘I Love my Love’. Interestingly, he makes no reference to other versions of the song, nor does Alan Lomax in his later collection, The Penguin Book of American Folk Songs (1946, p. 45), where Lomax actually only reprints the Sharp version.

“This version of the song ‘Sharp Prints’, which he attributes to a Mrs. Ellen Webb of North Carolina, is a small gem with a lyrical flowing melody and austere poignant verses that contain numerous floating phrases from British lyric tradition. I found the song sometime in the 1950s and sang it in programs numerous times. I even sent a recorded rendition that I did of it to a well-known performer in the 1970s, but nowhere else did I find versions of it.

“The trail of tradition for this song was invisible to me and as I finished my studies and gained a Ph.D. never finding a trace of it, I began to think that Cecil Sharp may have composed it himself and slipped it into his marvelous collection of songs. However, now I favor the theory that Mrs. Ellen Webb might well have composed the song herself or at least creatively chose to perpetuate it by singing it for Sharp. (The people in the mountains realized that Cecil Sharp was there to collect songs and ‘preserve’ them.)

“The words Ellen Webb sings, as found in the Southern Mountain collection, are those of a lover who declares love for a woman. Now, It is not unusual for women singers in the Anglo-American tradition to sing songs in which a man is the protagonist, or for men to sing songs in which a woman is the voice in the text. However, in this case, where ‘All my friends fell out with me because I kept my love’s company,’ the song might well be speaking of a same-sex relationship, which would have accounted for the ‘I’ of the song having ‘fallen out’ of the company of her peers. Indeed, in the early 1900s in the Appalachians, such a same-sex relationship would have been taboo, I would venture that this might well be one of the few cases of a lyric being collected by Cecil Sharp that speaks of same-sex love.

“Interestingly, when I sang the song, as you hear it now from the early 1960s, I changed Ellen Webb’s pronouns and sang it as though it were being sung to a male lover. The concert culture to which I performed never noted my ‘closet version’ (as I call it today), and the beauty of the melody and the text still conveyed the intensity of the piece, regardless of who wrote it for whom…which is how I hope it will be heard today.”

Lyrics

All my friends fell out with me
Because I kept my love’s company
But let them say or do what they will
I love my love with a free goodwill

Over the mountain, I must go
Because my fortune is so low
With an aching heart and a troubled mind
For leaving my true love behind

The moon above looks down and see
The parting of true love and me
It’s as hard to part the moon and sky
As it is to part true love and I

When I have gold, he has his part
When I have none, he has my heart
And he won it too with a free goodwill
And upon my honor, I love him still

The winter’s passed, and the summer’s come
The trees are blooming one by one
And if my true love chooses for to stay
I’ll stay with him ’till the break of day

For all my friends fell out with me
Because I kept my love’s company
But let them say or do what they will
I love my love with a free goodwill

Credits

Released January 31, 2025
Perfomer: Ellen Stekert
Composer: Traditional
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn

Music

New single out now! Listen to “Went To The Sea”

By Christopher Bahn on Sunday, January 19, 2025

On the surface, Ellen’s career as a folk musician may look like it was confined to the 1950s, since that’s the era when her four albums were released, before she turned her attention to graduate school and a long career as a professor. But Ellen continued to perform and record for decades, giving occasional concerts and sometimes singing during her college lectures. Many of those songs were captured on tape but never released to the public. Today, Ellen has an archive of hundreds of songs that have never been heard by anyone beyond those lucky enough to have been in the original audiences. A big part of why we started this website was to help remedy that, and we are pleased to announce the first of what we hope will be many new releases: “Went To The Sea.”

<a href="https://ellenstekert.bandcamp.com/track/went-to-the-sea">Went To The Sea by Ellen Stekert</a>

You can listen to the song on streaming platforms including YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and iHeart Radio by following this link to Ellen’s DistroKid page. To purchase a download of “Went To the Sea,” 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 for updates and interesting stories about Ellen’s life.

About the song

“Went To the Sea” was recorded at a rehearsal in the 1960s. It was written by Ellen’s friend Tracy Powers, who she met in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. Remembering Tracy, Ellen said, “She wrote wonderful songs and sang them with skill and wit. I started singing her songs in the late 1960s. ‘Went To The Sea’ was my favorite of hers. It has only one verse—Tracy said she never finished it. But the one verse it has is enough for it to be textually evocative and melodically haunting. So I learned it.”

The album art for this track depicts Ellen in 1948 in Nova Scotia, Canada, when she was about 13. The photo was taken by her father. Ellen had just contracted polio and could barely walk. Her family wasn’t sure she would survive. Her father and brother had to help her get to the beach where she sits in the photo, looking out over the ocean and the cliffs beyond.

Lyrics

Went to the sea
What’d I spy
I spied a maid, she was afraid
Afraid to cry and afraid to die

You’ll weep, you’ll faint, you’ll die
When in my arms you lie

I knew a girl
And I loved her well
I loved her better, gal, than tongue could tell
One day she loved me, one day she fell

You’ll weep, you’ll faint, you’ll die
When in my arms you lie

Went to the sea
What’d I spy
I spied a maid, she was afraid
Afraid to cry and afraid to die

You’ll weep, you’ll faint, you’ll die
When in my arms you lie

Credits

Released January 17, 2025
Perfomer: Ellen Stekert
Composer: Tracy Powers
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn

Interviews & Press Music

Have you seen this guitar?

By Christopher Bahn on Saturday, January 18, 2025

Ellen was featured on the Friday, January 18 local newscast of Minneapolis TV station KARE-11. The interview gave a nice overview of her career as a professor and folksinger, as well as helped get the word out about Ellen’s “long-lost friend”, as the video says: Her missing guitar!

The instrument was a Martin 00-21, and was bought new by Ellen in 1956. It was lost in 2008 after being sold by someone who was lent the guitar (temporarily, Ellen had hoped, but alas, no) as collateral.

Our thanks to Samantha Fischer for the interview. You can check out the whole four-minute segment at KARE-11’s website. The whole thing got started thanks to a post on the website Reddit by our friend Ross Wylde, who is also producing some of her archival music for re-release later this year. (We’ll be posting more on that very soon, including audio of one of the songs—very exciting!)

We believe the guitar is probably in Minneapolis. It has a few identifying marks, as Ross wrote in his original post: “It has her name carved into the soundboard along the brace with the Martin stamp. Its serial number is SN-150342.” If you think you may have any information about it, please let us know!

Personal

89 and feeling fine

By Christopher Bahn on Thursday, May 30, 2024

Last week, Ellen celebrated her 89th birthday in fine style—surrounded by friends at a party at her home.

Here’s a photo of her at the event, pleasantly surprised by a very sparkly cake. (We don’t know what those beer bottles are doing there. Just how wild was this party?)

Here’s to the next trip around the sun!

Updates

Some recent updates

By Christopher Bahn on Tuesday, May 28, 2024

*Ellen performing at SUNY Stonybrook in 1965*

We’re making progress on expanding this website, which will eventually cover Ellen’s academic and musical work, with stories and photography from across the decades. I’ve just added an “About Ellen” page, with a general introduction to her life and career, as well as the start of a “Fieldwork” page covering her work as a folksong collector. Please check them out!

We are also preparing to show you some unheard songs from Ellen’s extensive musical archive. These are recordings made at various concerts and other performances from across her career, which have never been officially released before. We’ll keep you posted as things move forward!

Music

About the guitar logo

By Christopher Bahn on Tuesday, May 28, 2024

If you’re curious about the image we’re using to illustrate the righthand side of this website, it comes from a 1962 promotional pamphlet for Ellen’s music produced by Peter Freedberger, her booking agent at the time. Clicking on the images below will make them larger. The original paper copy can be found in Ellen’s personal archives.

Music

Revisiting “The Jealous Lover”

By Christopher Bahn on Friday, December 8, 2023

While Ellen and I are working on a new collection of her unreleased music from across several decades of her career, which should be done very soon, we thought it might be nice to revisit “The Jealous Lover”, one of Ellen’s favorites from her 1958 album Songs From a New York Lumberjack.

As the title of the album tells you, these songs were in fact collected from a woodsman from upper New York state—Ezra “Fuzzy” Barhight, a folksinger who was one of the primary subjects of Ellen’s Ph.D. dissertation in 1965. Ellen visited Fuzzy many times over a period of years in the 1950s and 1960s, collecting stories and recording songs that would become a cornerstone of her work as a scholar, and also a large part of her repertoire as a musician. The multiple visits were part of her process of “depth collecting,” enabling her to record multiple versions of the same song in different contexts.

For years, Ellen didn’t enjoy listening to the album, feeling that her producer had encouraged her to sing too harshly, in emulation of Fuzzy’s original vocal style rather than Ellen’s own melodic strengths as a singer. But more recently, she’s softened her views: “I approve of myself, for a change,” she says with a laugh.

Fuzzy lived in a shed in the rural town of Avoca, New York, where he had worked not only as a lumberjack but farm laborer in the potato fields and other similar jobs. He was also an accomplished singer and banjo player who had learned dozens of folk songs over the decades. He came to Ellen’s attention via her professor at Cornell, who sent her to meet him for her first serious work as a folklore collector. “I was terrified. We ended up being good friends. He once told me, “You’ve got to listen to me when I talk to you—it’s your grandfather talking.”

Ellen’s original liner notes about “The Jealous Lover” from the Smithsonian Folkways album:

    Fuzzy's version of this song is similar, both textually and melodically, to variants found all over the United States. The song often takes its title from the name of the murdered girl, whose identity may change from one locale to another, though most of then names given are similar-sounding, e.g.,
Florella, Floretta, Flo Ella, Lorella, Louella, Ella, Ellen, etc. The name of the young man is more constant, usually being either Edward or the favorite ballad name, William or Willie.
    H.M. Belden believed it to be quite unique among 'murdered girl' ballads. In most other ballads of this nature, the man kills the girl simply to get rid of her—in this ballad the motive is jealousy.
The ballad appears to be an indigenous American product, for no Old World variants have been reported.
    But unlike most native creations, extensive research into the origin of the ballad has uncovered no information capable of tying the ballad to a specific and actual murder. The ballad is also quite remarkable in that it has been circulated completely by oral means, for no broadside or songster printings of it have been so far reported.

Songs From a New York Lumberjack is available for purchase through Smithsonian Folkways’ website. You can read the original liner notes by Ellen and producer Kenneth S. Goldstein here.

Personal

Welcome to Ellen’s website!

By Christopher Bahn on Thursday, July 13, 2023

Hello. Welcome to ellenstekert.com, the online home of Ellen Stekert, professor emerita of English at the University of Minnesota, singer and guitarist who got her start in the 1950s Greenwich Village folk boom, former president of the American Folklore Society and Minnesota state folklorist. Ellen has had a long and interesting career and we look forward to sharing it with you here, including music, writing, and photography from her archives that has not yet been seen by the public.