Stories from the Anne Grimes Collection of American Folk Music — 2010 ·

By Anne Grimes

“I love this book. It captures Anne Grimes’ spirit and presents her work in a way she would have been proud of; not surprisingly, since her children who have assembled it were engaged in her work. The body of materials presented here includes a wide variety of folksong materials from a number of different traditions, and will be of interest to scholars, collectors, performers, and students of Ohio history and culture. The photographs provide an extremely valuable complement to the descriptive text and song lyrics.”

Timothy Lloyd — Executive Director, American Folklore Society

“Anne Grimes was, quite obviously, a dynamo.… This book is a treasure.”

Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association

"Anne's work lives on. What a wonderful book this is. I'm proud to be a part of it."

Pete Seeger

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Stories from the Anne Grimes Collection of American Folk Music is a treasury of American traditional music and Ohio’s folklife heritage.

Traveling along the highways and byways of Ohio in the 1950s as a folksinger and collector of traditional music, Anne Grimes encountered people from many different backgrounds who opened up their homes to her to share their most precious family heirlooms—their songs. She recorded these treasures for posterity and further preserved them through her lectures and recitals.

After years of performance and research on her material, Anne Grimes decided to write about it all. This beautiful book presents her lively portraits of the major contributors with photographs taken by her husband, James W. Grimes; lyrics and extensive notes on the songs; and a CD sampler that includes performances by her contributors, most of whom had not been previously recorded. It also contains selections from Bob Gibson, Carl Sandburg, Pete Seeger, Jenny Wells Vincent, as well as Grimes herself. The Anne Grimes Collection is preserved in the Library of Congress.

Besides songs, Anne Grimes also collected dulcimers, and portraits of these folk instruments and their players—including Anne Grimes herself—are featured throughout the book and on the CD. Photographs include some of the forty-two rare vintage dulcimers and other instruments collected by Anne Grimes that are now preserved at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution.



Songs and Dulcimer Playing
CD Selections from the Anne Grimes Collection:
Reuben Allen, Bertha Bacon, Sarah Basham/Bertha Basham Wright, Henry Lawrence Beecher, John Bodiker, Dolleah Church, Walter W. Dixon, Ken Ward, Blanche Wilson Fullen, Bob Gibson, Brodie F. Halley, Perry Harper, Anne Grimes, Donald Langstaff, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, W.E. Lunsford, Jane Jones McNerlin, May Kennedy McCord, Jenny Wells Vincent, Pete Seeger, Neva Randolph, Babe Reno/Arbannah Reno, Branch Rickey, Carl Sandburg, Bessie Weinrich, Faye Wemmer, Okey Wood

Anne Grimes, Ohio folksinger and scholar, died at the age of ninety-one in 2004 while working on this book. A classically trained musician who served as music and dance critic for the Columbus Citizen in Columbus, Ohio, before embarking on her career in folk music, she recorded on Folkways, performed at national folk festivals, and served as president of the Ohio Folklore Society. The book was edited by her daughters, Sara Grimes, Jennifer Grimes Kay, Mary Grimes, and Mindy Grimes.

Photo: Kimberly Barth/Elyria Chronicle Telegram