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55 albums · 1940–2023

Folk, from Woody Guthrie and Greenwich Village to British and Irish folk, folk rock and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

Woody Guthrie in a checked shirt and a cap singing as he plays an acoustic guitar with a sign on it that reads This Machine Kills Fascists, in a black and white photograph
The five of Pentangle on a stage, two acoustic guitarists seated, a double bass player standing, the singer seated in a long flowered dress between them and a drummer behind, in a black and white photographDavid Rawlings in a cowboy hat and Gillian Welch in a striped dress playing acoustic guitars at microphones on an outdoor stage before a stone wall, a banjo standing between them
Woody Guthrie in March 1943, in a photograph for the New York World-Telegram. Photo: Al Aumuller, New York World-Telegram and the Sun, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. · Pentangle rehearsing for the Grand Gala du Disque in the RAI in Amsterdam on 6 March 1969. Photo: Jac. de Nijs, Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. · David Rawlings and Gillian Welch at the Newport Folk Festival in August 2009. Photo: William Wallace, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Folk music is the old songs and tunes handed down by ear, and the new songs written in their manner. In the United States its first records came in the 1920s and 1930s, and in the forties Woody Guthrie set his own words about the Dust Bowl and the road to old tunes. In Britain and Ireland singers kept the ballads and dance tunes going in the folk clubs.

The revival of the fifties and sixties began with the Weavers and the Kingston Trio and went on in Greenwich Village with Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan. In 1965 Dylan and the Byrds made folk rock, and a few years later Fairport Convention played the English ballads with electric guitars. Planxty and the Bothy Band played the tunes of Ireland, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake wrote songs of their own, and Gillian Welch, Laura Marling and Lankum are some of those who sing it today.

The list has 55 records from 1940 to 2023. It leaves out the field recordings, bluegrass and the folk music of the rest of the world, which would each need a list of their own. About 39 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Folk & Country 61%Rock 27%Blues 4%Other 8%
  • Folk & Country 61%
  • Rock 27%
  • Blues 4%
  • Other 8%

The genres named most: folk, folk rock, rock, contemporary folk, blues, singer-songwriter.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 4 countries: United States 27, United Kingdom 19, Ireland 5, Canada 4. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1940s

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Genres first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.