Frank Warner & Anne Warner: Information from Answers.com Mobile

Frank Warner & Anne Warner

Genres: Folk

Biography

Like Alan and John Lomax, the field recordings of husband and wife team Anne and Frank Warner would have an enormous impact on the folk revival in the late '50s and early '60s. "The Warners were among the first to perceive what a treasure lay hidden in these traditional vocal arts and to take steps to preserve them," wrote Alan Lomax. Born in 1903 in Selma, AL, Frank Warner absorbed traditional Southern music and made his first public performance at the State Fair in Raleigh, NC, in 1924. He studied at Duke University and Columbia, and after graduation began to work for the YMCA. While working in North Carolina and later New York, Warner continued to sing as a hobby and traveled widely to collect folk songs. In the mid-'30s he met Anne Locker. She enjoyed books and poetry, and had attended Northwestern University, but dropped out due to family finances. Unable to pursue her scholarly interests, she trained as a secretary. In 1935, Frank and Anne Warner married.

During the late '30s, the husband and wife team began traveling the Eastern Seaboard on weekends and vacations to collect folk songs. "In June of 1938, we made our first trip to Beach Mountain," wrote Anne Warner. "I kept a journal of that two weeks' trip, as if I somehow knew it would be the most important milestone in our lives." In 1940 they acquired a Wilcox Gray Recordio, a machine that "cut grooves with a stylus on small discs." In the North Carolina Mountains they befriended Frank Proffitt, the earliest person to record "Tom Dooley," and a number of other traditional singers and musicians. The Warners also spread traditional music as performers, traveling throughout the United States as well as other countries. They carefully credited the musicians who provided material, and worked tirelessly to promote regional singers like Proffitt. Between the late '30s and the late '60s the Warners collected 1,000 work songs, spirituals, and ballads and in 1972, donated the collection to the Library of Congress.

Anne Warner eventually returned to scholarly work, writing liner notes and articles. At 70, she began a six-year project that told the story of the music she had gathered with her husband in Traditional American Folk Songs From the Anne and Frank Warner Collection. Originally planned as a joint effort, Anne continued the project after Frank's death in 1978. In the late '90s Appleseed Records gave Anne and Frank Warner's field recordings a new life by releasing two collections. While many of the songs collected by the Warners were known from Folk Songs and Ballads of the Eastern Seaboard, Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still and Nothing Seems Better To Me made the music itself available to the general public. Anne Warner died in 1991. The Warners' two sons, Jeff and Gerret, have continued to promote their parents' work. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., Rovi