Moses Ash

Moses Asch , called Moe (born December 2, 1905 in Warsaw , Congress Poland , Russian Empire , † October 19, 1986 in New York ) was an American record producer .

Life

Childhood and emigration

Asch was born as the son of the well-known Jewish writer Shalom Asch and the younger brother of the proletarian writer Nathan Asch . He spent the first years of his childhood in Paris . When the outbreak of World War I began to emerge in 1914, his parents left France and emigrated to the USA, where they settled in New York City. This city remained home for Moses Asch more or less his entire life.

Adolescent years

As a teenager, Asch became interested in radio technology and went to Germany in the early twenties, where he completed an apprenticeship as an electrical engineer near Wiesbaden . In 1926 he returned to the USA and ended up in the record industry by chance in the course of delivering loudspeaker systems.

Start of recording activity

In 1935, Asch set up a recording studio and recorded the very first album there with children's songs, which would remain his favorite field throughout his life. In 1939 Asch - encouraged by Albert Einstein and other Jewish friends - went into business for himself and founded the Asch Recordings company in New York . As a result, the first recording of the album Jewish Folk Songs by the Bagelman Sisters was released on the new label . There was a detailed text booklet accompanying the record, which has now been included with every album published by Asch.

After Asch had only taken care of the Jewish-American audience in the first years of his activity, new perspectives arose from 1941 through the first recordings with the blues singer Leadbelly . Asch soon met Woody Guthrie for the first time , who made a number of records for him over the next few years. Pete Seeger made his first recordings for Asch in 1942 . Other musicians who, like Asch himself, were close to the left Popular Front were given a voice. By offering these politically left-wing and socially critical artists, who were ignored by the major labels, an opportunity to publish their music and their political views, Asch developed over the years into a central figure on the left scene and the folk revival in the USA. In the mid-1940s, Asch also had jazz musicians such as Mary Lou Williams under contract. The illustrator David Stone Martin began working for Asch with the pianist's album Zodiac Suite .

Economic problems

From an economic point of view, however, Asch Recordings could not succeed. In 1941 Asch had to file for bankruptcy. In 1946 he founded a new record company, which operated under the name Disc Label . Disc recorded with musicians like Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston , Josh White , Sonny Terry , Brownie McGhee and many others.

In 1947, after a financial failure with Nat King Cole , Asch had to file for bankruptcy again. Despite this recent failure, he founded Folkways Records in 1948 with his long-time business partner and secretary Marian Distler .

Folkways Records

As from the beginning, Asch also resolutely opposed any commercialization at Folkways Records . Not least because he and his partner knew that they and their small staff were overwhelmed with looking after stars. When selecting the artists, the focus was not on sales figures or the greatest possible financial profit. Instead, the focus was on recording the broadest possible spectrum of music, tones and sounds. The record company that still exists today includes the music of John Cage and Henry Cowell, poetry by Langston Hughes, as well as bluegrass music , the last recordings of Selknam songs and recordings of Greek literature, read in the ancient Greek language.

Big money couldn't be made with this program and Asch was almost regularly on the verge of ruin with Folkways. In 1970 the financial problems had grown so much that the entire Folkways catalog that had been compiled up to that point passed into the hands of Scholastic Books . Asch spent the rest of his life paying off his debt to Scholastic . In return, he remained the sole owner of Folkways Records .

In 1985 he bought back all rights to his record company. Subsequently, after long negotiations, he succeeded in selling Folkways Records in full to the Smithsonian Institution , which the record label finally took over in 1987.

Death and inheritance

Moses Asch, who headed Folkways Records to the end, died on October 19, 1986 in New York.

In all the years of his activity as a record producer, Asch's enthusiasm for little-known and little-noticed music on the one hand and his equally enthusiastic clientele on the other had ensured the survival. After the sale of Folkways Records , he was able to leave his family a substantial financial legacy while bringing the United States into possession of a unique cultural legacy.

See also

• Alan Lomax
• Protest song

Remarks

1. ↑ See Teddy Doering: Coleman Hawkins. Oreos, Waakirchen 2001, p. 156.

literature

• Richard Carlin: Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways. Smithsonian Books / Collins, New York 2008. ISBN 0-06156-355-2 .
• Peter D. Goldsmith: Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC 1998. ISBN 1-56098-812-6 .
• Tony Olmsted: Folkways Records: Moses Asch and His Encyclopedia of Sound. Routledge, New York, NY 2003. ISBN 0-415-93709-4 .