Wisconsin Folk Music Project History
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WHi Image ID 25191 |
| Iva Rindlisbacher (left), Helene Stratman-Thomas, and Lois Rindlisbacher at the Swiss bells in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. The bells stand was built by Otto Rindlisbacher, Iva's husband. |
“Helene Stratman-Thomas (1896-1973) emerges from this cavalcade of (Wisconsin folk music) scholarship as neither the first, nor the most persistent, nor the most prolific, nor the most expert collector of Wisconsin’s musical folklore, but she is, and perhaps always will be, the most significant.”
— James Leary, The Wisconsin Patchwork:
A Companion to the Radio Programs Based on the Field Recordings of
Helene Stratman-Thomas
With a heavy recorder and a thin budget, UW–Madison music professor Helene Stratman-Thomas and recording technician Bob Draves rolled down Wisconsin roads in search of folk music. The year was 1941, a time when many first-generation immigrants and big lumber camp veterans were still alive and performing.
The two traveled from town to town — “The average speed was 70 miles an hour,” Bob would later recall — covering thousands of miles to put down records in all regions of the state. Within a few years it would become impossible to capture such voices and experiences. Much of what Helene caught on those precarious shellac discs have never been recorded before or since.
The trip marked the beginning of Helene’s six-year folk song collecting effort that would result in the preservation of nearly 800 performances representing more than thirty ethnic and regional groups. The copies of therecordings are housed at the Mills Music Library at University of Wisconsin–Madison and the originals are part of the Library of Congress’s Archive of Folk Culture, the largest collection of American traditional music in the world.
The Helene Stratman-Thomas Collection of ethnic music recordings is especially rich in the songs of French-Canadian, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Cornish, and German immigrants. It also contains the music of Native American groups (in particular the Ho Chunk); occupational songs by lumberjacks, sailors, miners, railroadmen, and cranberry pickers; and Appalachian music performed by Kentuckians who settled in northern Wisconsin .
At a time when American folk music collecting centered on mainly Anglo- and Afro-American songs, or regionally focused works on Cajuns, Hispanics, and various American Indians, Helene’s work stood apart. She was open to all kinds of musical expression, which enabled her to record everything from Czech and Bohemian brass bands to Norwegian hardanger and Polish goraly fiddlers. Other never-before captured tunes came from psalmodikons and tamburica quartets, Oneida choirs, Welsh Gymanfa Ganu singers, and Swedish, Norwegian, Hollander, and Luxembourger balladeers.
Temperamental equipment and unpredictable performers made for extremely precarious conditions. “I’m surprised we got anything good at all because this was so primitive,” Draves told Simply Folk’s Judy Rose in a 1983 interview. When exposed to air, the purple coating around the aluminum recording discs would quickly harden so they had to remain tightly covered until performers were ready. Diamond needles that cut the records had to be sharp, yet any accidental touch against the aluminum and the needle was destroyed. Each disc only afforded 4 ½ minutes of recordings, which meant that singers had little room to dally or make mistakes.
But there were forgotten lyrics and other blunders, as well as some awkward moments. A cuckoo clock and church bells were just of few of the stray sounds that made it onto the discs. When it came to lusty ballads, singers might clam up in front of the female song catcher. In turn, Helene would step out of the room and let Bob record those songs that “ain’t exactly fitten for a woman to hear.”
A music theory teacher and women’s choir conductor, Helene fell into the work of folksong collecting. Yet her ability to develop instant rapport with almost anyone made her a natural. “She was a very loveable person,” Draves recalled, “a warm person who could become very interested in you.”