DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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The website offers little explanation of the Hall, including when it began or if it is even still operational, but acknowledges is neither has a building nor gives actual tangible awards to inductees. Categories include artists, songs, session players, writers, publishers, sidemen, background vocals, producers, and humor. Inductees in the “artists” category are listed below. See other Hall of Fames.
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First posted 10/27/2012; last updated 5/5/2022. |
Anthology of American Folk Music |
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Released: 1952 (on vinyl) Released: August 19, 1997 (on CD) Recorded: 1926 to 1933 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): 0.5 US Genre: folk/blues |
Tracks:Disc 1 (Ballads):
1. “Henry Lee” by DICK JUSTICE (1932) Disc 2 (Social Music):
1. “Sail Away Lady” by "UNCLE BUNT" STEPHENS (1926) Disc 3 (Songs):
1. “The Coo Coo Bird” by CLARENCE ASHLEY (1929) Total Running Time: 252:50 |
Rating: 4.843 out of 5.00 (average of 9 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:Author Chris Smith called this “the most important recording of the 20th century” CS-3 noting its “enormous footprint…on popular music.” CS-3 The set was compiled by the “notoriously eccentric musicologist” JB Harry Smith. He had collected several thousand old folk and country recordings and whittled them down to “his favorite hillbilly, gospel, blues, and Cajun performances” JB for this “quasi-legal set of three double LPs” JB originally released in 1952. It covered American folk recordings from “1927, when electronic recording made possible accurate music reproduction, and 1932, when the Depression halted folk music sales.’” WK This set reintroduced “near-forgotten popular styles of rural American music,” JB songs which, in some cases, “had languished in obscurity for 20 years.” JB Highlights included material from the Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Uncle Dave Macon. The collection was integral to “the folk & blues revival of the ‘50s and ‘60s” WK influencing “a new group of folkies, from Pete Seeger to John Fahey to Bob Dylan.” JB Robert Hunter, lyricist with the Grateful Dead, said, “It radically informed and purified our tastes, as well as the tastes of a whole generation of folk performers.” CS-4 Smith divided the music into “three categories: Ballads, Social Music, and Songs. Smith sequenced the three volumes with a great amount of care, placing songs on the Ballads volume in historical order (not to be confused with chronological order) so as to create an LP that traces the folk tradition,” JB moving from English folk ballads through songs dealing with “the hardships of being a farmer in the 1920s.” WK The Social Music set gathered material likely performed at social gatherings or dances as well as religious and spiritual songs while Songs was just a gathering of regular songs. The liner notes written by Smith were “almost as famous as the music.” WK He wrote short pieces about each song, accompanied by newspaper-style headlines such as “Zoologic Miscegeny Achieved Mouse Frog Nuptuals, Relatives Approve” for the song King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O by Chubby Parker. “Smith also edited and directed the design of the Anthology, including an illustration by scientist/alchemist Robert Fludd on the cover…In the 1960s, Irwin Silber replaced Smith’s covers with a Ben Shahn photograph of a poor farmer.” WK Notes:Anthology first appeared on the Folkways label as three separate two-album collections. It was reissued by Smithsonian/Folkways after being out of print for over a decade. The new release was packaged as a six-disc box set with Smith’s original liner notes and “a separate book of new reminiscences by artists influenced by the original and a wealth of material for use in CD-ROM drives.” JBIn 1997, the CD release of the collection saw each two-album set consolidated to one disc. The track listing on this page reflects that release. “In 2000, Revenant Records released a fourth collection (compiled by Smith) that includes union songs and songs recorded as late as 1940.” WK |
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First posted 5/29/2010; last updated 3/15/2024. |
 | This Land Is Your LandWoody Guthrie |
Writer(s): Woody Guthrie (see lyrics here) Recorded: April 25, 1944 First Charted: -- Peak: 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 15.89 video, 23.25 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details.
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About the Song:Guthrie’s song is “one of the most stirring testaments to the American spirit ever put to music” SS and might have been the national anthem if he was alive during the foundation of the United States. TM His song isn’t just “a pleasant ode to the beauties of the countryside” SS but a conviction that America belongs to the people, not just “the politicans, or the corporate executives, or the priviledged class.” SS Guthrie was born in Oklahoma in 1912. During the 1930s, he witnessed firsthand the effects of the Depression and the dust storms which ravaged the Great Plains. This impacted his songwriting and earned him a reputation as a spokesman for the disenfranchised. When he went to California in 1937, he forged a reputation for songs with biting social commentary in his radio broadcasts. In 1940, he went to New York to record a series of “Dust Bowl Ballads” for Victor. Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land” in 1940 as “an alternative American anthem” TC in response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” He was annoyed by the song’s suggestion that all that happened to the country – including poverty and injustice – was somehow blessed by a divine being. SS He set the lyrics to “When the World’s on Fire,” a traditional melody used by the Carter Family in 1930. That song, in turn, had been based on the 1928 hymn “Rock of Ages” as recorded by Blind Willie Davis. SS Guthrie’s song was built on “just three simple chords and a childlike lyrical quality.” TM In 1944, Guthrie recorded more than 170 songs for Asch Records, a small independent label in New York City. Among the songs was a slightly reworked “This Land Is Your Land,” but it didn’t see release until 1951. SS By then, the song became “a leftist national anthem, sung at rallies, political events, and in schools.” NPR The song was made familiar to most Americans by the Weavers. PM It has now become “a triumphant anthem for the march of Anglo-American progress and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.” TC Resources:
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First posted 4/25/2014; last updated 11/23/2025. |
 | Wabash CannonballRoy Acuff & the Smoky Mountain Boys |
Writer(s): J.A. Roff, adapted by A.P. Carter (see lyrics here) First Charted: November 24, 1938 Peak: 12 US (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, -- UK, 10.0 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 3.31 video, 4.14 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details.
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About the Song:This is “a genuine knight-of-the-road ballad with a touch of the Paul Bunyan flavor,” RA “perhaps the greatest of all train songs.” SS The song originated in the 1880s, In 1882, J.A. Roff wrote words and music for “The Great Rock Island Route!,” a song about a mythical train which traveled coast to coast. It became an anthem for hoboes. In Southern America in the late 19th century, the railroad offered a different form of work for those wishing to escape the farms and served up a touch of romanticism for those who wanted to live a less conventional life, riding the rails and going wherever the trains would take them. William Kindt adapted Roff’s piece in 1905 under the title “Wabash Cannonball.” There were several Wabash Railroad passenger trains dating back to the 1880s while the term “cannonball” was used to reference a fast train. When the song entered the public domain in 1928, it was reworked and claimed by A.P. Carter whose group, the Carter Family, recorded the song the next year, but didn’t release it until 1932. In the meantime an unissued version was recorded by Clark & Edans in 1928 and Tennessee singer and guitarist recorded and released the song in 1929. Roy Acuff, who was billed as “the King of Country Music,” SS recorded the song in 1936 with Dynamite Hatcher on vocals, but didn’t release it until 1938. NRR He didn’t record it with his vocal until 1947, although he performed it regularly on the Grand Ole Opry, SS where he first appeared in 1938 and was its top star by 1942. NRR His “voice was pure country and he was one of the first to carry the title ‘hillbilly’ proudly.” AC He embraced the plain and simple values of poor, rural Americans and gained an audience via his recordings, tours, and movie appearances. NRR In 1962, he was the first living artist elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame. NRR Resources:
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First posted 11/24/2014; last updated 11/23/2025. |
