Joe Hickerson, Songwriter, Longtime Folk Music Archivist at Library of Congress Dies at 89

Joe Hickerson, a singer-songwriter who served as the lead archivist for folk music at the Library of Congress for 25 years has died at 89. According to The New York Times, Hickerson passed away on Aug. 17 at a care facility in Portland, Ore., as confirmed by his partner, Ruth Bolliger.

At the height of folk revival, Hickerson began what became more than a quarter-century tenure at the Library of Congress in 1963, swiftly establishing himself as a knowledgeable guide to the sometimes convoluted collections of recordings, documents and oral histories that were vital to performers, songwriters and historians of the genre. The Times noted that Hickerson was a physical embodiment of the massive library’s holdings, thanks to his work memorizing hundreds of traditional songs from around the world, from the lyrics and melodies to the history of each tune and its provenance.

The Library of Congress is nation’s largest public collection of sound recordings and radio broadcasts with more than 3.5 million recordings representing 110 years of sound recording history, including half a million LPs, 450,000 78-RPM discs, 200,000 CDs and many more on formats ranging from wires, cylinders, music box discs and others.

In addition to his archival work, Hickerson was a folk performer, regaling audiences with a stripped-down, conversational style he referred to as “vintage pre-plugged paleo-acoustic.”

Joseph Charles Hickerson was born on Oct. 20, 1935 in Highland Park. Ill. and first became interested in folk music after seeing a 1948 performance by beloved folk singer/labor activist Pete Seeger at a campaign event for the Progressive Party. Before launching his career in music preservation, Hickerson attended Oberlin College in Ohio from 1953-1957. It was there that he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics, while also expanding his passion for folk music by helping to organize Seeger’s performances at the liberal arts college and at other universities, as well as serving as the first president of the Oberlin Folk Song Club and fronting the group the Folksmiths.

A bio from his personal archives at Indiana University, where his papers are kept, noted that he became friendly with Seeger and went on to write two verses to one of Seeger’s most popular songs, 1960’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” One of the verses went: “Where have all the soldiers gone?/ Long time passing/ Where have all the soldiers gone?/ Lone time ago/ Where have all the soldiers gone?/ Gone to graveyards, every one/ When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

After graduating from Oberlin, Hickerson and the Folksmiths released their album We’ve Got Some Singing to Do, which featured the first known commercial recording of the beloved Black spiritual “Kumbaya,” a folk staple that has been recorded by everyone from Joan Baez to children’s performer Raffi, Odetta, Sweet Honey in the Rock and many others around the world.

Hickerson went on to study folklore and ethnomusicology in graduate school at IU in Bloomington, where his master’s thesis was a 1,300-item annotated bibliography of North American Indian music north of Mexico, which received funding from the National Science Foundation.

During his years at IU, Hickerson frequently performed on and off campus, including stints as a strolling minstrel at the annual Madrigal Dinner, as well as gigs singing folk songs at the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation chapter. He was also a founding member of the IU Folksong Club and a director and host of a number of radio and TV programs on folklore and folk music that aired on the public radio station WFIU.

During his time as a reference librarian at the Library’s Archive of Folksong Hickerson released the albums Folk Songs and Ballads Sung by Joe Hickerson With a Gathering of Friends (1970) and the two-volume collection of traditional songs Drive Dull Care Away (1976). Hickerson retired as the director of the Folksong division in 1998 after more than three decades.