In recent days we have seen the loss of several folk music personages, each known for a different type of role. Bess Lomax Hawes, folklorist and musician, passed away on November 27th. Following in the footsteps of her father John Lomax and making giant footsteps of her own, she spent her life working to preserve folk music in different forms. Jack Cooke, of the Clinch Mountain Boys, died December 1st. In Ireland, the last of the Clancy Brothers, Liam Clancy, died December 4th.

Valerie Crockett, of the duo Valerie & Walter Crockett, lost her battle with cancer Sunday. Valerie and her husband Walter, of Worcester, Massachusetts, played with several bands in Boston and surrounding areas over the years. The Boston Globe has more on Valerie’s life.

We wrote last week that Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa had been taken into intensive care. She passed away today, leaving a legacy of Latin American music including more than 70 albums and of a life devoted to using her music to bring attention to everyday social issues. She had been nominated for multiple Latin Grammy awards (ceremony to take place next month). Vicente Panetta of the Associated Press has her story in USA Today.

Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul and Mary, died today in hospital after battling cancer for several years. Read the full AP story at any of these sites: MSNBC, Yahoo or The New York Times. As someone who sang “Blowin’ in the Wind” along with my friend’s record as a pre-teen, walked out on a high school talent pageant runway to the music of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and cried to the sound of “Day is Done” just a few years ago when a member of my family was overseas in a militarized zone, I feel that a piece of my life is gone. And yet all those wonderful songs will be with us for a long time. Mary will be remembered as part of the music that shaped many of our lives.

Larry Knechtel, whose keyboard arrangement of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for Simon and Garfunkel won him a Grammy award, passed away last Thursday. I confess a special attachment to that particular piece of music, and I suspect I am not the only one who feels that way. As described in the AP story from KOMO News, Larry was an accomplished musician who provided guitar and keyboard accompaniment for many well-known performers.

Folk musician Mike Seeger, a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, passed away on Friday, August 7 at the age of 75. Mike was half-brother to Pete Seeger and brother to Peggy Seeger. He was an essential part of the folk music movement of the mid-twentieth century and spent a good part of his life collecting folk music and making it known to a wider audience. He will be greatly missed.

The man whose dogged persistence led to the formation of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center passed away on Sunday, March 22 at the age of 91. With a heritage of socialist activism and an education in political science, he began as a union activist (in addition to being a shipwright and carpenter) but returned to school later in life to study folklore and eventually to teach at the university level. He began his writings in this area with a 1965 article on hillbilly music, and one of his last projects was the co-editing of the historical union song collection The Big Red Songbook, completed in 2007. Green was awarded the Living Legend medal by the Library of Congress in 2007. In addition to the obituaries referenced above, The Daily Yonder has a personal article that helps to round out the picture of Archie Green’s legacy.

John Cephas, half of the acoustic blues duo Cephas and Wiggins, died at his Virginia home on Wednesday. Born in Washington, D.C., Cephas was raised in Bowling Green, Virginia. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Council for the Traditional Arts and a founder of the Washington, D.C. Blues Society. Cephas and Wiggins were scheduled to perform at the Savannah Music Festival March 19.

The Washington Post writeup contains an interview article from 1989, written the day Cephas was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Maya Angelou, Pete Seeger, Steve Earle, Harry Belafonte, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Peter Yarrow and other notables joined this past Tuesday in a celebration of folk music artist Odetta, who passed away last December.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/arts/music/26odetta.html

Washington Post writer Kay Coyte has an article in yesterday’s Nashua Telegraph about the life of Victor Heyman, known to many for his quiet support of folk musicians. Victor passed away last month at the age of 73. Kay’s story gives insight into some of the lives Victor touched.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090223/NEWS03/302239938

I’d like to mention just a few events in folk music over the past year. These items will be old news to many of you, but I thought it would be helpful to start off this way and then go on to recent and upcoming events.

On a local scale, some of us witnessed changes in music venues, such as the the closing of Middle Earth Music Hall in Bradford, Vermont last May:

http://www.memh.com/index.php

http://www.middle-earth-music.com/

Happily, you can find their live music videos on:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Folkhero01

On the national front, we mourned the passing of folk music legend Odetta (December 2, 2008):

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1863667,00.html

Last month we saw Grammy awards granted to Pete Seeger (best traditional folk album), The Blind Boys of Alabama (best traditional gospel album), Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder (best bluegrass album), B. B. King (best traditional blues album), Ladysmith Black Mambazo (best traditional world music album) and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (best contemporary folk/Americana album, country and pop awards for individual songs, and album of the year). The Blind Boys of Alabama and Tom Paxton were given lifetime achievement awards.

Independent Music Awards winners, also in January, included Tony Trischka for best Americana album and The Paschall Brothers for best gospel album.

http://www.independentmusicawards.com/ima_new/jukebox2009.asp

http://www.folkways.si.edu/about_folkways/news.aspx

And Rolling Stone, the chronicle of rock, honored folk music artists Joan Baez and Pete Seeger in their February 19 issue:

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/02/02/inside-rolling-stones-afternoon-with-folk-icons-pete-seeger-and-joan-baez/

Feel free to comment on the folk music events that were memorable for you.

Folk radio pioneer Henrietta Yurchenco died last week at 91. The following is from Eli Smith co-producer of her latest project “Down Home Radio”.

-Ken

Dear Friends,

I am very sorry to report that Henrietta Yurchenco, my friend and co-creator of Down Home Radio, died on the morning of Monday Dec. 10th at the age of 91. Although she had not been feeling well for some time, her death was never-the-less sudden and shocking. She was an extraordinary person, incredibly full of life, energy and love for people and for music. Henrietta leaves behind untold numbers of friends, devoted students and people who she influenced in any number of ways. The value of her work documenting and promoting the indigenous cultures of Mexico, the United States and many other parts of the world is extraordinary.

The Down Home Radio project was not Henrietta’s first time around with radio, it was more like her fourth or fifth, and yet she approached it with all the zeal of someone a quarter her age. (more…)