Collectors, performers, and interpreters of American folksong. In the late 1930s and early
1940s, at the same time that Richard Chase was investigating the Beech Mountain, North
Carolina, story tradition, Frank and Anne Warner were discovering the parallel song
tradition.
Their continued involvement in the folksong movement, especially in the Northeast,
led to lectures and articles, to stints at the Pinewoods Folk Music Camp of the Country
Dance and Song Society, to Frank’s position as founding board member of the Newport
Folk Festival in Rhode Island, and to Anne’s publication of Traditional American
Folksongs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection (1984). The last, organized by
repertoire and region, includes the important songs of New York’s Yankee John Galusha,
New Hampshire’s Lena Bourne Fish, Frank Proffitt Sr. and other North Carolina singers,
and many more.
Born in Selma, Alabama, Frank Warner at the age of six moved with his family to
Jackson,Tennessee, home of railroad engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones. Six years
later, the family moved to Durham, North Carolina, where Frank in time studied under
Frank C.Brown at Duke University. In the early 1930s, he had a radio request program on
WBIG, Greensboro. Son of a YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) secretary, he,
too, became a professional Y organizer and executive. In 1932, shortly after moving to
New York City as program director of the Grand Central (now Vanderbilt) YMCA, he
met Anne Locher. They were married in 1935 and had two sons, Jeff, an actor and
folksinger, and Gerret, a filmmaker.
Anne Locher Warner, born in St. Louis, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in
Chicago, where she attended Northwestern University. Leaving without a degree, she
came to New York City in 1925. Her career included positions at the Council of Foreign
Relations, the China Institute, and Hofstra University. Her last position was as executive
secretary to the county executive of Nassau County, New York.
In 1938 the Warners took their first trip to North Carolina to meet Nathan Hicks, who
had made them a dulcimer. There, during an afternoon of music making, they met Frank
Proffitt, who sang “Tom Dooley” for them. Thus began a lifetime of collecting,
recording, and promoting American folksong. Frank recorded seven albums, carefully
replicating the performance style appropriate to each piece. He appeared on TV and radio
and in film, taught at Cooperstown, New York, and served as president of the New York
Folklore Society, vice president of the Country Dance and Song Society, and program
director of the society’s Pinewoods camp. A 1963 series of lectures was published as
Folk Songs and Ballads of the Eastern Seaboard: From a Collector’s Notebook (1963).
Anne, in addition to her book, published articles in Appalachian Journal, North Carolina
Folklore Quarterly, New York Folklore Quarterly, Sing Out!, and elsewhere. Both served
as trustees of the National Folk Arts Council.
The Warners pioneered the use of electronic recording devices in the field. Their work
is characterized by rich documentation of context, attention to whole repertoires, and a
sense of responsibility to singers, including returning royalties to them. (When a
recording by the Kingston Trio turned “Tom Dooley” into an international hit, they
helped negotiate the settlement to return at least some of the earnings to the Proffitt
family.) Pursuing full careers while fitting collecting and writing into evenings,
weekends, and vacations, Anne and Frank Warner were the last of the great amateurs in a
field now fully professionalized.
William Bernard McCarthy
References
Baggelaar, Kristin, and Donald Milton. 1976. Frank Warner and Jeff Warner. In Folk Music: More
Than a Song. New York: Thomas Y.Crowell, pp. 392–395.
Lawless, Ray M. 1968. Folksingers and Folksongs in America. new rev. ed. New York: Meredith,
pp. 229–231, 672, 692–693, 705.
Rosenberg, Neil V. 1993. Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, pp. 36–41.
Warner, Frank, and Anne Warner. 1973. Frank Noah Proffitt: A Retrospective. Appalachian
Journal 1 (Autumn): 163–193.
Warner, Jeff. 1990. Anne Warner. North Carolina Folklore Journal 37:67–70