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Archives of Traditional Music

ATM Tribute to Joe Hickerson

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During American Archives Month (October) this year, the Archives of Traditional Music (ATM) staff was busy preparing to remember and honor Indiana University (IU) alumnus (MA ’61) Joseph C. “Joe” Hickerson, who passed away August 17, 2025, at the age 89. The fruits of ATM staff activity are featured during the Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) November First Thursday festivities taking place from 4-7 PM on Thursday, November 6. As part of First Thursday, the ATM is hosting a song trail activity and folk-sing event that pays tribute to the life and work of Mr. Hickerson, prominent archivist, folklorist, singer, songwriter, and musician.

Event poster with red floral border design on ivory background with black text and a red square with the white letter "IU" Indiana University logo at the top center of the page that reads and continues down the page, "Archives of Traditional Music Libraries, The Archives of Tradition Music Presents: Folk Song Sing-Along, November 6th, 2025, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Archives of Traditional Music Reading Room, In memory of IU Alumni Joe Hickerson, 1935-2025, Photo Credits: University Archives, Joseph C. Hickerson papers, Collection C762, Folksinger, Musicologist, and Archivist" with a black and white photo outlined in red showing a three-quarter view of Joe Hickerson with a guitar under the arm and positioned in front of a bookcase filled with LP record albums.
ATM Event Poster showing image of
Joe Hickerson, 1958. IU P0116349.

Born in Lake Forrest, Illinois, and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, Hickerson received his bachelor’s degree in physics at Oberlin College in 1957, where he first discovered his passion for folk music. He then attended Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) from 1958 to 1963, studying folklore and ethnomusicology at the height of the American Folk Revival. He earned a master’s degree in 1961. He was working towards his Ph.D. when he received the golden opportunity to work as a reference librarian for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, DC. (This Archive is now known as the Archive of American Folk Culture, a part of the larger American Folklife Center at the LOC.)

Hickerson became the head of the division in the 1970s. His overall tenure with the prestigious government repository lasted 35 years. Still, even well after his retirement in 1998, he was often called upon for his expertise and assistance by many researchers wanting to learn more about the history of traditional songs, their origins, and variants. 

Besides the First Thursday event, the ATM is also honoring Hickerson’s legacy as both a performer and scholar by presenting a display of archival and library materials made up of items from the ATM’s holdings, the University Archives’ Joseph C. Hickerson Papers (Collection, C762), both the Folklore and Government Information Collections housed at the Herman B. Wells Library as well as from a variety of online resources offered through the IU Libraries. Located near the Circulation Desk and entryway of the Cook Music Library, this exhibition will be on display until the end of the Fall 2025 semester. (This blog post is being used to highlight various ATM collections and recordings relevant to Hickerson’s life’s work to share and preserve traditional folk music and song.)

Before detailing some of the specifics on these ATM collections and recordings, it is essential to note that the digitized audio files featured in this article are available for personal listening, research, and/or educational purposes through IU’s Media Collections Online (MCO) platform. Depending on the nature of the deposit contracts, these collection recordings should be easily accessible by IU affiliates (students, faculty, and staff); however, non-IU affiliates will have to sign up for an MCO Guest Account and also contact the ATM for assistance in gaining temporary access to the streamed online content.

One of the earliest collections in the ATM’s holdings related to Joe Hickerson singing-songwriting career is the following:

This collection is comprised of a group of duplicate recordings assembled by Norman Cazden, an American composer and musicologist who served as music director for Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, New York, from 1945-1960, and primarily feature select performances made by American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger at assorted events that took place at or near the civil rights minded and culturally sensitive summer camp for children that operated in the Catskill Mountains from 1939-1962.

Black ground with an cartoon-like drawing of three people sitting and singing around a camp fire in the center of the page. One of the individuals is playing a guitar. The word "neighbors" is written in large all capital letters and in white bold-text. The word "summer" also in all capital letters and the year "1947" are in much smaller white-text appear on either side of the drawing of camp fire overlapping some of the central image. The words "Camp Woodland Phoenicia, N.Y." in white-text are centered and written in small all capital letters at the bottom of the page. The name "Norm" appears in even smaller white-text and all capital letters in the lower right corner of the page. Both the image and text are framed in white and the Archives of Traditional Music's Collection Number "65-121" is handwritten in pencil in the top right corner of the page.
Cover of Camp Woodland’s
Annual Publication “Neighbors” from ATM Collection Number 65-121-F.

Founded on the “learning by doing” principles of progressive educator John Dewey, the camp was known for its emphasis on folklore, music, and building a strong sense of community and respect between the campers, who were mainly from urban areas such as the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, and the rural mountain folk of the Catskills. While an IU graduate student, Hickerson worked at the camp for two summers. In 1959, he served as a camp counselor, and then in 1960, he took on the role of the camp’s folk music director.

One of the most significant recordings in this collection is the track featuring Hickerson leading the Woodland campers in the singing of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, which was initially composed by Seeger in the mid-1950s while en route to Oberlin College for a concert, where Hickerson, a Seeger fan, heard it performed for the first time. While Seeger recorded his original three-verse version of the song on the Folkways LP album Rainbow Quest in 1956 (not released until 1960), he had pretty much abandoned the piece because he considered it to be somewhat of a flop (Horne 2016, 154).

Meanwhile, in May of 1960, when Hickerson was gathering music materials to share with campers in preparation for his return to Camp Woodland, he, who had always liked the song, thought it could be a good one for the campers to learn. Still, he was also a bit concerned that it might not be long enough to hold their attention. So, Hickerson dabbled with the lyrics and wound up adding two additional verses of his own and then repeated the first verse as a sixth verse, giving the song a circular effect, which helped considerably to strengthen the song’s anti-war theme (Fink and Handel 2025).

When many of the campers returned to their homes in Greenwich Village, they carried the song with them, playing and singing the piece around town, including the verses Hickerson had added. Eventually, the folk singing group Peter, Paul, and Mary, who had been performing in the area’s local club scene, picked up on it, believing it to be an old folk tune of years gone by and in the public domain (Horne 2016, 154).

Soon afterward, while performing in Boston, Peter, Paul, and Mary shared the song with the Kingston Trio, one of the most popular singing groups in the country at the time, offering them first dibs on recording it in exchange for access to the songs “Lemon Tree” and “500 Miles.” As a result, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” proved to be a substantial hit for the Kingston Trio in 1961. Of course, it was not too long before Pete Seeger’s manager, Harold Leventhal, recognized the song, and the Kingston Trio were notified of the copyright infringement (Bush 2013, 284-285). As the matter was settled, Seeger ensured that Hickerson was also credited, so that he would receive his share of the royalties (Horne 2016, 154). Peter, Paul, and Mary also recorded and released the song in 1962, achieving great success. It ultimately became a vital peace anthem throughout the 1960s as the United States’ involvement in Vietnam intensified (Bush 2013, 284-285).

Color photograph taken at an angle tilted to the right showing Pete Seeger standing behind a microphone stand singing and playing a banjo in front of an ivory-colored wall with three windows with dark trim covered by blinds made up of horizontal or vertical slats, which are often referred to as louvers
Pete Seeger performing at the Bloomington Masonic Temple, 1959 or 1960. IU Archives P0022136.

Unfortunately, the quality of Cazden’s copy of the “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” recording at Camp Woodland found in this ATM collection is relatively poor compared to the other song tracks included such as “Oleanna” and “Bonnie Laddie”, which feature both Seeger and Hickerson with members of the camp singing along. While the ATM could not have this collection recording remastered for this post, taking a moment to explore some of these tracks can help give listeners a better sense of the high value placed on folk music and song in the summer camp’s curriculum and also Hickerson’s impact on that community (and it on him) during the short time he was employed there.

More recordings in the ATM’s holdings that feature Joe Hickerson as a performer are:

This collection of recordings documents Hickerson’s return to campus in the fall of 1963, soon after he left IU that summer to take the position at the LOC. The concert was presented by the Indiana University Folksong Club, a student organization that Hickerson helped to found in 1962.

After Camp Woodland closed in 1962 to make way for a new water supply reservoir to be built in the area, one of the camp’s leaders and co-founders, Norman Struder, attempted to reestablish the annual Catskill Folk Festival, which had been an integral part of the camp’s activities and an important event for permanent residents in the region. The 1978 Catskill Folk Festival, documented in this collection and featuring Joe Hickerson’s performance, ultimately became the last one held with Struder at the helm, as he sadly passed away later that year (Eaglefeathers 2004, 34).

These ATM collections each contain individual commercial LP recordings that make up Hickerson’s two volume solo album set issued by Folk-Legacy Records in 1976. In an interview with Steve Winnick, folklorist at the LOC’s American Folklife Center, soon after Hickerson’s death, he noted that the album’s title song “Drive Dull Care Away” was one of Hickerson’s favorite tunes (CBC 2025).

Recorded November 19, 1980, during a concert sponsored by IU’s Folklore Students Association and held at the Monroe County Public Library, this collection really gives you a sense of how much Hickerson enjoyed singing “with” people rather than “at” them, something that he explains briefly in the liner notes his 1970 Folk-Legacy Records LP album Joe Hickerson with a Gathering of Friends indicating his preference for the communal nature of sit-down group sings (Hickerson 1970, 4).

The recordings and collections in the ATM’s holdings that are representative of Hickerson’s professional and scholarly activities include:

Recorded by an unidentified collector during an unidentified lecture at Indiana University on April 4, 1975, this piece features Hickerson giving a presentation on the LOC’s Archive of Folk Song and the history of various methods and technologies used by ethnomusicologists and anthropologists to record and collect songs for research and preservation purposes.

This collection includes a series of video recordings made by Nora Dial that document the proceedings of the event “A Century of Field Recording: An International Symposium”, sponsored by the ATM, held on the IUB campus from March 21-24, 1990. Hickerson is featured in “Session 5” of the symposium (Item# 10. VT-C 31 in the MCO record), which focused on and provided current perspectives on the archiving of sound recordings, alongside former ATM administrators Frank J. Gillis, George List, and Louise Spear. The symposium was held in the Hoagy Carmichael Room, which once existed at the ATM’s former IUB campus location in Morrison Hall. Much of the room’s contents are now displayed in the ATM Reading Room found on the second floor of the Cook Music Library.

Recorded for the ATM, May 16-18, 1991, by Nora Dial at the IU Read Center and at Bear’s Place (a restaurant near the IUB campus that closed in 2022), this collection of recordings documents the various programs and sessions associated with the event “Wasn’t that a time? : the Richard Reuss Memorial Folk Music Conference”. Hickerson is featured in Item# 1. Cass 3855 Part 1, Segment 3., participating in a panel discussion on Richard Reuss-his scholarship and contributions, with Bernie Asbell and David Dunaway. Reuss and Hickerson attended IU around the same time, and they communicated fairly frequently over a few years when Hickerson was at the LOC and Reuss was seeking some research help on a couple of projects related to the American Folk Revival. Hickerson’s conference presentation concentrates on different aspects of the American Folk Revival that could make for good research topics. He also provides a brief account of how the traditional folk song “Tom Dula/Dooley” transitioned to become the “boom song” of the late 1950s-early 1960s folk revival.

As shown in the ATM collections above, Joe Hickerson often found himself shifting between performer and scholar personas. He once described himself as either a “singer-cum-scholar (or in other contexts scholar-cum-singer)” (Hickerson 1970, 2) using the Latin term “cum” where the vowel “u” has a long sound, like the “oo” in doom and means “with” or “together”.

Ellen Stekert, a friend, former classmate, and fellow folk singing partner of Hickerson’s at IU, in a recent interview with the author of this blog post in October 2025, explained how this dichotomy was not necessarily an easy position to be in as graduate students studying folklore at the height of the 1960s folk revival. At that time, certain members of the academy questioned the seriousness of the student folk singers’ scholarly interests and pursuits. The issue was in part due to a belief by some scholars that the commercialization of folk singing diminished the value of the work folklorists do. Occasionally, popular groups like the Kingston Trio made fun of traditional folk singers to add a bit of comedy to their concert acts. These groups were unfamiliar with the history and depth of the traditional songs they sang.

To counter this disrespect, Hickerson and Stekert, along with a few other graduate students in the folklore and ethnomusicology program at IU (Bruce Buckley and, at times, Bob Black), formed their own folk singing group. Known as The Settlers, they saw their purpose as both educating and entertaining the public. While the group did not last long because their academic studies were their priority, the desire to teach others about the “life of a song” in addition to singing them was exactly what Joe Hickerson was known for and continued to do throughout his lifetime, as sharing songs is a way to share knowledge and, in turn, a part of oneself.

Photograph of Joe Hickson, Ellen Stekert, and Bruce Buckley sitting in a row with each one playing a guitar and the caption reads "Daily Student Photo by Tony Amdur, We'll Shoe 'Em--"The Settlers", the American folk singing group are practicing for the International Dinner in Alumni Hall tomorrow. Nine foreign countries will be represented in the show so America has to be good! Left to right Joe Hickerson, Ellen Stekert, and Bruce Buckley grads. The spotlight for the show will go on at 7 p.m. The dinner starts at 6 p.m.
Indiana Daily Student News Clipping from October 25, 1959 featuring image of The Settlers from the University Archives, Joseph C. Hickerson papers, Collection C762

Now, for one last recording Joe Hickerson-related that is not in the ATM’s collections but is being shared with the ATM by Ellen Stekert for this blog post. Use the following link (no login required) and click on the “Excerpt” below the play bar to listen to The Settlers’ Minneapolis Concert that took place on November 3, 1958:

Feel free to sing-along!

References:

Amy Wilson is the Senior Collections Reference Assistant at the Archives of Traditional Music.

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