Campus Folksong Club Records

The Campus Folksong Club was active on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. During its height in the 1960s, the CFC had over 500 members-making it an astonishingly large student organization and an important force in bringing culture from Illinois and beyond to the Illinois campus. Folk music scholar Neil Rosenberg describes the Campus Folksong Club as "one of the most vigorous of the many university folksong clubs during the sixties" (Rosenberg 1993: 3). The CFC's activities were groundbreaking in that UI students documented and collected field recordings of local musicians in Illinois, a task, which at the time, was generally conducted by professional folklorists. The CFC also helped "to overcome town/gown tension by encouraging local singers to treasure their wares" (Green 1993: 61). According to traditional musician Lyle Mayfield from Greenville, Illinois, "we learned that we weren't hillbillies, we were folk musicians" (Mayfield, conversation June 22, 2007). The CFC was also unique in its commitment to a variety of traditional music ranging from gospel and blues to old-time Appalachian and Ozark music, as well as ethnic music from outside the United States. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, and the New Lost City Ramblers were among the best known musicians that the CFC brought to the UI campus. In addition, to bi-weekly folk sings or hootenannies, and concerts, the CFC's other notable accomplishments include the production and release of three LPs. The first featured the Philo Glee and Mandolin Society trio, comprised of U of I art professor Doyle Moore and students Jim Hockenhull and Paul Adkins. The club's second album Green Fields of Illinois featured traditional musicians from central and southern Illinois, (Stelle Elam, Cecil and Jim Goodwin, Doris and Lyle Mayfield, and Cathy and Lloyd Reynolds). The club's third album The Hell-bound Train highlighted the work of cowboy singer and former rodeo circuit rider Glenn Ohrlin who was later named a National Heritage Fellow in 1985. The club also produced a monthly newsletter, Autoharp which has been digitized and made available through the Illinois Harvest digitization project.