Lindsay, Ken, collector, correspondent.

Biographical History

Ken Lindsay (1923-2001) was a founding partner in the Challenge Jazz Club, the first sizable jazz club in London after World War II. As a jazz and folk enthusiast, Lindsay was connected with the jazz revival and folk movement of the 1950s in the United Kingdom, and made a career of promoting such musicians and organizing performances. Lindsay also worked for the International Bookshop where he oversaw the department that would import records from America and Europe and sell them by mail. This was the period during which he established a correspondence relationship with Woody Guthrie. Lindsay went on to work for other record shops and continued to manage bands, lecture on music at universities, and write articles for such music publications as Melody Maker and Music Mirror .

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (1912-1967) was a singer, songwriter, and social activist who influenced twentieth-century American music and culture. Having lived through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl Migration, World War II, and the political upheavals that resulted in the labor union movement, Guthrie called upon these experiences as he expressed the plight of common people through his songs, prose, and poetry. He was a seminal figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s, and his songs and philosophy had a profound impact on society and on contemporary musicians such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

From the guide to the Ken Lindsay Collection of Woody Guthrie Correspondence, February 1952 – September 1953, (Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center Library of Congress http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.home)