Warner, Frank, 1903-1978

Biographical History

Anne Locher Warner (1905-1991) and Frank Warner (1903-1978) were devoted and renowned collectors, preservers, and interpreters of American traditional folk music who gathered, between 1938 and 1969, over a thousand songs and stories. Most of their pioneering work was done in the musically fertile areas of the Southern Appalachians, the North Carolina Outer Banks, Tidewater Virginia, New England, and Upstate New York. The Warners collected nearly one thousand songs and in doing so brought a number of otherwise obscure songs and performers to the attention of the American public, among them North Carolina's Frank Proffitt, from whom the first version of "Tom Dooley" was collected.

Frank Warner, a native of North Carolina, was not only a scholar of traditional music (he studied with Frank C. Brown) but also a well-known performer himself. He collected numerous recordings of songs and was active in organizations such as the Newport Folk Festival and New York Folklore Society. Anne Warner also served the folklore community by writing for scholarly journals and by publishing Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection (1984). The Warners' sons, Jeff and Gerret, in 2000 co-produced a two-CD set, titled The Warner Collection, of recordings drawn from their parents' collection.

From the guide to the Anne and Frank Warner Collection, 1938-1969, (Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center Library of Congress http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.home)