In the summer of 2022, the American Song Archives acquired the Oscar Brand Family Collection, an archival collection of almost 500 items, including posters, playbills, records, instruments, photos, and more. These artifacts span the seven-decade career of Oscar Brand, the prolific folk singer-songwriter who wrote songs for Doris Day and Harry Belafonte and gave airplay to Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and more.
Drawing from these archives, the Woody Guthrie Center opened “Ballad Monger: Oscar Brand in Story and Song,” a small spotlight exhibit on the “Dean of Folk Music” in December 2022.
From boxes of papers to display, curator Quinn Carver Johnson offers a behind-the-scenes look at “Ballad Monger,” exploring the opportunities and limitations of recovering a folk legacy from archival materials.
TICKETS
This event is free with admission to the center on the day of the event.
ABOUT QUINN CARVER JOHNSON
Quinn Carver Johnson is a poet and writer from Kansas. Johnson currently lives in Tulsa and works for the Woody Guthrie Center and Bob Dylan Center. Johnson books and hosts the People’s Poetry reading series at the Woody Guthrie Center.
