Publicity Release from Sam Eskin dated March 22, 1963  

       Sam Eskin, who is a folklorist and a singer of folk songs, approaches his field from many angles, and, conversely, his interest in folklore leads him into a wide variety of activities. As a folklorist, his most fundamental concern is with the collection, preservation and evaluation of traditional material which might otherwise never be known outside of the small groups which perpetuate it, or which, in fact, often fail to perpetuate it unless prodded to so. As a singer, Sam picks out those songs which particularly appeal to him, learns them, and sings them, either in person or on records, for the public or for his friends. Or he sings them just for himself, as he works around his country home in Woodstock, New York, or as he drives thousands of miles in search of more songs. Sam's basic interest in American folk music has spread to a more general interest in the musical manifestations of many cultures throughout the world. He has become involved in problems of comparative folklore, of musicology, of cultural anthropology, and of several other disciplines. Dixieland jazz, primitive musical instruments, the economics of Mexican Indian tribes, Polynesian artifacts, electrical sound reproduction, guitar techniques - these and a thousand other interests have grown out of Sam's vocation and relate back to it.

      This vocation has evolved spontaneously throughout most of Sam's life. He comes originally from an urban environment: Baltimore, Maryland, where his father, a Russian immigrant, was a locomotive engineer on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. There was no folk singing in the Baltimore he knew, but he left home when he was very young, and in the course of his wanderings for the years to come he had many opportunities to hear songs - all sorts of songs, everywhere. He worked in cattle ranches in Wyoming, in logging camps, in Alaskan canneries. He wandered up and down the country by any means available, and in time became a merchant sailor and wandered over the globe. Later he was, by turns, a taxi driver, a clerk, a photographer and a sandal maker. Eventually he became an organizational expert for a large retail delivery company, a job which he held for fifteen years, but which allowed him to keep traveling. (Sam struck this entry with pencil on the typewritten page. CG)

      At all events, Sam, from the time he left Baltimore, encountered a wide variety of social groups and of individuals and found that many of them sang songs. He liked the songs and began to sing them himself. He sang them because he was himself, for the time being, a member of the group which had produced them. However, even in his early days he began to acquire a curiosity about the nature of these songs. He learned that they were called folk songs and that there were other people who, like him, were interested in them, and who had studied them and even written books about them. Once his intelligence had been aroused he never let go of the subject. He read the books and the articles and began to understand the significance of folk songs, culturally, as social documentation, and aesthetically, as a means of expression for the people who sang them. Sam had already "collected" many songs because he had sung them and remembered them, but now he gathered material more consciously and more knowledgeably, bringing to bear upon his activity the intellectual awareness and the scholarship which he was cultivating. In this way an initial delight in singing songs grew into an avocation, and the avocation grew into a thorough professional endeavor. When he had made enough money with the retail delivery company,(This Sam  struck. CG)  Sam retired and became a full time folklorist.

      At the present time Sam not only pursues his interest in folklore and folk music but is always ready to investigate any of the further areas which that interest may lead him to. The tangible result of his work rests partly in the songs which he has transcribed on paper, but even more in the impressive collection of discs and tapes of original material which he has built up over some twenty-five years. He has made these available to the Library of Congress and to various universities interested in them, and has provided material for several commercial records. He is currently preparing a selection of Latin American material requested by the B.B.C. (Struck through on original release. CG) The range of his collection is world-wide - most of it collected by himself in the field. He has done particularly extensive work in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Israel. The collection includes not only folk songs, but all types of ethnic music, dance music, primitive drumming, stories, interviews, and any sounds of general cultural or aesthetic interest which Sam happens to have picked up in his travels - (one tape chronicles the roar of the Pacific on the west coast of Mexico).

     These are the permanent record of Sam's work. In addition, he has organized folk music programs at the University of California, at Columbia University, and elsewhere. He is familiar with the literature of his subject and is in contact with other important scholars and collectors. His demeanor, professionally and personally, is unconstrained and flexible, so that whenever his enthusiasm is aroused he is ready to pursue any of the ramifications of his subject, either through books and records or, more likely, by packing his bags and taking a trip.

      But for all that, Sam has not lost his original interest. He continues to sing the songs he likes: the newly discovered songs that have caught his fancy, and the old songs which he first started singing when he tramped around the world in his youth. The original impulse toward song has been endowed with a myriad dimensions by his subsequent intellectual and professional activities. At the same time, these activities have always been invigorated by the genuineness and spontaneity of the feeling from which they first evolved.