For 51 years, Art Rosenbaum has been recording folk music.

He's recorded fiddle players in North Carolina, Mexican guitarists in Michigan, gospel singers in Iowa, and shouters along the Georgia coast.

NAT: Automobile sounds?.

Today, Rosenbaum?s on his way north to the foothills of the Georgia Appalachians. He?s going to visit Ed Teague, an 85-year old banjo player.

Ed?s an active banjo player. As far as I know, he?s the only active old time traditionally school banjo player of the pre-bluegrass style, he?s a two finger banjo player.

PG: How did you find him?

AR: I cant really remember?I think it was through Ray Knight. I?m drawing a blank?

Folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Ed Teague in the mid-70s, but Rosenbaum knew him first. Teague has been playing at dances in north Georgia since the 1930s.

It?s a dirt road going his house. That?s a cowbird singing. Teague?s standing...
Read the full transcript

During the 1940s and 50s, field recordings made by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress introduced Americans to traditional music and led to the folk revival. Coffee houses, hootenannies, and groups like The Weavers and the Smothers Brothers took the country by storm. By the mid-1960s, rock and roll and the British invasion had captured America's listening tastes. Folk music disappeared, and some thought it was dead.

But a recent release of field recordings of folk music shows that traditional music is still alive, and one Athens, Georgia man has made it his life's work to find and record it.

Philip Graitcer has this story