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Folk-Legacy Records, Inc. - Folk-Legacy Catalog: Compact Discs, Cassettes, and Books - Call toll-free: 800-836-0901
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Official Connecticut State Troubadours - 1993
A rousing song from the
roustabouts of the steamboating days on the Ohio River, a haunting love song from
North Carolina's Appalachians, a lively tongue-twister of a song from the Pacific
Northwest, these and many more are sure to be included in the musical memories
you will take home with you after you hear Sandy and Caroline Paton singing a
program of the wonderful songs and ballads that form their unique and highly varied
collection of both traditional and contemporary folk material.
Ed and Beth Brown, of the U'n'I Coffeehouse Concert Series in Springfield, MA,
write: "If asked, 'What is this thing you call folk music and why do you care
so deeply about it?'- rather than attempt to define it, justify or expound upon
it, just send them to a concert by Sandy and Caroline Paton."
Drawing upon a vast repertoire developed over their many years of collecting folksongs
throughout the English -speaking world, from the Southern Appalachians to the
Ozarks, from Scotland and England to the Maritime Provinces of Canada, Sandy and
Caroline share their personal memories as well as their musical talents in every
program they present. They also invite their audiences to join in on many choruses,
encouraging them to actively participate in the experience. "We prefer to sing
with people, rather than at them," they explain. "Folk music has been a participatory
sport for many centuries, and we would like to see it continue to be just that."
Accompanying themselves with guitar, Appalachian dulcimer and autoharp, the Patons
skillfully blend their voices in harmonies that offer more than just a pleasant
musical interlude in our daily lives; many of their older songs provide insights
into our nation's history, reflecting the concerns, the delights, the joys and
the sorrows of those families who braved the wilderness to settle in the New World.
Truly, theirs is a program to be enjoyed by parents and grandparents, as well
as by children of all ages.
In recognition of their significant contributions to the folk music world, the
Patons have been honored by the California Traditional Music Society, the Memphis
Dulcimer Festival, the Eisteddfod Festival of Traditional Arts in Massachusetts,
and other organizations. In 1993 they were selected by the Connecticut Commission
on the Arts to serve as "official State Troubadours" for that year.
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LEE BAKER HAGGERTY
February 24, 1930 - March 31, 2000Lee B. Haggerty, co-founder of Folk-Legacy
Records, Inc., passed away at the Sharon Hospital, in Sharon, Connecticut, early
on the morning of March 31, 2000.
Lee was born in Westport, Connecticut, but his formative years were spent in a
rural setting outside of Zachary, Louisiana, on the banks of the Mississippi River.
His deep love of traditional music developed from listening to his mother reading
aloud to him and to his siblings such ballads as "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Lord
Randall." Recordings of Jules Allen singing songs of the west, ordered by the
family from Sears and Roebuck, introduced him to America's folk music. Lee was
not a singer, insisting that he couldn't "carry a tune," but he knew and loved
the words to hundreds of traditional songs and read ballad literature as others
might read the romantic poets.
His avid interest in literature continued throughout his academic career at Western
Reserve Academy and at Knox College in Illinois. He served in the U. S. Army during
the Korean War from 1952 to 1954 and was discharged a sergeant. He then worked
for a time in New York City before moving to Chicago where he worked at Chicago
First National Bank. Receiving a small inheritance enabled him to leave the bank
and focus on doing some writing of his own, as well as to enjoy some extensive
travel adventures with his old college roommate, Kent MacDougall.
In 1960, he learned from an announcement on WFMT in Chicago that Sandy Paton had
added folkmusic to the spoken-word record department at Krock's and Brentano's
bookstore. He soon became its most enthusiastic customer, and he and Sandy became
good friends. After Sandy and Caroline Paton moved to Huntington, Vermont, Lee
went there to visit them and listened to tapes Sandy had made on a field-collecting
trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. It was at his suggestion that
they formed Folk-Legacy Records in 1961 and their first recording, "Frank Proffitt,
of Reese, North Carolina," was issued early in 1962. In 1967, the company moved
to Sharon, Connecticut, where Lee shared a remodeled barn/duplex with the Patons
and the business. Over the thirty-nine years of their association, he helped to
produce more than 120 recordings of folk and folk-related contemporary music,
but it was the traditional field recordings Folk-Legacy was able to release that
gave him his proudest moments. In recent years, despite increasingly debilitating
arthritis, he remained active with the company, continuing his contribution until
his final illness. He was a quiet, thoughtful, gentle, man who devoted his life
to the music he loved. We are all indebted to him. |
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FOLK-LEGACY RECORDS, INC. Was founded in 1961 by
Sandy and Caroline Paton and Lee B. Haggerty. At the time of this writing, we
have been providing the discriminating folk music enthusiast with fine recordings
for over thirty-six years.
The company is operated out of a remodeled barn on a rural road in the Litchfield
Hills of Northwestern Connecticut (sometimes referred to as the Connecticut Berkshires).
There are four of us involved: Sandy and Caroline, our son Robin, and our partner
Lee. Sandy does the recording and gets to play with the computer. Robin does the
invoicing, packaging, inventory maintenance, keeps the promotional list in order,
and does anything else that seems to need doing. Lee does the books and maintains
the ledger. Caroline does most of the correspondence (Sandy does the E-mail),
places the orders with our suppliers, and, generally speaking, keeps the rest
of us on our toes.
Just a simple, old-fashioned, family business.
We chose the Green Man as our trademark because the traditional music we help
to preserve and promote through our recordings is, happily, flourishing once more,
following a period of dormancy. Like the Green Man, these examples of the remarkable
folk muse can never die, for the people will not permit it. They may fade from
popularity for awhile, as fads momentarily push them from the minds of the less
totally committed, but they will always be rediscovered and restored to life.
George Armstrong made the drawing of our Green Man for us, back in 1961, when
we first organized Folk-Legacy Records and began producing albums of traditional
music. An ancient symbol of temporary death and inevitable rebirth seemed, somehow,
appropriate for a company dedicated to the survival of traditions that reach back
into a comparable antiquity.
We've had a number of inquiries over the years about our trademark, that weird
drawing of a man with green tendrils and leaves growing all over him that appears
on all of our records. Caroline has suggested that I write a short article about
this representation of the Green Man since individual answers to the curious are
terribly time consuming.
I first came upon the Green Man in C. J. P. Cave's Roof Bosses in Mediaeval
Churches (Cambridge, 1948). Photographic studies made by Mr. Cave revealed
carvings on the beams of parish churches and cathedrals that had never been observed
or, at least, had not been commented on previously. The carvings, usually located
in obscure, shadowed places, too high to be viewed without the aid of field glasses,
depicted "a face with leaves sprouting from the corners of its mouth, its eyelids,
eyebrows and ears the face of the Green Man," as John Speirs described the discovery
in his Medieval English Poetry, the Non-Chaucerian Tradition (London, 1957).
Some of those medieval artisans obviously felt it would be wise to combine a time-honored
symbol of their old religion with those of their newly adopted one. They were
hedging their bets, apparently, for the Green Man is an ancient fertility symbol
of pre-Christian England representing the marvelous death and rebirth of life
that occurs annually in the cycle of the seasons. Speirs puts it this way: "Who
is the Green Man? He is surely a descendant of the Vegetation or Nature god of
almost universal and immemorial tradition (whatever his local name) whose death
and resurrection are the myth-and-ritual counterpart of the annual death and rebirth
of nature, in the East the dry and rainy seasons, in Europe winter and spring".
Folk Legacy's (Paton's) back yard - Sharon, CT
Sandy, Caroline, Robin, and David Paton
Out back of their Folk Legacy Records home place in Sharon, Connecticut - 1980s
The GREEN MAN - logo of Folk Legacy Records
As carved by Gordon Bok and on display in Sandy and Caroline Paton's headquarters in Sharon, Connecticut.
Folk Legacy - Sandy's studio control room
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