Frank Warner

Francis Moreland Warner (April 5, 1903 – February 27, 1978) was an American folk song collector, singer, musician, and YMCA executive. He and his wife Anne Warner (born Elizabeth Anne Locher, October 18, 1905 – April 26, 1991) collected and preserved many previously unpublished traditional song versions from the eastern United States, including "Tom Dooley", "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", "The Days of Forty-Nine", and "Gilgarrah Mountain", a New Hampshire version of the song more widely known as "Whiskey in the Jar".

Early life Frank Warner was born in Selma, Alabama, United States, and grew up in Jackson, Tennessee and Durham, North Carolina. He attended Duke University, and was president of the university's Glee Club. As a student of pioneer song collector Professor Frank C. Brown, he developed his interest in traditional folk music, and made his public singing debut to accompany a lecture by Brown at the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh in 1924. He graduated in 1925 and continued his studies at the School of Social Work at Columbia University in New York City before deciding to work for the Young Men's Christian Association and joining the YMCA training school. He continued to perform occasionally, singing and playing guitar and banjo, and began spending vacations collecting folk songs. He started work at the YMCA in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1928, before moving to work in New York City in 1931.

Marriage and song collecting He married Missouri-born Anne Locher in New York in 1935. The couple lived in Greenwich Village, in a literary community among friends including Stephen Vincent Benét, Carl Carmer, Marianne Moore, Clifton Fadiman, and DuBose Heyward. They continued to spend their vacations traveling in rural parts of the eastern United States, including the Adirondacks, the Appalachians and New England, as well as in eastern Canada, to obtain folk material. On their travels they met and recorded singers including Yankee John Galusha, Frank Proffitt, Lena Bourne Fish, Lee Monroe Presnell, and Sue Thomas. The Warners collected "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" from Sue Thomas at Nags Head, North Carolina. In 1951, he issued another 78, containing "Got the Whole World in His Hand", which - together with his own version of "Tom Dooley" - was among the songs he included on his first 10" LP, American Folk Songs and Ballads, released by Elektra Records in 1952. He recorded two more albums for Elektra, Songs and Ballads of America's Wars (1954), and Our Singing Heritage, Vol.III (1958; later reissued as American Traditional Folk Songs). In 1961, he recorded Songs of the Civil War: North and South, for the Prestige International label. Anne Warner wrote the liner notes for his albums. and the 1961 festival.

Frank Warner's last album, Come All You Good People, with accompaniment by his sons and liner notes by Anne Warner, was released by Minstrel Records in 1975.

Death Frank Warner died at his home on Long Island in 1978, at the age of 74.

After her husband's death, Anne Warner spent several years archiving and compiling their recordings, publishing a book, Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection in 1984. Jeff and Gerret Warner also produced From the Mountains to the Sea, a two-hour, multimedia presentation on the lives of Anne and Frank Warner and their collecting activities.

Discography Hudson Valley Songs (3x78 album, Disc, 1946) American Folk Songs and Ballads (10-inch LP, Elektra, 1952) Songs and Ballads of America's Wars (10-inch LP, Elektra, 1954) Our Singing Heritage, Vol.III (Elektra, 1958) Songs of the Civil War: North and South (Prestige International, 1961) Come All You Good People (Minstrel, 1976)