Moses Asch

Moses Asch (December 2, 1905 – October 19, 1986) was an American recording engineer and record executive. He founded Asch Records, which then changed its name to Folkways Records when the label transitioned from 78 RPM recordings to LP records. Asch ran the Folkways label from 1948 until his death in 1986. Folkways was influential in bringing folk music into the American cultural mainstream. Some of America's greatest folk songs were originally recorded for Asch, including "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie and "Goodnight Irene" by Lead Belly. Asch sold many commercial recordings to Verve Records; after his death, Asch's archive of ethnic recordings was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, and released as Smithsonian Folkways Records.

Early life and education Moses Asch was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Yiddish language novelist and dramatist Sholem Asch, and the younger brother of novelist Nathan Asch.

In 1912, the Asch family left Poland, on account of antisemitism, and settled in a suburb of Paris. In 1915, as war engulfed France, the family emigrated to New York. After the war, Asch studied electronics at a technical Hochschule in Koblenz, Germany. He returned to New York to commence work as an audio engineer.

Career In 1938, Asch's father's employer, The Jewish Daily Forward, commissioned the firm where Moses Asch worked to build a transmitter for its Yiddish-language radio station, WEVD. Asch thereafter explored the market for recorded Yiddish music, both sacred and secular. In 1940, Asch established Asch Recordings, and concentrated on publishing and selling phonograph records. Asch overextended his operations, however, and went bankrupt in 1948. Although in theory a "consultant" to Folkways in its early years, Asch ran the company from its formation until his death. Asch also issued Negro slave spirituals, such as the Negro Folk Music of Alabama, originally collected in 1952 by Harold Courlander who was an associate of Asch, and Negro Folk Songs redone by the Folk Masters, an African American band in 1952, as well Mormon Folk Songs and Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew-Aramaic, Cantorial synagogue music from the 1940s, including a rare pre-Holocaust liturgy from Moshe Koussevitzky.

In 1952, filmmaker and ethnomusicologist Harry Smith compiled for Asch the Anthology of American Folk Music, The Smithsonian acquisition of the Folkways archive was, in part, funded by the release of the album A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, which featured contributions by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2 and other artists. Neil Alan Marks wrote in The New York Times in 1980: "Folkways Records was for folklorists and musicians the talmudic source for much primary material. Its founder, Moses Asch, may have more to do with the preservation of folk music than any single person in this country."