User:LadyofShalott/Art Rosenbaum

Art Rosenbaum (born 1938 in Ogdensburg, New York) is a painter, banjo player, and retired art professor who has spent over half a century documenting folk music. His music has earned him a Grammy Award, and his scholarly work on the banjo is cited as key in the banjo revival of the post-World War II period.

Biography
Rosenbaum enrolled at Columbia University in 1956 and received his degree in art in 1960, and an MFA in painting in 1961; he then went to Paris on a Fulbright grant until 1965. During his college time he was active in the local folk scene, crossing paths with Bob Dylan and forming a group called The Columbia Chamb'ry Players; Rosenbaum played banjo and fiddle, and sang. He started teaching at the University of Georgia in 1976, retiring in 2006.

In 1964, Smithsonian Folkways released Rosenbaum and Pat Dunford's album of traditional music from Indiana (Rosenbaum's home state), Fine Times in Our House. This album followed the recording Rosenbaum and Ed Kahn made of Pete Steele, previously recorded by Alan Lomax; it includes "Last Payday at Coal Creek", "perhaps Steele's best-known song".

His Art of Field Recording received high praise in Utne Reader; the two boxes of each four CDs have extensive notes and covers painted by Rosenbaum himself, and black-and-white photographs by his wife, Margo Newmark Rosenbaum. His collecting, which is focused "solely on old music" has earned him comparisons with Alan Lomax and Harry Smith, both of whom have influenced Rosenbaum.

In addition to the album liner notes, Rosenbaum's writings about music include a 1998 book about ring shouts, Shout Because You’re Free. Writer John Bealle has credited Rosenbaum's 1968 book, Old-Time Mountain Banjo, as being "surely a key transitional text" in banjo revival, which presented "a meticulous comparative study of style based on the playing of traditional performers whose playing Rosenbaum had studied".

In terms of making music, Rosenbaum is a "traditional-style banjoist" who has collaborated with the likes of Jean Ritchie (on her 1962 album of country songs from the 1920s and 30s, Precious Memories).

His 2007 album, Volume 1 of Art of Field Recording: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum won a Grammy award for best historical album.

Judith McWillie said of Rosenbaum's work, "His paintings, teaching, and field recording/musicianship are all of a piece, all one outpouring of a talented individual."