Title: Oberlin Folk Music and the Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse Collection, 1955-2018

ID: RG 61/

Extent: 13.8 Linear Feet

Arrangement

Abstract

Creators

Administrative/Biographical History

Oberlin College Folk Music Club

The club was originally organized as the Oberlin Folk Song Club in 1957, with Joe Hickerson ’57 as its first president. The idea for the formation of the club was sparked by the performance at Oberlin College by Pete Seeger in 1954. Hickerson organized or co-organized subsequent Seeger performances at Oberlin in 1955 and 1956. After the 1956 performances, Hickerson led a “folksing” with Seeger at a college house (Grey Gables Co-op), recorded and simultaneously aired by the student-operated college radio station, WOBC-FM. Hickerson had his own folk music show on the radio station. He co-directed the first Annual Oberlin Folk Festival in May, 1957.

Charted later as a student organization under the name Oberlin College Folk Music Club, it continued to present folk artists in concert and promoted other folk music activities on campus. The club was open to Oberlin community members, but at least half of the membership had to be made up of Oberlin students. An article of the charter states that “in the event of the disbanding of the OCFMC, the tape collection will be donated to the Ethnomusicology Department of the Conservatory.” This is the only mention in the charter of tape recordings of folk music performances and events, and their ultimate disposition. It is unclear how long the radio station taped the club’s events, or when the college established a policy for recording the club’s performances by another college entity. In recent decades the college recording office, Concert Sound, made recordings of all college events. In a project spearheaded by the Ethnomusicology Department and the Folk Music Club, Concert Sound digitized earlier folk music and other performance recordings on older analog media.

The Folk Music Club continued to be active, and still is today. Many club members were and still are folk musicians; Joe Hickerson’s group of eight Oberlin student musicians, The Folksmiths, made a recording on the Smithsonian Folkways Records label in 1957, the summer after Hickerson’s graduation. Regular club reunions are held, usually at college commencement time when alumni reunions are an important part of the celebrations. In the fall of 2004, the first Oberlin Alumni Folk Music Conference took place over a three-day weekend, featuring lectures, participatory singing, concerts, banjo and other workshops, open mics and informal jam sessions, and contra dance. The conference was supported by campus committees and departments, and the Alumni Association.

In 2007 Professor of Ethnomusicology Roderic Knight approached Deborah Campana, Director of the Conservatory Library, about an offer by Tom Reid (OC ’80), Associate Director of the Student Union, of a collection of 208 compact discs, featuring live performances by students and visiting artists held at The Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse from February 2000 to May 2007. The Conservatory Library cataloged and provides access onsite these discs, as well as recordings ranging from 2007-2015. The Archives holds unique CD-ROMs of recordings taken from 1984-2018. See Cat in the Cream Recordings OBIS catalog record for access to materials from 2000-20015. Items marked as unique to the Archives may be accessed at the Archives reading room in the Terrell Main Library.

Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse

A student-run coffeehouse at Oberlin College opened on April 9, 1976 in the basement of Bosworth Hall under Fairchild Chapel. By September this was called “Cat in the Cream.” In 1980 the coffeehouse and free admission performance venue moved to the old game room in Hales Memorial Gym (former women’s gym), which offered more space, wood floors and a wall of mirrors. That year the student organization became independent of the Student Finance Committee. Performances at the Cat in the Cream include folk music, jazz, poetry readings, improv and sketch comedy, theater, dance, storytelling, and End-of-semester performances by Oberlin Steel and the Dead Hear Footsteps radio program. The venue seats 325 persons.

In September 2017, Campana accepted Reid’s offer of a much larger collection of 693 CDs that he produced and stored in the Student Union. The collection consisted of digitized recordings from reel-to-reel tapes dating from the 1950s, ranging from Pete Seeger concerts in the 1950s up through the 2018 Oberlin Spring Folkfest. The recordings were received by the Conservatory Library as the “Oberlin College Folk Music Archive” in seventeen binders of CDs, with identifiers OFCD0001-OFCD0695 and an accompanying inventory spreadsheet with what is known about performer names, dates, and locations. Again, the Conservatory Library cataloged this collection and provides access. See the Oberlin Folk Music Archive OBIS catalog record for access.

Sources

“Cat Finds a New Home in Hales” by Owen Jones, Oberlin Review, 9/16/1980.

Cat in the Cream website, accessed 1/26/2023.

Joe Hickerson Papers (RG 30/453): Biographical Sketch

Student Life: Musical and Dramatic Organizations (RG 19/3/3), Series 6.: Oberlin Folk

Song Club/Folk Music Club

Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich

Forms of Material (links to similar genres)

Languages of Materials

Administrative Information

Acquired: 09/09/2022. Accession No: 2022/038

Restrictions: The recordings are restricted from downloading or copying. Recordings listed in the Conservatory catalog record in OBIS, the online catalog of the Oberlin College Libraries, may be used in the Conservatory library only; an item listing is provided in the catalog record. Items marked as unique to the Archives’ Folk Music and The Cat in the Cream recordings in this guide’s inventory may be accessed at the Archives reading room in the Terrell Main Library.

Rights: Recordings are subject to copyright law; rights are held exclusively by the artists.

Acquisition Note: The collection originated from several sources. Concert Sound, the college’s events recording office, made the digital transfers from original tapes and some recordings came from Oberlin’s in-house radio station, WOBC. The exception are recordings temporarily loaned by Oberlin College alumni for the purpose of digitization for the Conservatory’s Folk Music Archive recordings collection. The recordings in this collection were transferred to the Archives from the college recording office.

Related Materials:

Oberlin College Conservatory Library

Oberlin Folk Music Archive recordings (Reel-to-Reel tapes, CD-ROMs, DVDs

and USB Jump drives)

The Cat in the Cream recordings (CD-ROMs, DVDs)

Oberlin College Archives

Joe Hickerson Papers (RG 30/453)

Moving Images: Digital Video Discs (DVDs) (RG 57/3)

Photographs: Subjects (RG 32/5)

Commencement (Pete Seeger, speaker), 1972

Entertainment

Folk Dance Club

Sound Recordings: Cassette Tapes (RG 37/3)

Commercial recordings (3) by Joe Hickerson

Finding Aid Revisions: Processed by Stephen Renko, 3/27/2023. Historical background note by Anne Cuyler Salsich.

Collection Material Type: Artificial Collection

Scope and Contents:

SERIES DESCRIPTION

Subgroup I. Oberlin Folk Music Recordings, 1955-2018 (11.0 l.f.)

Series 1. Audio Recordings on Reel-to-Reel Tapes, 1959-1977 (3.2 l.f.)

These are tapes of live concerts recorded from 1955-1977 in Oberlin, Ohio, primarily at Oberlin College. Transfers were sponsored by the Oberlin College Folk Music Club. They include recordings from the club’s Hoot festival, Hobo Jungle, Oberlin Spring Folkfest, and the Alumni Folk Music Conference. Performers include: Plum Creek Boys, Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger, New Lost City Ramblers, and Highwoods String Band. A small selection of recordings (OFCD 0001-OFCD 0040 and 0700-0701) are accompanied by photocopies of the original track and artist listings, available in digitized form, in part with added transcriptions of handwritten notes.

Series 2. Audio Recordings on CD-ROMs, 1955-2018 (7.2 l.f.)

This series comprises CD-ROMS of digitized reel-to-reel tapes from Series 1, as well as born-digital audio recordings captured at the Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse, Finney Chapel and Tappan Square as a part of Spring Folkfest. This series also includes a recording unique to the Archives’ collection - the “Grey Gables” folksing, which was one of the first student-led performances of the Folk Music Club and is unique the Archive’s collection, as well as OFCD 0698-705.

Series 3. Moving Images, Photographs and Sound Recordings (DVDs and external hard drives), 1997-2008 (0.4 l.f.)

This series is a collection of DVDs unique to the Archives’ collection which contain video, audio and photographs taken at both Spring Folkfest and Alumni Conference performances from 1997-2008. The USB drives contain corresponding audio and video recordings of Spring Folkfest performances from 2014-2017. Notable performers include: Rob Jamner, Austin Walkin' Cane, Drill Bit, Ukes Of Hazard, Hanneke Cassel Band, Jeremy Kittel Band and Mariache Flor de Toloache. In some cases, these jump drives also contain photographic images of select performances from 2000-2017. Also included in the USB drives are raw microphone recordings from 2014 and 2017 from Folkfest performances at The Cat in the Cream.

Series 4. Selected Digital Photographs Printed by Archives Staff for Access, 2014-17 (0.2 l.f.)

Here the researcher will find representative photographs on paper of the many digital images taken at certain performances on the recordings in Series 3. These were printed by Archives staff for patron convenience.

Subgroup II. The Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse Recordings, 1984-2018 (2.8 l.f.)

Series 1. Audio Recordings on CD-ROMS, 1984-2018 (2.8 l.f.)

Consists of CD-ROMs of mainly non-folk concert audio recordings made at the venue from 1984-2018, with the bulk of the collection from performances captured from 2000-2018. Notable performers include: Moonchild, Kassa Overall Trio, Dead South, High and Mighty Brass Band, Sweet Potato Spoon, Blac Rabbit, Gypsy Strings, King Neptune and Three Story Chicken House.

Download Box / Folder List (pdf)