Stekert performing early in her folk career. (Howard Mitchell) Alumni At Age 90, a Singer, Collector, and Scholar of Folk Music Goes Digital Stories You May Like From Springsteen to the Stones: Your Big Red Concert Memories Cheryl Engelhardt ’02 Is a Rising Star in New Age Music It’s Your Jam: Test Your Knowledge with a Big Red Music Quiz After a long career onstage and off, Ellen Stekert ’57 is focused on preservation—releasing songs from her vast archive on Bandcamp By Melissa Newcomb At age 13, lying in a hospital bed recovering from polio, Ellen Stekert ’57 borrowed her older brother’s guitar and learned to play to pass the time. It would lead to a decades-long career—not only in music but in academia. Stekert is a veteran folk singer who has released several albums and performed widely; she’s also a collector and curator of folk music and a scholar who has advanced the teaching of folklore studies. “To me, a folk song is an expression of a person,” says Stekert, a professor emerita of English at the University of Minnesota. “Folk songs are handed down—but the person singing it chooses that song, and sings it in ways that express themselves.” Although Stekert no longer sings publicly due to surgery that impacted her vocal cords—she jokes, however, that she “can still talk your ear off”—she’s currently digitizing and releasing recordings from her vast archive, much of which has not been made public before. In spring 2025, she released her first new album in 67 years, using a technology that musicians could have scarcely imagined back when her last one came out: the Bandcamp website. Titled Go Around Songs, Vol. 1, it features 10 tunes, including a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and Stekert’s version of the traditional “Scarborough Fair” (made famous, in a very different arrangement, by Simon & Garfunkel). To me, a folk song is an expression of a person. Folk songs are handed down—but the person singing it chooses that song, and sings it in ways that express themselves. Stekert has also been releasing individual songs from her archive. They include “The Ballad of Frankie Silver,” which tells the true story of a wife condemned to death for the 1831 murder of her husband—a tale that Stekert first encountered in a 1952 book of North Carolina folklore: “His feeble hands fell gentle down / His chattering tongue soon lost its sound / To see his soul and his body part / It strikes terror in my heart / I took his blooming days away / Left him no time to God to pray / And if sins fall upon his head / Must I bear them in his stead?” "The Ballad of Frankie Silver" A native of Great Neck, Long Island, Stekert was introduced to the Greenwich Village folk scene by a high school classmate who’d go on to be a founding member of the famed New Lost City Ramblers; at musical gatherings, she met luminaries like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. “I had an innate curiosity of wanting to get out and see what the world looked like,” she recalls. “I was raised in a privileged suburb, and I wanted to learn all about what else there was.” Three of Stekert's albums. Stekert had already recorded songs for her first album by the time she matriculated on the Hill, where she majored in philosophy in Arts & Sciences and helped found the Cornell Folk Song Society. Her gigs on campus included solo shows in Goldwin Smith; she was a TA for Harold Thompson’s legendary American folk literature class, popularly known as “Romp-n-Stomp.” Stekert was a TA for Harold Thompson’s legendary American folk literature class, popularly known as "Romp-n-Stomp." Stories You May Like From Springsteen to the Stones: Your Big Red Concert Memories Cheryl Engelhardt ’02 Is a Rising Star in New Age Music She performed at folk festivals, state fairs, arts venues, and elsewhere—often incorporating mini-lectures about the material’s history into her shows. Stekert would even play recordings of traditional versions so audiences could hear how they originally sounded. On the Hill for a return performance in 1960. That segued into an academic career. Stekert earned a master’s in folklore and anthropology from Indiana University and a doctorate in folklore from Penn; she taught at Wayne State University for a decade before joining the University of Minnesota faculty in 1973. She went on to serve as Minnesota’s first State Folklorist, found the Center for the Study of Minnesota Folklife, and serve as president of the American Folklore Society. Now, at age 90 and long retired from teaching, Stekert is focused on preserving her life’s work. An avid collector of folk songs for decades, Stekert had kept her archive of audiotapes and other analog media in temperature-controlled storage, but they were becoming fragile. She has been digitizing her collection with the help of a musician in his 20s—whom she met after she sold him a photo of Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival on eBay and learned he was a fan of hers. "High Floods & Low Waters" Among her newly released singles is a recording of a “lost” Woody Guthrie song, “High Floods & Low Waters,” which had gone unheard since Stekert and several other artists performed it on a CBS TV program in 1959. Written in the 1940s, the song contrasts Southern floods with the devastating droughts then causing water shortages in NYC. Camping during a 1996 trip to collect folk music from a source's last living descendant. Guthrie never published a recording or even its lyrics, Stekert says, and the CBS performance is the only version of which she’s aware. But the lyrics still resonate—perhaps, in an era of climate change, even more than when Guthrie wrote it: “Bow down with your neighbor and ask yourselves why / Some cities are flooded while others bone-dry.” Top: Stekert performing early in her folk career. (Photo by Howard Mitchell; all other images provided.) Published December 5, 2025 Comments Shannon, Class of 1958 6 Dec, 2025 This is a great article and the songs included show how Stekert’s beautiful voice captures the emotional quality of the lyrics which conveys the message as well as the music. Bravo! Reply Leave a Comment Cancel replyOnce your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Class Year Email * Save my name, email, and class year in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ Other stories You may like Students Karen Chen ’23 Aims for Gold in Beijing Bear Hugs O, Christmas Tree! Bryant Park’s Evergreen Grew on Alum’s Farm Campus & Beyond Remembering Dr. Jane Goodall, a ‘True Environmental Hero’