The American Songbag
Book, hardcover with dust jacket
Harcourt Brace
H 26.5, W 20.0, TH 4.0, cm
CARL 20419
Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site
Photo courtesy: Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site

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Songbag on NPR

Carl Sandburg began collecting songs as a young man when he explored the people and places of America's heartland. He filled pocket notebooks with lyrics and devised his own simple notation system to record the melodies. During the 1920s as he lectured his way around the country reading his poetry and closing his programs with folk songs-his musical "songbag" overflowed. He collected songs from literary colleagues, folklorists, union organizers, college students and professors, soldiers, anonymous Americans, friends, and obscure 19th-century songbooks. In 1927, Sandburg published The American Songbag that included the lyrics, piano accompaniment, and his historic commentary of "280 real American songs." In 1950, he published the New American Songbag.