Songwriter and Longtime Library of Congress Folk Music Archivist Joe Hickerson Dies at 89

Joe Hickerson, the esteemed singer‐songwriter and longtime folk music archivist at the Library of Congress, died on August 17, 2025, at a care facility in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 89, according to his partner, Ruth Bolliger, and as reported by The New York Times.

Amid the folk revival of the 1960s, Hickerson began a distinguished 25-year career at the Library of Congress in 1963, where he guided musicians, songwriters, and scholars through its vast repositories of recordings, documents, and oral histories. Revered for his encyclopedic knowledge, he memorized hundreds of traditional songs—from their melodies and lyrics to their origins and histories—to serve as a living index for researchers and performers.

The Library of Congress boasts more than 3.5 million sound recordings spanning over a century of audio history, including 500,000 LPs, 450,000 78-RPM discs, and 200,000 CDs, as well as rare formats such as wire recordings, cylinders, and music-box discs.

Beyond his archival work, Hickerson was a captivating performer who described his approach as “vintage pre-plugged paleo-acoustic,” often delivering songs in an intimate, conversational style that resonated with live audiences.

Born Joseph Charles Hickerson on October 20, 1935, in Highland Park, Illinois, he discovered folk music in 1948 when he attended Pete Seeger’s performance at a Progressive Party rally. His passion led him to Oberlin College (1953–1957), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and simultaneously organized Seeger’s campus concerts, founded the Oberlin Folk Song Club, and fronted the Folksmiths ensemble.

According to his personal archives at Indiana University, Hickerson formed a close friendship with Seeger and contributed two additional verses to the acclaimed 1960 anthem “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” poignantly reflecting on the toll of war.

With the Folksmiths, he released the album We’ve Got Some Singing to Do, which featured the earliest known commercial recording of the Black spiritual “Kumbaya”—a song later popularized by artists such as Joan Baez, Odetta, and Raffi.

Hickerson pursued graduate studies in folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University, producing a 1,300-item annotated bibliography of North American Indian music for his master’s thesis, a project supported by the National Science Foundation.

While at IU, he performed as a strolling minstrel at the annual Madrigal Dinner, sang folk songs at the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation, co-founded the IU Folksong Club, and hosted folklore programs on the public radio station WFIU.

During his tenure at the Archive of Folksong, Hickerson released two albums: Folk Songs and Ballads Sung by Joe Hickerson With a Gathering of Friends (1970) and the two-volume collection Drive Dull Care Away (1976). He retired as director of the Folksong Division in 1998 after more than three decades of service.

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