In 1938, Asch's father's employer,
The Jewish Daily Forward, commissioned the firm where Moses Asch worked to build a transmitter for its Yiddish-language radio station,
WEVD. Asch thereafter explored the market for recorded Yiddish music, both sacred and secular. In 1940, Asch established Asch Recordings, and concentrated on publishing and selling phonograph records. Asch overextended his operations, however, and went bankrupt in 1948. Although in theory a "consultant" to Folkways in its early years, Asch ran the company from its formation until his death. Asch also issued
Negro slave spirituals, such as the
Negro Folk Music of Alabama, originally collected in 1952 by
Harold Courlander who was an associate of Asch, and
Negro Folk Songs redone by the Folk Masters, an African American band in 1952, as well
Mormon Folk Songs and Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew-Aramaic, Cantorial
synagogue music from the 1940s, including a rare pre-
Holocaust liturgy from
Moshe Koussevitzky. In 1952, filmmaker and ethnomusicologist
Harry Smith compiled for Asch the
Anthology of American Folk Music, The Smithsonian acquisition of the Folkways archive was, in part, funded by the release of the album
A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, which featured contributions by
Pete Seeger,
Bob Dylan,
Bruce Springsteen,
U2 and other artists. Neil Alan Marks wrote in
The New York Times in 1980: "Folkways Records was for folklorists and musicians the
talmudic source for much primary material. Its founder, Moses Asch, may have more to do with the preservation of folk music than any single person in this country." ==References==