Folk Music Indexes:
Print and Electronic Resources

Resources on the Web

  1. Greenhaus, Dick, et.al. The Digital Tradition., A collection of lyrics and digitized music files for more than 8000 folk songs. Both keyword searching and title browsing is possible.

  2. The Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads Project. The Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads project makes digitised images of more than 30,000 broadsheets and ballads available to the research community.

  3. Kuntz, Andrew. The Fiddler's Companion. An index with more than 30,000 entries to tunes from Celtic, British and American traditions. Includes both print and recorded sources, along with ABC notation files for more than 2,000 tunes. A CD-ROM version is also available.

  4. Lomax, Alan. The Alan Lomax Collection aims to provide both searching and browsable indexes for all of his many recording trips around the world. Currently about ten trips are now available, including his 1959-61 southern United States work.

  5. Nelson, Lesley. The Contemplator's Website - A great site with historical information and lyrics to all the Child Ballads, as well as many other Anglo-American folk genres.

  6. Ng, Alan. Irish Traditional Music Tune Index. Alan Ng's Tunography. An impressive website that indexes both books and recordings of Irish tunes. Includes extensive information on alternate titles and provides details on many recordings for which the titles of tunes are problematic, such as medleys that often do not give full listing of the individual tunes played.

  7. Plymouth Library Song Index. Search the index of over 60,000 song titles in nearly 2,000 songbooks held in the Plymouth, England Library. Covers all types of songs.

  8. Olson, Bruce. Roots of Folk: Old English, Scots, and Irish Songs and Tunes - A massive and fascinating tour through the early publications and manuscripts that are the sources for many of the ballads and tunes that we now sing and play.

  9. Parcells, Fred, The Reel Book. A collection of more than 1700 performances of Irish tunes transcribed in standard notation from a variety of sources including published recordings from the 20's thru the early 90's, pub sessions, and other venues. A small one time fee of $10. provides you with lifetime access to the scanned in immages.

  10. Roud, Steve. The Roud Folk Song and Broadside Index.  A massive database of traditional songs and broadsides from a wide variety of english language sources, produced by Steve Roud, the librarian for Local Studies for Vaughn Williams Memorial Library .  It is also available in an Access database format directly from Roud.
  11. Stewart, James. An Index to Traditional Instrumental Tunes. This digital index to traditional instrumental music collections contains some 55,000 entries and covers all the major tune collections, such as O'Neills, Cole, etc. as well as many lesser known collections. Includes type of tune (jig, hornpipe, etc.), keys and timings of titles.

  12. Waltz, Robert B., and David G. Engle. The Traditional Ballad Index: An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk Songs of the English-Speaking World. Includes both recordings and printed sources, with the focus on ballads.

  13. Keller, Robert M. The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium This website is a browsable and searchable database with page images and display of John Playford's complete works.

  14. Banjo Newsletter, Cummulative Tablature Index, Annapolis MD, 1973--. An index to more than 30 years of 5 string banjo tablature for all styles. Includes many fiddle tunes.

  15. Sing Out! - Sing Out!, the premier folk music magazine, now more than 50 years old, has a complete listing of all songs published during this time. The magazine also maintains the Sing Out Resource Center, which houses thousands of items and this resource is available to members.

  16. Levy Sheet Music Collection - A massive sheet music collection with much turn of the century and earlier material now searchable on line to retrieve complete bibliographic information, including words to first lines. Most titles can be displayed graphically.

  17. National Library of Scotland - Searchable index to the more than 1000 broadsides in this Scottish collection, with scanned images available for all entries.

  18. Cowpie Song Corral - Provides search engine and lyrics for country songs.

  19. Country Music Lyrics - Has Lyrics for more modern country performers.

  20. Harry's Blues Lyrics & Tabs Online. Has lyrics to more than 2800 Blues titles.

  21. Song texts of the original Carter Family - Look here to find lyrics for many of the songs found in the vast repertoire of the Carter Family.

  22. FolkLib Index - From the original FolkBook discographies for folk performers.

  23. Folkmusic.org artist listing - An index to Folk Music Artists sites.

Print & Microform Indexes

Most of the print or microform indexes listed below will be available in many university and public libraries.

  1. Brunnings, Florence. The Folk Song Index. Garland Publications, 1981. A comprehensive index to all the major folk song collections published prior to 1980. Includes recordings and folk song magazines such as Sing Out, as well as print anthologies.

  2. Child, Francis J. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 10 parts in 5 Vols. 1882-98. This original source for Child Ballad numbers, has been reissued many time over the 1925 years, including a CD-Rom, a Dover reprint series most recently issued in 2002. Child, a Harvard professor of English literature, collected manuscripts and texts from as many known publihed sources as possible. A single volume student edition was first published in 1904.

  3. Cohen, Norm. Traditional Anglo-American Folk Music: An Annotated Discography of Published Sound Recordings. New York, Garland Pub., 1994. A topically organized discography focusing on recordings that feature traditional Anglo-American material from both commericial and field recordings issued on LP's, Cassettes and CD's. Includes indexes to performers, titles with some cross-referencing, Laws and Child Ballad ID's, and record labels.

  4. Dixon, Robert M. W. et.al. Blues & gospel records, 1890-1943. Oxford, England. 4th ed., Oxford Univ. Press, 1997. More than a 1000 pages of discographic information organized by performer and ordered by date of recording sessions, with each listing including matrix numbers and orig. issue info. Appearance of artists as accompanyists or side performers is also listed, both for with other blues performers and also for side performer appearances with non blues groups. A title and side performer index is also included.

  5. Luchinsky, Ellen, The Song Index of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. New York, Garland Publishing, 1998. A two volume index to all the song folios in the Enoch Pratt Collection.

  6. An Index to Printed Sources of Folk Dance Tunes from the United States & the British Isles. Berea, KY, North American Imprints, 1995.

  7. Keller, Kate Van Winkle, & Carolyn Rabson, The National Tune Index, New York, University Music Editions, 1980. This microfiche index to mostly 18th century and earlier publications includes titles, first line text, and several forms of incipit indexes. Most major research Universities will have copies of this massive index to early British & American music material. It is now available on the web at www.colonialdancing.org/Easmes/ as part of a larger index to early American musics.
  8. Laws, G. Malcolm; Jr. Native American Balladry. A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographic Syllabus. Rev. edition, Philadelphia, American Folklore Society, 1964. First published in 1950, this is source book for Laws Bibliographic ID's starting with A thru I. Provides both citations to earlier field collections and recordings as part of a comprehensive discussion of Balladry as it developed in the United States and Canada.

  9. Laws, G. Malcolm; Jr. American Balladry from British Broadsides A Guid for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song.. Philadelphia, American Folklore Society, 1957. Similar in format to the above bibliography, this book documents the British Broadside traditions as collected in North America. Citations point to field collections, popular songsters and various collections of broadsides. The bibliographic ID's for individual titles start with J thru Q.

  10. Meade, Guthrie T.; with Dick Spottswood and Douglas S. Meade Country Music Sources: A Biblio-discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music. Chapel Hill, NC, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002. A massive index to both recordings and printed material that focuses on traditional and older material. Organized into four broad sections (Ballads, Songs, Religious Songs, and Instrumental Music) with numerious sub-sections listing titles, each of which provides a uniqued Discographic ID, similar to the Laws Bibliographic IDs published. Recording information includes dates, location recorded, original matrix, and records issued. Additional info is available on composer copyrights, different labels issued along with references to print sources and some recent reissues.

  11. Russell, Tony; with Bob Pinson. Country Music Records; a Discography, 1921-1942. Nashville, TN, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum 2004. Covers material somewhat similar material to Meade's, but organized by performer, rather than type of material, including an index to music titles as well.


revised & updated, Aug. 2006.   Jane Keefer      
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