MARCH 26TH, 2015
MARCH 26TH, 2015
Jerry Silverman (3/26/1931) is an American folksinger, guitar teacher and author of music books. He has had over 200 books published, which have sold in the millions, including folk song collections, anthologies and method books for the guitar, banjo and fiddle. He has taught guitar to hundreds of students. He is currently a folk performer and lecturer at schools, universities and concert halls in the U.S. and abroad.
Silverman’s best-selling books are The Folk Song Encyclopedia (a two-volume compilation of over 1,000 folk songs; words, music and guitar chords), Ballads and Songs of the Civil War (piano-vocal with guitar chords), The Guitar Player’s Guide and Almanac (a combined method book and survey of musical, technical and anecdotal information), Of Thee I Sing (patriotic American songs from the Revolutionary War to the present), The Baseball Songbook and The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust. The latter book required 9 years of research to recover many songs that were never written to paper. It contains 110 songs in 16 languages – Yiddish, German, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Ladino, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Hungarian and English. The songs include the works of concentration camp prisoners and inhabitants of the ghettos of Eastern Europe as well anti-Fascist anthems inspired by the Spanish Civil War, Red Army songs and songs of Resistance fighters. Silverman’s most recent book, New York Sings, was reviewed by long-time friend and colleague Pete Seeger. Seeger and Silverman were both editors at Sing Out! A Folk Music Magazine in the 1960s. [wikipedia]