The Emmy-winning special SONGS TO KEEP: TREASURES OF AN ADIRONDACK FOLK COLLECTOR opens a musical time capsule from a hundred years ago. Marjorie Lansing Porter (1891-1973) dedicated her life to preserving the rare folk songs of the Adirondacks. Throughout the 1940s and '50s, Porter traveled throughout New York State, interviewing and recording traditional musicians and singers in the hopes of creating a comprehensive collection of previously unpublished folk songs, transcripts and other writings. Like folksong collectors Alan Lomax and Anne and Frank Warner, Porter captured many songs just before the last living tradition bearers died. The Marjorie L. Porter Collection of North Country Folklore consists of more than 300 traditional ballads, songs from lumber camps and iron mines, Irish and French-Canadian songs, and Iroquois chants. The collection also includes dozens of oral histories and Porter's collected writings. SONGS TO KEEP features contemporary folk musicians Lee Knight, David Ruch, Dan Berggren, Alex Smith and others discussing and performing these traditional tunes.
