The first episode of our podcast on The Story of Vanguard,  the 10th edition of VMP’s Anthology box set series, will set the scene for the rest of your box and give you an overview of Vanguard, its importance, as well as the state of folk music at large in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when the albums contained in this box were first released. 

Before we dive into the music of The Weavers, Odetta, Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Doc Watson and Skip James, learn from Ronald Cohen — professor emeritus of history at Indiana University Northwest and a leading scholar on folk music — about the backstory of the label, New York as an epicenter of folk and how to define folk music.