FOR forty years—from its founding, in 1947, to its acquisition by the Smithsonian Institution, in 1987— Folkways Records was, in all its faintly shabby grandeur, a kind of folk-expression museum ...

The song is obviously old. The acoustic guitar fades in, its strings bleating and chugging like a train against the sounds of vinyl pops. Then the harmonica adds some wah-wah-ing like a steam whistle.