Moe Asch, Tight of Fist but Savior of Folk Music

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

WWII savaged culture in Europe, but brought Moe Asch the opportunity to collect rights to folk songs from around the world.

David B. Green for Haaretz

On October 19, 1986, Moe Asch, founder and owner of Folkways Records, one of the world’s great collections of ethnic- and folk-music recordings, died, at the age of 81. The character of Mel Novikoff, the stingy record producer in the Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” offers an unflattering portrait of Moe Asch’s less pleasant side, but no one disputed the fact that his contribution to musical posterity is immeasurably large.

Moses Asch was born in Warsaw on December 2, 1905. His father was the dramatist and writer Sholem Asch, who went on to become of the most well-known, if controversial (because of his flirtation with Christianity), Yiddish writers of the 20th century. His mother was the former Mathilde Shapiro.

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