Folk Music in Portage County
- Art Stevenson
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
As part of our PCHS feature exhibit, each month through December of 2026 we will share a new piece of music history. Be sure to come back to learn more about the music that makes Portage County so great!
Folk Music in Portage County was researched and written by Art Stevenson.
What is Folk Music?
In a broad sense, folk music is the musical expression of a person, a group, or an entire culture, based on ways of life, customs, and traditions. Commercial country, blues, bluegrass, and other genres are derived from folk music and song. Ethnic Folk Music encompasses the traditional music of many cultures, including songs, ballads, spirituals, melodies, and dances passed down from one generation to the next. Folk music can be played on any instrument, in groups of any size, or by a single musician. Traditional folk music is the practice of performing folk songs of the past, passing the songs and melodies down to the next generation, keeping the cultural qualities intact. Traditional folk ballads like Barbara Allen have been handed down for generations and are hundreds of years old. Ethnic and American folk music records were distributed in the USA starting in the early 1900s. Many of the early American folk singers, like Bradley Kincaid, were classified as hillbilly or country singers.
The American Folk Revival began in New York City in the early 1940s, with independent record labels issuing numerous records by Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and The Almanac Singers. Pete Seeger and The Weavers were on the hit parade in 1950 with Goodnight, Irene. Many folk artists included socially and politically conscious songs in their repertoire. During the Red Scare of the early 1950s these musicians were driven into obscurity due to their outspoken views about socialism. Pete Seeger himself was blacklisted.
In the late 1950s the Folk Revival made a strong comeback with the popularity of the hit-making Kingston Trio, followed by numerous singing groups like Peter, Paul, and Mary. Both acts were based on the concept of The Weavers. For several years, folk music singers and groups were on the pop charts. Many of the songs were easy to learn, and coffeehouses and clubs featuring “hootenanny” jam sessions appeared in every large city. Music stores sold millions of guitars and banjos across the country.
American folk music expanded beyond traditional music to include the songs and music of a new generation of singer-songwriters emerging in the early 1960s, during the so-called Folk Boom. In contemporary folk music the emphasis is more on the artist creating new songs and music rather than carrying on a musical tradition. Bob Dylan is a prime example of a contemporary folk musician; in fact, his rise to prominence as a singer-songwriter in 1962 marked the beginning of the contemporary folk genre.
Folk Music In Portage County:
Indigenous Folk Music and Dance
Folk music was practiced in central Wisconsin long before the arrival of European settlers. Wisconsin’s indigenous nations performed singing, dancing, worshipping, and storytelling during tribal ceremonies and celebrations. According to accounts from the early 1800s, Native Americans sang and danced at these ceremonies with no other accompaniment than simple percussion, beating sticks together, clapping hands, or using small hand-held drums. Each tribe or large group had its own traditional songs, which were the stories and histories of their culture, the commemoration of events, celebrations of marriage, religious tributes, etc. The music of the tribes has steadily evolved since then, responding to changes and catastrophes to their culture and environment as European settlement expanded westward. The Drum Dance, a widespread phenomenon today in Native American culture, emerged and evolved with these changes.
The origin of today’s Drum Dance tradition has been attributed to the Sioux prophet Tailfeather Woman, who in the 1870s spent four days hiding from white soldiers in a lake in western Minnesota, taking shelter in the lily pads. The Great Spirit came to her in a vision and showed her how to construct a large drum which she believed would unite warring tribes and stop the killing of her people by white soldiers. The Drum Dance ritual caught on fast as it was spread to neighboring tribes in the east, into Wisconsin. The drum is regarded as sacred to the Ojibwe and Menomonie tribes, and today Drum Dance ceremonies are held at events held by numerous tribes throughout North America. The UW-Stevens Point Native American Center hosts Drum Dance events.
Music In Wisconsin’s Pinery Camps: In the late 1800s, the lumbermen or “Shanty Boys” often stayed in isolated lumber camps, many miles from the nearest hotel, restaurant, or saloon. The work was hard and dangerous, the crews worked in all weather, and the hours were long. Around the wood stove in the communal bunkhouse, or “shanty,” the men would gather after supper for conversation, storytelling, and song. Any shanty boy could take his turn entertaining the crew, whether he could carry a tune or not. Musical instruments were rare in the camps, and a talented singer or storyteller was an asset to the logging camp as a source of evening entertainment around the hot stove, after a long day of working in the forest. Most of the poems and songs in the logging shanties were derived from popular songs and old folk ballads. Billy Allen was one of the few known songwriters in the Shanty Boy singing tradition, and he entertained the shanty boys with his original poems put to music. His songs told stories of the loggers and the life they lived. Some of his songs mention localities in central Wisconsin! Two of his songs, “Driving Saw Logs On The Plover” and “On The Banks Of The Little Eau Pleine” mention rivers that flow through Portage County.
Shan T Boy and the Song Catcher: In 1860 William N. (Billy) Allen left home at age 17 to work as a “timber cruiser,” surveying sections of timber for sales during the extensive harvesting of old growth forests in the late 1800s. Timber cruising became his trade. Although Wausau was his home, Billy Allen’s work took him to forests throughout the United States, and as far south as Mexico. Many of his days and nights were spent in isolated lumber camps with the men who cut, limbed, rolled, skidded, and hauled the big logs to the streams and rivers, to be floated downstream to the mill. Starting in 1870, he composed numerous poems and songs about lumberjacks and life in the pinery lumber camps. Despite having little formal education, Billy Allen could read and write well, and his stories and poems were published in local newspapers, under the pseudonym Shan T Boy!
Enter the Songcatcher. Franz Rickaby, a folklorist at the University of North Dakota, produced perhaps the most important collection of lumber camp songs from the so-called Golden Age of the Pineries in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Rickaby spent time hitchhiking and traveling on foot to distant lumber camps, seeking singers, poets, and musicians. Being a musician himself, Rickaby could write down the lyrics and the melody as it was sung or played by the songster. On a trip to Minnesota, he found a manuscript of “On The Banks Of The Little Eau Pleine” written by “Shan T Boy.” Rickaby exchanged correspondence with other lumber camp song collectors, including Eau Claire businessman William Bartlett, who knew William N. Allen of Wausau as the Shan T Boy! Franz Rickaby traveled to Wausau to meet Billy Allen in 1923. Allen was 80 years old and living in retirement with his sister, having never married. Rickaby helped Allen remember many of the poems and songs he had composed and committed to memory but had never written down! Rickaby committed the lyrics and melodies to paper, and claimed Billy Allen to be the only folk author of songs he ever met.
Franz Rickaby’s book “Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy” was published in 1926, one year after his untimely death at age 35 from rheumatic fever. His book has been reprinted recently as “Pinery Boys – Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era” with introductions by Gretchen Dykstra and James P. Leary (University of Wisconsin Press). Several of Billy Allen’s original songs and music are included.
William N. Allen, the Shan T Boy, lived to see his poetry and songs published in Rickaby’s book. He passed away on May 7, 1929, in Wausau at the age of 85, a true Wisconsin pioneer. Some of his songs have been recorded and performed by folk artists specializing in songs of the Pinery Days.
Ethnic Folk Music in Portage County: Polish immigrants began arriving in Portage County in the 1850s. The immigration continued well into the 20th century, with arrivals from Poland, and from the crowded Polish neighborhoods in Chicago. Historical records, and the memory of elderly Portage County residents, recall dances and weddings in the 1930s featuring accordion and fiddle music of Polish origin. This early music in our area was not well documented, but in 1941 a recording engineer from the University of Wisconsin came to Stevens Point and recorded traditional Polish fiddle tunes by Polish immigrant John Ciezczak and singer Jeannette Jablonski. Scandinavian folk music and storytelling (and joke telling) traditions have also been reported and documented in eastern Portage County.
Children show off traditional Polish dances including the Krakowiak during a celebratory dinner after the annual state convention of the Polish Women's Alliance. Photos courtesy of the PCHS Stevens Point Journal collection, published on 9/18/1950.
Arrival of The Folk Boom in Central Wisconsin: Stevens Point-born actor and musician Paul Bentzen first became interested in music performance by watching Big John Schofield play folk music live on Channel 7 WSAU, in the late 1950s. Schofield played banjo and guitar and sang Woody Guthrie songs, and children’s songs. This was Bentzen’s first exposure to folk music, and in high school he started his first band, The Cavaliers, a folk band. In 1962 the popular Brothers Four, a hit making folk group played a concert at the university. Top folk music act Odetta appeared at the Fieldhouse in January, 1963, and The Journeymen in 1964, as headliners of The WSC Winter Carnival.
Thank you for reading this music history, presented together with the Portage County Historical Society's feature exhibit!
Be sure to visit the exhibit in-person during open hours and check out the digital collection of local music history.