Ride an Old Paint

Before all the Pulitzers, Carl Sandburg’s baritone made him famous.

You’re listening to Carl Sandburg singing “Ride an Old Paint” in nineteen forty-six and accompanying himself on the guitar.

Sandburg loved to travel the open road and was the first to document many American folk songs. In fact, in his early years audiences would be drawn equally by his poems and his music. He published a five-hundred-page collection of songs in nineteen twenty-seven called The American Songbag.

The Carl Sandburg Folk Music Festival is held each year in North Carolina.