Moses Asch

Moses "Moe" Asch. American recording engineer and record executive. Born: December 2, 1905 in Warsaw, Poland Died: October 19, 1986, New York City, New York, USA He founded his first label, Asch Recordings, in 1938 and between 1941-1948 this label provided an outlet for some important material by folk artists including Leadbelly, Cisco Houston and Woody Guthrie. In 1946 he launched the Disc (5) label, which specialized in modern jazz. In December 1949, Asch founded Folkways Records to specialize in folk and ethnic recordings. His masters and rights to the Folkways label were acquired by Smithsonian Folkways in 1987. In addition to producing records, Moe Asch possessed one of the world's finest and most eclectic collections of traditional and folk music as well as jazz.