The Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City.
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The Anthology of American Folk Music originally appeared on the Folkways label, as did the accompanying album to The Country Blues by Samuel Charters.
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Since acquiring Folkways, the Smithsonian has expanded Asch's collection by adding several other record labels, including Cook, Monitor, Fast Folk, Dyer-Bennet, and Paredon.
Wexler was also featured on the soundtrack of the film Underground (1976), recorded on Folkways Records in 1976.
In 1965, Zorich recorded and released an album on Folkways Records, entitled Moby Dick: Selections Read by Louis Zorich. One of Zorich's first major film roles was the Russian Constable in the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof.
In 1975, Walker released three albums of poetry on Folkways Records - Margaret Walker Alexander Reads Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes; Margaret Walker Reads Margaret Walker and Langston Hughes; and The Poetry of Margaret Walker.
Between 1955 and 1960, Ferguson recorded three albums on Folkways Records, each a part of the Rawhide satirical series.
In 1962, Folkways Records released Raymond Swing: Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Album, which included highlights from Swing's career.
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Dave Van Ronk, accompanying himself on guitar, included it on his 1963 Folkways recording Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger.
Traum first appeared on record at a historic session in late 1962 when a group of young folk musicians, including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge and The Freedom Singers, gathered in the studio at Folkways Records to record an album called Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1.
After La Farge and Matthews divorced in 1935, Oliver Albee changed his name to Peter La Farge and became a Greenwich Village folksinger with five Folkways Records albums.
He has been recorded by Smithsonian Folkways's Folkways Records label on the album Musical Traditions of St. Lucia, West Indies: Dances and Songs from a Caribbean Island, where he appears as lead fiddler on a kwadril suite of five dance tunes with the Kwadril Ensemble.
Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs is a remastered compilation of American folk songs sung by legend Woody Guthrie accompanied by Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Bess Lomax Hawes originally recorded for Moses Asch in the 1940s and re-released in 1989 by Folkways Records.
In 1984, looking for someone to continue the Folkways Records collection after him, Asch found Ralph Rinzler, who was then artistic director of the Smithsonian’s annual Folklife Festival.
Over the years of Folkways Records, Asch recorded some of the biggest names in music, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, Dizzy Gillespie, John Cage, and Charles Ives.