Biography
Born Oliver John Abbott in Enfield, England, in 1872, O.J. Abbott spent the next nine decades gathering folk songs and eventually introduced hundreds of them to audiences everywhere. Early in adulthood he left England for Canada, where he formed close ties with Irish immigrants and their descendants while employed on Ottawa Valley farms and in lumber camps throughout Ontario and Quebec. Recognition within Canadian and broader North American folksong communities had grown steadily by the middle of the 1950s, leading him to commit more than one hundred songs to tape between 1957 and the late winter of 1962; many of these pieces originated in the 1880s and 1890s and traced their roots to Irish tradition. Folkways Records issued selections from the sessions together with excerpts from his set at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival. Approaching his ninetieth year, Abbott saw international demand for his performances rise sharply, resulting in appearances at the National Museum of Man in 1958, a 1959 Ottawa concert alongside Pete Seeger, CBC broadcasts and another Newport appearance with Seeger the next year, and a 1961 slot at the Mariposa Folk Festival. He died early the following year.
Albums