Biographical Note
Robert Winslow Gordon was born in 1888 in Bangor, Maine. He studied English at Harvard beginning in 1906, working under George Lyman Kittredge. In 1912 he married Roberta Peter Paul of Darien, Gerogia, and their only child, a daughter named Roberta, was born in 1914. Gordon accepted a position as assistant professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley in 1917. During his tenure as a professor at the University of California between 1917 and 1924, Gordon collected over a thousand shanties and sea songs on the waterfront in San Francisco and Oakland. In 1923, Gordon began editing the column "Old Songs that Men Have Sung" in the pulp magazine Adventure. In the column, he printed songs requested by readers and asked readers to submit additional texts and verses, and in doing so built a robust collection of folk songs. In 1925, he embarked on a year-long research trip with the goal of creating the definitive collection of American folksong. During this time he collected songs in Asheville, North Carolina, and Darien, Georgia.
In 1928, the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, appointed Gordon as a "specialist and consultant in the field of Folk Song and Literature" in the Music Division. Later, Gordon adopted the title of director of the Archive of American Folk-Song. During this time, Gordon continued to live and conduct research in Darien, Georgia. In 1929, at the request of Putnam and Carl Engel, chief of the Music Division, Gordon concluded his fieldwork and moved to Washington, D.C. While in D.C., Gordon experimented with recording apparatuses and conducted his own tests with wax cylinders, wire recorders, and disc recorders. In 1933, dwindling funds and dissatisfaction with Gordon's performance led to the end of his tenure as the Director of the Archive of American Folk-Song. He continued to work as an editor and professor of English until he passed away in 1961.