The following interview with singer-songwriter Elliott Adkins is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
Elliott Adkins has a passion for recording old songs that have largely been forgotten. The 23-year-old musician was inspired after finding boxes of sheet music in his parents’ basement when they moved from his childhood home in Atlanta last year.
“I thought it would be cool if somebody took the time to record these obscure pieces of music that had never been recorded…so I did,” Adkins said. “I put it online really not expecting much of it, but it took on a life of its own.”
Most of the collection of more than 1,000 pieces of music, which were his late grandmother’s, are old enough to be in the public domain. That allows him to remix, record and share the music. Adkins records himself singing and playing the songs on guitar, posting the never-before recordings online. His video of the 1927 song, “Yesterday,” went viral on Instagram and propelled his social media presence.
“I feel like the public domain is often overlooked. It’s a great way to preserve our cultural legacy,” Adkins said. “There are people who had great ideas in the past, but the way our copyright system is set up, it’s hard to expand on those ideas. The public domain allows you to have a certain amount of time to make as much money as possible…then it becomes something greater than yourself. It removes the ego from art.”
Adkins said he’s drawn to these vintage tunes, in part, because he “naturally craves mystery” and likes the challenge. It’s a stretch to figure out the music, understand the lyrics, and put his own twist on the songs, he said. He unpacks the history of the songs and often shares some of their backstory in his videos.
“I feel like the public domain is often overlooked. It’s a great way to preserve our cultural legacy.”Elliott Adkins, singer-songwriter
“I find the [old] songs to be a lot more sophisticated than popular music today, with their chord progressions and harmony,” Adkins said. “There’s a blend of genres – early jazz and forms of classical music – that’s very interesting.”
In October, Adkins was invited to perform at the Internet Archive’s annual celebration in San Francisco. He made musical history singing “Tell Her I’ll Love Her,” an English sea song from the early 1800s. It was the first time the song had ever been recorded. Adkins was the closing act for the event, playing his guitar and singing before a live audience—and getting the crowd, which surpassed 400 people, to sing along.
“It was great. I could tell the audience was primed for anything I was going to throw at them,” said Adkins. “It was nice to have such an attentive audience. There was an ideology attached to what I was performing, a mission behind it, and those people were very much ready for that.”
Adkins, who also writes original alternative country and Americana music, said he’s become fascinated with the community of music preservationists he’s encountered since venturing into this niche of music. He’s met people old and young, online and in the Atlanta area who are committed to reviving forgotten songs.
To research music, Adkins uses the Internet Archive and the Discography of American Historical Recordings Database from UC Santa Barbara.
Staff at the Internet Archive spotted Adkins on Instagram and reached out to invite him to participate in the October event. Since much of his material he uses is in the public domain, he’s said he’s a “big fan” of the Archive and was happy to collaborate on the project.
A few songs were considered before the decision was made to go with, “Tell Her I’ll Love Her.” Adkins worked on the arrangement, wrote new lyrics, and said he practiced it for 30 minutes every day leading up to the performance in San Francisco.
The feedback after the performance has been overwhelmingly positive and Adkins said he’s picked up new followers on social media as a result of the event.
“It’s a way to get in touch with the past,” Adkins said. “Most people, especially my age, are so unaware of what music sounded like 100 years ago. It’s really cool to see what songs did make it, what songs didn’t.”
Adkins said he enjoys thinking of new ways to present the old tunes.
“I see music as something that is constantly trying to be pushed forward,” he said. “I think you can grab a lot more people if you adjust it for the modern audience.”
At the end of his Internet Archive performance, Adkins led the audience in singing additional verses to the sea song that he wrote just for the event:
Here we all are gathered to sing the same sea song
A song that may be old, but is not yet gone
The past isn’t dead ‘til it can’t be read
So, celebrate with us, speak of days of yore
Here we all are gathered to maintain what came before
So, it isn’t just my ghost that can visit this sweet shoreHere we all are gathered to sing the same sea song
A song that may be old, but is not yet gone
The past isn’t dead ‘til it can’t be read
‘cause some will remember though the world may forget
Here we all are gathered to sing the same sea song
(So, thank y’all very much for singing right along)