Dave Sear

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Dave Sear Performing at a Hootenanny in Washington Square Park (Dave Sear/The Dave Sear Collection)

Dave Sear's lifelong love of folk music began at an early age. As a child attending the Little Red Schoolhouse, he saw legends like Leadbelly and The Almanac Singers perform, and he was only 16 when he first appeared as a banjo player on Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival. 

After performing on WNYC's Adventures in Folk Music in the early 1960s, host Henrietta Yurchenco offered Sear a co-host position, and that job was the start of what was to become a more than 30-year relationship with this station.

In 2011, Sear generously loaned the WNYC archives some 500 1/4" open reel tapes for digitization. The tapes consist of the three decades of shows he produced and recorded here at WNYC. 

The Archives Department is pleased to highlight some of the most significant and exciting artists that performed on his three programs: Adventures in Folk Music, Folk Music Almanac, and Folk and Baroque - including Reverend Gary Davis, Mable Hillery, Utah Phillips, Tom Paxton, Happy Traum, Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Robin and Linda Williams, and many many more. 

• Playing the Banjo With Higher Aims - New York Times Profile