Gordon Friesen

Who is Gordon Friesen?

Gordon Friesen and wife Agnes Sis Cunningham were the founders of Broadside, the political song magazine that first published many of the most popular songs of the folk revival, including Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.

Friesen and Cunningham were also members of the Almanac Singers during the 1940s, a Greenwich Village urban folk music revival group with a shifting membership.

"At its peak, Broadside appeared monthly, but as the folk revival lost momentum, its publication dwindled to bimonthly and ultimately semi-annually by the end of the 1960s. Although its circulation never exceeded four figures, the Friesens kept Broadside afloat until 1988, publishing 187 issues in all."

In 1999, Cunningham published their collaborative memoir, Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography:

In 2000, Smithsonian Folkways Records collected the magazine’s most notable songs on the five-CD box set The Best of Broadside 1962-1988.