Robert Winslow Gordon was born September 2, 1888 in Bangor, Maine

Bangor, Maine

Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...

. Educated at Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, he joined the English faculty at the University of California at Berkley in 1918. He was the founding head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 in 1928, later the Archive of Folk Culture, which became part of the American Folklife Center

American Folklife Center

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife" . The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American folk music...

. He was a pioneer in using mechanical means to document folk musicians, originally using Edison cylinder

Phonograph cylinder

Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

 recordings. He is known among folk singers as the originator of the infamous Gordon "Inferno" Collection of American songs, and he also collected an early version of Kumbaya

Kumbaya

"Kumbaya" or "Kumbayah" — is an African-American spiritual song from the 1930s. It enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s and became a standard campfire song in Scouting and nature-oriented organizations...

. From 1943 to 1958, he was a Professor of English at George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

.He died March 26, 1961.

Biography