Francis Moreland Warner (April 5, 1903 – February 27, 1978) was an American folk song collector, singer, musician, and YMCA executive.
He and his wife Anne Warner (born Elizabeth Anne Locher, October 18, 1905 – April 26, 1991) collected and preserved many previously unpublished traditional song versions from the eastern United States, including "Tom Dooley", "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", "The Days of Forty-Nine", and "Gilgarrah Mountain", a New Hampshire version of the song more widely known as "Whiskey in the Jar".
He continued to perform occasionally, singing and playing guitar and banjo, and began spending vacations collecting folk songs.
[6] The couple lived in Greenwich Village, in a literary community among friends including Stephen Vincent Benét, Carl Carmer, Marianne Moore, Clifton Fadiman, and DuBose Heyward.
[8] On their travels they met and recorded singers including Yankee John Galusha, Frank Proffitt, Lena Bourne Fish, Lee Monroe Presnell, and Sue Thomas.
[1] Using a wooden banjo made for him by Hicks, Warner later began performing the song, which became an international hit in the 1950s in recordings by both The Kingston Trio and Lonnie Donegan.
It was a continuous act of unpaid, tender devotion to American folk song and a life-long love affair with the people who remembered the ballads...".
[5] Beside his unpaid work in collecting folk songs, Frank Warner continued in his employment by the YMCA, becoming a member of its national council, and from 1952 until his retirement was general secretary for operations in Nassau and Suffolk counties, Long Island.
The first was a set of three 78s, Hudson Valley Songs, for the Disc Company of America in 1946, where he was accompanied by Bess Lomax, Butch Hawes, Pete Seeger and Tom Glazer.
[8] Additional recordings, moving image, and written material, including correspondence, is held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.