Recent Collection Highlights
As we begin a new fiscal year, we’re pausing to reflect on the past year and highlighting three collections we received and added to our Wisconsin Music Archives: the Mike Kuehl Collection, the Bucky Halker Collection, and the Dick and Goldie Sherwood Collection. They vary in size, scope, and format, but each documents special moments in Wisconsin music history and we are honored to be trusted as their caretakers and to facilitate sustainable access and engagement.
Mike Kuehl Collection
Mike Kuehl Sr. began recording bands in the band room at Rhinelander High School in 1966, and shortly thereafter opened his own Audio Unlimited recording studio and began recording regional rock and garage bands. Eventually he began releasing the music he was recording, and between 1966-1976 Kuehl recorded and released nine stellar singles on his Audio Unlimited, Hodag, Sonic, and Wyldwood labels–all of which have become sought-after collector’s items.
In the late ‘60s, Kuehl left Rhinelander for Madison, where he and business partners Jonathan and Susan Lipp founded Full Compass Sound Studios [see: Full Compass Recordings Collection]. Kuehl engineered many of the early sessions, including some by Ben Sidran [see: Ben Sidran Collection], but returned to Rhinelander in the early ‘70s to open his revamped Wyldwood recording studio and DJ for a local radio station.
For most of the 1980s and ‘90s, Kuehl and his family lived in Minneapolis, where he was a production manager for KSTP-AM radio, but by the mid ‘90s he returned to Rhinelander and opened a digital recording studio called Passage Recording. In addition to his studio productions, Kuehl made mobile recordings throughout the state and was particularly known for recording bands in the Madison area.
This multi-format collection includes DATs, cassettes, CDs, 45s, LPs, and a variety of open reel tape configurations. The recordings chronicle Kuehl’s studio recordings from 1966 through the early 2000s and also include his airchecks and sound productions for radio stations in Rhinelander, Marinette, Menominee, Minneapolis, Madison, and elsewhere. Highlights among the open reel tapes are the original mixes [marked “without overdubs”] of his 1960s and ‘70s rock recordings by the Illusions, Gord’s Horde, Rebounds, Sons of May, Midnight Sun, Lexington Project, Screamin’ Bob, Stratus, the Loaders, Dave Yonker, and others. Other artists recorded by Kuehl in the collection include Billy Folger, Kevin Vick, Lloyd Kaye, Maxwell St. Blues Band, Red Johnson, Mr. Brown, Exodus, Bad Influence, and many more.
Bucky Halker Collection
Clark “Bucky” Halker is a distinguished historian, labor activist, and critically-acclaimed musician who specializes in American roots and folk music. Halker is perhaps best known for writing and performing labor protest songs, his Illinois folk music projects, and the preservation of Woody Guthrie’s musical legacy. He has been awarded numerous public folk arts grants, contributed to Grammy-nominated recording projects, and received the American Folklife Center’s prestigious Archie Green Fellowship in 2012.
Born in Beaver Dam and raised in Ashland, Halker left Wisconsin to study U.S. history, earning an MA and PhD at the University of Minnesota, focusing on the working class and labor protest songs. He taught at various colleges for several years before pursuing a performing career in Chicago in the mid-’80s. Halker has released more than fifteen albums, both as a solo artist and as front person for The Remainders. He has produced the Folksongs of Illinois series for the Illinois Humanities Council, tributes to Joe Hill and the IWW, and devoted decades to promoting and preserving Woody Guthrie’s musical legacy. His musical career is enhanced by his many publications, including his book For Democracy, Workers, and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protest, 1865-1895, as well as his lectures and presentations.
This multi-format collection includes LPs, open reel tapes, cassettes, DATs, and CDs spanning the early 1970s to present, consisting of original material, demos, and both studio and live recordings. There are several interviews with Bucky as well as ones he conducted with musicians for his documentary projects on VHS, U-matic videocassette, and DVD. There are also photos, press, posters, and flyers all pertaining to Bucky’s career spanning from the late 1960s, when Bucky first began to perform in Northern Wisconsin, through 2024.
Dick and Goldie Sherwood Collection
Dick Peterson, aka Dick Sherwood, grew up in Iowa County and began playing fiddle in the early 1950s. With his trusty Sears and Roebuck fiddle in hand and several trick fiddling moves in his repertoire, he won several Wisconsin state fiddling contests and began playing music with such local musicians as Bobby Hodge and Bruce Bollerud [see: Bruce Bollerud Collection]. He met his wife Goldie Peterson [née Perrin] while performing at the Iowa County Fair and the two quickly became musical partners.
Beginning in the fall of 1960, Dick Sherwood hosted a Madison-based variety show on WISC-TV called The Dick Sherwood Show. The show was syndicated and broadcast throughout Wisconsin on various stations through 1964. Goldie became the resident bass player, sometimes guitarist, and featured vocalist while the show featured a rotating cast of “Country, Western, Oldtime, and Modern Music.” Dick and Goldie were the first to hire Bruce Bollerud, who was featured in the house band for years before leaving to join the Goose Island Ramblers [see: Goose Island Ramblers Collection]. The Dick Sherwood Show cast also recorded one album and several singles for Cuca Records [see: Cuca Records Collection and Cuca Records Database]/.
This multi-format collection includes CDs, DVDs, LPs, 45s, and a large scrapbook of photos, newspaper clippings, and concert posters from their performances throughout the Upper Midwest. The scrapbook contains photos of performances with many local and national musicians including Bruce Bollerud, Bobby Hodge, Roger Bright, Ray Price, Joe Zinkan, Chuck Johnson, and others. Many members of the Channel 3 TV Dick Sherwood Show cast are featured such as Don Moldenhauer, Hank Grover, Gene Kriedeman, Bud Lacky, Gene Manthey, Sharon Kline, Mike Lopez, Joe Enright, Vic Wall, and Mike Austin. Also included are many photos and newspaper clippings of Dick and Goldie’s family and friends’ bands from the late 1970s through the ‘90s, including their son Mark Peterson, Pat McIntyre, Rusty Valentine, Don Barren, Shannon Gunn, Bill Wilson, Dick Reed, the Goose Island Ramblers, and Ron Poast.
Other highlights: five CDs of unreleased live recordings from the Dick Sherwood Show including performances by Cowboy Copas and Cuca recording artists such as Bobby G. Rice and his sister Lorraine, Bobby Hodge, Greg Swenson, Sharon Arnold, and Jimmy Carson; copies of their Cuca releases; a compilation of unreleased hymns performed by Dick and Goldie in memory of Dick’s mother, Lulu Peterson; live recordings of the Accordion Jamboree, where Dick and Goldie performed for Rudy Burkhalter’s Memorial; concert DVDs from a 2009 Dick Sherwood Reunion show; a 1962 gig poster from a performance with Johnny Cash; and a three-hour radio program about the Dick Sherwood Show, produced for WORT-FM and co-hosted by Goldie Sherwood and Nate Gibson, Audio-Visual Preservation Archivist, UW–Madison Libraries.
