Israel Goodman "Izzy" Young (26 March 1928 – 4 February 2019) was an influential figure in the international folk music community. An American-born folklorist who later lived and worked in Sweden, Young combined scholarship, retail, promotion and advocacy to support traditional and contemporary folk artists. He is best known for running gathering places that became hubs for musicians, collectors and researchers.
What he did and why it mattered
Young operated a well-known shop in Greenwich Village that served as a meeting place and resource center for people interested in folk music. The backroom of the store functioned as an informal listening library and rehearsal space where singers and song collectors could hear rare records, exchange songs and network. Later he opened a companion shop and activity space in Stockholm, continuing the same mix of commerce, curation and community building.
His New York establishment, widely referred to in accounts of the period as the Folklore Center, occupied a visible role in the Greenwich Village scene and is often mentioned in memoirs and histories of the era. Bob Dylan described spending time in the store's backroom, where he listened and read before his rise to fame; Dylan recounts these memories in Chronicles. The Centre became a place where amateur and professional musicians rubbed shoulders with collectors and academic folklorists.
Background and later life
Born in New York, Young combined a collector’s attention to detail with a promoter’s willingness to organize performances, talks and small festivals. In the later part of his life he settled in Stockholm, where he ran the Folklore Centrum and continued to write, lecture and advise researchers. Over decades he accumulated documents, recordings and ephemera that have been used to reconstruct aspects of the folk revival.
Roles, activities and legacy
Throughout his career Young acted in several overlapping roles: a shopkeeper who stocked rare and popular recordings, a facilitator who helped musicians find audiences, a columnist and commentator who wrote about traditions, and a keeper of material culture related to song and story. His work helped preserve older repertories and gave many young performers an early audience.
- Founder and operator of a prominent Greenwich Village Folklore Center (shop and meeting place).
- Proponent of community spaces for sharing and researching song and story.
- Cultural bridge between American and Scandinavian folk communities via his Stockholm activities.
- Subject and source in memoirs and histories of the 20th‑century folk revival.
Izzy Young died in Stockholm on 4 February 2019 at the age of 90. His life is remembered for the practical ways he supported musical life: creating spaces for listening, encouraging young artists, and preserving material that helps later generations study and enjoy folk traditions. For more on the broader scene that shaped and was shaped by Young, researchers often consult contemporary accounts and musician memoirs that describe the Greenwich Village years and the cross‑Atlantic exchanges in which he played a part.