The Golden Ring Folklore
Center was originally
opened in the summer of 1972 by Fritz & Mary Schuler. Fritz, an elementary
school teacher in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, had decided his first love was teaching,
performing and promoting American Traditional Folk Music. He and his wife Mary,
an artist who had illustrated for many magazines, done the art work for a
children’s book, "Little Hawk the Story of a Morgan Horse" and had Pete Seeger
choose one of her drawings for his biography "The Incomplete Folksinger" returned to their home town of Manitowoc and opened
the Golden Ring
Folklore Center as a teaching studio and retail folk music shop.
The name had been selected from a wonderful folk album on Folk Legacy Records by
a close knit group of friends who played music together who called themselves
"the Golden Ring" with the meaning of a "golden ring of friends
bound together by a common love of music" This idea appealed to the Schuler’s,
so when they rented a wonderful old house and opened up the living room as a
showroom for guitars, banjos, and mountain dulcimers as well as music
accessories, folk music books and folk records, the name "Golden Ring
Folklore Center" seemed perfect. They used the rest of the house for
teaching studios and their home. And teaching they did, hundreds of folks have
learned to play folk guitar, mountain dulcimer, and banjo at the Golden Ring.
Fritz also expanded his teaching through the University of Wisconsin Continuing
Education and taught folk music classes for the next 25 years at UW campuses in
Manitowoc, Fox Valley, Green Bay, Fond du Lac, and West Bend, teaching nearly
2000 students the joy of folk guitar, banjo and mountain dulcimer. He still
teaches these classes at the Golden Ring today. Fritz Also began
performing soon after the Golden Ring opened, and performed nearly yearly at
Milwaukee’s 19th Street Coffeehouse as well as festivals all over Wisconsin,
Michigan, and Illinois. In 1994, Fritz and Mary, along with local guitar whiz
Peter Pivonka performed as The Clipper City Stringband at the 1994 Chiba Seafest
in Manitowoc’s sister city Kamogawa, Japan. Although escalating store duties
has curtailed a lot of his performing, he still finds time for the occasional
show. Booking information and more in-depth performance history can be found
under performance
The Schuler’s also continued to promote folk music with a series of folk concerts. In 1976 they teamed up with the University of Wisconsin - Manitowoc to bring legendary Chicago folk artist Art Thieme to Manitowoc. Through the years they’ve produced many concerts with the help of some fine folks in Manitowoc. First at the University, then at The Center of The Arts, Thanks to Mary and Jim Melberg and later at the First Presbyterian Church (thanks to Rev. Bill Plank) The artists were a virtual Who’s Who of folk at the time: Michael Cooney, Cindy Mangsen, Louis Killen, Sally Rogers, Bob Carlin, Ed Trickett, Rory Block, Dan Keding, Lui Collins, Bob Bovee & Gail Heil, Gerri Gribi; Claudia Schmidt, The Blue Flame Review, Kevin Roth, Don Lange, Jim Craig, Lee Murdoch, Anne Hills, Leo Kretzner and many more.
By 1979 the Golden Ring Had overflowed its banks - guitars, picks, records everywhere. After a brief search they found a wonderful new location in a historic 100 year old building in downtown Manitowoc. Soon, the Golden Ring had a new home (and the Schuler’s had a living room). The Golden Ring began to expand -- more books, records, more guitars (even electrics!) , banjos and mandolins. Mary was still busy with her art teamed up with Kevin Roth to illustrate his "Anthology - a Dulcimer Song Book" for Centerstream Publications in 1978..
A few years after the move a number of the other music stores in the city folded up their tents and the Golden Ring decided to expand to fill the void. Never losing sight of their original intent of being a great folk music shop, the store expanded to help the local musician --reeds and band supplies were added as well as orchestra supplies. The biggest change was the music book selection. Starting with the original stock of the best selection of folk songbooks and instruction books in Wisconsin, tons of other books were added. Piano - vocal Music- Piano instruction, songbooks, easy piano, orchestra, band books and much more. A Slight name change took place to reflect these changes (Thanks to the suggestion of Art Thieme) and it was now known as "The Golden Ring Music & Folklore Center"
And once again the Golden Ring was out of room.
In 1990 the Golden Ring moved again, this time right around the corner (actually in the same building) to it’s third location at 1001 Washington Street (The corner of 10th and Washington Street). The shop’s inventory had increased dramatically since the move. You’ll find an Incredible selection of Folk CDs as well as Jazz and popular music from the twenties through the fifties. The music book selection has expanded to gargantuan proportions and we have a wonderful selection of guitars, banjos, dulcimers, mandolins and more. The Milwaukee Journal - Sentinel's Dennis McCann happened to visit and wrote a wonderful article on us in September of 1999.
We moved once again, to our fourth location, in October of 2001- moving just next door to our last shop (Yes, We're still on the corner of 10th and Washington Street) - making it our third move in the same building! -and some kind of weird record for sure! We now have twice the floor space to display our growing selection of CDs, books and instruments.
In 2003 we teamed up with Woodland Dunes to once again produce folk Concerts in the Manitowoc Area. To give you an idea of that venture check out it's own website at www.woodlanddunesconcerts.org
2004 was a great year - Lots of great concerts, lots of music and lots of new Guitar Brands. 2005 has been great too - with concerts by Peggy Seeger, Tom Paley. Geoff Muldaur and the like, and we've just updated the website again...For an in depth look at what we now have, visit the different areas of our website, or better yet, take the time to visit us in person. You’ll be glad you did!
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