Paul Nelson and Jon Pankake had opinions about folk music, and they wanted you to know it. In 1960 the pair published the first issue of their fanzine, The Little Sandy Review, with unrestrained confidence. 

“We are two people who love folk music very much and want to do all we can to help the good in it grow and the bad in it perish,” they wrote in the journal’s opening pages. “After reading this issue, it should be very apparent to anyone who we think is good and who we think is bad and why.” 

Over the next five years, Nelson and Pankake would publish 30 issues of Little Sandy Review, reviewing folk music legends like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and up-and-coming artists like a young Bob Dyaln. 

“[Nelson and Pankake] were so excited to get more of a spotlight on a music ecosystem that few people knew about or cared about. And that intense love for the medium produced Little Sandy Review,” said Erin McBrien, curator of the Upper Midwest Literary Archives (UMLA) at the University of Minnesota.

Little Sandy Review’s full 30-issue run is held within UMLA and was recently digitized by Digital Library Services, a department within University Libraries. And while LSR isn’t a literary journal, its connections to the 1960s Midwestern folk scene, and the history and ethos it inherited from anti-Vietnam War protests, gives it common lineage with concurrent poetic movements.

“It’s an odd duck in the Upper Midwest Literary Archives at first glance but has some interesting connections with other collections we have,” McBrien said. “And I love fanzines, I love ‘em. I feel very strongly that writing is intersectional. This kind of creative expression — its interviews, its reviews, its essays — as far as I’m concerned, that is creative nonfiction. It’s very exciting to see the things people are excited about.” 

The journal found its way to the UMLA through Pankake’s wife, Marcia Pankake, a librarian at the University from the 1970s until her retirement in 2006 (the annual Pankake Poetry Series was named in honor of Marcia and her love for poetry). Jon and Marcia were also members of the string band, Uncle Willie and the Brandy Snifters, and co-editors of the “Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book.”

Little Sandy Review mainly focused on the Midwestern folk scene, McBrien explained. Between concert and album reviews, the journal would print adverts for upcoming local shows. But since many folk artists of the time lived nomadic lives, it also showcased famous folk musicians primarily from the South.

“The folk scene was heavily tied with the protests against the Vietnam War and came from a lot of people from the greater Minnesota area, and other more rural parts of the Midwest,” McBrien said. “But unlike the rock and punk movements, which stayed pretty urban, the folk musicians became daily itinerant wanderers, essentially from protest to protest, and show to show.” 

Despite its relatively small size, Little Sandy Review is a frequently searched for and requested collection in UMLA’s catalog, sought after by music historians, researchers, and folk aficionados alike. Given the demand and ease of scanning, LSR was a prime candidate for digitization.  

“There’s a surprising amount of requests for how innocuous it is. And there’s not a whole lot of funding for humanities research, particularly not with travel. So it was very exciting to think that researchers would be able to access the whole thing,” she said. 

The demand also speaks to Little Sandy Review’s popularity at the time, its influence on folk and music criticism, and its enduring legacy, she said. Thirty issues is “very impressive” for a fanzine, and Nelson and Pankake were able to interview “some very big names.” 

“People should look at it, and they should read it on UMedia,” McBrien said. “And they should tell Theresa Berger and Isabella Neira what a great job they did.”