Irwin Silber | Sing Out cofounder, 84

Irwin Silber, 84, who as founding editor of the small but influential magazine Sing Out became a towering figure in the 1960s American folk music renaissance that brought Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and numerous others to prominence, died Wednesday at a care facility in Oakland, Calif., of complications related to Alzheimer's disease.

Mr. Silber founded Sing Out in 1950 with folksinger Pete Seeger and musicologist Alan Lomax. He also published more than a dozen books, wrote for several other publications, and produced numerous folk music concerts.

At Sing Out, he worked on a shoestring budget, noting in 2001 that most of the time he collected only half of his $50 weekly salary. Nonetheless, he built the magazine into a bible of American folk music, reporting on such seminal figures as Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

As a result, when a new generation of folksingers burst onto the music scene in the early 1960s, he was perfectly positioned to cover them. Sing Out carried some of the earliest reports on Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and others.

"He was a giant in folk music as the editor of Sing Out," said Barry "the Fish" Melton, half of the folk duo Country Joe and the Fish before it expanded into a four-piece rock group. "Really, Irwin's legacy in the music community was spreading songs everywhere." - AP