On August 12, 1958, Charles and Dorothy Chase opened the Folk Music Center in Claremont. Two months later the Claremont Courier ran photos and a story on the first international instrument show.

In 1961, Dorothy and Charles opened the Golden Ring, a music cafe (coffee house) in Claremont. It was one of the earliest venues for folk music in the Southern California area, bringing such greats to Claremont as the Reverend Gary Davis, Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry, Doc Watson, Jean Ritchie, Hedy West, John Fahey, the New Lost City Ramblers, Kris Kristofferson, and Guy and Candy Carawan.

In 1976, the Folk Music Center Museum was incorporated as a non-profit educational, cultural corporation. The non-profit has auspices over:

• The museum instrument collection
• Field trips and tours
• A musical instrument loan program to schools
• Exhibits and displays for libraries, schools, and other museums
• Assistance and support for musical instrument making at the high school and college level for music, culture, engineering, and physics projects
• Open mic
• The Claremont Folk Festival

The Folk Music Center Museum has hundreds of rare and antique musical instruments and artifacts of cultures from around the world. The museum provides many services to the community, including:

• A musical instrument loan program to schools
• Field trips and tours
• Exhibits and displays for libraries, schools and other museums

The museum was opened in 1976 as a non-profit educational, cultural corporation. The first museum collection was a Stauffer guitar and a Stauffer Theorbo, both dating back to the 1880's, that Charles and Dorothy found in a second hand store for five dollars.

For more info about the museum and/or any of its programs please call (909) 624 2928 or email us at: folkmusic.center@verizon.net

Our Current Online Museum Pieces:

Weissenborn Guitar (entered 3/12/04)