# Ragnar Hasselgren

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**Ragnar Hasselgren** (June 3, 1904 – September 28, 1982) was a [Swedish-born](/source/Swedes) singer and recording artist, who was active on the American [West Coast](/source/West_Coast_of_the_United_States) from the 1920s through the 1970s.[4][5]

## Life and legacy

Hasselgren was born in 1904 in the [Swedish](/source/Sweden) province of [Dalarna](/source/Dalarna). His birthplace was the town of Strömshyttan, which is located between [Hedemora](/source/Hedemora) and [Vikmanshyttan](/source/Vikmanshyttan). He emigrated with his parents when not quite two years old and as a child spoke only English. When he was eighteen, he was hired by a Swedish building contractor in [California](/source/California), who gave preference to Swedes and people of Swedish descent. A company benefit enabled workers to learn English. Since Hasselgren already knew that language he learned Swedish instead.[4]

Ragnar Hasselgren played guitar and sang at [Swedish-American](/source/Swedish-American) clubs in the [Bay Area](/source/San_Francisco_Bay_Area) for much of his adult life and recorded nearly two dozen songs in the 1940s and 1950s. His recordings were distributed by Harmony Music of [Berkeley](/source/Berkeley,_California) and Gaare Records of [Oakland](/source/Oakland,_California). Performing in Swedish and English, he had a repertoire that encompassed Swedish folk songs, American popular music and novelty numbers in Scandinavian dialect.[6]

In the early 1960s Harmony Music released two albums featuring Ragnar Hasselgren.[7][8] The Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research also had one of Hasselgren's recordings on its album "From Sweden To America", which was released as an LP in 1981[4] and as a CD in 1996.[9] In 2011 the twenty-three tracks on the CD were released on [iTunes](/source/ITunes_Store) and [Amazon mp3](/source/Amazon.com).

In 2016 the Minnesota Historical Society opened an online archive of Swedish American newspapers. These historic publications give many accounts of Hasselgren's performances and recordings from the 1920s through the 1970s. Search term is "Ragnar Hasselgren".[10]

## References

1. [Ragnar Hasselgren](http://www.faqs.org/people-search/hasselgren/) faqs.org. Retrieved August 13, 2015.

1. [Walberg M. Hasselgren](http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gl=allgs&gsfn=Ragnar%20E&gsln=Hasselgren&gss=seo&ghc=20) ancestry.com. Retrieved August 16, 2015.

1. [Ragnar Hasselgren obituary](https://archive.org/download/WestCoastSinger/07%20Ragnar%20Hasselgren%20obituary%201982.pdf) archive.org. Retrieved Aug 25, 2019.

1. *From Sweden To America* (Stockholm: Caprice Records, 1981).

1. ["Ragnar Hasselgren (03.06.1904 - 01.09.1982)"](http://musiknostalgi.atspace.cc/raghas.htm). Svänga-Benga. Retrieved June 22, 2019.

1. [Harmony Music](http://musiknostalgi.atspace.cc/harmony.htm) atspace.cc. Retrieved June 21, 2019.

1. *Scandinavian-American Comedy Songs* (Berkeley: Harmony Music, c. 1960).

1. *Swedish Folksongs* (Berkeley: Harmony Music, c. 1960).

1. *From Sweden To America* (Stockholm: Caprice Records, 1996).

1. [Swedish American newspapers](http://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/swedishamerican) mhs.org. Retrieved August 29, 2019.

## External links

- [Ragnar Hassselgren - Gaare discography](http://78-varv.atspace.cc/raghas.htm)
- [Ragnar Hasselgren - Harmony discography](http://smdb.kb.se/catalog/search?q=%28Hasselgren%2C+Ragnar%29)
- [Ragnar Hasselgren profile](https://archive.org/download/WestCoastSinger/09%20Ragnar%20Hasselgren%20profile.pdf)
- [Ragnar Hasselgren songbook](https://archive.org/download/WestCoastSinger/01RagnarHasselgrenVisor12.pdf)
- [Ragnar Hasselgren audio at the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Ragnar+Hasselgren%22).

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Ragnar Hasselgren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar_Hasselgren) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar_Hasselgren?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.