Happy 2019! A look back at 2018.

All of us at the Southern Folklife Collection want to wish you a very happy new year. 2018 was a very productive one for the SFC:
2018 was the second year of our partnership with YepRoc Records and saw the release of three new recordings. In February, we released Doc Watson, Live at Club 47 with a record release party at Club Passim featuring songwriter and 2017 IBMA Guitar Player of the Year Molly Tuttle accompanied by her bandmates in The Goodbye Girls, Allison de Groot, Lena Jonsson, Brittany Karlson and guitarist and singer Stash Wyslouch.  Live at Club 47 documents Doc Watson in top form recorded in February 1963, between his first solo public performance at Gerdes Folk City in New York City in November 1962 and his breakthrough performance in August 1963 at the Newport Folk Festival. 55 years after the recording, Live at Club 47 reached #9 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Album Chart.DocWatson_LiveAtClub47_COVER to album. Sepia toned photo of Doc Watson holding acoustic guitar standing outside in front of a barn
Black and White photo of Tia Blake in black shirt with leaves in background. Shot in ParisIn March we released a special 10” vinyl EP for Record Store Day, Tia Blake, Paris and Montreal Demos 1973-1976.  Tia released only one record in her lifetime, Folksongs & Ballads, for a small record label in France. Her demos had briefly been available on a CD reissue by Water Records that had quickly gone out of print. We hated to see this material unavailable to a broader audience, and with both Tia’s and her mother Joan’s blessing, made the tracks available again on vinyl, newly remastered by Brent Lambert of Kitchen Mastering, from the SFC’s 24bit 96kHz transfers of the analog masters. The demos are intimate and beautifully sung in Tia’s rich melancholy voice. The recordings are some of our favorites in the collection.
July saw the release of Bluegrass Champs, Live from the Don Owens Show. These rare live 1950s radio broadcasts featured Scotty, Donna, Van, and Jimmy Stoneman of the Stoneman Family.

The recordings came from the legendary private collection of Leon Kagarise and were produced by Joe Lee of Joe’s Record Paradise.  Live from the Don Owens Show reached #2 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Album chart.
At the end of July, we completed the implementation phase of Extending the Reach of Southern Audiovisual Sources, our 2015-2018 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant has been transformative, allowing us to implement large-scale preservation and access workflows for archival audio and video holdings of the Southern Folklife Collection. This August we started a new expansion phase of the grant to broaden the focus to all archival AV materials in the Wilson Special Collections Library and to pilot AV digitization services for partner institutions across the state through UNC Libraries’ North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.
Another key initiative has been providing access to our collections backlog. In 2018, brief online finding aids and library catalog records were created for many of the SFC’s hidden collections. We hope to complete this process and have all of the SFC’s collections discoverable in 2019. For an updated listing of our collections visit our website.
My thanks for your continued support! We are looking forward to 2019, which is the 30thAnniversary of the SFC’s official opening. We have a number of events and exhibits planned. More news to come.

Greetings from the New Arrivals

Andrew Crook filing through tapes in the stacksHello there! My name is Andrew Crook and I’ve been an audiovisual archives assistant with the Southern Folklife Collection since mid-September. Prior to arriving at UNC, I worked as a photo archivist at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA and I am a 2015 graduate of the library science and information science program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where I got my first taste of audiovisual preservation as a graduate assistant in the university’s library system). I am one of the three new hires working under a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help expand the scope of the digitization work undertaken at Wilson Special Collections Library over the next several years. With that in mind, I’d like to use this post as an opportunity to introduce all of us and talk a bit about what we get to do on a day-to-day basis.Mel Meents reviewing videotapes from the Student Television CollectionMel Meents is also working under this grant as an audiovisual archives assistant. Mel is a 2017 graduate of the library and information science program at the University of Illinois and prior to starting at UNC, was employed at the Nashville Metro Archives Audiovisual Conservation Center in Nashville, TN working as a project archivist and digitization technician.
On the ground level, we are both responsible for managing the files produced during our regular digitization projects and preparing them for long-term digital storage. This ongoing process requires us to carry out a number of tasks: including inspecting and editing metadata to ensure that the digital files produced by our engineers are directly tied to their original items, packaging preservation masters with supporting documentation in preparation for long-term storage, producing high quality derivatives of master files for user access and connecting streaming files to the finding aid entries associated with the original items. We have been working on the grant for almost three months and, to date, we have already posted and packaged digital files for around 1300 items: including standout selections from the Archie Green Papers (20002), William R. Ferris Collection (20367) and Apollo Records Collection (20539) and fascinating tapes from the Bushyhead Family Collection (05773). We are also on call to help out with a number of activities to ensure that our rare and unique materials are ready for immediate playback by our audio engineers: including varying degrees of mold remediation and item cleaning.Film cans from the Florentine Films Collection in the stacks at Wilson LibraryAlongside our daily duties, we have undertaken a number of independent projects. For instance, Mel has singlehandedly processed and arranged a large number of items from the Student Television Collection: a collection spanning 25 years worth of student-generated media productions across over 1600 tapes (Mel will be writing in greater detail about this project in the near future, so stay tuned!). I have been barcoding and organizing hundreds of reels in our film collection—including over 700 raw film elements from the Florentine Films collection that were used in the production of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary—to prepare them for eventual relocation to our off-site cold storage facility. These projects have served to ensure greater access and longevity to the unique materials that are housed in Wilson Library.Dan Hockstein preparing to transfer a tapeAudio engineer Dan Hockstein is another new member of the Mellon Project Team. Dan comes to us from Philadelphia, PA, where he spent time as a QC engineer with George Blood Audio after earning a degree in audio post production and sound design from Emerson College.
Dan is performing parallel transfers—digitizing up to 12 cassettes at a time—to prepare preservation masters derived from the thousands of cassette tapes in the collections. Over the past two months Dan has digitized a large number of items, with highlights from the Bruce Bastin Collection (20428), Jas Obrecht Collection (20512) and Greenhill Family/FLi Artists/Folklore Productions Collection (20542), constituting much of the nearly 600 items that he has transferred to date. Dan actively troubleshoots any potential issues associated with certain objects before playback: a task that sometimes requires him to re-house cassettes or bake the tapes themselves in order to guarantee smooth playback. Dan has also begun working with audio engineer Brian Paulson to develop an automated method to streamline the audio department’s pre-existing metadata workflow.
Our group has definitely hit the ground running and we’re looking forward to helping expand access to the materials held by Wilson library, not to mention those held by our new partners, in the new year!

Preservation Update – new hires and online recordings

Our efforts to expand and improve on audiovisual preservation continue here in Wilson Library, with the recent hiring of our third Audio Engineer, Dan Hockstein, and two Audiovisual Archives Assistants, Mel Meents and Andrew Crook. These positions have been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of our Extending the Reach of Southern Audiovisual Sources: Expansion grant. This phase of the project scales the digitization and preservation work we’ve done for the SFC to all of Wilson Special Collections AV.
Andrew, Mel and I have recently moved into a new space in Wilson Library’s Digital Production Center, and we now have an official AV Lab to call our own in addition to the Ben Jones and John M. Rivers Jr. audio studios. Mel and Andrew have stayed busy working across collections in the building, producing item-level descriptions for videotapes in the University Archives’ Student Television at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill collection (#40326), prepping films for cool storage from the Florentine Films Archives (#20193), and managing monthly pre and post-digitization tasks.

a vertical rack of audio equipment sits next to a table with computers, with a rack of video equipment in the background
Audio and video equipment in our new AV lab location

The audio engineers have been running tapes and discs, covering large sections of the Bruce Bastin Collection (#20428), Paul Brown Collection (#20382), William R. Ferris Collection (#20367), Apollo Records Collection (#20539-z), and North American Traditions Collection (#20503) among many others. Since August we have digitized, preserved, and provided online streaming to over 1,300 audio recordings.

a shelf of audiotape boxes including a Woodie Guthrie folk voice recording
A batch of 1/4" audiotapes waiting digitization

Our Technical Services department has also been working hard to decrease the number of collections in the SFC backlog, creating collection level finding aids for over 70 collections! Our AV Archivist Anne Wells and processing assistants, Rae Hoyle and Emma Evans, have completed or provided additions to a number of SFC finding aids, including the Berea College Collection of John Lair and Lester McFarland Recordings (#20281), Nancy Hamilton Collection on Molly Sequoia (#20125-z), and North Carolina Symphony Recordings (#20390-z).

a photo stand with two lights projected onto an audiotape box
Our photo stand for photographing items in the collection

In early 2019 we look forward to sending off our next batch of video priorities for digitization to our vendor. These items will be joined by recordings from a few of the regional institutions we have partnered with as part of an initiative in the grant to provide services to external collections, including Appalachian State University and North Carolina State Archives. More on that soon!
 

A witches' spell has been cast on SFC!

Happy Halloween from the Southern Folklife Collection at Wilson Special Collections Library!

A few items in the collection allude to witchcraft – we were delightfully frightened to find a selection of ghost stories told by Ollie and Roy Coleman in Iredell County, N.C., and caught on tape by folklore student Connie Jean Stone in March of 1975. This item can be found at call number FT-354 in the Connie Jean Stone Collection (20247).Packaging for tape media, reads: "North Carolina Archives of Folk Lore and Music - Connie Jean Stone Collection - Ghost and Witch Tales - Told by Ollie and Roy Coleman - Recorded in Iredell County, N.C. in March 1975. Dubbings from cassette originals. Submitted in Folk 186 and 187, with transcriptions in termpapers.
One creepy story tells the tale of a witch who seems to have cast a spell on a poor dairy cow, cursing and drying the bewildered bovine’s milk supply. Below you can find a clip of the recording, as well as transcription from the original field notes submitted by Ms. Stone. Notes are in folder 421 in the Southern Folklife Collection Field Notes (30025):

My Grandma, once upon a time was a-lettin' a witch have milk, you know. And uh the cow got low on hermilk and couldn't givetoo much, so she told the witch one evening when she came after milk that she couldn't have no more -- until the cow picked back up on her milk. And the witch said, "Alright." She went on home, and started down the path and that cow followed her up just as far as she'd go, to the end of the fence. That night the cow wouldn't giveno milk. So Grandpa told Grandma to milk her and to get a skillet and pour the milk in -- there o'er the fireplace, and boil it and peck it with a reap hook -- and when it got ready to boil, to turn it over into the fireplace. And she had all the young'uns out around the house to see that nobody didn't come while she was a-doin' it. And about the time she got ready to turn that milk over, the ole witch stepped in at the door. And she asked Grandma, said she wanted to borrow something. Grandma told her no, she couldn't borrow nothing today. But the ole witch picked up a cake of soap as she went out the door so the spell wouldn't get back on her.
78rpm record label displaying artist name.
Another fun find from the collection is this 78rpm disc credited to Bakersfield country artist Alvadean Coker, entitled “Witch’s Waltz,” on the Abbott label, at call number 78-186. Alvadean’s countrified bad dream involves a grandmotherly spell cast due to bad behavior. Find a clip below:
 

We here at the SFC hope you have an enjoyable and safe Halloween!

1975 American Traditional Old-time Music Festival

cover of festival brochure, with illustration of a scarecrow holding a banjosecond page of festival brochure, describing the scope and intent of the festivalThe American Traditional Old-time Music Festival was a touring festival of old-time musicians directed by Mike Seeger in 1975-76. This brochure, Folder 2877 in the D.K. Wilgus Papers (20003), is from the April 17, 1975 stop at UCLA. Song and interview recordings from throughout the tour can be found in the Mike Seeger Collection (20009), most of which are digitized: FS-20009/9655-9662,9688-9696. Here is one to get you started: Dennis McGee and Sady Courville, April 20, 1975 (FS-20009/9693).
third and fourth pages of festival brochure, providing brief biographies for the artists to appearthe last two pages of the festival brochure, detailing other bicentennial events at UCLA; acknowledgments

Forever A Spirit in the Dark: peace to the Queen of Soul

two covers of Aretha Franklin LPs, on the left is Queen of Soul with an extreme close up of Franklin's face, on the right is Lady Soul with a close up of Franklin sinking into a microphone
Peace to the Queen of Soul, may she rest in power. The love she brought to this world will forever be a spirit in the dark for so many. We had an emotional listening session in the studio this morning, sharing some of our favorite tracks from LPs in the Southern Folklife Collection. We started with one of her early recordings from 1962, a selection of spirituals released on Battle records that also featured singer Sammie Bryant and Franklin’s father, Rev. C. L. Franklin. Listen to her intro to “Precious Lord, Part 2” here:


With a voice that resonated with sounds from the past and into future of American music, she used her gifts to lift people up. Her voice commanded attention, and she used it to communicate a call to freedom rooted in feminism and the remarkable power of her being. When Franklin sang a song, she made it her own, whether it’s Otis Redding’s “Respect” or Nina Simone’s “Young Gifted and Black” from the 1972 album of the same name. Listen to a clip here:

Photocopy of handwritten session notes from "Spirit in the Dark" by Aretha Franklin, Folder 8, Jerry Wexler Collection (20393), Southern Folklfie Collection, UNC Chapel Hill
It’s “Spirit in the Dark,” one of Franklin’s original compositions that we turn to again and again. In the Jerry Wexler Collection (20393) there are some photocopies of Franklin’s session notes for mixing the 1970 album of the same name. We loved reading her concise notes clearly directing the session according to her artistic vision-“Up the bass in spots, some turn arounds!  Tambourines on fast part…”  We wrapped the session with her live recording of the song from her 1971 album Live at Fillmore West. Looking at the gatefold image from the LP, we can only imagine what that night must have been like. Going to return to this one again and again as we remember the one and only Queen of Soul.

Inside gatefold of LP with photo of Aretha Franklin and band performing onstage, photo taken from behind the band looking at the audience.

Sounds of '68: Cheap Thrills


LP Cover, cartoon panels for each song by Robert Crumb

Cheap Thrills, Big Brother and the Holding Company (Columbia, August 1968)
Following their show-stopping performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills was one of 1968’s most eagerly anticipated albums. The San Francisco band featured the raw ecstatic vocals of Janis Joplin, a 24-year old from Port Arthur, Texas who had deeply absorbed blues influences and traditions while singing in clubs in Houston and Austin. Cheap Thrills topped the album charts for eight weeks, featuring songs “Piece of My Heart” (U.S. #12) and “Ball and Chain.” The album also featured cover art by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, founder of Zap Comix.

[THIS ITEM WAS ON DISPLAY DURING THE WILSON SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY EXHIBITION, “SOUNDS OF ’68: REVOLUTION IN THE AIR,” JANUARY – APRIL, 2018. DRAWING FROM THE DEEP HOLDINGS OF UNC LIBRARIES’S NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVESMUSIC LIBRARY, AND SOUTHERN FOLKLIFE COLLECTION, THE EXHIBIT CELEBRATES THE RECORDINGS AND THE ARTISTS THAT DEFINED AN ERA.]

Sounds of '68: Electric Ladyland

jimi hendrix experience, electric ladyland cover, closeup of face in orange

Electric Lady Land, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Released on Reprise, August 1968

Electric Ladyland, the Experience’s third and final album, marked a new direction as Jimi took took greater control. Sessions held in London’s Olympic Studios and the Record Plant in New York City were looser, more jam oriented, and took on a party-like atmosphere, causing friction between Jimi and co-manager/producer Chas Chandler and bassist Noel Redding, ultimately leading to Chandler’s exit and the disintegration of the band. In addition to the two versions of Voodoo Chile, the sprawling 15-minute jam with Steve Winwood and Jack Cassidy, and the tighter pop Voodoo Chile (Slight Return), Ladyland is best known for Hendrix’s reinvention of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower (U.S. # 20), which Dylan performed in Jimi’s style thereafter.

[This item was on display during the Wilson Special Collections Library exhibition, “Sounds of ’68: Revolution in the Air,” January – April, 2018. Drawing from the deep holdings of UNC Libraries’s North Carolina Collection Photographic ArchivesMusic Library, and Southern Folklife Collection, The exhibit celebrates the recordings and the artists that defined an era.]

jimi hendrix experience, electric ladyland backcover, the three men of the experience seated
jimi hendrix experience, electric ladyland left gatefold, b&w collage w/ text
jimi hendrix experience, electric ladyland right gatefold, b&w collage w/ text

Sounds of '68 at Wilson Special Collections Library

poster for Sounds of '68 exhibit including clip-art cut outs of musicians in the exhibit. 1968 was a year that reshaped American society and American music. It was the year that Marvin Gaye heard it through the grapevine, Janis Joplin gave away another piece of her heart, James Taylor went to Carolina in his mind, and Johnny Cash recorded a landmark concert at Folsom Prison.
The musical legacy of that year was the topic of an exhibition at UNC’s Wilson Library earlier this year. “Sounds of ’68: Revolution in the Air” draws from the deep holdings of UNC Libraries’s North Carolina Collection Photographic ArchivesMusic Library, and Southern Folklife Collection. It celebrates the recordings and the artists that defined an era.
While the exhibit is no longer up, we thought we would use Field Trip South to offer a virtual exhibit experience.
of the album covers of classic LPs, reproductions of advertisements published in Billboard magazine and Cashbox, and rare photographs of artists such as Johnny Cash, Odetta, and Thelonious Monk during their North Carolina tours.
1968 was a highly charged year. A divisive presidential campaign, the Vietnam War and protests against it, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy all rocked the nation. The exhibition captures a musical scene that reflected deep changes in culture and society—from psychedelic blues to country, and from soul to musical theater and classical composition.
We’ll post a new album every week so check back next week. Up first, a pair of albums pushing blues into the outer limits, Electric Ladyland and Cheap Thrills.
 
 

Field recordings and Folklife

cover of Jayme Stone's Lomax Project CD. A banjo, open reel tapes, photographs, and a folder of notes are viewed from above.
Our friends at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro are hosting banjo musician Jayme Stone and his Folklife Project on Friday, April 27. Continuing the practice from 2014’s Lomax Project, CD-15287 in the Southern Folklife Collection, Stone and his collaborators continue to look to recordings made by folklorists and field recorders for songs to reimagine. While Alan Lomax made recordings across the globe, opening up the source material allows for Stone to explore the work of other folklorists and song collectors, presenting that work to new listeners.
cover of 2018 LP by Anna & Elizabeth, "The Invisible Comes to Us". Photo of the two artists leaning on each other with square designs superimposed.The Smithsonian Folkways recording artists Anna & Elizabeth have also looked to archival recordings for source material, and during a recent performance at Chapel Hill’s Nightlight, the duo performed along with a field recording of Margaret Shipman singing “Jeanno and Jeanette”  recorded by Helen Hartness Flanders, a folklorist from Vermont whose collection is at Middlebury College Davis Family Library. The Flanders collection is digitized and you can hear her recordings of Margaret Shipman streaming online via the Internet Archive
The Southern Folklife Collection is the repository for thousands of field recordings and many of these stream online thanks to the Audiovisual Preservation and Access Team and grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. I hope these recordings can inspire artists to create new and reassembled works as well. Remember that Wilson Library does offer fellowships!
There are well over 20,000 streaming audio recordings streaming online through the Southern Folklife Collection finding aids. Field recordings are made in the field, taking the listener to a specific time and place. With that in mind I selected a few recordings made in North Carolina. Be sure you click through to the streaming file to listen.

  • For some old time inspiration, the Paul Brown Collection (20382) includes many recordings made at the home of fiddler Benton Flippen. Audio cassette FS-6582 was recorded 22 October 1980 along with Paul Brown and Paul Sutphin.
  • For some blues, the Joan Fenton Collection (20382) includes open reel tape recordings she made of Howard Cotten, bluesman and storyteller from Goldston, NC. Audiotape FT-0891 was made 6 August 1976 and includes Mr. Cotten performing the Piedmont blues classic “Step it Up and Go” as well as sharing memories about Blind Boy Fuller.
  • Field recordings in the Artus Moser Papers (20005) were made on instantaneous discs. Listening through some of those recordings recently, I fixed on disc FD-0705. Songs on the recording, including a driving and lightly swinging version of “John Henry.” are performed by an unidentified female singer, recorded to instantaneous disc by Artus Moser in the 1930s.

If you are interested in other field recordings in the Southern Folklife Collection and Wilson Library, contact us anytime! And remember you can hear Jayme Stone’s Folklife interpret field recordings at The ArtsCenter this Friday.