Folklorist Archie Green with musician Dorsey Dixon and an unidentified horse (mule?), East Rockingham, North Carolina, 1962. Green was recording Dixon’s Babies in the Mill album at the time.
From the Archie Green Collection.
Category: Collections
US Military V-Discs in the Eugene Earle Collection
During World War II, the U.S. military and American record companies collaborated to produce a series of records for the “V-Disc” program, a morale-boosting effort designed to provide troops overseas with access to exclusive new music. Many of the top performers of the day, including Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington, contributed recordings to the project. The V-Discs were produced exclusively for use by military personnel and the artists who volunteered their recordings insisted they not become commercially available, so when the program came to an end in 1949 the Army destroyed most of the original pressing plates and many of the existing discs, making V-Discs a rather collectible commodity today.
The 261 V-Discs in the Eugene Earle Collection represent a wide variety of popular music, including big band jazz, country and blues. Many of the songs were recorded with the military audience in mind, as you can hear in the clip below of Carson Robison performing “Nursery Rhymes of 1944”, from Army V-Disc 145 (SFC # TR/12-19). He really lets Hitler have it, in the classic schoolyard manner.
Nursery Rhymes of 1944
Photo of the Week: Goober
George “Goober” Lindsey, promoting his 1968 album “Goober Sings” at KBBQ radio in Burbank, California. He’s flanked by KBBQ music director Larry Scott, Don Grierson of Capitol Records, and disc jockeys Bob Jackson and Hugh Jarrett. One of 56 KBBQ press release photographs found in the Southern Folklife Collection Radio and Television Files.
Louis Dotson Plays The One-String
Pictured is farmer and musician Louis Dotson of Lorman, Mississippi, photographed by Bill Ferris in 1973, constructing a “one-string guitar” on the wall of his front porch. The traditional instrument, sometimes referred to as a “diddley-bow”, is made by stretching a single guitar string between two nails and played as a slide guitar with a bottle neck or other object used to adjust the pitch. Dotson is quoted extensively in Ferris’ new book, Give My Poor Hear Ease:
“My daddy used to play music. He used to play all the time. That’s how I learned to play the guitar. After he died, the other boys, they took the guitar. I couldn’t get another one. So I decided to put me up a wire. I just call it ‘part of a guitar.’ It’s a one-string guitar, but it sounds like it’s got six strings on it. …Nobody else around here can play it but me. People, they come and listen to me. They say they don’t see how I can do it.”
Listen to a clip of Louis Dotson play “Bottle Up and Go” on the front porch of his farm (complete with crowing rooster), from SFC field tape #FT-10105: Bottle Up and Go
Clip and photo from the William R. Ferris Collection.
New "Dolly" Box Set Released
Today Sony Legacy will be releasing a new Dolly Parton box set, appropriately entitled “Dolly”. The four-CD, 99-track set is the first cross-label, career spanning Dolly Parton retrospective.
The Southern Folklife Collection was proud to provide Sony with remote access to the first two songs presented on this compilation, “Puppy Love” and “Girl Left Alone”, recorded in 1959 for Eddie Shuler’s Goldband Records by then thirteen-year-old Dolly Parton.
Listen to “Puppy Love”, from the original master tape (#FT-7670 in the Goldband Records Collection): Puppy Love
Photo of the Week: Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk, photographed by Robert Bolton at the Atlanta Jazz Festival, May 1966. From the Robert Bolton Collection.
"Seeing Sound" Exhibit, Oct. 12, 2009 – Jan. 4, 2010
Before the widespread availability of recordings and record players, music publishers relied on visual representations to inform and entice consumers to buy sheet music of popular songs. The illustrator had to convey both the subject matter and the mood of a song, essentially capturing the sound of music in a single painting or drawing.
From October 12 to January 4, the Southern Folklife Collection will be hosting the exhibit Seeing Sound: Sheet Music Illustration From 1890 To 1940, featuring sheet music illustrations from the Eugene Earle Collection. The exhibit will be held on the 4th floor of the Wilson Library and is free and open to the public (9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Mon.-Fri., 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM on Sat.).
Photo of the Week: Blind Alfred Reed
Fiddler Blind Alfred Reed (center) with his West Virginia Nite Owls. Undated photograph, ca. late 1920s. From the Guthrie T. Meade Collection.
Photo of the Week: Nimrod Workman
Singer and coal miner Nimrod Workman, performing at the 1985 Tennessee Grassroots Days festival in Nashville. Photo by David Hildebrand, from the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project Collection.
Photo of the Week: Mance Lipscomb
Texas blues singer Mance Lipscomb at the 1970 Beloit Blues Festival, “showing off guitar set into dentures”. From the Archie Green Collection.