Field Trip South: Picking Up The Bobby Patterson Collection

Album Cover for Old-time Fiddling and Clawhammer Banjo, Tommy Jarrell, Kyle Creed, Audine Lineberry, and Bobby Patterson, Mountain Records #

Welcome back to Field Trip South. This period of isolation is a great time for recollections of a couple of our own recent field trips—my first collection pickups as Collection Assistant with the SFC.  It might help during this time to remember ventures outside and connections with people, the history we all share, and the community that shared history creates.

Bobby Patterson (#20574) connected people for years from his hub in the Coal Creek Community near Galax, Virginia, as a musician, producer, and documenter of the old time mountain music of the region, operating Mountain Records with Kyle Creed before building his own studio and starting his Heritage Records label.

Bobby Patterson seated, holding a banjo with a mandolin and electric bass on either side of him
Bobby Patterson poses with banjo, mandolin, and electric bass

As another SFC connection Paul Brown (#20382) mentions in his excellent celebration of Patterson’s life and work here (Across the Blue Ridge – episode 95), many of the musicians recorded on both the Mountain and Heritage labels would not have been heard without Patterson’s dedication to recording and preserving this culture.  Patterson could also pick a bit himself, accompanying on a variety of instruments with a number of collaborators like Kyle Creed and the Camp Creek Boys, the Highlanders, Tommy Jarrell, and Fred Cockerham.  He later played regularly alongside his long-time musical partner Willard Gayheart, who offers his own recollections in the episode, which highlights not only Patterson’s playing, but a number of sessions recorded by him for the labels, and his documentation of performances at festivals and conventions throughout the region.

 

Album cover of the Heritage Records recording of the 1978 Brandywine Music Festival, showing a square dancing troupe
Heritage Records Release of the 1978 Brandywine Music Festival (Heritage Records #24); from the Norm Cohen Collection (#20480)

 

In 1987, Patterson was instrumental in launching the Old Time Herald (#20067) with founder and editor Alice Gerrard (#20006), a magazine that celebrates traditional music and dance, particularly in the southeastern United States, which still operates out of Durham.

SFC Curator Steve Weiss, AV Archivist Anne Wells, and I traveled to Galax in early Fall 2019 to pick up Patterson’s collection from the studio he built next to his home just outside Galax.  Our local guides Kilby Spencer and Mark Sanderford, without whom we would have struggled to navigate through this pickup, provided context to the collection and pointed out recordings and musicians that could be of particular significance. Steve and Anne assessed the condition of the different formats and began the organization process. I helped them pack, tote, and haul, and learned a great deal.

It was a rewarding and satisfying experience to work with these colleagues and friends, reminding me why we do what we do, and reinforcing the importance of this work, preserving not only the physical materials but the spirit they capture.  We would also like to thank Kelley Breiding, and—most of all—Janice Patterson, for their support of this project.

a guitar and two banjos leaning up against a desk in Patterson's studio
The house instruments of Patterson’s studio

We are happy and honored to host the Bobby Patterson Collection (#20574) at the SFC.

View of the Blue Ridge Mountains, outside Galax, VA

Southern Artists in the Judith McWillie Papers

Last year we digitized over 100 videos from the Judith McWillie Papers documenting a diverse set of artists at work. Focusing primarily on southern artists (with an emphasis on Georgia natives), McWillie spent hours filming in homes, studios and yards from the mid-1980s to late 1990s before focusing her lens on Cuban art in the 2000s.
Below is a sampling of screenshots from some of these videos, which were originally brought to the Southern Folklife Collection on Video8 or VHS, and are now available through the Judith McWillie Papers finding aid (20455).

Precious Bryant sit and tunes her acoustic guitar
Precious Bryant tuning her guitar in Waverly Hall, GA on August 8, 1986 (VT-20455/16)

Mary T. Smith stands at a table outside, holding her canvas with two cats in the background
Mary T. Smith is asked to paint her cats in Hazlehurst, MS on December 15th, 1986 (VT-20455/26)

A painting of two yellow cats against a black background stands upright on a table
Cats in progress (VT-20455/26)

Robert Beauchamp stands in his studio surrounded by canvasses of his artwork
Robert Beauchamp in his studio in Athens, GA on May 26th, 1984 (VT-20455/93)

Wadsworth Jarrell sits in front of his paintings
Wadsworth Jarrell discussing his work in Athens, GA on June 9th, 1984 (VT-20455/94)

colorful portrait of a boy using purple, yellow, red, blue and white values
Close up of painting by Jarrell featured in the exhibition AFRICOBRA III at Howard University in 1973 (VT-20455/94)

silhouette of trees and flock of black birds against purple, yellow and pink sunset
McWillie takes a break from interviewing and videotapes formations made by a flock of birds in Athens, GA (VT-20455/15)

Judith McWillie is professor emeritus of drawing and painting at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. Preservation and access to these materials was made possible by funding through our Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Extending the Reach of Southern Audiovisual Sources.

Student Television Collection

Over the past two months, we have been processing and arranging the University Archives Student Television at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill collection (#40326) as part of the next phase of our generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photo collage of a U-matic case and tape for "Off the Cuff #19: A Holiday Extravaganza!" One has a drawing of a Christmas tree on the label; the other a drawing of Santa.
U-matic case for “Off the Cuff #19: A Holiday Extravaganza!” featuring drawings on the labels (VT-40326/466).

This collection of video recordings features original, student-produced shows, along with recordings of events and speeches around campus made by UNC Student Television between the years 1983-2010. There are more than 1,600 recordings in the collection on U-matic, VHS, and mini-DV analog formats. A few shows are still running today including General College and Late Night STV. UNC Student Television is a completely student-run television station for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Founded in 1983, it is now one of the largest media organizations on campus.
The finding aid for this collection will be available soon, but until then we thought we’d give you some highlights.
Off the Cuff is a long running sketch comedy show, and the STV collection features around 200 items with related Off the Cuff content. Pictured above and below is a sample of U-matic and VHS tapes found in the collection, all featuring Off the Cuff shows and segments.
Photo collage of U-matic case with sticker that reads "Off the Cuff" on the front, "sometimes comedy" on one edge, and "isn't pretty" on the other edge
U-matic case for “The 75th Off the Cuff Special: 7 years of STV comedy” (VT-40326/167)

Photo collage of VHS case for "Off the Cuff #150: Behind the Music Part 1" Label has a drawing of a monkey on it.
VHS case for “Off the Cuff #150: Behind the Music Part 1” (VT-40326/1478).

General College is another long running show featured in the collection. STV describes it as a “surreal melodrama with comedic elements,” and episodes are sequential by season. Below is a short clip of the General College intro from episode #14 produced in the fall of 1988 (VT-40326/104).

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!
 

McCabes Guitar Shop Collection comes to UNC

McCabes_1
It’s a treat to go on an accession trip through the eyes and lens of Southern Folklife Collection curator, Steve Weiss. Just last month, Steve traveled to California to prepare the over 2000 audio cassettes and open reel tapes documenting performances from 1969 onward by the likes of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, John Fahey, John Hammond, Bill Monroe, Odetta, Jean Ritchie, Dave Van Ronk, Mike Seeger, Ralph Stanley, Merle Travis, Kate Wolf, Townes Van Zandt, and North Carolina’s own Elizabeth Cotten and Doc and Merle Watson. They all took place at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California.
More than 1,600 musical acts have played at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California, over the last 45 years. The list on the store’s website even comes with a warning: “We lost track of a few names.”
Now Bob Riskin, the concert venue’s owner, has donated thousands of hours of recordings from those concerts to the Southern Folklife Collection (SFC) in the Wilson Special Collections Library. The SFC will preserve the recordings by creating and archiving digital copies of them.
The McCabe’s store, which first opened its doors in 1958 and specializes in selling folk and acoustic instruments, offers instrument rentals and repairs as well as books, lessons, and help for musicians and music aficionados alike.
We look forward to researchers, scholars, musicians, and fans to be able to access these historic recordings starting in September of 2016. For now, though, take a trip to McCabe’s through these photographs made by Steve Weiss on his recent trip.
McCabes_4McCabes_3 McCabes_2McCabes_5 McCabes_7 McCabes_8 McCabes_9 McCabes_10 McCabes_11 McCabes_12 McCabes_6 McCabes_14