Topic: Music Collections Archived at Colleges/Universities

[ScottN]

Hi all,

Just discovered some footage of Buddy Moss playing Tricks Ain't Working No More on YouTube.  It looks like home movie footage towards the end of his life. There is a lot of distortion but it is a thrill to see that right thumb in action, for me at least



If the link doesn't work the title is "Tricks Ain't Working No More - Buddy Moss performs" - it was posted last month by Joshua Jacobson who is a very good player and singer based on watching his other videos.

Thanks,
            Scott

[TenBrook]

Just stumbled on this wonderful 3 part interview with Fiddlin' John Carson's daughter and country music pioneer Rosa Lee Carson. So far it's quite an enteraining/informative listen and it's wonderful to hear her voice 50+ years after she made her first recordings.

http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/search/searchterm/Moonshine%20Kate,%201909-1994/mode/exact

It seems the Atlanta History Center site is worth poking around, another search brought up an interview with Gid Tanner's son Gordon.

Note that you can download the tracks by clicking the 'download' link in the top right.

Lew

[bnemerov]

There's also an hour+ of audio with Blanche Puckett (Riley's wife) in the collection. These interviews were done by various social worker types. One outcome was this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Atlanta-History-1914-1948-Thrasher/dp/0820316970

It's a wonderful read; it was very helpful when I was trying to put together Sister O.M. Terrell's childhood in Atlanta. One thing that makes these interviews so effective: blacks interviewed blacks and whites, whites. Minimized the "yassuh, nossuh" answers.

There are many more interviews than those used in the book--including some black guitarists and some of the hillbilly band musicians from the Atlanta scene of the 20s & 30s. Don't know how many are available on the 'net yet, but it's nice to see the AHC digitizing the tapes and putting some on-line.
I also recall Mike Gray describing using the AHC materials in his book about Willie McTell.
best,
bruce

[TenBrook]

bruce,
Thanks for filling in the details on how the interviews came to be. Thanks also for pointing out the book.

Additional searching led me to this 4 part interview with Buddy Moss. Always wonderful to find additional first person accounts from early blues players.

http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/LAohr/id/172/rec/1

[Johnm]

Thanks very much for finding the links to these interviews and posting them, Lew.  The Buddy Moss one is revelatory.  Finding out that he described himself as 18 years old when he started to learn guitar in 1919 makes the instrumental expertise and vocal maturity he showed in his 1934 solo sessions much easier to understand.  His published birthdate of 1914 would make those '34 recordings implausibly precocious, especially vocally, where he definitely sounded like a grown man, not a 19-year-old kid.  The 1901 birthdate also makes his mature appearance in his post-rediscovery period a lot easier to understand.

I haven't listened to the whole interview, and in some ways it is a bit slow-moving, but it is fascinating, and knowing where it is makes it possible to return to it.  Thanks!
All best,
Johnm 

[Stuart]

Thanks, Lew--These are great. And thanks for the background, Bruce.

At first the numbering of the Buddy Moss interview clips was somewhat confusing, but from what I can tell, they're all here:

http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/LAohr/id/172/rec/1

http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/LAohr/id/173/rec/2

http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/LAohr/id/174/rec/3

http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/LAohr/id/175/rec/4

The first two were done on February 23, 1979 and the next two on March 8.

The inferred "Clip 3 of 4" and "Clip 4 of 4" (neither of which I could find) appear to be "Clip 1 of 2" and "Clip 2 of 2."

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[banjochris]

I've spent a good chunk of the evening listening to tapes from the Mike Seeger collection, online at the University of North Carolina ? https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20009/ ? a bunch of the material you can only listen to on campus, but there is quite a bit available to listen to online anywhere, including a bunch of reels of Dock Boggs interviews and recording sessions (which are outtakes only, not the takes that made it onto the Folkways LPs).

I've only listened to the material from Boggs' first album and before, but so far I thought I'd share a couple of things, hopefully folks will find it interesting:

The original tune for "Lovin' Nancy," which Dock sings but doesn't play, is not quite the same but close to the tune of his "Cole Younger."

Dock also sings "Bound Steel Blues," written by him and recorded by the Shepherd Brothers, a cappella. It's rough but very cool.

Before he met Mike Seeger, Dock had never played "Death of Jerry Damron" on the banjo. He sings it with a different tune directly from the lyrics as they go through a bunch of old songs that Dock had written down. Dock says he's fooled with it a little but wants to get it to where he can play it on the banjo. It's clear from the conversation (which is from maybe the second or third time Seeger is visiting him, I would guess) that, given the chance to perhaps record again, that Dock is concerned that Seeger let the "recording manager" know that he has "oodles" of songs that no one else does, which of course is what the folks recording 78s in the 1920s were interested in the most.

One of the lines we had a little trouble with in "My Old Horse Died" should be "Swallowed the place where my house had stood"

I get the feeling Mike Seeger's biggest job recording Boggs at least early on was to get him to relax and slow down. Also there's one session with a different guitarist (I don't know who it is) that doesn't jell; Seeger's accompaniments are much better, which is not really a surprise.

There's a great outtake of "Harvey Logan" about 16:00 into reel 7 that only goes wrong near the end, where Dock sings the chorus:
"Oh my babe, my woman babe, hey hey hey hey." Also, Dock screws up two takes of "Harvey" a couple months apart in exactly the same place, the "lasso" verse.

On reel 8, a nice outtake of "Country Blues" with Mike Seeger backing on guitar.
Chris

[Lastfirstface]

Interesting stuff, Chris. I need to sit down and give those recordings a listen.

I don't know if you've checked them out, but I recommend the Eck Robertson tapes form the Mike Seeger collection. Lots of tunes that didn't make it to 78 or the County LP. He's a little shaky here and there but you get to here all kinds of special tunes like Eck's original "My Frog Ain't No Bullfrog."

[Johnm]

Thanks, Chris and Pete, for telling of your findings in the Mike Seeger collection.  I wonder how many resources of that sort are out there of which we're not aware.  Did you notice if there were any unissued recordings by Mike of the McGee Brothers and Arthur Smith, Chris?
All best,
Johnm

[Lastfirstface]

There are recordings of the McGee brother, several of which have already been digitized. Some of them are restricted and you can only access them from campus, but there are accessible separate interviews with Sam and Kirk that are worth a listen. I think the restricted recordings are ones that ended up on commercial releases like the "Opry Old Timers" LP and the "Milk 'Em In The Evening" live album.

[TenBrook]

In case anyone gets confused (like I did). Once you visit the link Chris posted (https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20009/), scroll all the way to the bottom to get to the digitized recordings. I at first tried clicking on links to individual performers at the top but found that some of them weren't digitized. The bottom links include anything that has been digitized. Once you click on it if the Access Restrictions state 'Open' then you're good to go. If it states 'Campus', well then, you'll have to wait until you're visiting UNC.

Thanks for sharing these Chris, I'm currently listening to Elizabeth Cotten (https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/20009/id/2886/rec/1) while a soft rain falls outside. In the past myself and others have shared links to other university repositories of online recordings. It would be nice to have a thread with all of them gathered in one place.

Lew

[banjochris]

There are recordings of the McGee brother, several of which have already been digitized. Some of them are restricted and you can only access them from campus, but there are accessible separate interviews with Sam and Kirk that are worth a listen. I think the restricted recordings are ones that ended up on commercial releases like the "Opry Old Timers" LP and the "Milk 'Em In The Evening" live album.

The "Milk 'Em" raw tapes are indeed available; I started listening to them very late last night -- they start with a few takes of a song that's not on the LP.
It seemed to me that much of what wasn't available involved a) bluegrass shows recorded live or radio shows that Seeger recorded and/or b) artists whose archives would still have significant commercial possibilities, like Mississippi John Hurt, Bill Monroe, etc.

It's gonna take a long time to listen to this stuff -- last night I heard the beginning of a tape that had 4 minutes or so of a slightly rusty but still amazing Leonard Copeland playing Beckley Rag and Just Pickin' from 1964.

[Stuart]

Nothing to do with Dock Boggs or Country Blues, but the article provides some insights re: the challenges institutions and people who preserve recordings face:

http://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_88d57cf0-6477-11e8-98a0-ebf19a287717.html

[banjochris]

Interesting stuff, Chris. I need to sit down and give those recordings a listen.

I don't know if you've checked them out, but I recommend the Eck Robertson tapes form the Mike Seeger collection. Lots of tunes that didn't make it to 78 or the County LP. He's a little shaky here and there but you get to here all kinds of special tunes like Eck's original "My Frog Ain't No Bullfrog."

I listened to just a touch of an interview with Eck that is on the B side of one of the Boggs reels, plus I have a bunch of Eck tunes that I acquired online somewhere years ago; I think it does have that Bullfrog tune -- I know it has Grigsby's Hornpipe on it, and it's not the County LP. Great stuff!
Chris

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I think what Lew suggested, of having all of the various university/college-related links to music archives listed in a single thread is a great idea.  I will work on putting that together in the next couple of days, and when I get ready to do it, I will put all of the recent posts in this thread, starting with Chris's one from early today, in there.  When I do the big merge to create the thread, I will leave all of the posts with their original titles for ease of following earlier discussions.
All best,
Johnm