Mountain looms; shaped notes; split-oak baskets; bluegrass

Installment #3 of fieldwork from a three-year residency as a folklorist at the Campbell Folk School.



Excerpt #8: Wilma Hatchett McNabb, at age 94 the winner of the 1990 North Carolina Folk Heritage Award. Mrs. McNabb had learned to weave as a small girl on the old mountain loom of her mother's, but became a serious weaver in the early years of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild and the craft revival of the 1920s-30s.

Excerpt #9: The Tuesday Night Singing at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Hanging Dog, North Carolina. The group was a remnant of the Cherokee County Singing Convention, which disbanded in 1948, and included several veteran shaped-note gospel song leaders.

Excerpt #10: Bill and Bonnie Barker of Upper Peachtree, North Carolina. Bill was the last traditional maker of split-oak baskets in Cherokee County, having learned from his mother and his father-in-law.

Excerpt #11: The Mashburn Brothers bluegrass band, of Union County, Georgia, at a benefit concert at the Hanging Dog Community Center. With banjoist Don Fox of Hiawassee, Georgia, and fiddler Red Roberts, originally of Owl Creek, North Carolina.

Good morning, central Virginia!

Hey all:

All of a sudden with a lot of time on my hands . . .

I will be spending a lot of time in coming weeks getting my own archival files and folklore collections in order. In particular, I'm going to begin digitizing all my old Hi-8 video footage from fieldwork in Tennessee and Maryland's Eastern Shore. Also, some VHS footage from North Carolina and Georgia. Then I'm going to start posting highpoints of the video on YouTube, and embed mp4s on my website, formerly the site of the Southern Council for Folk Culture.

And playing guitar.

That picture of me playing the old 12-string dobro is, by the way, from last year's Spirit Walk in Charlottesville. I'm in character as 1920s cowboy singer Billy Vest, who hailed from Afton, Virginia, and recorded on Columbia Records back in the day. He had an amazing story. He met and played with Jimmie Rodgers; the Carter Family; Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett and the Skillet Likkers; Darby and Tarleton, and was even in the movies with Gene Autry and played in his band.

Normally I wear my boots inside my pants. And that 1970s leather pimp jacket from Mexico I'll never wear ever again, I promise. Mostly because it got rained on and shrank, which didn't improve its looks any.