Hellfire and banjoes

The last two clips from my fieldwork videos from 1988-91:

Excerpt #14: Taped at a revival meeting at the Boiling Springs Baptist Church, Cherokee County. Unidentified preacher. I have many times used this clip as an illustration of oral narrative and what folklorists call "formulaic composition" in traditional southern mountain sermon style. Like African American sermon style, traditional Appalachian "shouted" sermonizing is often misread by the uninitiated as "angry." This style of preaching goes back, in both Black and Anglo traditions, at least to the Second Great Awakening.

Excerpt #15: Banjo player Hobby Whitener, with gospel piano player Ruby Russell. The two are neighbors in Marble, North Carolina. I'm on the far left on guitar, and local tree surgeon Scott Ferguson, on my left, plays fiddle. This is a program we put together for public school teachers from Chattanooga.

Woodcarvers; left-handed fiddler; metal men; banjo-playing women

More video excerpts from fieldwork in western North Carolina, east-central Tennessee and north Georgia, 1988-91, while I was working on grants from the NEA and the NC Arts Council:



Segment #5: Ray Mann, one of the original Brasstown Carvers, and one of the last of his generation of Carvers, at his home in Warne. NC.

Segment #6: Ross Brown, old-time north Georgia fiddler, at his home in Hiawassee, Georgia. The tune is "Sweet Marie."

Segment #7: Adam Ledford, of Jack Rabbit, NC. Folk artist, metal sculptor, and shade tree mechanic. Ledford's elaborate and fanciful scrap-metal men and animals were displayed at the Knoxville World's Fair.

Segment #8: Roberta Voyles, banjo, and John Debty, guitar, Marble, NC. Roberta and John, brother and sister, learned to play from their father and his friends, who had an old-time string band that played dances throughout Cherokee County and beyond (though Roberta, being a good girl, was not allowed to attend).

long-bow fiddler; culture worker; Leatherwood singers

This is the first of several video clips I'll be posting, excerpts from fieldwork I did while folklorist-in-residence at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. All the original documentary materials from those years are archived at the Folk School, which is right on the North Carolina-Georgia-Tennessee border in what used to be called "the Southern Highlands" of Appalachia. I'll gradually add more detailed commentary about each clip.

Segment #1: Ben Entrekin, fiddle, with Sam White, guitar. Ben was a champion fiddler at the Knoxville World's Fair, and was the son-in-law of the legendary Cherokee fiddler, Manco Sneed.

Segment #2: An interview with Margaret Campbell at her home in Gatlinburg, TN. Ms. Campbell was instrumental in the craft revival of the 1930s, helping to start the Brasstown Carvers. Here she shows two carvings in her personal collection, by Tom Brown of Pleasant Hill, Tennessee. These carvings are featured in the Allen Eaton's 1937 survey, Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, which was funded and published by the Russell Sage Foundation. The book also included the iconic photography of Doris Ulmann.

Segment #3: The Leatherwood Singers of Peachtree, North Carolina. This clip includes three generations of the gospel-singing family.