Diversifying Repertoire: Special Collections

Alice Gerrard is considered one of the "pioneering women" of bluegrass music. She collaborated and documented many women musicians throughout her career including Hazel Dickens, Elizabeth Cotten, Ola Belle Reed, Matokie Slaughter, and many more. She also documented many North Carolina musicians such as Joe and Odell Thompson.

"The Cecelia Conway and Tommy Thompson Collection consists of field recordings of African-American old-time musicians from North Carolina. Created by Cecelia Conway and Tommy Thompson in 1974, the live recordings feature John Snipes, African-American old-time two-finger and clawhammer fretless banjo player of Haw River, Alamance County, N.C.; Dink Roberts, African-American old-time banjo player of Haw River, Alamance County, N.C.; and Joe and Odell Thompson, African-American fiddle and banjo player from Mebane, Orange County, N.C. The recordings include old-time tunes and song from both African-American and Anglo-American fiddle and banjo traditions of the Carolina Piedmont. Also included in the collection are corresponding tape logs created by SFC staff. Tape logs include song titles, playback speed, and track configuration."

"Charles Brown (1922-1999) was an African American rhythm and blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced blues performance in the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1949 and 1952, Brown had seven Top 10 hits in the U.S. Billboard R&B chart. He influenced performers including Floyd Dixon, Cecil Gant, Ivory Joe Hunter, Percy Mayfield, Johnny Ace, and Ray Charles. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999."

"Candie Anderson and Guy Carawan, a white couple married since 1960, met as a result of their mutual involvement in the civil rights movement. The Carawans have been involved in the work of the Highlander Research and Education Center (formerly the Highlander Folk School) in Tennessee, an institution that supports and provides educational resources for progressive social and political causes in the South. Included are historically significant speeches, sermons, and musical performances recorded during major civil rights demonstrations and conferences in Nashville, Birmingham, Atlanta, and other southern cities; field recordings of worship meetings, songs, stories, and recollections from Johns Island, S.C., that document the African American heritage of the rural South Carolina Low Country;

"Audiovisual materials created and compiled by the Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, a social justice leadership training school and cultural center located outside of Knoxville, Tenn... Materials found in the collection document Highlander's Citizenship Schools during the civil rights movement, their work with labor struggles in the 1970s, and later their work with immigration, globalization, and environmental causes from the 1980s to 2000s. The collection also contains materials documenting Highlander's work with international communities in Latin America and India in the 1980s and 1990s, including video recordings related to the Bhopal Union Carbide Plant Disaster of 1984...Recordings of folk music, protest songs, labor songs, and African American religious songs were a large part of the civil rights movement and appear within the collection. Of particular note are audio recordings on acetate disc and transcription disc of radio programs, recorded songs, and voices of leaders from the civil rights movement, including Esau Jenkins, Septima Clark, Rosa Parks, Zilphia Horton, and Highlander co-founder, Myles Horton."

"Collection of historian and documentary film producer Malinda Maynor Lowery, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Malinda Maynor Lowery has focused much of her academic and filmmaking career on questions pertaining to Native culture, identity, and migration. The collection contains papers, ephemera, photographs, and audiovisual materials related to some of Lowery's documentary film projects on these subjects, including work completed while she was a student at Harvard University and Stanford University, as well as the films Real Indian (1996), Sounds of Faith (1997), and In the Light of Reverence (2001)... The collection also contains photographs and audio recordings related to Malinda Maynor Lowery's husband, Willie French Lowery (1944-2012), a Lumbee musician and activist from Robeson County, N.C."

"The collection of organizational records, audiovisual materials, and photographs documents the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, an organization based in Nashville, Tenn., and founded in 1966 by African American folklorist, singer, and civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon and white folklorist and folk musician Anne Romaine. The Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project (SFCRP) worked to present traditional musicians from African American and white cultures in performance together at a time when this was considered controversial. The SFCRP continued presenting musical performances throughout the South until the late 1980s, keeping close ties with the civil rights movement. Musicians documented in this collection include Dewey Balfa, Dock Boggs, Reverend Pearly Brown, Alice Gerrard, Hazel Dickens, Mable Hillary, Jane Sapp, Lily May Ledford, Furry Lewis, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Ola Belle Reed, Frazier Moss, Sparky Rucker, Mike Seeger, Johnny Shines, Hedy West, and Nimrod Workman."

"The collection of white folklorist, author, professor, and filmmaker William R. Ferris (1942- ) of Vicksburg, Miss., contains professional and personal papers, photographs, sound recordings, film, video recordings, artifacts, and other items documenting his life and work from the early 1940s through the 2010s.... Topics include Mississippi and the Mississippi Delta; African American life and culture; black churches; folk, blues, gospel, fife and drum corps, and other genres of music; blues musicians; southern writers; folk and music festivals; folk arts, culture, and humor; auctioneers and mule trading; the Ku Klux Klan; and prisons, especially Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary."

The purpose of this LibGuide, which was made possible through a grant from the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation, is to introduce all those interested in blues music to relevant resources available through the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Libraries.

The primary sources within special collections offer unique perspectives that reflect time and place, individual identities, and community practices. In academic research, primary sources such as diaries, correspondence, records, manuscripts, and photographs provide evidence of historical thought and experiences. In creative research, primary sources can provide evidence of creative practice, or inspiration for new compositions, stories, or interpretations of historical performance practices.

This LibGuide provides an overview of resources about and by Elizabeth Cotten in the Southern Folklife Collection and the UNC Music Library.

Content Warning: This collection of sheet music from the 1830s-1920s contains racist imagery and content.