We are happy to announce the publication of Norm Cohen’s All This for a Song, the second volume in the Southern Folklife Collection’s Vernacular Music Reference Shelf series. All This for a Song gathers together an important collection of sixteen case studies, originally published between 1895 and 2003, demonstrating the variety of approaches scholars have used in studying and analyzing American traditional songs and ballads. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography of more than 1,000 song, ballad, and tune studies published from the mid-19th century to the early 21st.
All This for a Song is currently available at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Bull’s Head Bookshop, or you can call the Bull’s Head at 919-962-5066 to order.
Today Sony Legacy will be releasing a new Dolly Parton box set, appropriately entitled “Dolly”. The four-CD, 99-track set is the first cross-label, career spanning Dolly Parton retrospective.
The Southern Folklife Collection was proud to provide Sony with remote access to the first two songs presented on this compilation, “Puppy Love” and “Girl Left Alone”, recorded in 1959 for Eddie Shuler’s Goldband Records by then thirteen-year-old Dolly Parton.
Listen to “Puppy Love”, from the original master tape (#FT-7670 in the Goldband Records Collection):
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We recently received a copy of Way Out There: The Complete Recordings 1934-1943 (SFC CD-7810), the new Sons of the Pioneers/Roy Rogers box set from German label Bear Family Records. Bear Family boxes are always overstuffed with great material, and this one is no exception, with six CDs and a 160 page hardcover book featuring dozens of photographs and poster reproductions. SFC staff were happy to assist the folks at Bear Family with remote access to material from our 78 rpm record collection during the production of this set.
Listen to the Sons of the Pioneers performing “Way Out There” (from SFC 78-7047):
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The holdings of the SFC are particularly strong in Sons of the Pioneers material, most notably the Sons of the Pioneers Transcription Discs Collection, featuring many non-commercial recordings from the Lucky-U Ranch radio programs of the 1950’s, and the Elizabeth Drake McDonald Collection on the work of songwriter Bob Nolan.
UNC Press has announced a November 2009 publication date for Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices Of The Mississippi Blues, the new book/CD/DVD from UNC’s own Bill Ferris. From the Press:
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Illustrated with Ferris’s photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a CD of original music and a DVD of original film, this book features more than 20 interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South.
The CD/DVD is set to include narratives and performances from Fannie Bell Chapman, Scott Dunbar, James “Son” Thomas, B.B. King and more, personally selected by Bill Ferris from his extensive field recordings housed in the SFC’s William R. Ferris Collection.
UNC Press has put together a great website where you can watch video clips, get bonus material, and preorder your copy.
We are happy to announce the publication of Norm Cohen’s All This for a Song, the second volume in the Southern Folklife Collection’s Vernacular Music Reference Shelf series. All This for a Song gathers together an important collection of sixteen case studies, originally published between 1895 and 2003, demonstrating the variety of approaches scholars have used in studying and analyzing American traditional songs and ballads. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography of more than 1,000 song, ballad, and tune studies published from the mid-19th century to the early 21st.