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This collection has access restrictions. For details, please see the restrictions.
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the FAQ section for more information.
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Collection Overview
| Size | 38 items (2.0 linear feet) |
| Abstract | Folklorist and librarian Brett Sutton was born in 1948 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. He enrolled in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a Masters degree in 1976. His thesis project, The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes, and the Black Tradition, focused on African American spiritual folk singing in North Carolina. The collection includes reel-to-reel tapes with cover sheets, tape indices, and content notes for each recording that were gathered for Sutton's thesis research. These tapes were recorded in several locations, including the World's Greatest Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith in Durham, N.C., an African American congregational church. Recordings consist of Sunday morning services; a benefit to honor the choir's sixth anniversary; shape-note gospel hymns; spirituals; and interviews with Gurtha Dunston, leader of the vocal choir at Gethsemane Baptist Church in Franklin County, N.C. Other tapes contain music and preaching recorded from WSCR radio broadcasts in Durham. |
| Creator | Sutton, Brett. |
| Language | English. |
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Information For Users
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Subject Headings
The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
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Biographical Information
Brett Sutton was born in 1948 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. He graduated with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1970 with a Bachelors degree in English. After a period of work and pursuit of his musical interests, he enrolled in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned a Masters degree in 1976. His thesis project, The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes, and the Black Tradition, focused on African American spiritual folk singing around Raleigh and Durham, N.C.
Sutton's interest in spirituals is an extension of his more general interest in music, especially black folk music and jazz. He studied music widely and plays in the classical, jazz, and folk idioms. He has studied theory and historical aspects of music and transposes music into notation. Most of his collecting focused on black churches and the performances of individuals. He also studied blues, black chanted sermons, and the history of black sacred music.
In 1982, Sutton earned a Ph.D. in anthropology, and, in 1988, he earned a Masters in Library Science, both from UNC-Chapel Hill. While earning his Masters degree in Folklore, Sutton was the curator of the UNC Folk Music Archives, now the Southern Folklife Collection. Sutton led the development of a cataloging system for the archive's then thousand-plus holdings.
In 1976, Sutton, along with Peter Hartman, continued collecting religious folksongs in the Virginia mountains. Recordings from this collection can be found in the Brett Sutton and Peter Hartman Collection (#20042). From this research, Primitive Baptist Hymns of the Blue Ridge (book and LP record) was published in 1981 by the University of North Carolina Press.
Along with Sutton's numerous articles, books, and papers, 1986-1988, about religious folksongs, he participated in radio and film documentaries. As an audio engineer for WUNC public radio, he worked on a five-part series on North Carolina folklife that includes "The Golden Echoes of Creedmore, N.C.," and "Being A Joines: Brushy Mountain Tale Teller." Sutton initiated, along with Joan Fenton, Back Porch Music, WUNC's popular weekend music program, and, in 1986, he contributed sound recordings for A Singing Stream, a film by Tom Davenport.
Brett Sutton became Dean of Information Services at Aurora University, in Aurora, Ill., in 1997.
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Scope and Content
The Brett Sutton collection consists of reel-to-reel tapes with cover sheets, tape indices, and content notes for each recording. These tapes were recorded in several locations, including the World's Greatest Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith in Durham, N.C., an African American congregational church. Recordings consist of Sunday morning services; a benefit to honor the choir's sixth anniversary; shape-note gospel hymns; spirituals; and interviews with Gurtha Dunston, leader of the vocal choir at Gethsemane Baptist Church in Franklin County, N.C. Other tapes contain music and preaching recorded from WSCR radio broadcasts in Durham. This material was gathered for folklorist and librarian Sutton's Masters in Folklore thesis, The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes and the Black Tradition, which includes a compilation tape from these recordings along with the written text.
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Series 1. Sound Recordings, 1974-1975.
Sound recordings consist of reel-to-reel tapes recorded using a Sony tape deck and a Shure microphone in several locations, including the World's Greatest Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith in Durham, N.C., an African American congregational church. Recordings consist of Sunday morning services; a benefit to honor the choir's sixth anniversary; shape-note gospel hymns; spirituals; and interviews with Gurtha Dunston, leader of vocal choir at Gethsemane Baptist Church. Other tapes contain music and preaching recorded from WSCR broadcasts in Durham. This material was gathered for Sutton's Masters in Folklore thesis, The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes and the Black Tradition, which includes a compilation tape from these recordings along with the written text.
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Series 2. Documentation, 1974-1975.
Documentation consists of cover sheets, tape indices and content notes for each recording. Documentation notes are in the following folder:
folder FT-809 through FT-833. #20041, Series: "2. Documentation, 1974-1975. " |
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Items Separated
Items are separated according to their format (FTs and documentation folder).
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