Grants to Library Will Preserve Historical Southern Music and Films
Detail from flier for 1970
Fiddler's Grove Festival.
Southern Folklife Collection.
The Southern Folklife Collection (SFC), which collects and preserves music and popular culture of the region, received $138,275 in February from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The SFC will use the funds to preserve and make accessible 2,350 hours of unique and endangered musical recordings.
Upon the project's estimated completion in July 2009, researchers will enjoy free on-site access to recorded interviews and performances by the South's preeminent traditional musicians, such as Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, and Elizabeth Cotten. Recordings will be drawn from the collections of Paul Brown (NPR newscaster/musician), Eugene Earle (collector/discographer) and noted musicians Alice Gerrard and Mike Seeger.
Stills from the films of Harry Lee Harllee,
identified by Harllee as (top to bottom):
himself; Mingo Jackson; Magnolia Gardens.
Southern Historical Collection.
The project also includes live recordings made between 1970 and 2000 at the Ole Time Fiddler's and Bluegrass Festival at Fiddler's Grove in Union Grove, N.C., and WPAQ radio broadcasts from the collection of Ralph D. Epperson, who founded the Mt. Airy, N.C., station in 1948.
"Together with the John Edwards Memorial Foundation Collection and the Curriculum in Folklore's archives, these recordings make UNC-Chapel Hill one of the premier repositories for the study of Southern traditional music," said Steve Weiss, head of the SFC. The SFC is closely affiliated with the Southern Historical Collection, which received a $6,000 grant in June from the National Film Preservation Foundation.The SHC will use the award to preserve three 16mm, black and white amateur films. The films were shot in and around Florence, S.C., in the late 1920s by Harry Lee Harllee (1876-1952). The footage includes scenes of social gatherings, plantations, the Harllee and Quattlebaum families, and natural scenery.
These films provide an "exclusive window" into a waning culture and its customs, said Stephanie Stewart, moving image archivist in Wilson Library. They also provide a rare view of the region's flora and fauna in the early part of the twentieth century, said Stewart.
Harllee, a naturalist, ornithologist and taxidermist, founded the Harllee Natural History Museum, in Florence. He also established Harllee Quattlebaum Construction there; it is now Quattlebaum Development Company of Charleston, S.C.
The home movies are part of the Harry Lee Harllee Collection at the SHC. Viewing copies will be available in UNC's Wilson Library when the grant is completed in August 2009.
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