In the pines, in the pines....

June 7, 2005 8:42 PM

The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection from the University of Arkansas. "John Quincy Wolf began collecting Ozark ballads while an undergraduate at Arkansas (now Lyon) college. His first serious professional interest in Ozark folksongs dates from his attendance at the Old Settler's folk music festival at Blanchard Springs in 1941. He and his wife Bess began to seek out folksingers in the White River and surrounding areas, often placing advertisements in local newspapers for people who knew 'old songs'. Wolf recorded hundreds of Ozark folksingers between 1952 and 1963, including Almeda Riddle, Neal Morris, Oscar and Ollie Gilbert, and Jimmy Driftwood. [...] The Wolf Folksong Collection at Lyon College contains hundreds of recordings." Site contains the field recordings of Ozark Folksongs, as well as sections for Memphis Blues, Sacred Harp Singing, and more. The folk song recordings are indexed by song title and singer. Music files play in Windows Media or Real.
posted by jokeefe (10 comments total)

Wow - great stuff and lots of it. So far I'm just reading the writings of Wolf Sr., but the site is going straight to del.icio.us and I'll be back for the rest. Great post.
posted by freebird at 9:08 PM on June 7, 2005

Great post, thanks. I've been getting into folk music over the past year or so and always love to find new (to me) recordings.
posted by HSWilson at 9:58 PM on June 7, 2005

Great find, jokeefe - this is excellent stuff - thanks for sharing!
posted by madamjujujive at 3:55 AM on June 8, 2005

Very, very cool post. (No version of Omie Wise as far as I can tell, though. I know it's more of an Appalachian song, but I had hopes.)
posted by OmieWise at 6:26 AM on June 8, 2005

OH MAN! THANKS!
posted by mrs.pants at 6:53 AM on June 8, 2005

When I first found this site a year or so ago, a lot of the tracks had been transferred through equipment with a terrible ground loop. The 60Hz hum was pretty unbearable.

Now I see they're storing them as WMA. I dunno which is worse ...
posted by scruss at 9:45 AM on June 8, 2005

Well, the recordings were bound to be far from perfect given that they were mostly made in people's kitchens during the 1950s (though I get the feeling that's not your specific complaint, scruss). But given the barebones nature of the site (Comic Sans, design directly from the hit parade of 1995) I figured that actually having a choice of media was a bonus... Out of interest, what would you call the ideal solution for the storage of these files? As mp3s? (Serious question, I don't know a lot about this. Would like to learn.)

And thank you all for your comments (especially mjjj).
posted by jokeefe at 12:39 PM on June 8, 2005

The local public radio station here in Little Rock runs a weekly show about musicians with an Arkansas connection (and the local alternative weekly runs a column)--sometimes it's Louis Jourdan or Johnny Cash or Black Oak Arkansas, but there's a lot of older stuff on there as well. (And here's another online archive, at Southeast Missouri State.)
posted by box at 3:10 PM on June 8, 2005

Wonderful -- thanks, j!
(Ozark roots here)
posted by languagehat at 3:58 PM on June 8, 2005

(Ozark roots here)

Yes, I remember! Thanks, and hope you're doing well. :)
posted by jokeefe at 10:50 PM on June 8, 2005