Loyal Jones Rural/Country Comedy Reference Collection

Loyal Jones (1928-) grew up on a farm in western North Carolina. He graduated from Hayesville, North Carolina High School in 1945, earned an undergraduate degree in English at Berea College in 1954, and received his masters in English from the University of North Carolina in 1957. He was the first Director of the Berea College Appalachian Center (now the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center) serving in that capacity from 1970 to 1993. Jones served in the United States Army and was a public school teacher in Jefferson County, Kentucky before returning to Berea. He then served as Associate Executive Director and later Executive Director of the Berea based Council of the Southern Mountains. Over the years, he has also been active in many local and regional organizations. He began writing in college but did not publish until several years later. He is a prolific writer and has to his credit nine books and literally dozens of published articles concerning Appalachian people and their culture. Nearly all of his writing is connected to the Southern mountains, reflecting his essentially life-long presence there. As a result of his years of writing and speaking about the region—including his work on regional humor—Jones has become one of its best-known and best-loved figures.