John F. Smith Traditional Music Collection

John F. Smith taught in the Berea College Normal School.  As part of his Composition and Rhetoric course, Smith asked students to write down the names of banjo and fiddle songs and tunes known to them in their home districts of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.  The results are a large, varied body of material that includes ballads, songs, fiddle and banjo tunes, and games.  Several students also included lists of musical instruments present in their home communities and descriptions of music related social events such as house dances and singing schools. Smith’s students came from a part of Kentucky and Tennessee located on the western edge of Appalachia. The area includes Garrard, Lincoln, Casey, Pulaski, Madison, Estill, Wolfe, Owsley, Breathitt, Magoffin, Floyd, Clay Leslie, and Knox counties in Kentucky and Sevier and Marshall Counties in Tennessee. Taken as a whole, their lists offer valuable insights concerning the kind of songs being sung and the repertory of traditional musicians in this region prior to the changes in musical tastes brought about by radio and phonograph records beginning in the 1920s.