Showing Collections: 1 - 10 of 13
Asa Martin Collection
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0115 SAA 115
Abstract
Asa Martin was born 1900 in Clark County, Kentucky where he grew up hearing music at home and at various traveling shows. He tried his hand as an entertainer, first singing on small vaudeville shows and eventually on commercial recordings and radio with Madison County, Kentucky fiddler, Doc Roberts.On their recordings for Gennett and other labels, he played guitar with Roberts and performed a varied repertoire of songs that included parodies, traditional ballads, and current...
Dates:
translation missing: en.enumerations.date_label.created: 1920-1979
Cash Gospel Quartet Collection
Collection — Container: 1
Identifier: BCA 0109 SAA 109
Abstract
This collection documents the radio performing career of the Cash Quartet from Rockcastle County, Kentucky during the 1950-1960s. The collection consists of radio program sound recordings, written program song lists, published song books, photographs, and printed personal appearance programs.
The Cash Quartet was formed by Walter Cash (1929- ) around 1956 in the Ottawa community of southern Rockcastle County, Kentucky. Other members were his wife Reba (1937- ); sister, Joanne (1936- ); and...
Dates:
Other: Majority of material found in 1959-1961; Other: Date acquired: 08/31/2007
Curley Collins Collection
Collection — Container: 1
Identifier: BCA 0119 SAA 119
Abstract
Ruel Culbertson (Curley) Collins (1915-1986) played the fiddle, guitar, and banjo in country and western bands of the 1930s-1980s. Born near the Boyd County seat town of Catlettsburg in northeastern Kentucky, Curley Collins grew up hearing the music of his father, Neal, on banjo and his mother, Maggie, on the pump organ at church. He also was listening to country music on records, nearby radio stations, and major network programs such as the National Barn Dance and the Grand Ole Opry. He...
Dates:
translation missing: en.enumerations.date_label.created: 1928-2002
Doc Hopkins Audio Recordings Reference Collection
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0266
Abstract
Doctor Howard Hopkins was a popular performer on mid- western radio in the 1930s and 1940s. Born January 26, 1900, in Harlan County, Kentucky, Hopkins began playing banjo during his boyhood on an instrument his father crafted for him.
The Hopkins family moved to Rockcastle County, where Doc’s neighbors included his future radio colleagues John Lair, Karl Davis, and Harty Taylor. In 1930 Lair invited his schoolmates to Chicago, and Hopkins named the new band the Cumberland Ridge...
Dates:
Other: Date acquired: 05/06/2017
Ed Ward Collection
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0137 SAA 137
Abstract
Ed Ward was a private record and tape collector, poet, prose writer, and community historian who lived at Bledsoe in Harlan County, Kentucky.
The digitized material in this collection includes recordings of interviews with Ed Ward, his reading from his writings such as Tall Tales of the Hills, musician interviews he recorded, and selected tape copies from Ward’s record collection of commercial recordings of Kentucky old time and early country music...
Dates:
Other: Majority of material found in 1937-1991
Jim Smoak Banjo Music Collection
Collection — Container: 1
Identifier: BCA 0163 SAA 165
Abstract
Growing up in low country South Carolina in the 1930s and 1940s, Jim Smoak immersed himself in the music of his family and of the live radio broadcasts to which they listened. Smoak especially admired the innovative banjo playing of Snuffy Jenkins, whom he heard daily on Columbia’s WIS Station. Jenkins would become a family friend and mentor, inspiring Smoak to pursue work as a banjo player. Smoak would become one of the first generation of banjo players to bring three-finger style to...
Dates:
translation missing: en.enumerations.date_label.created: 1963-2012
John Lair Papers
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0066 SAA 066
Abstract
The John Lair papers document the life of country music broadcaster, music collector, and community historian John Lee Lair (1894-1985).
Dates:
translation missing: en.enumerations.date_label.created: 1930-1999
Bradley Kincaid Collection
Collection
Identifier: BCA 0014 -SAA 013
Abstract
This collection contains correspondence, business records, photographs, news clippings, songbooks, and sheet music from radio ballad singer Bradley Kincaid. Collection sound recordings include interviews of Kincaid and his associates, a 1974 Kincaid performance at the Renfro Valley Traditional Music Festival, a 1974 recording of the song "Who Is Bradley Kincaid" composed and performed by Vince Matthews and Glen Sherley and copies of Kincaid's commercial 78 rpm discs (1928-1947).
Dates:
1856-1999; Majority of material found within 1923-1949
McLain Family Band Records
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0086 SAA 086
Abstract
The McLain Family Band came to be as the result of an interest in Bluegrass music developed by Raymond K. McLain (1928-2003) while Director of Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, Kentucky where he had moved in 1954 with his wife, Betty. This interest owed much to both family influence and formal academic training. McLain’s mother had been director of Southern Folk Life Studies at the University of Alabama. He had majored in music theory at Denison University and done graduate work...
Dates:
translation missing: en.enumerations.date_label.created: 1968-1989; Other: Date acquired: 12/14/2001
Reuben Powell Early Country Music Collection
Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0065 SAA 065
Abstract
The collecting activity reflected in this collection began in the early 1950s and continued well into the 1970s. After Rueben Powell’s 1968 retirement from work as chief utility engineer at Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Ohio, Powell and his wife Retha started the Renfro Valley Tape Club as a means of sharing the fruits of his collecting with other country music fans. Its appeal was particularly substantial among Powell's contemporaries who were disenchanted with the then newer country...
Dates:
translation missing: en.enumerations.date_label.created: 1910-1982